Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 12

Deletion of usernames at request, after move to new GDFL license?
Will it be possible to delete usernames at owner's request, after moving to the new GDFL license which will be compatible with CC?

The current policy prohibiting username deletions is there on the ground of GDFL requiring all authors be permanently attributed, which means that deleting a username will remove the attribution from edits, violating GDFL. The CC license, however, allows usernames requesting no attribution. Would it be possible for a person to request deleting his/her username, together with explicitly agreeing and requesting that all their past edits under that usernames never be attributed?

In fact, unless I'm not mistaken, the CC license has a provision where a person requesting no further attribution obliges users of derivative work to honor his/her quest, which in turn seems like deleting usernames (or least permanently hiding them from edit history) would be required for WP to be compatible with the license. 01:18, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know the technical details of the GFDL versus CC attribution. I'm not in favor of making it possible for contributors to remove their username from edits because it's too easy for this ability to be abused, and it will waste the time of admins and bureaucrats. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 17:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Transclusion of user talk pages.
. Ignoring for the moment the removal of the warning, is there a policy against this. It seems sort of abusive. Taemyr (talk) 14:06, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I was a little worried when I saw it that the user was trying to trick visiting administrators into blocking ClueBot or some such rubbish, but then I realized that, thanks to the attribute, pushing the big red button blocks the user instead.


 * That being said, I don't think that there is a specific policy against it--there's nothing in WP:UP or WP:TP that covers this. However, I've gone ahead and undone the transclusion based on the fact that it misrepresents the user and their interactions on Wikipedia, which is against the purpose of a userpage.  As for the policy issue, I'm a little wary of extending policy to cover this. --jonny-mt(t)(c) I'm on editor review! 15:47, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

DYK
I have noticed that the DYK update is constantly overdue. It's supposed to be changed every six hours but it's often many hours late.

This is quite simply unfair to the many users who make submissions to the feature. Submissions for this feature expire after five days, which means that every time DYK is overdue, less submissions are promoted than should be the case and consequently many of the submissions which might otherwise get a promotion end up expiring when their five days are up.

It appears there simply aren't enough admins overseeing this project and it seems unlikeley that an effective method for recruiting more admins to the task will be found. Isn't it time therefore, that the process of promoting the current update was simply automated? It would save everyone a lot of hassle, and ensure that the maximum number of submissions get promoted in every five day cycle. Gatoclass 03:26, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm.. maybe someone could write a bot to do this, and run it through RfA. However, we'd need to be sure that the bot won't mess up, as the main page is supposed to exemplify our best work. Puchiko (Talk-email) 14:07, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * A bot could do it, or perhaps a developer could write some code to do it. A queue readable by a bot would need to be set up, if it hasn't been already. Sarsaparilla 04:06, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I briefly considered writing a bot for it, but I couldn't figure out the procedure currently being used. --Carnildo 11:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

A bot has been discussed before but several people said that a bot can't decide what is a good and bad hook, which hook is referenced, and which hook has a permitted photo (or improperly used photo). If there is bot involvement, it would be a spam message to administrators that the update is due. Many would hate to receive spam!

I try to help out by alerting admins manually, checking hooks, etc. Archtransit (talk) 21:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Update: I remember seeing a bot for DYK but it was blocked. I don't remember the name of it (Dykbot?  Dickbot?)Archtransit (talk) 22:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I understand your point, a bot can't judge a hook and its corresponding article. Apart from a spammy bot, I have an idea. I'm not very technical though, so I can't say if it's possible. How about a user script which would have some sort of alert pop up if DYK was over due. Since you must install a script for it to take effect, only admins that want to would get the alerts. Puchiko (Talk-email) 01:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Why does it have to be admins who update it? They are only ordinary editors after all, and many are far to busy. DuncanHill (talk) 14:16, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Update: A new discussion on this topic has been opened at WP:AN. Gatoclass (talk) 11:18, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Fake messages banner
User:Redmarkviolinist contains a simulated "You have new messages" banner, which is a bit iffy under this policy. I deleted the banner, and this was then undone. He then left a rather rude, inaccurate message on my talkpage. The banner is very realistic, and certainly fooled me - thus I would suggest that we form a consensus to remove it.--Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 16:07, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Lots of discussion here on the topic. --Onorem♠Dil 16:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I know, I saw that, and I referred the user to it in my edit summary. But I don't want to get into a dispute, so I'd like some fresh opinions on whether or not it is allowed. The policy I listed says to "avoid" them except for essential testing uses, and he certainly qualifies under that. Would someone else maybe enter dialogue with him?--Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 16:23, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * This was also mentioned above yesterday. I do not see anything wrong with it, the worst thing that could happen is that you fall for it, which wastes one second of your time but puts a smile on your face. JayKeaton (talk) 20:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * What is rude or inaccurate about the message he left you? --Kbdank71 (talk) 20:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

This is not really a proper venue for this discussion. An appropriate forum to get community feedback on whether an editor's behavior violates existing policy is Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. — Satori Son 21:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * As above this isn't the correct place for it, but as above THAT I have to aree with Kbdank71... what was rude or inaccurate about the message he left you? I know that accusing someone else of bad faith IS bad faith in itself, but.. your claims against him that you left here about his message seem to have been made in bad faith JayKeaton (talk) 22:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It is inaccurate per WP:OWN - "In the future, please don't touch my page". It is rude because it could have been phrased much more politely, for example: "Hi, I'd prefer it if you didn't make major changes to my page without discussing them first".--Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 08:03, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Nationality consensus
There is a - let's call it a debate - going on in J. K. Rowling about whether she should be listed as "English" or "British". A user has appealed to a "wiki-consensus" that English (or Scottish or whatever) should be used in ledes, rather than "British". Can someone point me to where this consensus is spelled out? It reads very oddly to me, like referring to someone as Californian, or British Columbian, or New South Welsh (?Walean ?sp) or Bavarian or ... you see what I mean. It is fine in the body of the article, but tends to bring up too many complexities to go in the lede. Rachel Pearce (talk) 21:53, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * England is a country. California is not. JayKeaton (talk) 22:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes but the Manual of Style for biographies (point 3 of the section on Opening paragraphs) says:
 * Nationality (In the normal case this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen or national, or was a citizen when the person became notable. Ethnicity should generally not be emphasized in the opening unless it is relevant to the subject's notability.)
 * Well no-one has English citizenship nor English nationality. However much one might wish otherwise... Just as no-one has Californian citizenship. Rachel Pearce (talk) 01:24, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, that's wrong. US citizens resident in California are also citizens of California. See the US Constitution, 14th Amendment.
 * As for the debate, it seems to me that there are two possible policies that would make sense.
 * Leads should normally identify people in terms of independent countries in preference to their divisions -- that is, "UK author" or "British author" and not "English author" or "Scottish author". But the divisions should be mentioned if the person is notable for political, sports, or other activities specifically in relation to that division... which does not apply to Rowling.
 * Identify the person the way they would identify themselves.
 * [Note: "British" is used as an adjective for "UK" as well as for "Britain" or "Great Britain", and I meant it in that sense here.]
 * (A Canadian born in England) --207.176.159.90 (talk) 01:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. Lightmouse (talk) 14:08, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * See also recent discussion in the talk page of the article of Talk:Colin McRae. Note that the argument being used here is that technically the UK refers to itself as a country of four countries. to quote "The United Kingdom is made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.". Unfortunatly/Luckily, no one in the world other than themselves care about it and/or recognize. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:32, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * We should use how the person self-identifies. Find a source where Rowling calls herself something, then use that term.  The situation in the UK is unique to that country, and we cannot and should not attempt to draw analogies to other political entities where they don't work.  The Home Nations are NOT like U.S. states, but they also are NOT like sovereign states.  Some people from the UK would consider their own nationality British, others would consider it English/Scottish/Welsh.  The wider issue is that its rediculously stupid thing to argue about.  --Jayron32| talk | contribs  06:17, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions for improving bans
Because of a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Matthew_Hoffman/Evidence, some ideas for improving blocks and bans, especially long term blocks and bans have emerged:

