Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 103

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Television series by year

As far as I can tell, a category for a decade (such as Category:1960s television series) is for series that had first-run episodes during the decade. A category for a specific year (such as Category:1960 television series) is for series that first aired during that year. The year categories are subcategories of the decade categories. It seems a little strange to have the subcategories be for something a little different from the parent categories, but that's how it seems to be set up. Does anyone disagree? If that's right, then I'd like to put text on each category describing it. The text would be something like:

• For decades: This category is for television series that were on the air in the 1960s.
• For years: This category is for television series that started in 1960.

Opinions? --Auntof6 (talk) 15:57, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  21:59, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Possible change to template Infobox movie -- technical help requested, comments welcome

When the language is specified with this template, the template puts a page in a category such as Category:Korean language movies. As you can see from that category, not all possible categories have been defined. I don't think we need them all defined.

• Q1: Is there a way to have the template add the category only if it exists? I think some of the chronology templates do something similar.
• Q2: Would anyone object to making such a change?

Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 04:13, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Probably a good idea, so I've added the logic. Osiris (talk) 04:40, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

One of the problems with this fix is that we can have 30 articles that should be in a category, but no one has any idea that we never made that needed cat. With them being red-linked, the system at least tracks the need for the category to be created. Without that, there is no way to tell if the category is even needed short of searching for links to the language pages for movie articles. --Creol(talk) 06:01, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

That's very true. There's also the alternative (and this goes for other similar cases where we're using autocat in templates) of sorting the pages to a parent category that's more likely to exist. Like if Category:Korean language movies doesn't exist the logic can sort them to Category:Korean language media in the meantime, along with books and other media in the same language. Although however we force the autocat, it still won't pick up on all of the instances of a particular language. Some instances will still have to be searched out and added manually. Osiris (talk) 08:42, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Personally I would allow the template to put them into the cat even if it doesn't exist. Red link cats just like normal red links are allowed. (although not preferred). Sometimes there are situations where it is better just to allow it to happen. This might be one of them. Otherwise the second option that Osiris mentions would be preferable to it just not happening at all for the reasons Creol mentions.. -DJSasso (talk) 12:46, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Picture of the Year voting round 1 open

Dear Wikimedians,

Wikimedia Commons is happy to announce that the 2012 Picture of the Year competition is now open. We're interested in your opinion as to which images qualify to be the Picture of the Year for 2012. Voting is open to established Wikimedia users who meet the following criteria:

1. Users must have an account, at any Wikimedia project, which was registered before Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000 [UTC].
2. This user account must have more than 75 edits on any single Wikimedia project before Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000 [UTC]. Please check your account eligibility at the POTY 2012 Contest Eligibility tool.
3. Users must vote with an account meeting the above requirements either on Commons or another SUL-related Wikimedia project (for other Wikimedia projects, the account must be attached to the user's Commons account through SUL).

Hundreds of images that have been rated Featured Pictures by the international Wikimedia Commons community in the past year are all entered in this competition. From professional animal and plant shots to breathtaking panoramas and skylines, restorations of historically relevant images, images portraying the world's best architecture, maps, emblems, diagrams created with the most modern technology, and impressive human portraits, Commons features pictures of all flavors.

For your convenience, we have sorted the images into topic categories. Two rounds of voting will be held: In the first round, you can vote for as many images as you like. The first round category winners and the top ten overall will then make it to the final. In the final round, when a limited number of images are left, you must decide on the one image that you want to become the Picture of the Year.

To see the candidate images just go to the POTY 2012 page on Wikimedia Commons.

Wikimedia Commons celebrates our featured images of 2012 with this contest. Your votes decide the Picture of the Year, so remember to vote in the first round by January 30, 2013.

Thanks,
the Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year committee

This message was delivered based on m:Distribution list/Global message delivery. Translation fetched from: commons:Commons:Picture of the Year/2012/Translations/Village Pump/en -- Rillke (talk) 23:58, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Minimal city stub?

A city/populated place is notable in itself. So far, so good. I do however claim that to be worthy of keeping, the article about the place also needs to fulfill certain citeria:

1. The stub needs to contain some basic facts: The place is part of a larger area, and has a certain number of people living there. Unless we are talking about a village, there will also be an urban area/conurbation, with a population that is worth mentioning.
2. Unless we are talking about Sleepyville, which is a suburb of TheBigCity, and everyone is a commuter, there will be some kind of economic activity that is predominant in or around the city. Usually such things are worth mentioning. Smaller places are focused on one kind of economic activity, perhaps even one company,with bigger places some variation can be seen.
3. There might be some cultural heritage, almost any city has a place of worship, or some other sights interesting to those who visit. Mentioning them is usually helpful.

Mean as I am, I like being brutal. New creations of cities/populated places that do not state information from at least two of the three categories above should be deleted, after some time (1 week). How many stubs 'X is a place in Y,Z' do we have? - For those living in X, or tohse interested in geography, this should not be difficult to do, and it would prevent us from getting mass-created stubs no one dares to delete.--Eptalon (talk) 16:09, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

This is close to being a proposal for the proposed deletion process on EN. And yes, I am in favour of this. We are not supposed to be a directory of every place in the world. Chenzw  Talk  16:11, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

You're indeed being brutal lol and those one-liners if not improved after one week could become temporary soft redirects such as the one I've just created today about an Allier commune. ONaNcle (talk) 17:08, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Eptalon why do you insist on wasting so much time on this topic, you bring it up over and over. Just because you don't find these small articles useful doesn't mean they aren't. A stub is just a starting point, it is where articles will start from. There is no time limit on wikipedia and an article that is short is better than no article at all. If you don't like the articles don't read them. And contrary to Chenzw, we are an encyclopedia, so yes we are expected to be a directory for every place on earth. It's long been established that people will expand an existing article before they will create a new one. We want to encourage people to edit, not discourage. Deleting such useful articles would be detrimental with no obvious gain. -DJSasso (talk) 17:12, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

• Aside from ONaNcle's "loltastic" comment above, this statement, "Eptalon why do you insist on wasting so much time on this topic, you bring it up over and over." is where the discussion first turned from a proposal to do something for the wiki to a personal discussion about intentions and questioning motives. Assume good faith, please. We have a proposal below to redirect one sentence place articles to a list. The proposal does not go beyond that at this time. I would like to return to the main question at hand. Is this something editors on this wiki wish to do? Gotanda (talk) 22:49, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

• And as the discussion below talks about the proposal does go beyond that. If we redirect/delete these articles then it will require us to do it for all other stubs of a similar situation. (ie one line). This will affect almost the entire wiki and the redirecting of almost half the articles. Will require the wiki to create numerous pages to have the articles be redirected to. As someone else below pointed our this will take enormous amounts of man hours to do which could be far better used in another manner. Which I find ironic since people are complaining about how little man power we have to maintain these articles. I am sorry if you don't like the comment above but Eptalon has quite literally brought up this topic every couple months for the last couple of years. It is tedious to have to discuss it over and over ad nauseum and smacks of trying to wear out the opposes. -DJSasso (talk) 00:31, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

The amount of time used trying to delete these stubs over and over through the years is astounding.. Deleting them is more of a waste of time than just letting them sit there idlely. Discussing the same thing over and over and over.. and over.. is even more of a waste of time and energy. (this edit is one less I can get in today finding references for BLPs - 4 less with edit conflicts) --Creol(talk) 17:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The argument can be made that we waste more time patrolling a plethora of short articles that have barely any content on them than they are worth. Yes, we're an encyclopedia, but we're one with a very specific purpose: providing English-language articles in a simplified format (theoretically for people for whom English isn't their primary language, I would assume). Is it the best use of our time to have one-line articles about every tiny village on Earth, or would our readers be better served by fleshing out complex concepts like theoretical physics? I just caught a nearly three-week-old worthless edit on Medicine; are you really telling me that a page like Chouvigny is more important? Is Belle Plaine, Iowa really doing our readers much good? Are we at our most productive by creating pages like Coaraze instead of bringing Binary numeral system up to the same level of comprehensiveness as en:Binary number? EVula // talk // 20:10, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

How much bad is Belle Plaine, Iowa doing our readers? Who is patrolling it? It is already written and at this point providing no drain on resources at all except (currently) this thread and (if the case were made) to delete it. The existence of a stub causes no damage. The time spent here would be better spent looking for those 3 week old edits that got missed or finding a references here and there but instead, the time taken to further discuss this means another article on the list of BLPs without references sits there for a while longer. Belle Plaine hasn't caused me to lose any editing time, this discussion (and the umteenth before it) have. I can ignore a stub of no interest to me, but ignoring these discussions lets people push through policy I don't agree with so can't be ignored.

