Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 October 6

= October 6 =

w.e.f.
BrahMos says: "...in order to comply with Missile Technology Control Regime restrictions, to which Russia (also India w.e.f. 2016) is a signatory."

What's "w.e.f."? Google says World Economic Forum, but that makes no sense in this context. Pizza Margherita (talk) 00:48, 6 October 2016 (UTC)


 * It's an abbreviation for "with effect from". So in the sentence quoted, India is a signatory with effect fro 2016. DuncanHill (talk) 00:51, 6 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I have added it to our WEF (disambiguation) page. Oxford Dictionary online say it's British English, which is not incompatible with Indian English. Alansplodge (talk) 08:40, 6 October 2016 (UTC)


 * and I've expanded it in the BrahMos article. Rojomoke (talk) 13:54, 6 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Somebody's taken it out of the disambiguation page on the grounds that it doesn't link to an article or a prospective one. Any ideas anybody? Alansplodge (talk) 15:41, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Sigh. Don't waste your time. This is yet another case where the interest of readers comes second. Now a reader looking for the meaning of "w.e.f", if they're unlucky enough that the appropriate meaning they're looking for is indeed "with effect from", just won't find it. Brilliant. This reminds me of the situation with the Deaths in nnnn pages. At the end of every month recent deaths that don't link to a WP article because there isn't one about that person get deleted. That's right: not only do non notable deaths get deleted, but any person that happens not to have an WP article about them (as if notability was by definition the existence of a WP article on you; btw there are tricks around it that people sometimes use since the "deletors" only go after redlinks, but anyway). So if somebody looks in years to come for a reasonably complete list of deaths by date and relies on WP to provide it, well they will not find it in those pages. They will only find those deaths of people who happened to have a WP article at the time of their death, because, of course, if later on a WP article about that person does get created some time in the future no one is gonna think of updating the Deaths in nnnn lists. It seems to me this clearly diminishes the value of WP to readers. When I asked who came up with that idiotic rule I was told "the community" had decided that's how it should be. And what was "the community"? Three or four people who had discussed it and reached that (in my opinion completely nonsensical) conclusion back in 2006 or 2007. Basemetal  16:33, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I guess one could link it to List_of_aviation,_aerospace_and_aeronautical_abbreviations (the only place on WP I found this abbreviation). ---Sluzzelin talk  17:05, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I can understand why that "wef" was removed. A reader wanting to know what it stands for should not really be going to Wikipedia, they should be going to some kind of dictionary of abbreviations. Agree with you on the list of deaths, though I don't really follow the bit about "not only do non notable deaths get deleted, but any person that happens not to have an WP article about them". Aren't those the same thing? --Viennese Waltz 07:30, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Do you mean that no one is notable unless they have a WP article about them? That would imply that no one should ever have an article written about them. Basemetal  08:50, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * No, I'm just a bit unclear on what kind of entries in the lists are being deleted. If someone adds an entry to the list saying "Joe Bloggs died 7 October 2016", and Bloggs has no WP article, then you're saying that entry is being deleted. Fine, I get that. So what kind of entry do you mean when you say "non-notable deaths", if it's not what I just described? --Viennese Waltz 09:21, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * By "non notable deaths" I meant deaths of people who are not notable, people who do not and will never have a WP article, like (probably) my gas station attendant when she one day finally passes away. The other category is people who are notable, do deserve to have a WP article about them but just don't happen to have one. Those entries also get deleted, unless (as sometimes happens) someone quickly rushes an article about them between the time of their death and the end of the month. Those were the two categories I had in mind and the reason I made that distinction was that, of course deleting the entries of the first category is entirely justifiable, but not, in my opinion, of the second kind. Basemetal  09:39, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * But how do you know, at the time when the entry in the list is made, whether the person is notable or not? We can't just say, "Oh, that person seems notable per WP:N but for whatever reason there is no WP article about them, so the entry should be allowed to stand until someone gets around to writing it." That opens a whole can of worms. There are procedures for establishing notability, which would not be followed if that was the line being taken. It's much better to have a hard-and-fast rule that only people who have already been deemed notable (by virtue of having an extant WP article about them) should be allowed to go in the list. --Viennese Waltz 09:55, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The same discussion could take place at the Deaths in nnnn pages for that entry that takes place when it is decided whether a person is notable enough or not to have an article about them, but independently of the actual existence of an article. If you mechanically rely on the existence already of an article, in effect turning it into a definition of notability, you turn the Deaths of nnnn into what it actually is namely not the list of notable deaths for a certain month of a certain year but the a list of deaths of those people who happened to have WP articles already written about them at the time of their death. (And, as I explained that will not change even if or when an article does get written, if it gets written after that entry was deleted, i.e. if someone gets an article after their death as most often happens) I wonder what they were doing back in 2001 when they were very many notable people who did not have articles about them. I'm curious to see what the list of Deaths in nnnn looks like for those years. Basemetal  10:22, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, the revision history for Deaths in 2001 shows that lots of additions have been made to that page since it was first created (the last one just a couple of days ago), so I don't think the problem is quite as bad as you're making out. It looks like people are making efforts to keep these lists correct and complete. --Viennese Waltz 11:42, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Then I'm very glad to have been proven wrong in this. Basemetal  11:49, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * As of today (07/10/2016) there are the following redlinks in the Deaths in 2016 list: Austin Kalish (05/10), Phillip Klemenov (02/10), Larry Stogner (02/10), Edda Heiðrún Backman (01/10), Brent Chambers (01/10) and Noreen O'Leary (01/10). They all seem to be notable enough. It is a small sample but this is just a small experiment. I'll make it a point to follow how many of them get an article by the end of this month, of those who don't and get removed how many get an article in the next 10 years and, finally, how many among those get reintroduced into the Deaths October 2016 list at some point after that. This is a long term experiment, so don't hold your breath. If both of us are still around, I'll be talking to you in 10 years . In any case I'll have learned something about how this place works. Basemetal  12:23, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * With the interest of readers foremost in my mind...how would one go about creating a bot (or another sort of tool) that searches for "w.e.f." so that it can be expanded to "with effect from"? I wasn't familiar with that initialism, and in my view an awful lot of contractions and abbreviations (I use the terms loosely) detract from the ease with which a layperson can digest an article. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 20:06, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Bot_policy and Creating_a_bot have some relevant info. I might start with PyWikiBot . If you ask around (at the village pump?), there are likely extant bots that could be minimally modified to fix 'w.e.f.'s. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:32, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Consent classes at university
A lot of universities in the US and UK now require freshmen to go to consent classes designed to prevent sexual assault (eg )