For example, how about:


 * A requirement that all blocks be at most a year in length


 * Some sort of automatic neutral review of all blocks


 * A mandatory waiting period of 1-2 weeks before a long term block is certified


 * A requirement that several people, maybe including a minimum number of other admins, sign off on a long term block to certify it


 * Submission of all long term blocks to a committee of admins for certification

In addition, for example, if someone is blocked right now, there really is not a clear path for the blocked editor to take. One can appeal the block, and then more often than not, the person appealing gets a terse note from someone who does not want to be bothered, and is just left frustrated if a mistake was made.

I think that all long term blocks should be reviewed automatically by a committee, or need certification by other editors and/or administrators to implement it. I think something as onerous as an RfC might be too much. However, the hole here obviously is that one admin, maybe distracted, was able to make a short term block, and then make it a long term block and although he did post a notice of it, no one was forced to look at the situation to make sure it was proper.

Also, the blocked editor's pleas for assistance or pardon went unheard since he did not know who to contact for assistance. I can only imagine the frustration. There needs to be standard way for blocked editors to get their case reviewed, and a clear path for them to follow.

Comments?--Filll (talk) 03:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I think American (and, I suppose, international) law gives us some precedent for how long a ban from an individual admin can last: habeas corpus. We make the one admin ban equal to how long a prisoner can be held w/o trial in most countries, then refer the case to some sort of wiki judiciary. For example, nine admins could be randomly picked for every ban case (limits for who can be picked could take the form of judicial jurisdiction by subject area if you want the judges familiar with what is being edited).--75.69.118.1 (talk) 04:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * This seems uncessarily beurocratic. Some people are permablocked for very good reasons, and often in such large numbers, that the above process would cause MAJOR problems, for example, Username violations or vandalism-only accounts.  IPs are almost never perma-blocked; good and established users are almost never permanently blocked execpt for outstanding reasons.  I really don't see any need for this.  --Jayron32| talk | contribs  07:20, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I tend to agree that the above is probably too bureaucratic - however unfair indef blocks were a problem for me just after I joined Wikipedia - I was indef blocked 25 June 2007, I would argue unfairly (see my contributions here to judge for yourself) and was a newbie at the time.  The whole experience nearly caused me to leave Wikipedia (not helped by the fact that I still get treated with distrust on here by some editors and admins because I have a block on my record).  The blocking admin failed to respond to any of my emails and it took me a while to figure out how to appeal the block.  (Fortunately a fair minded Admin reviewed the block).  Not sure what the answer is (if I knew I'd suggest it) I don't think its the current system and I don't think its the suggestion made above either - maybe its somewhere in between?  Kelpin (talk) 10:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * And all we'd need is ~50 000 more admins. I presume your plan includes where to find those? Wily D  12:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If the system is more fault tolerant, you do not have to worry so much about the foibles of individual admins. The standards right now for adminship are pretty high because they have so much unquestioned and unrestrained power.--Filll (talk) 18:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The plan as proposed seems impossible to implement. However (and I have issued a few indef blocks myself), if it were possible to implement a review of indefinite blocks, that might not be a bad idea. I'm not sure how many of those we get in a day, but if they could be highlighted as new pages are so that a reviewing admin could mark them as patrolled, that might well be a good checks & balance system. I say that with no knowledge whatsoever of how such a system could be implemented, if it could be implemented, or if there is some good reason why it would be utterly unworkable. :) Alternatively, I wonder if the block appeal process could be made more transparent, with a bot launched to leave notices when the blocking admins don't. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:25, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Checking, in the last hour there have only been nine indef blocks, which is less than I would've suspected. I suppose it's early in North America, where most editors are. Still, I probably overestimated the number of reviewing admins.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by WilyD (talk • contribs) 13:31, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * there is a very wide range of practices between different admins in block length, and threshold, & it would be interesting to do a study, even manually. DGG (talk) 20:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Obituary satisfy WP:N?
Does an obituary alone satisfy WP:N? I'm looking at Bunny Roger, where that's the only source mentioned. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 20:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It depends on what type of obituary it is. Some obituaries are paid advertisements, which means they are essentially self-published and should not be used to establish notability.  In other cases, the newspaper assigns someone to write an obituary of a famous person, and that would fall under the heading of reporting, so it would be considered a reliable source and could be used to establish notability.  In this particular example, since there is a byline for the obit, I would assume it was written by a reporter.  In that case, it can be used to establish notability.  Karanacs (talk) 21:03, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Right - I think I understand that. But is a reliable source obituary sufficient to establish notability?  Doesn't notability require "multiple independent sources"? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 21:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Per Notability, multiple sources are highly encouraged, but if the depth of coverage is sufficient, then a single non-paid (i.e., independent) obituary should be establish notability. Karanacs (talk) 21:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * However, a single source must be exceptionally deep. In almost all cases, a single source isn't enough. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:37, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It would be pretty exceptional for a news obituary to appear concerning a person about whom nothing else had been written, so in practice this is rarely an issue. Christopher Parham (talk) 08:10, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Linking all dates
I've noted recently that there is a tendency to link full dates in articles regardless of their relevance. This includes the retrieval dates of web references in footnotes, e.i. the date a Wikipedian checked the existence of a web source and noted this. This problem has been brought up for discussion recently (and resulted in a low-intensity revert war) over at Swedish language. What has been cited in favor of linking all full dates is WP:OVERLINK and WP:DATE and that it enables users to set preferences for how and if they want dates linked.

The arguments against, brought forth by myself and other users, is that such links have no encyclopedic value and offer no deeper understanding of the topic in question. The argument that it will allow users to decide for themselves how they wish the links to appear is very weak since this applies only to a small minority of registereted users.

Should this require a rewording of the applicable guidelines or should it be assumed that it's merely a reasonable exception to them?