Your counter-point is that we have better things to put our efforts into than creating these stubs. The problem is we do not dictate what people want to write about. Also, we are not the ones who already spent their time on them. The only edits to Belle Plaine since it was written are a handful of bots (or bot like stub sorting). No real time lost. We frown on mass produced stubs, but alternatively, it is more likely that person would just wander off than that they start breaking down Theoretical Physics. We may have things that could better use our time, but dictating how others volunteer their time is not an option. ( 2+ more BLPs suffer for this) 20:51, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I didn' do much today, I spent about an hour writing about Montluçon; I also extendended Commentry (both cities in Allier department). What I can say that Commentry is a very good example of what industrialization can do to a village. They found coal nearby... In 1790, therewere 700 people in the village, in the 1870s-1890s, there were 12.000, today there are about 7.000. All I wanted ot point out with this that unless an article gets created/extended to a sufficient standard, it is little use. There was a spree of mass-creating such pages in 2008-2009; most of these pages have seen their last human edit then, and now only get updated by bots. Now we see another spree of such creations. Wouldn't it be time to start THINKING about getting decent rules that let us delete such orphaned articles? -"How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience? And for how long will that madness of yours mock us? To what end will your unbridled audacity hurl itself?" (First Catiline oration)- I am not against small articles about cities wherever, all I am trying to say is that unless they include at least two of the three categories of information I pointed out above, their content is next to useless. Unless we vercome our inertia and act, we will find out that of the nearly 100.000 articles, betwenn 10.000 and 20.0000 are one sentence stubs about cities. But I'll leave that to the people that will be around in 2015/2016.--Eptalon (talk) 21:48, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

No it isn't the time to think about getting decent rules to let us delete these articles. Because this articles are a GOOD THING. I would very much rather have 10-20,000 one sentence stubs than 10-20,000 subjects that don't have articles that should. Just because you think they are of little use doesn't actually make them so. Articles existing do a number of things, one even if they only contain where they are located tells a reader where it is located so the articles do provide some information. Secondly a reader (ie non-editor) that does a search for a given town that interests them is far more likely to be discouraged and stop reading the wiki if they find nothing than if they find a small one sentence stub. And if they find that one sentence stub there is a chance that they might actually add a bit of information that they might know about it. Even if that happens very rarely that is a net benefit that wouldn't be seen if we delete the article. The question really is Eptalon, do you want to grow the encyclopaedia or not. Deleting small stubs just because you don't like them is the quickest way to shrink and kill the wiki through discouragement of editing. (and of course the literal deleting of articles.) Your comment to that new editor that basically insinuated that their creation was worthless and that they should great large paragraphs for a new article was disgusting. Completely bitey and inappropriate for someone who has been here so long and knows we need to encourage people to stay and not to leave. -DJSasso (talk) 21:57, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The thing that everyone that brings this up time and again forgets is that this is the exact same way en.wiki started. Do you think it magically jumped from no articles to fully big articles? No the vast majority of articles on en started as single sentence stubs. Because we are a smaller community we will stay in the single sentence stub phase a lot longer. But we do have to go through it, just like en did. -DJSasso (talk) 22:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Supposing the articles were not created by a script, but by a human editor, how much longer would it take to write the two extra sentences?-If script-created, how much time would it need ot adapt the script ot paste three-sentence articles, instead of one sentence articles? - If all you can say about the fourth and fifth largest cities in Kentucky is that they are cities in Kentucky, how much do you actually care about what you write? (Owensboro, and Covington for those who don't know). When you then find out that the last human who edited the articles did so in 2009, what light does that shed on our project? - Is the image of not having these articles not a better one than having them as pitiful one-liners? --Eptalon (talk) 22:29, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't matter how much longer it takes. People are free to spend their volunteer time how they like. Maybe the person only knows enough about the subject to say where it is. As long as they aren't vandalizing and they are writing about something notable, it doesn't matter how much they "care" about their subject. It doesn't matter that the last person who touched it was in 2009. We have 30 (give or take) active editors on this wiki. Articles are going to go untouched for years. It is a fact of life on a small wiki. It sheds worse light on our project to not have an article when someone searches for it than a one liner. To be honest if I wasn't an editor here and I did searches and found no articles I was looking for I would stop coming here to read articles after about the 2nd or 3rd not found article, on the other hand if I found a single sentence I would be satisfied even if they didn't have much information. Secondly if I was someone creating these articles and spending my time in GOOD FAITH to create articles for the wiki and saw people deleting them because they just didn't find them interesting enough I would quite simply walk away from the wiki. Neither of these two scenario's helps our wiki because one causes us to lose readers and the other causes us to lose editors. In fact going so far as to actively delete these articles is going out of our way to hurt the wiki when keeping them doesn't harm our wiki in any way and quite possibly helps it. -DJSasso (talk) 22:48, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Being the person who created a lot of these articles, I have pushed for a while now for their deletion. I believe creating these articles was a mistake, and I disagree with the assumption they do not do any harm. They do. They harm our reputation as a credible source. SEWP has become a stub depositary. We would be better off concentrating on the expansion of the most commonly visited pages, rather than that of obscure places, very few people have heard of and want to here of. What we need is action to achieve what we say we are supposed to be doing: writing articles in simple language. I would argue our Wiki is less of a list of everything in the world, and more of a tool/place for people who find ENWP too complex. These people are very, very unlikely to find the ENWP articles complex, as the reality is most communes on ENWP are also very short stubs. Therefore, unless ENWP has an article (as opposed to a stub) about a place, there is clearly no need for a one line stub here, and I would argue a redirect to ENWP would be more useful and beneficial for us (at least, until the ENWP stub is expanded). Yottie ^=talk= 23:03, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

How exactly is our reputation as a credible source harmed by small articles. The articles are accurate information therefore they are still credible. -DJSasso (talk) 23:10, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