Is there any research on the effectiveness or otherwise of these? Amisom (talk) 10:20, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Is This what you were looking for? It's based in Canada, not the U.S. or U.K., but seems to be on the right track.-- Jayron 32 15:46, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I do not believe there a lot of universities with this requirement. Specially a compulsory workshop would be problematic. The whole thing looks more like a public awareness and sensitization campaign than as a hard requirement. --Hofhof (talk) 17:30, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Zero tolerance of consent classes? Thincat (talk) 21:40, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

What would happen if the nuclear football were destroyed and the president killed?
What would happen if the nuclear football were destroyed and the president killed? What is the contingency plan? Could the US still launch a nuclear attack? --Hofhof (talk) 17:24, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * According to Gold Codes, there is a redundant set of codes and nuclear football for the VP as well. -- Jayron 32 18:21, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * And what if the VP were killed and his nuclear football destroyed? Llaanngg (talk) 09:59, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * We can play what-if games all day. The OP asked for what happened if the president were killed and his particular nuclear launch protocols went with him.  The answer is the VP has the back-up.  It's an infinite recursion if we keep saying "and what happens if THAT guy gets killed".  Eventually, we're just fucked... -- Jayron 32 13:35, 7 October 2016 (UTC)


 * There probably exists a top secret system for submarines that probe if the footballs are operational and will authorize an attack if the footballs cannot be detected and some other criteria are met (to make sure that the non-detection is not due to a technical failure, freak disasters like asteroid impacts or gamma ray bursts will also have to be ruled out). The whole point of having a second strike capability is to be able to launch a nuclear strike even if the whole country is destroyed. The deterrence to the enemy is that they cannot escape nuclear annihilation by annihilating their target first. If they do that then there are still submarines that can launch an attack days or even weeks later. So, I'm pretty sure that besides the normal way of authorizing an attack there also exist protocols for submarine commanders that will kick in if no contact can be established with the home base. Count Iblis (talk) 19:09, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The British navy uses Letters of last resort for this purpose - the USSR used the Dead Hand system. I don't know if there's an exact US equivalent. Tevildo (talk) 20:56, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Operation Looking Glass. There's a nuke launching plane of last resort ready to take off at all times. Until 1990 one was flying 24/7 with several planes in shifts so the others can refuel. They kept one eye covered so they couldn't be blinded by seeing hydrogen bombs and would give the order if there's no one left. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:52, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Appropriate "See Also" links have been added. Tevildo (talk) 22:23, 7 October 2016 (UTC)


 * For a long time there was this. 50.0.205.96 (talk) 15:42, 9 October 2016 (UTC)