Peter Isotalo 14:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The point of these links isn't necessarily that they shed new light on the subject at hand; one argument in favor of them is that they allow the encyclopedia to be browsed as a timeline (or timeweb). What specific exception are you proposing? Losing autoformatted dates in reference metadata seems reasonable, but losing autoformatted dates in inline mainspace content seems less so. Just asking. --- tqbf  19:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Linking dates allows users to see the date in the format they prefer when they set their preferences. If the dates are not linked, you'll only see the format as it was typed.   Corvus cornix  talk  19:41, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Plus, how many people will really click on a date? Can you honestly say that you don't immediately jump over dates, linked or not? A few extra blue links is hardy harmful for a process beneficial to the reader. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 20:38, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Any blue link that doesn't shed light on a topic and is there only to fix a date formatting issue which is really isn't a problem to begin with is completely pointless. As other users have pointed out, different date formats are really not more problematic than differences in spelling, and those are already tolerated. The tiny minority of registered users that actually do tinker with their date settings doesn't weigh in as a major factor when looking at the big picture. The weakness of the argumens for the date linking for formatting and the amount of protests it has garnered from a sizeable minority of editors gives me the distinct impression that thare no real consensus for linking all full dates.
 * Peter Isotalo 11:22, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Date formatting was specifically added to preferences because of edit wars over date formatting. With spelling, we have a standard, use British spellings for British subjects, use American spelling for American subjects, use the spelling that the original author started with if it's neither American nor British.  Do we now need a date standard, use American date formatting for American subjects, use non-American for all other cases?  This is a solution looking for a problem.  It does no harm to link dates.  Leave it alone.   Corvus cornix  talk  04:06, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * See 4582 for the technical meat, and Wikipedia talk:Date debate too. Can someone summarize those for us? I see something about using, but don't understand the details. (more coffee needed...) -- Quiddity (talk) 21:12, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It would be great if there would be another way to auto format dates. However since there isn't (yet) another way, linking full dates (not just sole year, or sole month) is beneficial. Garion96 (talk) 04:10, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Automobile Weight
I notice that a cars weight is usually missing from the specifications in most articles. I would be nice to encourage authors to include this info, as compact cars have added about 1000 lbs in the last 20 to 30 years, at the expense of fuel efficiency.

I thought of adding the weights the entries I see, but think it would be better to encourage the authors to do so at the beginning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.194.90.126 (talk) 19:05, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It seems like we have this metaproblem all over the place, in far more crucial areas than automobile weight (for instance, do a quick survey of WP:BLP articles looking for birthdates). If you can't solve the birthyear problem, you may be tilting at windmills trying to get editors to look up how much an E36 M3 weighs. OTOH, WP:BOLD --- go add the info! --- tqbf  19:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I have added a note on your behalf at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles.--Pharos (talk) 04:24, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * As long as you have a reliable source, you're free to add the info. In fact, many articles already include the info, and a field exists within Infobox Automobile for this data. However, reading between the lines of your comment, Wikipedia is not a soapbox. We are free to list car's weights, but not to opine on why that's a bad thing (especially since small cars are still more fuel efficient than three decades ago despite the weight gain, which has improved safety enormously). --DeLarge (talk) 11:56, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Concert tours
There are hundreds of articles on concert tours, from various eras, on Wikipedia. There are even several for tours in 2008. Most of them, no matter what year, consist solely of listings of dates and cities the band played in. Am I alone in thinking that these are not encyclopedic topics? Of course this is not always true, for example, Madonna's Confessions Tour generated huge amounts of publicity and needs a separate page. Anyway, it seems to me that they come close to violating or violate multiple policies and guidelines, and would like know the community's feelings on this. Do you think they violate:


 * WP:NOT, especially point 3?
 * WP:NOT? (although I doubt the bands themselves are creating these pages)
 * WP:NOT?
 * WP:NOT?

and for the future tours
 * WP:NOT?

Comments would be appreciated, Thanks, AnteaterZot (talk) 08:30, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with you that many of these articles fail our policies and guidelines for content. However, more critically than the those you've cited, Many of them don't meet WP:N, and are unsourced or unsourceable and thus unverifiable. If you take these to AfD, do some due diligence to show you have looked, and there aren't existing suitable sources from which an article could be written, they will be deleted and uncontroversially so. Accordingly, I don't see any need for a novel intepretation of policy or that we need any new policy for these articles. The problem here is the larger class of articles of which these particular articles are but one example. The issue is one of process failure, because even when we all agree on a class of articles as unsuitable, they must go through AfD to be deleted, as prodding articles for lack of sources or as being necessarily permanent stubs is considered controversial and thus improper. That problem is endemic. If no tertiary source article can be written for a subject, it should not have an article. Yet, there are so many permanent sub-stubs like these because a listing of existence is about all that can be verifiably written. We have no feasible process for removing them or for unsourced content. AfD cannot handle the hundreds of thousands of entirely unsourced "articles" we have that are all placeholders for real content, and the many more that are barely, inadequately or spuriously sourced. With these staggering numbers, there's no way to separate the wheat from the chaffe. Clicking on random article a few times is actually terrifying if you care about this project. Every proposal for making a pragmatic deletion process based on lack of sources has been shot down though (see, e.g., Requests for verification and Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles). Eventualism is not going to get us there and is not realistic. Our content continues to grow at a pace that only deepens the hole we have dug for ourselves in not requiring encyclopedic content as it is added, or within a reasonable time frame after it is added.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:36, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've begun the process, and caught some flak, but progress is being made. AnteaterZot (talk) 03:17, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Once a major tour has begun it is pretty likely to have been reviewed in local newspapers as it travels from city to city, so there are probably many thousands of past tours that meet our notability standards. Future tours may have a tougher time meeting that burden, however. Christopher Parham (talk) 08:26, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Some will have significant, detailed coverage; the major ones. Others will have many mentions ("x will be playing at y on some date for some amount of time"), but no significant treatment.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:03, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Of course, but my local paper seems to review three-four live shows per week, and once you add up all the world's papers I'm confident that there are at least a thousand tours per year that meet our standard. Christopher Parham (talk) 16:10, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * As long as they use the sources, I don't care. Besides, they usually don't. Most people aren't motivated enough to rescue their own pages. AnteaterZot (talk) 06:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Disputes with admins
I think I may be diving headlong into a very vicious content dispute with a majority of admins in WP. Of course I will remain civil and calm, etc., but what happens when I believe (and can demonstrate) that an admin or admins are acting in arbitrary extension of restricted WP and ArbCom policy? This is my first day of the fight, and my first request for consideration was closed and blocked after being up for only two hours, with the admin citing an ArbCom decision that did not pertain to this case. So if this pattern continues (and I believe it will), do I go directly to ArbCom, or what? SamuelRiv (talk) 08:35, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Arbitration is the last step of dispute resolution, not the first, and everyone with half an ounce of sense hopes to avoid it altogether. Calm and civil discussion is the best way. That, and realizing consensus doesn't always go your way. Also, when you're asking for help, it is helpful to cite specifics rather than vague generalities. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:44, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Fine. I'm hoping to restore Encyclopedia Dramatica. Now you have context. Any comments related to whether or not this is a stupid decision should go to my talk page, NOT HERE. Anyway, since there is no policy (for one, ArbCom doesn't make policy) on this article, then it should be able to be created. My concern is that when I finish writing it on a user page, it will get deleted immediately, and this is based on the fact that my request for unblocking was closed without discussion by an admin and that other userpages containing controversial draft articles have been deleted. SamuelRiv (talk) 16:55, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Then you're going to need more than what's in your User space right now, because as of now, ED may not have an article without exemplary sourcing, due to severe historical problems with members using ED pages and Wikipedia pages to harrass Wikipedians. ED has come before the ArbCom and has come on the losing end.  Tread very very carefully.  ArbCom does not make policy, but it has made a decision on ED.   Corvus cornix  talk  04:11, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Like I said, take it to my talk page. For the record, ArbCom has not made policy on ED, only linking to ED. The article itself is still up for grabs. Or at least it would be if its creation wasn't being blocked, which wouldn't be a problem if discussion about creation wasn't also being blocked. When do guidelines become policy? SamuelRiv (talk) 04:35, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * When apples become oranges... --Jayron32| talk | contribs 06:12, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism & Unregistered Users
I am a relatively new arrival to Wikipedia. The biggest gripe I have is the amount of vandalism perpetrated by unregistered users. I currently watch 13 different articles that I have contributed pictures to. I am amazed at the amount of vandalism that occurs even on the most obscure, uncontroversial pages.