We are laughed at by people at ENWP, and branded as a place with a whole load of Stubs about French communes, American cities, and, formerly, Romanian Rivers/Asteroids/Football players. ENWP is where we are most likely to find people who are willing to help. This bad reputation, created by other people at ENWP who don't see past the numerous stubs, contributes, I am sure, to better people not coming to help here, because of this. Yottie ^=talk= 23:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind being pointed to those discussions as I am curious to see people mentioning any of those articles being over abundent. As someone who is very active on ENWP I have never seen anyone mention any of those things. What I have seen is people talking about is how they never find articles they search for here so there is no point coming here looking for stuff. Or another big thing I have heard from writers is that we are always chasing off writers by making seemingly random decisions or that we make it hard for people to want to come here and write. We were very highly criticized for deleting those Asteroid articles, so much so that there was talk having the WMF come in and restore them all and remove the administration. (though I doubt that ever could have happened.) A wiki suddenly dropping thousands of articles has a way of getting peoples attention in a bad way. -DJSasso (talk) 23:25, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I cannot point you to any discussions, but that is the feedback I have had. However, I don't think you can deny having redirects to enwiki, for a vast majority of place stubs, would be very different on the Simplicity side, and this is, correct me if I'm wrong, the main point of this wiki. (Example: Beauchastel vs Beauchastel) Yottie ^=talk= 23:34, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

• I'd like to point out this edit, which is very important to this discussion. I will post a more fleshed out comment when I've had some time to think. --Gordonrox24 | ^Talk 03:02, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I think I explained my views on this during the last discussion, which I initiated (though I did not know then that it had been discussed so extensively before). In that discussion, I supported redirecting the titles to a list, with anchors, that shows basic data about each place; data that would be far more informative than "X is a place in Y". I am opposed to deleting the pages, but I still support redirecting the definitions, and allowing them to be broken off into independent articles whenever someone has something of substance to add. That is my opinion, and I'll leave it at that.

Obviously this was a pretty poor welcome for Aplikasi. We could have done better there. I will post a message to his talk page later. That said, the mass creation of dictionary-style entries for the sole purpose of hitting a certain milestone faster is not something that I would encourage. If that is indeed what this is for, then we'll be seeing a further 8,000+ of these over the next coming weeks. If there was ever a time to come to some kind of agreement over this, then it would probably be now. Osiris (talk) 05:48, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I support this idea of redirecting such place articles to a list. Gotanda (talk) 09:16, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

In that context, what about agreeing on the three items I stated when I started this? - Losing an editor is deplorable, but do we need editors who only create one-liners automaticlly to reach a milestone? - What if article 100.000 is an X is a city in Y,Z stub? - No one cares about most of these articles, else we would have seen more activity on those created in 2009. Grouping them by administrative division (county,departement, in the case of France) and fleshing out the few people are actually interested in is probably a good idea. Having some kind of guideline we could point new editors to would certainly also help this purpose.--Eptalon (talk) 09:54, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I must say redirecting to lists does seem like a good idea. It avoids deletes and the redirects can easily be broken. On handling newcomers who put up one-liners, we could devise a passage which could be added under the standard greeting. It should have a soft advisory tone, something along the general lines of "Can you find any more information on this subject? Readers might like to know a bit more". If we had such a passage, it would present a standard and congenial face to the newcomer. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:17, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I will add my support to the redirect to a list idea, which I have proposed numerous times on Wiki/IRC, and which has always been ignored. It would be easy to break the redirects, as said above, and articles which are big enough could still figure on the list, but with a link to the main article. As for losing an editor, it is very sad, but I would agree with Eptalon - is this what we wanted? Imagine an editor had come along writing a whole load of Unwikified articles. Wouldn't it be better to warn him before he creates too much work, so that he can change? The situation is the same here, better safe than sorry. By warning him about the one liners (which can theoretically be QDed), the editors involved were only trying to point him in the right direction. If the editor didn't take that on-board, then it is quite unfortunate. Yottie ^=talk= 13:26, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Been following this discussion. Strongly agree with a list with redirects, and disagree with numerous one-line stubs. Have similar thoughts to those immediately above me. Kennedy ^(talk) 13:55, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes Eptalon, we do need editors who create small articles. We need any editor that is creating non-vandalism notable articles. Chasing them off as you have now done is horrible. You are well aware of how hard it is for us to get editors. These sorts of moves are exactly why editors show up and leave. But I guess it is true that people here don't actually want new users, they prefer their walled garden where they can feel like big fish in a small pond. Think I might actually give up on this wiki if we start doing this. Though I am sure some would be happy about that. Why waste time writing articles on a wiki where people could just randomly delete them even if they are notable. I am sure many others will think the same thing. -DJSasso (talk) 15:05, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Well so far you are the only one to have stated this opinion... Its nothing to do with new editors as far as I can see. Yottie was the one who created the French stubs, and Razorflame was the Romanian rivers (?) and Yottie is in agreement for them to go. A respository of one-liners doesn't seem a very exciting website. I've done tests many times in the past by basically hitting the 'show any page' button and its shocking how many times you are presented with "X is a place in Y". I'd much rather expand other articles. Threatening to leave over this is a little over the top, almost toys out of the pram stuff really... Kennedy ^(talk) 15:19, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

A (box explained here
Restating the argument, I agree and support the consensus reasoning and points-of-view above, including

• Osiris here: "... redirecting the titles to a list, with anchors, that shows basic data about each place ... and allowing them to be broken off into independent articles whenever someone has something of substance to add."
• Gotanda here: "... redirecting such place articles to a list."
• Eptalon here: "Grouping ... and fleshing out the few people are actually interested in is probably a good idea."
• Macdonald-Ross here: "... redirecting to lists ... avoids deletes and the redirects can easily be broken. On handling newcomers who put up one-liners, we could devise a passage which could be added under the standard greeting. It should have a soft advisory tone, something along the general lines of 'Can you find any more information on this subject? Readers might like to know a bit more'. If we had such a passage, it would present a standard and congenial face to the newcomer."
• Yottie here: "... redirect to a list ... and articles which are big enough could still figure on the list, but with a link to the main article"
• Kennedy here: "... list with redirects ..."

Taken together, these comments are a consensus guideline which is not difficult to understand and follow. --Ansei (talk) 15:34, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

(ec)Except that new editors see that even established users articles can just be tossed without much care. A repository of one liners isn't any worse than a repository of red links. If anything its better. Readers ie not editors aren't going to come here and click show me a random article. They are going to either go to google and search for what they are looking for, or if they already know about this site they will search for the article they are looking for. I very much support people wanting to expand articles we have, but you shouldn't stop people from helping in the way they want to help just because you prefer to help in a different way. And it isn't just intending to leave over just this, we are always making decisions of this nature. More often than not just based on nothing but pure I don't like this. This is just the icing on the cake. Destroying tens of thousands of articles just because people don't like to look at one sentence stubs is the ultimate in careless actions in my view. There are of course countless side effects to doing so beyond the editor situations, for example if they are turned into redirects they no longer get index by google for searches. Leading to less people coming to the website from outside. In the end there are many many reasons why tossing these articles is or is potentialy a bad thing and the only real benefit of getting rid of them is people won't see as many of them in the show me any page searches. Because other than hitting that link, people don't go to pages they aren't looking for so they never actually see these one sentence stubs so no one actually notices if we are big repository of the. -DJSasso (talk) 15:37, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Ansei for listing those in such a structured way. I would also add, that due to the much bigger audience ENWP has, the commune stubs are far more likely to be expanded there first. However, in probably well over 50% of the 36K communes (just a guess, possibly far more in reality) the articles are also one liners with templates. To me this means that if they aren't being expanded at ENWP, it is highly unlikely they will be expanded here before. The fact is, they will probably not be expanded here at all. Yottie ^=talk= 15:48, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Now of course this is an essay from en. But the same applies here I think. There is no deadline. -DJSasso (talk) 16:26, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I think you could probably argue that the stubs aren't worth having, as a page with a list would contain more facts than X is a place in X. I think you may need to realize that if a reader looks up an article, then another article, then another article, and each article is simply "X is X - full stop", that reader might think "wait a minute, this place is rubbish", whereas at least with a list containing population, mayor, and a few other facts might be more useful to that reader. If you would like to go and edit 10,000+ articles and add that information to them, then I will support that. But I think that is unrealistic currently (and unless I mention it now, I can see 'sofixit' coming...), and that the best option would be to group the stubs. Yottie ^=talk= 16:43, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

B (box explained here

Hitting the target?