The thing is that every occurrence of vandalism that I have seen has ALWAYS been by unregistered users. Why does Wikipedia allow posting by unregistered users? It is such a simple process to get registered. You are asking for nothing but trouble by allowing anonymous posting.

Gedstrom (talk) 14:13, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's a principle that anyone can edit. Although a lot of vandalism comes from anonymous users, not all users who vandalise are anonymous, and it's been shown that about 70% of anonymous edits are in good faith (although most are lacking in quality).  x42bn6 Talk Mess  17:17, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Please also see Perennial proposals. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Non free images of signatures
Non-free images of signatures now form a large component of "miscellaneous" fair use images but there seems to be no guidance on their use. Should they be included in the list of "unacceptable images" (they generally add little information about a subject, and are almost invariably not the subject of critical commentary or even a passing mention other than appearing in an infobox) or should they be declared a new set of blanket "allowed" images and given a distinct tag and category (hence preserving uploaded information, and bearing in mind that the signatures uploaded generally have no commercial value)? I have initiated a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content. Purgatorio (talk) 12:53, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Repetitive themes in "Did you know..."
You seem to have a new editor for "Did you know..." who is a diehard University of Michigan football fan and belonged to Alpha Kappa Alpha. Even when the blurb doesn't mention one of these two subjects, that's what the article turns out to reference in some way (as with today's teaser about Clarence Williams). I read the main page on a regular basis, and this repetition is annoying to the point that I'm bothering to complain (which is unusual for me). I normally enjoy the breadth of coverage, but the page seems to be losing some of that quality.

Please explain why certain themes are driven into the ground, or alternatively, why no one on the editorial staff has noticed. Maybe everyone else in the world loves it in the same way they ate up television reality shows, and I'm the one who's out of step. Please let me know one way or the other.

--FrDigby (talk) 16:54, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You may be interested in joining the discussions related to this very issue on Wikipedia talk:Did you know 81.77.184.52 (talk) 17:35, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Quotations of Jimbo Wales
I notice a lot of policy pages quote Jimbo Wales (see, e.g., WP:USERPAGE). Perhaps these are artifacts from the days when Jimbo used to unilaterally set policy. Now that he doesn't, are those quotes binding in the same sense as the legislative history of a statute, which influences/governs how the statute will be interpreted in a court of law? Or are they just non-binding obiter dicta which are basically just there for decoration at this point? If the latter, I would favor deleting those quotes for clarity's sake (as Jimbo's quote "this should be no big deal" was deleted from WP:RFA). Some people still quote them as though they are authoritative. Sarsaparilla 04:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You know, this perplexed me as well. But some people are very attached to the Jimbo quotes.  So rather than fight them might as well engage in an act of self-promotion.  A while back I created template:Jimboquote.  It takes no position as to the value or appropriateness of including Jimbo quotations, but it does put them in a nice text box with a neutral but distinctive background color.  You can see this template in use at WP:V and WP:BLP.  Wikidemo 07:48, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm going to go ahead and be bold about removing the quotes. Sarsaparilla 16:45, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Now that IS bold indeed. However, you may be sending the right message - it is no longer Jimbo that has the dictatorial control of Wikipedia, it is the Wikipedians with the Republican control.--WaltCip 16:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I share your confusion but I think actually that what is written above- similar to including quotes in a statute- is exactly the way it should be treated. I'm not sure deleting them will go over well, and I'm definitely not sure it's worth the effort... Epthorn (talk) 14:21, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Some Jimboquotes are included to counteract the tendency to overvalue the Word from Jimbo. The Great Userbox Wars were in part: "Jimbo said userboxes are EEEVILLLL. Kill them all!" when Jimbo had said nothing so extreme, and then said several times that he hadn't. Having Jimbo's exact words is one way to answer this fundamentalism. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:30, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Drop the vendetta against trivia.
I'm sorry to inform you of this, but Wikipedia will never be widely accepted as an academic source of information. I don't understand the goal of "encyclopedic style" if it does nothing. You seek to make wikipedia respectable to those that will never respect it (researchers) at the expense of those that appreciate it for what it is (the internet culture). These newly or more strongly enforced policies such as "no triva" and "real world notability" only harm the site wikipedia used to be. It doesn't make any sense to scorn what you have.

Many people come here for the trivia, and only the trivia. Others only come here to read countless episode summaries of their favorite shows. By integrating or deleting trivia, and merging episode summaries, you slap these people in the face. Eventually Wikipedia will do nothing but outsource to other sites, and I don't want that. In the goal of making yourself more encyclopedic, you have alienated a good portion of your fanbase. Stop trying to be Britanica, and go back to the old Wikipedia we knew and loved. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.184.82.235 (talk) 20:12, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You mean the old Wikipedia of before the time when people began adding fancruft like crazy? ¶ dorftrottel ¶ talk ¶ 20:25, December 5, 2007
 * No, I mean the wikipedia that didn't have a mile long stick up its ass. It was a hell of a lot better than what we have now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.184.82.235 (talk • contribs)
 * If you can provide some evidence that filling Wikipedia with references in Family Guy and minor video game characters is better to the public at large than reliably sourced information, people might be more inclined to take suggestions like this seriously. Mr.  Z- man  21:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * There are alternative outlets for what you speak about. Also, trivia is simply used as term to describe a certain type of content. If you read the guideline, you would see that it advises you to find ways to properly add this stuff to an article in well written prose. If something cannot be integrated, then most likely, it's not useful information for an encyclopedia, and you should find another place that was intended for keeping the kind of information that you want to keep. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That's the thing, people don't want prose, people want the trivia section. Who cares if its useful or not? This place was built on the idea of fun and useless information. As to appealing to the public at large, they aren't coming to wikipedia for information, they come for casual entertainment (usually via browsing obscure video game pages and Family Guy character pages). If people want serious, encyclopedic information, they aren'y coming here. I have no problem splitting the focus to include both serious information and "limited interest" info, yet Wikipedia seems hellbent on only dealing with the first type of information. Why I ask? It serves no purpose. Your space is damn near unlimited, and no one is going to take you seriously... ever. Let the "pointless" articles stand, or alienate a good portion of your fanbase, for no reason. Your choice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.184.82.235 (talk)
 * If you know of a better site, go to it. If you think you can run this one better and the people here won't listen to you, fork it and start your own. It's your right under a free licence. The rest of us will stay here and write an encyclopedia. Marnanel (talk) 02:19, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * "This place was built on the idea of fun and useless information." - Says who? I believe it was started as an encyclopedia. Mr.  Z- man  02:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Maybe he has us mixed up with Bulbapedia. Now that's fun and useless information (No insult to WP:PCP; I jest). -Jéské ( Blah  v^_^v )  —Preceding comment was added at 02:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * people don't want prose, people want the trivia section. Speak for yourself. I want the prose, and am annoyed by the trivia. I want come to here to learn, not to kill time Pfly (talk) 11:33, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with original post, there's nothing wrong with trivia. Who's to say it's actually trivial? some of it is important and is simply grouped under "trivia". perhaps a better term would me Miscellaneous details." --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 18:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality disputed tag for Emotional Language
I have put a POV tag on the Angulimala article. Is there a tag for the use of emotional language e.g. “ruthless killer”, “vicious killer”, “pure sadism” instead of presenting the facts unemotionally e.g. “serial killer” etc. Thanks Dhammapal (talk) 04:26, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes: .  --- tqbf  04:28, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Template:M to ft bias contrary to WP:ENGVAR
This template is currently set to default to American spelling ('meter'), and is significantly more difficult to use to show other spellings ('metre'), as other parameters have to be added, something that a large number of editors don't know how to do. This is wholly contrary to wiki policy not to favour one spelling over another. I am starting to see a number of pages where entering the simplest m to ft notation has been used to push overall spelling changes on the page from UK, Canadian, Australian, etc., spellings to US spellings, contrary to WP:ENGVAR policy (people add the m to ft tags and don't know how to make the 'metre' version show, then other subsequent editors see 'meter' and take that as a green light to change 'colour' to 'color', etc). This template must be changed to use the abbreviation 'm' as the default (as this is also the most widely used format anyway), with full spellings 'metre' and 'meter' being made equally tricky to add. - MPF (talk) 10:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Try asking there, too. This isn't much of a policy concern. Fact is, American spelling is much more common, and as such it's easier for it to remain as is than to jump through hoops fixing something that is not broken. Furthermore, being a pain in the ass to do something is not bias, just a matter of coding. Finally, what you propose would fuck up a lot of transclusions, and instead of awb'ing a bunch of them, the time is much better spent just specifying a spelling where necessary. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 10:49, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Convert uses the Queen's English as the default spelling and has a provision to change the spelling to American when desired and none of us Americans are complaining about that. This is just like how m to ft has American as the default and a provision to switch the spelling to Commonwealth. Both templates clearly explain how they work at their main template page and it is not bias if editors are using them incorrectly, then trying to justify the incorrect usage to go against wiki policy and change the English variety on the page.  British Commonwealth articles should use the Commonwealth English and American articles should use American English and for other places it is whatever the article has been using, then keep using it unless their is consensus to change.  From a code standpoint, the templates need to have a default spelling, re/er, sorry that you don't like the default.  &mdash;MJCdetroit (talk) 13:32, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Oddly, for some strange reason, the metre spelling is the official spelling used by the US government, but everybody ignores it and uses meter.  Corvus cornix  talk  19:40, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know what "official spelling" Corvus is thinking of, but the applicable standard in the US is the US edition of the SI standard, NIST Special Publication 330, and it's available in PDF here. And what it says on this point is:
 * The spelling of English words is in accordance with the United States Government Printing Office Style Manual, which follows Webster’s Third New International Dictionary rather than the Oxford Dictionary. Thus the spellings "meter," "liter," and "deca" are used rather than "metre," "litre," and "deka" as in the original BIPM English text
 * I post this correction as a point of fact and not by way of advocating any particular policy for Wikipedia on spelling. --207.176.159.90 (talk) 22:04, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Tagging, specific and general issues
Archived discussion, as it seems to be going nowhere. Please either continue the discussion with users on their talk pages, or start an RFC on the relevant policy/behavior. -- Kesh (talk) 00:07, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