This thread has developed in a way that is too-familiar. At this stage, is it not timely, constructive and necessary to highlight diffs which develop unstated premises and then extend them to extreme limits?

• Question: In this thread, do we see examples of a kind of "reductio ad absurdum argument"? Yes.

  Is it not clear that DJSasso's diffs generally try to shift the focus of the thread? By showing how unworkable the consequences would be, reductio ad absurdum is used to disprove or discredit an opinion which does not mirror DJSasso's overview. For example, DJSasso's diff here re-focuses on distracting and tangential issues.

Reductio ad absurdum is only valid and persuasive when it builds on assertions which are actually present in what it is deconstructing -- not when the tactic highlights one or more "straw men" or "Aunt Sallies".

• Question: In this thread, do we see examples of a kind of a "straw man argument"? Yes.

  A rhetorical "straw men" is created by extending the narrow questions which started this thread here. When we accept or merely fail to refute the "straw man" set-up, we permit opportunities for DJSasso or anyone else to attack a contrived "straw man" instead of trying to work with Eptalon's primary proposal or Macdonald-Ross' secondary proposal or my tertiary proposal. For example, DJSasso's diffs here and here are re-focusing on a tangential issue -- a "straw man" which is beside the point.

We have not seen how consensus-building is fostered by reductio ad absurdum or straw man arguments. In the specific context of this one thread, we can see how our epistemic community and our consensus-building process are undermined. In our work together, consensus is not the same as intensity of preference. --Ansei (talk) 18:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

You do realize you have used a number of those terms incorrectly right? A straw man is an argument based on a mis-statement of a person's opinion. I have done no such thing. Most if not all the positions above have been that single sentence articles are useless. I have not made any arguments based on anything but that. Nor are my arguments Reductio ad absurdum. They are all very valid issues. Retaining editors is a valid concern, driving traffic to our website is a valid concern. If someone can't point out the problems with an action how exactly do you propose to create a consensus and find a good way to handle a situation. And then you point to a diff of mine pointing to the No deadline essay as being tangential when that was a specific reply to someone's concern that an article hasn't been expanded in a given time. That is 100% what this whole discussion is about. It isn't even remotely tangential. As per usual your comments are unhelpful. -DJSasso (talk) 19:08, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Something to note, if we are going to delete all single sentence stubs. Using the Special pages I went and verified that there are 20k one sentence stubs on the wiki without an infobox. I don't think I would be out of line estimating there are another 20k that include an infobox. (harder to verifify since infobox code puffs up the byte size of a page) So give or take a bit...we are looking at deleting/redirecting 40k articles on the wiki. Which equates to close to half our wiki. If you still think that is a good way to go I think I will just leave it at that because really I can't put it in any clearer terms that it will make us look ridiculous and likely cause a much harder look at shutting us down again. -DJSasso (talk) 19:22, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Or maybe it will be seen as refocusing on our 'prime directive' which is to provide simple content, not listing 'X is in X' (and we have all to gain by branding the move as this). If half our wiki really is X is a place in X', then there clearly is a problem. Yottie ^=talk= 19:56, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Well that isn't all X is a place in X. Those are all pages that are made of of one sentence. So they can be anything really. But if we are going to do it for places we have to do it for all those other articles as well. So for example if we had "Obama is the president of the United States of America" it would have to go as well because we can't pick and chose favourite subjects. (I just realized an amusing irony that I am not using as a reason to keep the articles is that as you say our prime directive is to provide simple content. How much more simple can we get than simply stating where a town is located.) -DJSasso (talk) 20:00, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Simple does not mean short. As far as I know, we are talking about redirecting place stubs, to make lists. We are not talking about the mass deletion of 20k stubs, including one liners about other things. I think you might be slightly confused as to what we are proposing. Yottie ^=talk= 20:59, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, he is dead-on with what is being proposed. Location articles are just the only thing actually mentioned here but when the precedent is set every 1-2 line stub (to start with - larger stubs later on) is a valid target for deletion/listifying. How is an article about a person, animal, book, movie, mountain, disease or specific science any different from an article about a place? If they don't provide enough information to meet an arbitrarily set amount, they are just as bad and should go as well. When this door opens, there is nothing stopping the mass QD/RfD of articles using it as a basis. Notability is no longer the main basis - "Is it informative enough?" (using individual opinion of "enough") becomes a legitimate reason for requesting the deletion of any article. This applies to every article on the wiki that is judged not comprehensive enough for inclusion. --Creol(talk) 21:15, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Are we speaking the same language? Because from what I can see, Ansei summarized the opinion of 6 editors all calling for redirecting place stubs to articles. The fact we aren't talking about all the other one line stubs, is that it is usually impossible to create such lists with those. What we are proposing would give more information than the current place stubs (X is a place in X), and in no case would it equate to losing information from the stubs. Yottie ^=talk= 21:30, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
List of thermodnamics topics, list of pure mathematics topics, list of French history topics?--Eptalon (talk) 21:34, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Not sure if you are being devil's advocate. These are topics, and it isn't possible to use a table style article to regroup all the information. This is, however, possible with place stubs, as they already all follow the same format (X is a place in X). It would be easy to come up with statistics for these - much less so for any other topic for which there are stubs here (at least on the same scale). Yottie ^=talk= 21:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Except that every subject that has articles that are one sentence stubs can be redirected to some other page, usually a list page. For example musicians can be redirected to a list of musicians from their respective country, churches to lists of churches, sports teams to lists of teams. If you do it for one you have to do it for all because not doing it for every subject is either a biased POV approach to specific topics at best or a complete violation of NOTCENSORED at worst. There is no middle ground, we do it for all stubs or we don't do it. You can't pick and choose. Because just about any article can be redirected to a list article. As for the summarizing Ansei did, yes he did, however all those opinions he summarized may have been by editors who didn't fully realize the implications of what they supported. Because the minute you make this call a precedent is set and every one line stub is a target for a redirect. And that is a slippery slope because then as Creol mentioned its likely people will complain about two line stubs...five line stubs etc etc. Notability is the only thing to use to judge articles. Not usefulness and not fame. Notability. -DJSasso (talk) 12:32, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

But you see, DJ, what you are saying simply isn't true. We could easily decide to do this only for place stubs, and that would be the end of it. As Osiris said, we are not calling for a policy. We are asking for a one-off redirect of place stubs to lists. It may be a precedent, but that does by no means make it a policy. The undeniable fact is, place stubs on this wiki follow a certain format (as many of them were created from templates) which hands itself particularly well to what we are proposing. The fact X artist comes from X country does not justify notability, and if articles with that little content exist on SEWP, then they may need to be deleted. I would probably agree with the fact that our proposal would work with churches (although unless the church is of particular significance, once again it is not notable - there are at least as many churches as there are French communes (actually, probably a lot more) and many of them simply would not deserve an article for themselves, but only a mention in another article), and sport's team would work a certain extent. But that is not what we are asking for, and is simply changing the subject. Once again, I repeat, this is a one-off proposal, which is not something to make a guideline out of. If something similar were to happen in the future with different categories of articles, then it would have to be discussed separately. As for Ansei's summary, as you say so well, I think people do know what they are asking for: a one-off redirect of place stubs to lists. One-off. Precedent or not, we could agree with this proposal, a clause which wouldn't enable this to be used as a precedent. It isn't difficult. Also, notability is not the issue here. We are in actual fact asking to keep the entries for the place stubs, even add information to them, but to group them. Yottie ^=talk= 13:19, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

But again. You can't have a one off proposal that applies to only one subject because that is biased against a single subject and violates NPOV and is in essence censoring a specific subject. You can't just do it for one subject, it would have to apply for all to be a balanced approach that is in line with existing policy. We simply per policy can't have a one off. Notability is the issue here, a notable subject gets its own page. Useful, which is the criteria most have mentioned above doesn't enter into it. -DJSasso (talk) 13:34, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

But once again, you can. Are you scared of hurting the feelings of the other topics? This isn't censoring. It is a different way of improving place stubs, and I don't think it would be an effective way of improving other types of stubs. Making exceptions is part of wiki, that's what IAR is for (I'm sure I'll be contradicted on this, now...). Rather than having several thousands of place stubs which say 'X is a place in X', as they are all the same, we could group them. And remember, we are doing this for the readers. It is what is best for them, as we will be providing more information for them. If you wish to continue offering the very, very basic information which is there now (i.e. X is a place in X), then that is your choice. But I actually care about getting more information to our readers, and it's not a policy which is going to stop us, when common sense is far more logical. Yottie ^=talk= 13:50, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

No you can't. This isn't about hurting a subjects feelings. Its about being a neutral encyclopaedia. The minute we decide articles on a certain subject aren't useful even though they are notable we stop being neutral. Neutrality is the core principal of wikipedia, more important than anything and the one thing you can't IAR. There is no reason you can't have a list article AND these individual articles. It isn't a one or the other. So if you think having lists helps the reader then create a list, but that doesn't mean you have to do a disservice to the reader by killing the article. What you are suggesting is throwing out the baby with the bath water. You don't get information to readers by deleting it like you are suggesting. If you redirect to a list you aren't giving a reader more information, you are giving them less because a list can't expand. An article can. -DJSasso (talk) 14:00, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, if you can't even admit that the immediate consequence of adding population, mayor, historical monuments equates to giving the reader more information, then I don't know what is. I will reiterate, this isn't about not being neutral. The information from the stubs will be kept. We are not deciding the articles aren't useful enough to be included. We are including them, but in a different way, with lists. A way which makes more sense, which gives more information (than it probably would within the next 5 years...), and which makes it easier to maintain. I will quote WP:IAR, this time. If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. If you really believe that NPOV is preventing us from doing this, then I will argue it's preventing us from both improving and maintaining Wikipedia. What is being proposed does not stop people from creating the articles, as long as they meet certain criteria (which was the initial topic of this thread, started by Eptalon). We could very well make the lists now, with the place stubs still in existence, but that would most certainly make all of the 'X is a place in X' articles redundant, and rather pointless information-wise. In which case, merging is the best solution (although, as the lists would have all the information anyway, if would equate to redirecting). Yottie ^=talk= 14:34, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

And why can't those things be added to the articles? If you are going to take the work of adding them to the list, the better more helpful solution would be to add those things to the articles and thus expanding the articles and solving the problem people seem to have. It is the same amount of work and is hugely more helpful. NPOV can't be broken, it overrides IAR because creating a bias doesn't improve the wiki, it harms the wiki. -DJSasso (talk) 14:59, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

It would be far more work to add all of those to the articles themselves, and this proposal would serve as a good solution, until we have the workforce to expand each individual article. It's what I would call evolution, or making the best of what we can offer at this moment in time. If you are able to offer a solution making adding to all the articles as easy and as useful for the readers as what we are proposing, then please, tell us! That would make this whole discussion better, and bring us back to Eptalon's first point which was about including a certain number of things on place stubs to make them worthy of inclusion. IAR is there to override everything. That's why it's called ignore all rules. But I still think it is not a neutrality issue, and that inevitably, different articles will receive different attention. Yottie ^=talk= 15:30, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

E (box explained here

Use of the verb eclipse is necessary in this thread.

No -- Disruptive diffs make the process of consensus-building impossible. DJSasso's tactic is deconstructed at en:Wikipedia:Escalating alphabeticals.

In this thread, the actual problem at hand -- minimal city stubs -- is not eclipsed by a false dichotomy. [Re-focusing on] NPOV in this context is not reasonable. In this context, the diffs of DJSasso are only disruptive. --Ansei (talk) 16:49, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with escalating alphabeticals. Deleting/Redirecting one subjects small stubs and not another is a NPOV issue and is very on topic. Also please stop throwing in non-simple phrases into discussions that do nothing but cause disruption and show a complete lack of good faith while usually derailing whatever discussion you insert them into. -DJSasso (talk) 17:11, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I have to agree with JDSasso's point about non-simple phrases. I often have a hard time understanding what you write, Ansei. --Auntof6 (talk) 17:37, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Adding the same information to the individual articles is no more difficult than adding it to the list. You still have to get the same amount of information. You still have to either type in the same amount or copy paste the same amount. If you are going to take the time to supposedly expand the entire list when you redirect these articles. Why not just put the information in the articles in the first place. If you intend to just redirect the articles and not immediately update the list then you are indeed doing what I suggested you were doing earlier making expansion harder without providing any new information. Causing both the reader experience, and the editor experience to be worse off. The best solution, the easiest solution and the one that helps the reader the most is the one where the articles are left how they are and they can grow organically. IAR only applies when common sense says the action should be made, if an action is objected to, it is no longer clear that the action is fully of benefit to the wiki. NPOV is one of the five pillars. Saying lets ignore it is the equivalent of me saying well I think this article gets vandalized too much so I am just going to delete it because its easier for me to delete it. Which will benefit the wiki because the article won't be there to get vandalized any more. You don't jeopardize possibly the most important pillar of wikipedia just because you think something is easier. -DJSasso (talk) 17:22, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

C (box explained here
Restating the argument, which is narrowed and made specific in the thread heading:

Assumption #1This discussion thread is limited and focused on the subject of "Minimal city stub?"

Assumption #2This thread is not about 20k single sentence stubs?

Assumption #3This thread is not about the President of the United States ...?

Now what? How may we most effectively work together to develop common ground and to find consensus?

• 1st proposal -- this is what the thread is about.

See Eptalon's diff here: "A city/populated place is notable ... [and] the article about the place also needs to fulfill certain [minimal] criteria ..."

• 2nd proposal -- responsive follow-up based on Eptalon's foundation

See Macdonald-Ross's diff here: "... redirecting to lists ... avoids deletes and the redirects can easily be broken. On handling newcomers who put up one-liners, we could devise a passage which could be added under the standard greeting. It should have a soft advisory tone, something along the general lines of 'Can you find any more information on this subject? Readers might like to know a bit more' ..."

• 3rd proposal -- Follow-up builds on consensus made specific in cited diffs

See Ansei's diff here: "...a consensus guideline which is not difficult to understand and follow."