On the specific, there is a user that feels it is his personal mission to tag every article that doesn't have what he deems an acceptable external reference. A view of their contributes shows what effectively comes off as spamming. My concern is not that that's how he wants to play on Wikipedia, my concern is the credibility issues associated with mass tagging of thousands of articles. He's bragged about the number of articles he's tagged. To be credible, Wikipedia must first appear credible, visually at first site. Someone coming in and seeing a reliability tag is going to walk away and discount the accuracy of an article. While tagging may encourage editors to work on an article, what does it say to people who come here seeking information? The individual doing the en masse tagging is fairly unreasonable so talking with them is impossible. Others have tried and failed. So I come here with a couple of suggestions. When tagging why do we tag on the main article instead of on the talk pages? At least on the talk pages the tags wouldn't be seen by the non-editing users but would be seen in a category search. The person's criteria, they claim, is notability stating all the tagged articles would fail an AfD nomination and are destined to be deleted. I doubt that looking at the tagged articles. Several hundred schools were tagged this morning. They claim to want to improve Wikipedia but all I see is they are making a whole lot of articles look useless to those "on the outside" who immediately question reliability when a tag is glaring at them. Is there a common ground for tagging that wouldn't hurt the articles and is there are rule I am unable to find that says articles are required to have outside references and not just external links? Thank you for your time. IrishLass (talk) 13:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Just in case it isn't clear, I think what IrishLass is looking for is WP:VER. Arthurrh (talk) 00:35, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks IrishLass, you make excellent points. Especially about the negative impact of seeing such tags on what will be thousands of articles if the editor in question continues along his chosen path as a Wikipedia contributor. On the previous exchange that had been taking place on Flyer22's talk page, AnteaterZot boasts about having placed these tags on "far more than" 500 articles, but then, when it was pointed he has made no actual contributions to these articles, replies, "That's not true, earlier this evening I added two sources." It's a vast imbalance and I wonder if he is not doing more harm than good. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:46, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * An example of the level of frustration and disharmony being caused by AnteaterZot would be this: . The tagging does indeed appear to come off as spam, mass tagging with the exact same wording.  Shawn and PAnteaterNot are by far not the only ones upset by the behavior being shown.  I think it's appropriate to discuss compromise rather than have thousands of articles tagged, untagged, retagged because of an ill-conceived and/or misguided understanding of BOLD, revert, discuss cycle and/or Verifiability.  Discussion before further tagging really should be priority one. IrishLass (talk) 18:06, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I completely agree. Anteater has gone through and tagged all the characters from the "24" articles DEMANDING notability references that satisfy him. It appears that he spends about 8-12 hours on this site--every day--not contributing anything useful as far as I can tell. He just tags articles for notability issues and then nominates them for deletion. He has tagged thousands of pages in just the past few days. Angelriver (talk) 21:25, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I would like to add my voice to those complaining about the mass tagging. One recent example has been Only Fools and Horses episodes. These are all works in progress, generally containing little more at this stage than basic production details, a plot summary, and possible a trivia item or two or a sentence on relevant connections to the series story arc (first character appearances, references to past events, etc). These do not require verification. Episodes which have disputable unsourced material do have citation tags as appropriate - these being far more subtle than huge tags at the top of the screen - but the majority do not need even these. On that note in fact, I would like to recommend the large "sources needed" tag be reserved for extreme examples due to its offputting nature. Citation needed tags at the point in question - which include a relevant category add which is perfectly useful for those looking for articles to add sources to. As for Anteaterzot, something definitely does need to be done, tagging as often as he is is unacceptable.Caissa&#39;s DeathAngel (talk) 21:46, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Be aware that all articles to follow both general and fictional article notability guidelines, that states that for a topic to be notable for inclusion in WP, significant coverage in secondary sources needs to be demonstrated. Furthermore, individual episodes of a TV are not generally notable either.  It is perfectly reasonable for another editor that believes that notability has not been sufficiently demonstrated to bring into question its notability via tagging.
 * Mind you, I'm looking at his contributions and there is definitely something excess about it. He's tagging school articles, album articles, characters, etc, that do need to have notability demonstrated, but....  I can't easily tell how long he waits to bring the articles from tagging to an AfD, but he's got a few of them in there as well.   I have a feeling he's doing this via a bot or something like AWB (though he's not listed as an AWB approved user) (he has 9 changes listed at 05:05, December 10, 2007, for example, and many consecutive edits are in alphabetically nearness).  Again, spot checking these articles, he's correct in noting their lack of notability, but the massive amounts of changes in short times suggests that he's using a lot of automated tools to do this work (Articles in a given catagory that lack a "reference" section appears to be the criterion here) - such automation is rather scary and I worry about the good faith efforts here. --M ASEM  22:23, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Response by AnteaterZot
Perhaps I can say a few things to address these concerns. My effort to reliable source tag the articles stems from a desire to avoid rancorous Articles for Deletion debates. As many of you are no doubt aware, minor characters in fictional works, individual episodes of TV shows, and elementary schools are constantly nominated for deletion. The only thing that saves such articles from deletion is proper sourcing. Unlike the "deletionists," I want Wikipedia to provide the information, just not on thousands of individual pages. It is my goal to encourage the survival of deserving articles, and to encourage to consolidation of minor characters and episodes into "List of" pages, and elementary schools onto schools district pages. The main benefit of such pages is editorial oversight. As can be read at Criticism of Wikipedia, a great deal of the problems with Wikipedia's public image involve poor or non-existent sourcing. My idea of improving Wikipedia is increasing the sourcing. Sourcing is the bulk of pillar one of the Five pillars of Wikipedia. AnteaterZot (talk) 22:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I shall now provide my point of view on each of the complaints above;
 * 1) Everybody has a personal mission on Wikipedia.
 * 2) I avoid articles with even the faintest hint of third party sourcing, so my actions are not indiscriminate spamming. I do not tag "List of" articles. Others nominate "List of" articles for deletion.
 * 3) Credibility is provided by sourcing.
 * 4) The vast majority of the articles I have tagged have no possibility of surviving a deletion nomination. When deleted, the information is gone, destroying the hard work of the creators. Sourcing and/or consolidation will strengthen and preserve the information.
 * 5) I believe that what I am doing will improve Wikipedia in the long run. I did not so much brag as inform an angry editor that his estimate of the number of tags I had applied was erroneous.
 * 6) As for users, Wikipedia has a bot go through and mark "orphaned" articles. Nobody seems to care about that. In my opinion users are smart enough to know that an article on a TV episode is probably fan-written, and thereby mostly accurate, tag or no tag. Tags on the talk pages are an interesting idea, but they will likely be ignored.
 * 7) I am an individual, not a "they". This can be confirmed by an admin through a process known as checkuser.
 * 8) What proportion of source-adding to tag-adding would be acceptable to all of those who oppose the tags? (It seems none)
 * 9) In general, I don't retag an article if somebody removes it, have you not noticed that? I have two reasons for this; 1) I don't want to anger anybody who feels very strongly that the tag is not appropriate for "their" article, and 2) removing the tag makes the article more vulnerable to losing a deletion nomination, because it will look like (and is) in bad faith if sources are not eventually added.
 * 10) I will not be nominating the articles for deletion. This may be an underlying concern of the people complaining today. I figure the articles will eventually get speedy-tagged, prod-tagged or nominated for deletion by others.
 * 11) If you look at the results of my tagging, you will see that many users have been motivated to find sources rather than complain.
 * 12) This whole process is rather like natural selection. When an article is tagged, my tag will prompt some editors to find sources. Most of the tags will never be seen by anybody, since they are on obscure pages that have been abandoned by their creators, and those pages will eventually get deleted. Some tags will be removed by people such as yourselves without sources being added. That means that they care about the articles, and might work to improve/consolidate them.
 * 13) I am not using any automated tools.
 * 14) It seems that User:Caissa& wants me to be forcibly prevented from adding tags, and all my tags removed. Do any admins here view this as a solution?
 * 15) Finally, unless somebody takes it on themselves to remove all my tags, I am sure we can work out some sort of compromise.

AnteaterZot (talk) 22:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I would like to respond to some of your points.

1. Personal missions are irrelevant in the face of the overall goal of the project. Where they impede upon the goal of the project - as we have posited about yours - we will oppose them.

2. Your tagging is still spamming, regardless of whether or not it is focussed. It certainly represents a poor record of actually improving articles, since tagging does in itself nothing to improve them.

3. True. Not sure why you've stated it though, as nobody is denying it. That sources are desirable is hardly a point of contention here.

4. I'd like a precedent on that. It's a very POV statement to make without justification. A better use of your time - and of more benefit to someone who clearly feels so strongly - would be to actually look for and put in sources. You're boasting about how much you are benefiting the project (or at least coming across as though you are) without actually having done anything valuable here. People who add sources are highly respected. People who just endlessly tag are not.

5. Tagging does not benefit in the long run unless people actually follow through. A far better use of an editor's time is to make genuine improvements, adding tags is a lazy way to pretend you are making improvements. I make improvements. You tag. Who is more valuable to the project?

6. Why is the Orphanbot of any relevance whatsoever to this discussion? And people who genuinely care about improving articles will see the tags on the talk page, when editing an article it is standard to look at the talk page before/whilst doing so. I don't see that reasoning as credible.

7. "They" is used grammatically as a gender neutral singular since "it" is not considered polite in the English language. It does not automatically denote plural, and your gender is unknown.

8. Use common sense. 2 good edits to 500 useless edits is, frankly, ridiculous.

9. The point is the tag shouldn't be there in the first place. You're going about improving things in the wrong way.

11. I somehow doubt this is the direct result of the tags. If the articles specifically needed them, a lot of them would be in Category: Sources needed anyway.

12. POV, not actually based on anything real, therefore not a justification for spam-tagging.

13. Not a word in that suggests why they need to be on the main page, or why you couldn't find and add the sources yourself.

14. I'll await independant verification on that, your edits are suspicious to I and others, and you've hardly proved your innocence with that statement.

15. My suggestion of a compromise: You either volunteer to stop placing tags, or else be forcibly prevented from doing so. All tags removed untill/unless independent verification of of their value/relevance. I'm not really prepared to negotiate on that one, I see your methods as unacceptable.

Hmm. My numbers haven't added up. I can't be bothered checking them though.Caissa&#39;s DeathAngel (talk) 23:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC) --

New responses to AnteaterZot and additional comments regarding the subject
"#The vast majority of the articles I have tagged have no possibility of surviving a deletion nomination. When deleted, the information is gone, destroying the hard work of the creators. Sourcing and/or consolidation will strengthen and preserve the information. " This statement is laughable as you've been told last night. He tagged Edith Bunker as not notable as well as Ben Cartwright, neither of which would fail/pass/be deleted (however you choose to say it) when put up for AfD. Both are Smithsonia inductees. I believe, going by memory, Edith's chair and Ben's saddle are in the Smithsonia. The list is a justification in the users mind, most of which don't hold water with statements like "I feel strongly." It is not what this user "feels" but rather what Wikipedia wants.

As was suggested, why can this tagging not be done on the talk page? I've seen it done and it will not make Wikipedia look bad to outsiders. I still think, as I said lat night, the user is spamming. Multiple edits within seconds? Obviously the user holds no store for what others opinions are. They've discounted every statement made before they came in and provided their laundry list of "whys". Just because you have reasons in your own mind doesn't mean you are right. As to your claim of not using automated tools, I find that impossible to believe. But that's just my opinion of AnteaterZot's spam. I agree with Caissa's DeathAngel that AnteaterZot should be stopped at all costs. And apologies for having editing issues with the formatting and what not. CelticGreen (talk) 23:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I did not tag them as non-notable, I tagged them as reliable sources needed. Neither of the articles mention anything about the Smithsonian. It's Archie's chair, btw. AnteaterZot (talk) 23:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Even if I stop tagging, whether by force or choice, the articles need to be sourced or deleted. AnteaterZot (talk) 23:35, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It seems to me, Anteater, that you don't really care one whit about this site. If you actually cared, you'd do things to improve the articles rather than spend all of your time tagging them and then nominating them for deletion. I believe your record speaks for itself. I'm actually gathering references for some of these articles that you've tagged, but tell me....what have you done to improve anything? All you're doing is working on your agenda to get rid of these pages. I saw where you said that on another user's talk page. Do something useful with your time for a change and actually work on improving an article rather than automatically tagging it. Angelriver (talk) 23:39, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I do care. I have stated my reasons. Prior to my tagging project I have worked on individual articles. The way an article survives is by having sources. Please pick at random some of the articles I have tagged, and try to find sources for them. In general, it can't be done. AnteaterZot (talk) 23:46, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * New comments go at the end of one persons comments, not in the middle. No one went into your comments, please do not go into others.  And it's both chairs.  Regardless, you're are now double speaking.  First you say they would be deleted as not notable then say, "but that's not why I tagged them" after previously saying that is why you tagged them.  Please, do, make up your mind.CelticGreen (talk) 23:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia does not have a deadline. I'm not sure what policy says that, but it's official. Time must be allowed for sources to be added, we are in no hurry. I cannot see why you are. Use citation tags for specific comments of dispute, recognise that there is an ongoing debate over what to do with episode pages (that they will be deleted by policy is probably inevitable, but it's still contested for now I believe) and otherwise just find sources! Help the articles yourself instead of just getting everyone else to do it! Caissa&#39;s DeathAngel (talk) 23:43, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Take as much time as you need, these are not Prod tags. AnteaterZot (talk) 23:48, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I haven't looked at the specific tagging being done, but I would like to comment on something more general that was discussed at the beginning of this thread. Articles which are unreferenced, poorly referenced, non-neutral, etc. should not be relied on; people coming to these articles should be told in no uncertain terms—not on the talk page, and not at the bottom—but right up front, that the article has these problems. This is an encyclopedia. Our articles should be tertiary source entries by definition. Unsourced content is a placeholder for third party reliable sourced content and it is a terrible thing when a user relies to their detriment on false information, which is de rigeur in unsourced articles. Every unsourced article should be sourced and until that is done, tagged as unsourced. Properly tagged articles which make people "immediately question reliability when a tag is glaring at them" is a good thing. I know there is more going on here, with notability tags and the like. This is not addressed to those issues.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:45, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Angelriver, I couldn't agree more. Nothing has been done to improve any significant amount of articles, apparently one reference was added out of THOUSANDS of tagged pages.  The pages will not automatically get deleted, that is your opinion, or possibly desire, AnteaterZot.  What I plainly see is that you are clearly disrupting the community and the project with your behaviour.  Many are upset by your actions, some have said so other places, some have said so here.  That, in and of itself, is bordering on violating WP:CIVIL actions that cause disharmony.  Fuhgettaboutit ~ may I suggest you view the contributes, you will see why this has become quite an issue.CelticGreen (talk) 23:47, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Fuhghettaboutit we are talking about thousands of articles tagged out of some thought process which is impossible for most to understand. And AZ is bragging about the thousands of articles they've tagged without a care or without an attempt to help the article.  Notability and reliability is almost a separate issue in this situation.  CelticGreen (talk) 23:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Considering the amount of tagging I have done, very few people are upset. Other people have restored some of my tags. Why is that? AnteaterZot (talk) 23:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * There's a considerable difference between being upset and vocalizing it. Some probably don't even know about this page and it's against the rules to inform them this discussion exists. CelticGreen (talk) 23:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If they are not too upset to vocalize, they aren't too upset. There is a link to this discussion on my talk page. And of course they could indicate their feelings on the articles or talkpages. AnteaterZot (talk) 23:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Anteater, that's really not something of which you should be proud. You're lazy. You're tagging articles and expecting everyone else to do the work while you sit back just waiting to nominate them for deletion. I, personally, agree with you CelticGreen. I believe there to be a violation of the tagging system and that Anteater is creating a hostile environment here. It needs to stop. Angelriver (talk) 23:54, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * What can I say? Did you see how many hours I put into tagging? How is that lazy? I'm not trying to be hostile, the tags are good for Wikipedia. AnteaterZot (talk) 23:58, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I notice you have no one that has seen your work that agrees with you on that. And not making specific accusations, but trolls often put thousands of hours into hurting the websites they target.  Hours of work does not equal caring about Wikipedia.CelticGreen (talk) 00:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh really? Somebody restored my tag to Edith Bunker and added an in-universe tag. How do you explain that? AnteaterZot (talk) 00:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see that you removed the tags, and claim that this discussion is gospel. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Put words in people's mouth much? I would have removed them either way as I did last night.  I just referred people here to see why my decisions was made which is far from "gospel" as you put it. CelticGreen (talk) 00:13, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't put my tag back, somebody else did. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:20, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Again, putting words in others mouths? AGAIN? Where did I say you did.  Regardless of who did it, I would have done what I did based on other discussions. CelticGreen (talk) 00:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * This is what you put in the edit summary: "Per village pump policy discussion, no the tags are not appropriate...." AnteaterZot (talk) 00:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Again with the putting words in peoples mouths and taking things out of context. CelticGreen (talk) 01:37, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * My concern is two fold. First, there is a difference between "reliable sources" and "notability".  While notability relies on reliable sources, using the reliablesources tag as AnteaterZot  has used does not suggest deletion of an article in a long term, just that the article needs such.  If AZot's concern is notability, then these should have been tagged with notability, which does state that if notability can't be demonstrated, it should be merged or deleted.