The consensus-building process does seem to be moving forward slowly. There does seem to be some progress despite the array of distracting issues. --Ansei (talk) 21:38, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

When I expressed my views above, I was not commenting on Eptalon's proposal for a criteria; and no, I am opposed to creating some sort of guideline prohibiting stubs. My expressed opinion was solely in regards to the current cluster of commune titles. The idea of redirecting them is simply a merge proposal for a specific group of articles. I have no problems with stubs, but in this particular case I believe that a detailed list of information would more beneficial for the readers. Obviously some disagree, and that's fine. Osiris (talk) 21:54, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

The listing could look somewhat like fr:Liste des communes de l'Allier. Yes, they link every one of the 320 communes, and provide some basic info ('X is a city in Y', plus listing of mayors, of population, and perhaps of historic buildings). This is true even for fr:Veauce, with a staggering population of 41 (but a church from the 12th century, and a castle from the 14th//15th century,...). We could do something similar, but not link the articles that don't have anyrhing more than 'X is a city in Y'. --Eptalon (talk) 21:57, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

That is exactly my thinking Eptalon. Similar format to the link you posted, with an added column for historical monuments/points of interest. More useful than X is a place in X, in my opinion. Yottie ^=talk= 22:15, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

D (box explained here

Use of the verb eclipse is necessary in this thread.

In this thread, some of the reasoning is flawed because it distorts issues.

The actual problem at hand -- minimal city stubs -- is eclipsed in one contributor's diffs, yes. However, the main point of this thread is not eclipsed in the consensus of good judgment which developed. --Ansei (talk) 16:21, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

F (box explained here

Bullying affects the process of consensus-building.

The bullying of DJSasso undermines and destroys our ability to work together. Some of the diffs in this thread are examples of a kind of bullying which overwhelms all else -- see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Bullying. --Ansei (talk) 18:53, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Disagreeing with someone isn't bullying. Ironically what you are doing right now is bullying. Running off to get sanctions against someone that disagrees with you is bullying. -DJSasso (talk)

Bullying distorts and eclipses consensus-building. --Ansei (talk) 19:01, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

You are right it does. And right now you are bullying me and turning this discussion into a poisoned environment. -DJSasso (talk) 19:06, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Please, both your comments are not adding to this discussion. By all means, resolve your problems via Talk Page or email, but not here. And keep it civil, poisoned environment isn't the best thing to have said. Yottie ^=talk= 19:27, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

@ Yottie -- Please notice that I have put boxes around my five six contributions to this thread.

In each box, can you see that I focus explicitly on consensus-building?

In each, can you recognize that my only point-of-view is to agree with what I understand to be a developing consensus?

In each, can you understand that I am only trying to restore a constructive focus on impoving consensus?

Is it unclear that the purpose of my efforts was to try to mitigate the effect of diffs which distorted and eclipsed the process of consensus-building?

After revisiting at what I have done, I hope you will understand that Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Bullying is a practical way underscore we most need here. --Ansei (talk) 20:24, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I would agree you were doing what you could to get this thread back to what it was supposed to be, yes. Yottie ^=talk= 20:32, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

And with the exception of the first one, all of them contain an attack on me, all of which do the exact thing you claim to be trying to avoid. Causing unnecessary drama and eclipsing the discussion at hand. -DJSasso (talk) 00:24, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

DJ, please just keep quiet... Resolve your problems with Ansei elsewhere. Yottie ^=talk= 00:54, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Not wanting to lengthen this heated subject, but my opinion is to keep the stubs. Wikidata will eventually (1 year?) have infoboxes which supply some of the things Eptalon is looking for. It won't be written nicely in a sentence but will provide readers with general factual information they can use. We will not have to update because it will be automatic. So the concern of a small workforce to improve stubs is remedied. It sounds like there is consensus to not completely delete, but rather move the stubs into a list or table. This scenario does require many hours of work to create new holder articles and then move and redirect the stubs. I would rather clean up or add to new articles or fill in some of our redlinks. --Tbennert (talk) 21:06, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

It will certainly require some time and effort. We should not go off on a rampage redirecting them. But if there is a consensus here, then if and when an editor wants to put in the work and construct a proper list—with anchors—, then the titles associated with that list can be redirected. If I've read correctly, about ten editors are in favour of the proposal to temporarily redirect X is a place in Y pages to an informative list. I'm not sure where Chen stands on this, as he gave a preference early on in favour of a criteria-based guideline. This discussion has now degenerated into two editors having a go at each other, so perhaps it's time to get somebody to close it. Osiris (talk) 05:15, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Even though some editors have expressed that "converting" existing articles into lists, one per bigger geographical area, this requires a lot of effort, and can only be partly automated. Wikidata is also no solution to our problem, as it will add an infobox to the one-sentence article, and regularly update the numbers in the infobox. Looking at any geographical area, people will likely only search for a few cities, which need decent stubs, much like the one I created for Montluçon, or that we have for Commentry. In Allier, there are three "big"/"important" cities and perhaps five cities people are likely to search for. This will be the the same for any geographical denomination for an area roughly the same size. So, what can we add to the welcome template, to tell new editors we are not interested in large numbers of one-sentence, 'X is a city in Y,Z' stubs? --Eptalon (talk) 10:15, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I think it is probably best to simply point people to this discussion if and when they do start mass-creating them. I don't like the idea of adding anything to welcome templates, which should really only point out core policies and links to help them get started. Osiris (talk) 10:24, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Here we go again

Here we go again. Metrik has begun making more French commune stubs at the rate of 4-5 per minute.--Peterdownunder (talk) 07:24, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I am not sure what you think, but to me, this smells like an attempt to game the system. Also see the contributions of User:Aplikasi and his user talk. The self-welcoming, the return to Wikipedia after this (only to continue mass-creating stubs), as well as continued editing while ignoring user talk... all of these make it hard for me to continue assuming good faith. Chenzw  Talk  07:41, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

And still more, even after Chenzw's note on Metrik's talk page. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:26, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Action: I have blocked Metrik for 6 hours as I am convinced that he is not interested in working on this wiki in a collaborative manner. This action is not intended to be a statement against the existence of these stubs. Chenzw  Talk  15:42, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

It is ridiculous... The pages should at least contain the region. Also, the infobox is not filled in properly (see Sanssat for example). A bit careless, doesn't help, and only creates more work. Yottie ^=talk= 15:50, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

1. The user passes the duck test with flying colors. a CU to confirm it is the same person is not needed (and should be declined anyway).
2. The user has used two or more accounts (with "I'm leaving, wait, I'm back" drama tossed in) to create these stubs. Not disallowed, but certainly disruptive.
3. The user has been repeatedly told not to do this to the point they had to be blocked for it.
4. 400+ articles just flooded into two maintenance categories (Articles with infobox errors and Articles in need of coordinates) meaning days of continuous work needed just to clear errors in the articles (took me 3-4 weeks to clear 900 coord issues last time. This time we add no INSEE data as well as no coordinates)
5. The reference listed is useless. Just listing who identified the system does not show it was identified. The reference should point to the information itself, not the people who have it, making the user hunt their pages for it.

While I am against the deletion of articles on notable subjects under most situations, the number of issues with these, the amount of work needed to get them up to the "almost useless information" level and the fact that they were created by a user who had been told time and again not to do this, I say toss them all. Maybe deleting it all will get the message across to him that this is not acceptable behavior. --Creol(talk) 17:05, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

John James Richard Macleod

Can someone please move the biography to John James Rickard Macleod which is the correct name of this person? See en:Talk:John James Rickard Macleod#Name. I can't find a "move" button anywhere, nor a template for such a request. Thanks, Yerpo (talk) 17:52, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Done. The problem with finding the move button (its in the dropdown menu at the top with redirects) is that only auto-confirmed users have access to it. While your account is well over the 4 day requirement, you don't have the 10 edits to trigger auto-confirmed. --Creol(talk) 19:53, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I overlooked this condition, thanks for the note. Yerpo (talk) 20:27, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Reflinks

Is there any way we can enable Reflinks on Simple and if so, would anyone be opposed to us doing so? MJ94 (talk) 03:23, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

It already works for me. Example for a random page: [1] πr² 01:44, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, it used to work differently, didn't it? (e.g., [2]) πr² 01:47, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Help turn ideas into grants in the new IdeaLab

I apologize if this message is not in your language. Please help translate it.

• Do you have an idea for a project to improve this community or website?
• Do you think you could complete your idea if only you had some funding?
• Do you want to help other people turn their ideas into project plans or grant proposals?

Please join us in the IdeaLab, an incubator for project ideas and Individual Engagement Grant proposals.

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking new ideas and proposals for Individual Engagement Grants. These grants fund individuals or small groups to complete projects that help improve this community. If interested, please submit a completed proposal by February 15, 2013. Please visit https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG for more information.

Thanks! --Siko Bouterse, Head of Individual Engagement Grants, Wikimedia Foundation 20:50, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery. (Wrong page? Correct it here.)

Tradition

There are many sources speaking about how the Adam and Eve tradition about them hiding their genitals after eating from the tree has influenced modern-day indecent exposure laws and other prudish worldviews. Would such a note be notable enough to include in the sex organ article? PassaMethod (talk) 21:15, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I couldn't find a similar statement -- referenced or otherwise -- on a variety of nudity/indecent exposure/genitalia etc related articles on the regular English wiki. I'd find the statement contentious, regardless of its attribution anyway. (After all, countries without Judeo-Christian religious majorities or major historical influence also have indecent exposure laws/"prudish" worldviews.) If it is deemed to be relevent, I'd say put it in the article on nudity or an (as yet unwritten) article on indecent exposure rather than sex organ. –Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 04:28, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes but many of those countries were colonised hence influenced in such a way. PassaMethod (talk) 10:07, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

But far from all - meaning that nudity taboo was incorporated into the Adam and Eve myth from some older and more general tradition. We should look for that to explain modern thinking about this topic. --Yerpo (talk) 17:58, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I think it's clear from Greek and Roman history alone that special rules about dress preceded the Bible by a very long time. Even neolithic societies (some of which survived into modern times) had their rules about dress. I've added a speculative history para to our page on clothing. 07:21, 2 February 2013 (UTC)Macdonald-ross (talk)

Note for articles on living people

Currently, the note on biography articles for living people says "...must be removed straight away." I think the verbal phrase "straight away" is much more difficult than the word "immediately." Certainly, the latter can found in almost any English dictionary, whereas the former is not in many of them. A look at frequency in Google n-gram viewer shows that during the last twenty years, "immediately" has been about one-hundred times more frequently used. So, I suggest we change the wording. Kdammers (talk) 11:10, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure which note you are referring to, but the word now might be the best option (it depends on the whole sentence)? Yottie ^=talk= 11:15, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah we can change it to immediately. I am not sure I like now for this case as it is a bit aggressive. -DJSasso (talk) 13:05, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Suppose thats relative, I consider "now" to be less agressive than "immediately". But either would be fine as far as I'm concerned. Kennedy ^(talk) 13:40, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah I don't have a problem with either. :) -DJSasso (talk) 14:55, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

It's only that now is in the BE850. But to be honest, I don't mind either. Yottie ^=talk= 18:44, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Complaint

I have complained on [3] about DYK Queue #2. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:36, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Singlechart template

Would someone look at template {{Singlechart}}? It's not formatting correctly. It's leaving two right-brackets on the peak chart position. You can see an example in the template's doc page, here. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:13, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

 Fixed. Osiris (talk) 04:26, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 05:18, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Help for mangled categorization

I made this mess and I just can't walk away and leave it all uncorrected. I added a reference to Centrebus Leicestershire, so I changed the flag from unref to refimprove with date of February 2013. After saving I noticed a category had appeared in red for Articles needing additional references from February 2013. So I thought that I would create the category, thinking it didn't yet exist if I was the first to date the flag for February. Not brilliant since I've never created a category. After I created it, I then tried to add it to the category "Articles needing additional references". For some reason that appeared in red, so I added it to category: "All articles needing additional references". That's still not right, because it's not a subcategory and the only one there. It needs to go to "Articles needing additional references" where all the other months are happily living. The category now appears in the main (not hidden) categories in the Centrebus article with no way to delete or change it. And I have these new category pages with no way to move them to where they really belong: parent and child. Sorry for being so wordy and please help. I'll not try this again... Fylbecatulous talk 17:26, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. --Creol(talk) 17:38, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I so thank you ツ Fylbecatulous talk 18:31, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Notability for temples?

We have several new articles on Hindu temples. What are the notability guidelines for this kind of thing? --Auntof6 (talk) 03:01, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I think each article should establish its own notability. Historical, architectural, religious... One can't just say "X is a temple in Y". Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:54, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

It is not my culture, so I can't say much. Even though in the western world, almost every village has some kind of "church", some of these churches are more notable / important than others. Most of the time, the importance comes from history, and from the significance the religion attaches to it. I very much think tthat religious communities such as the Sikh, the Shino, the Hndu or the Buddhist will have similar rules. Those interested should prioritize, and create the more important ones first..--Eptalon (talk) 23:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, many thanks for using the word prioritize, which I think is a key idea. Since we can't do everything, we should encourage editors to do those topics which are most significant in the areas they are interested in or knowledgeable about. Such pages are likely to attract the most readers, and to be most noticed if they are absent. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:16, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Weather boxes

Hi, about these weather boxes, is there a place where I can play around with them without interfering with wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wakeboardin (2) (talk • contribs) 02:06, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

You can do that in Template:Weather box/sandbox. Osiris (talk) 10:36, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Article wizard

Over a week ago, an anonymous user (37.0.123.17) copied a few of the English Wikipedia's Article Wizard pages over to here. I asked the user whether they had any further plans for them, but they haven't responded and no further edits or imports have been made. I'm not fully familiar with how it works over there or how successful it is, but basically... it shows new and unregistered users the policies on creating a new article and then, when they've read it all, they write their draft and it's then submitted to Wikipedia:Articles for creation to be reviewed by more experienced users.

Obviously, we don't currently have an AFC process and we don't require editors to be registered in order to create pages (unlike the English Wikipedia). But I must admit: in theory, a step-by-step wizard like this could bring benefits for our project if it's well constructed. The closest thing we have at the moment, is Wikipedia:Requested pages, which is not really much of an encouragement to contribute.

I was going to just ask whether I can delete the pages, and I guess I still am (they're just copy-pastes that lead nowhere). But it also got me thinking about the benefits of a process through which new users can be guided to writing drafts for potential publishing. As most of us probably know, our policies are a bit daunting when you first start editing and that wizard system looks like it'd be a lot more encouraging than publishing it in the main space only to have it quickly tagged for deletion...

I realise the last thing we want at the moment is another project page we have to keep up with (we have enough on our hands with featured content submissions sitting around for months without review). This is not really a proposal since I don't have the time to create anything like this at the moment. Just thought I'd see what people thought about it. Osiris (talk) 11:42, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

The basic idea behind Article Wizard is good and constructive. It would probably take quite a bit of thought to adapt it to our needs. A first step would be, as you hint, to get an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses from experience on English wiki. But if we are not going to pursue this right along to an actual decision, it would be best to leave it alone. We have spent a lot of time discussing issues on other central pages without any decisions resulting, even though there is an acknowledged need for change. I might mention the discussion on Wikipedia talk:Requirements for very good articles as an example. Many good points are made in discussions, but we are certainly lacking when it comes to making decisions. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:12, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page in regards to that outstanding discussion. It does need resolving. Osiris (talk) 18:02, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I like the en wizard and have used it myself when creating page there. I think something similar would work well here, probably for new unconfirmed and ip creations. It will be no more work than there is currently in either deleting them or cleaning them up (and the wizard might mean there is even less), and this way they won't be in the main space till roughly ready. We are doing something similar with patrolling new pages, this could make it easier.Peterdownunder (talk) 12:15, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Here's a plan. I think it is a good idea. Even if we decide not to go down the final review steps, the basic intro stuff is valuable to help new editors. I will translate the pages that have been brought over so far. This will give people a chance to look at them in our context. Then I am happy to continue. It seems to be a valuable way of supporting new editors and getting better outcomes here. Peterdownunder (talk) 12:44, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The only real issue I have with the process is articles sitting forever never being finished/fixed and never being deleted. This is a problem I see at en where they will sit years because they never get deleted or moved to article space. If someone is going to keep a close eye on it and do purges now and then that is great. Otherwise it has the potential to just hide problematic pages from detection where if they just created them directly into article space they might be caught. -DJSasso (talk) 13:25, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Good point, and needs to be addressed.--Peterdownunder (talk) 06:27, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like an excellent plan. I'll definitely help out getting the pages translated. I patrol NewPages pretty much every other day; it doesn't take very long to get to all of them and I imagine the pages made via this would take even less time. We can keep track of them through monthly categories. After one or two months, the drafts can be either moved to the main space or deleted. Osiris (talk) 22:14, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that would work.Peterdownunder (talk) 06:27, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Consultation

Hi I would like to know which section I put a complaint against a user who is dedicated to make my posts to be deleted --Veronidae (talk) 20:40, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

User:Auntof6 has tagged 3 of the articles created by you for quick deletion due to being transwiki'd articles (A3). These articles were Aquatic plant, Monte Fitz Roy, and Hexaplex erythrostomus. Administrators have looked at each of the articles.

1. Aquatic plant was quick deleted as an A3 back in July 2012. It was later rewritten by another editor.

2. Monte Fitz Roy was not deleted. Note that the section on Geographic setting is a word for word copy of the English version. Only minor changes exist to most of the rest of the page.

3 Hexaplex erythrostomus was quick deleted as A3. It was an exact copy of the English page with the exceptions of changes to images, expanding a citation template, category and interwiki. It was later undeleted and stripped down to be in its current form.

Of the other 4-6 new pages you have recently created, which she did not edit, at least 3 are also exact copies of the English versions and need to be quick deleted. Thank you for pointing these pages out so they can also be tagged for deletion. --Creol(talk) 22:38, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

If you think you can simplify these articles, so that they adapted to the audience here, we can of course also run a regular deletion. Personally, I delete transwikied pages (the kind we are talking about here) when I see that they are not simple, and they are not being worked on. Very often, starting with a small stub and extending that leads to better results than transwikiing and then not quite knowing where to start simpiification. Gastropoda started as a nearly 30k en copy-paste; today it is at about a third of the size. It took 80 edits from about 15 (non-bot) editors. Tollund Man was started last month, and has grown from 1.3k in size to almost 6k.--Eptalon (talk) 23:45, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Procedure

Once again we have someone promoting their own proposal on DYK. It is quite improper to do that. Irrespective of the merits of the item, an editor should not take administrative action on any issue where they are the proposer. Others will judge, decide and move. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:22, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

You are going to have to point to the specific link. You are pretty vague in this comment. -DJSasso (talk) 18:37, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Oregonian has moved a series of DYK proposals onto DYK queues. I object to people promoting their own proposals, whoever it is and whatever the circumstances. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:25, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Just listing a few examples here:

Sacred Band of Thebes: [4] [5]

The Ballet of the Nuns: [6] [7]

Sovereign's Orb: [8] [9]

More are available at [10]

While I am not so particular with the promotion of own hooks which have already received at least 2 positive reviews (we are a small community, after all), promotion of hooks with only one review or those which have not even been confirmed is something that should not be done. I am going to revert those changes again and leave him a message about this. Promotion of hooks to DYK is technically not an administrative action (eg Bluegoblin7 and Purplebackpack89 have helped with updating the queues in the past) - although in order to avoid a conflict of interest, editors are requested to promote hooks which are not nominated by them. Chenzw  Talk  08:55, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it is not formally an administrative function. However, it is gaming the system to promote one's own proposals, and something that Goblin never did or would do. It is really part of Wikipedia's whole community ethos that, whatever the issue, it is decided by others than the proposer. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:48, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

All the hooks sent to the queues had been approved for promotion by Osiris and others. Oregonian2012 (talk) 10:26, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

No... I just commented on them and said, on some of them, that they were okay by me. Somebody else should confirm it and do the actual queuing. Osiris (talk) 02:13, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata phase 1 (language links) coming to this Wikipedia

Sorry for writing in English. I hope someone can translate this locally.

Wikidata has been in development for a few months now. It is now time for the roll-out of the first part of it on your Wikipedia. Phase 1 is the support for the management of language links. It is already being used on the Hungarian, Hebrew, Italian and English Wikipedias. The next step is to enable the extension on all other Wikipedias. We have currently planned this for March 6.

What is Wikidata?

Wikidata is a central place to store data that you can usually find in infoboxes. Think of it as something like Wikimedia Commons but for data (like the number of inhabitants of a country or the length of a river) instead of multimedia. The first part of this project (centralizing language links) is being rolled out now. The more fancy things will follow later.

What is going to happen?

Language links in the sidebar are going to come from Wikidata in addition to the ones in the wiki text. To edit them, scroll to the bottom of the language links, and click edit. You no longer need to maintain these links by hand in the wiki text of the article.

Where can I find more information and ask questions?

Editors on en:wp have created a great page with all the necessary information for editors and there is also an FAQ for this deployment. Please ask questions you might have on the FAQ’s discussion page.

I want to be kept up to date about Wikidata

To stay up-to-date on everything happening around Wikidata please subscribe to the newsletter that is delivered weekly to subscribed user’s talk pages. You can see previous editions here.

--Lydia Pintscher 16:16, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery. (Wrong page? Fix here.)

What to do next

Copied from m:Wikidata/Deployment Questions for easy reference:

• As soon as Wikidata is deployed, you will notice a clickable arrow pointing to Wikidata on the left pane of each article, below the list of interwiki links. If this arrow is there, you can remove the interwiki links from the article. Do not remove the templates showing featured and good articles in other Wikipedias. Whether such removal is acceptable, is up to the community of your project.
• Please note that interwiki bots will at first re-insert interwiki links that are removed. This issue will solve itself as the bots are updated. If this happens, you might want to send the bot operator a message, encouraging him/her to update his/her bot.
• If the interwiki links remain in the article, they overwrite the info from Wikidata.
• Every change of interwiki links on Wikidata which are related to the articles you are watching on your Wikipedia should appear in your watchlist. If you see something improper, please go to Wikidata and correct it.
• In order to remove links from Wikidata, put the magic word {{noexternallanglinks}}. If it is used on its own, it will remove all links on that page. This magic word can also be used to remove specific interwiki links, if it is used with parameters. For example, {{noexternallanglinks:fr|id}} will remove fr: and id: interwiki links.
• I created a new page. Should I add interwiki links? One option is just to add links, there will be probably interwiki bots still around to add the links to Wikidata. Even a better solution, you can go to Wikidata yourself, find the corresponding entry (for instance, using the option "item by title" and searching for the article in one of the languages it previously existed), and manually add the article you created to the entry.

Osiris (talk) 00:24, 22 February 2013 (UTC)