 * I am also strongly concerned with the rate of the edits. AZot's stated he doesn't use an automated tool, but I find it very hard to believe that one can edit without the use of such and achieve a rate of upwards of 20 edits a minute, and be making good faith use of those tag additions.  The Edith Bunker article is an example where such rapid editing (even if manual) can lead to bad tag application.  There is a discussion in the second half of that article that describes how the character was to be killed off, but lacks reliable sources.  While AZot's application of the RS tag is "correct" in this case (there are no sources but I would reasonably expect sources can be obtain), catching these types of issues just is not reasonably possible when edits are done at the rate AZot is creating them.  This is not so much the issue of using an automated tool or not (I assume per good faith that he isn't per claim above), but just that how accurate one can be tagging articles at that rate. --M ASEM  00:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I start with a category page, open all the articles, and check each one for sources. If it has sources, I close the tab. If it does not, I add the tag. I then go through the tabs and the edit summary, then click save page. So I did review the articles, even if I save in pulses. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Anteater, you tagged over 7,000 pages--500 of them in just a couple of days. Please. And yes, it is lazy when all you're doing is pointing out the negative and doing NOTHING to improve it. CelticGreen is absolutely correct, and I've been on other sites and have seen it happen--TROLLS spend hours destroying. Time spent on a site does NOT equal quality improvements to the site.Angelriver (talk) 00:13, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * And of those 7000 pages, how many have been reverted? How many watchlists did they show up on, and yet nobody complained? AnteaterZot (talk) 00:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Why is it, AnteaterZot you are incapable of adding your comments at the end rather than hiding your replies and making people hunt for them? CelticGreen (talk) 00:15, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That's the style. Look at other discussions. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Edith Bunker still has no sources anywhere on the page, and doesn't talk about her character's real-world impact at all. Yet CelticGreen removed another user's tags -- not mine, since CelticGreen had reverted me on that. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You can tag 7000 articles but you don't know the difference between reverting and don't know how to format replies? I added citation tags as needed.  Just removed the reference request. CelticGreen (talk) 00:19, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I think I do. Do what you want with Edith Bunker, I've not reverted you. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * But you claimed I reverted you, which I did not. CelticGreen (talk) 00:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You removed my tag : And you removed a comment I just made. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:25, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I removed a tag, I didn't revert a page. And I have no clue what you are talking about removing a comment you made.  I have gotten several edit summaries while you go on and on without saying anything constructive.  But I have most certainly not removed any comments you made intentionally.  Why would I do that?  It serves me to have people see your "opinion."CelticGreen (talk) 00:32, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You probably did by accident during an edit conflict. Removing the tag I put on is reverting. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:35, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I personally don't see anything wrong with what AnteaterZot is doing. The tag he is using is of long standing, and has already been used on thousands of articles. We do require that articles be sourced, although that is honored more in the breach than anything else. So far as I can tell, he has not tagged a single article incorrectly. Does it make look Wikipedia look bad? I think not, I think that it shows that the project has the integrity to look honestly at its flaws and attempts to address them. So far as I can tell, the articles he has tagged and then sent to AfD are ones where he attempted to source and failed or arguable violated WP:CRYSTAL. I think the term spamming is highly inflammatory and should be used only for instances where the accused spammer has a conflict of interest. As long as the use of macros and tabbed browsing are not considered automation, I think it is quite possible for someone to tag at the speed he is doing it without using a bot. On the other hand, I would like to hin tone down his edit summaries. Emphasizing THIRD PARTY sorces, as he does, smacks of failure to assume good faith in advance. Dsmdgold (talk) 00:27, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Note that Angelriver considers a reliable sources tag as "destroying" an article. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:26, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * So noted, I didn't see it that way. Thanks. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:34, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Anteater, I saw where you said I thought that adding a reliable sources tag was destroying the site. I specifically said that TROLLS spend hours destroying a site, so how much time you've spent on this site is of no consequence. In other words, time spent on a site isn't necessarily to the betterment of the site. If you're going to quote me, at least get it right. Angelriver (talk) 00:29, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * No, I'm doing my best to improve the project. How do you respond to my question, "And of those 7000 pages, how many have been reverted? How many watchlists did they show up on, and yet nobody complained?" AnteaterZot (talk) 00:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Hello! Do you see people here complaining? I sure do! I'm one of them! The second I found out what you were up to, I started complaining. Angelriver (talk) 00:36, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * A few. And I have some defenders, it seems. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:39, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I’m going to agree with everyone here that AZ is out of control with his tagging. It is clear that he is spamming Wikipedia with these tags and I have no doubt he is using a BOT to do it. Disrupting Wikipedia is probably the most common violation of the rules for this site. People are banned for far less than AZ has engaged in and his justification has more holes than a machine gun target. It is clear his only reason is to either hurt Wikipedia by having tens of thousands of articles deleted or just to stir up as much trouble as possible before getting the boot. The admins needs to take a look at this and put a stop too it. --MiB-24 (talk) 00:37, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The admins are observing us argue here, I'm sure. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Anteater, you have more detractors than supporters, and even the 2 whole people supporting you, have issues with you.Angelriver (talk) 00:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Compromise with me. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Compromising with trolls destroys the integrity of the site. Besides, you are not going to compromise.  All you want is these pages deleted and nothing is going to change your mind. --MiB-24 (talk) 00:47, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I am not a troll. I do not want all the articles deleted. Make a suggestion towards a compromise, and assume I can be reasoned with. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:50, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the compromise as presented is that you stop tagging and start editing. If you truly do not want the articles deleted, do something about it don't just tell others what to do. CelticGreen (talk) 00:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Really? Caissa's DeathAngel wants all my tags removed. AnteaterZot (talk) 00:58, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * FALSE. I specifically said that if they can be justified then they can stay. I don't believe the majority can, and I don't believe you've provided justification. If they can, and doubtless some can, then keep them. Obviously. Don't misquote me like that.Caissa&#39;s DeathAngel (talk) 01:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * My justification is that the article sports no secondary or tertiary source. AnteaterZot (talk) 01:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Anteater, would you agree that the community generally disapproves of drive-by tagging, and would you be ameanable to altering your methodology to either helping to include references more frequently, or using tags, or in other ways increasing your edits to tagging ratio? Arthurrh (talk) 01:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd be very happy to see this. I also think there is some relevance of this discussion to a wider debate about the use of the tag in question on the main page, and instead of more specific fact tags (which are less intrusive and more directive to those looking to add sources)Caissa&#39;s DeathAngel (talk) 01:25, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm considering what is being said. However, fact tags make it seem like the sentence tagged is possibly not true, which is not my belief. Reliable sources increase the level of scholarship, which is in line with my goals. Would the community prefer I tag a defined subset of all Wikipedia articles that presently don't have sources? Or would the community like me to take some sort of break from tagging to see if my experiment works? If that is agreed to, could I ask that all those here meet me halfway somehow, for example by finding sources for the articles that were detagged? AnteaterZot (talk) 01:37, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Asking everyone to work on the articles you've suggested is exactly the same as them telling you what kind of edits to make. I personally would prefer to see you spend more time editing and less time tagging. If there is a particular area you have experience with, are interested in, or seems to have a need, that would be a great start. Arthurrh (talk) 01:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * EXPERIMENT!! There it is.  He's not tagging to help improve, he's tagging as an experiment and those are his own words. CelticGreen (talk) 01:58, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I want to see if my tagging causes the articles to be improved. Those are my words. AnteaterZot (talk) 02:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * So you admit you didn't do this to improve Wikipedia you did it as an experiment. Would that be social experiment?CelticGreen (talk) 02:06, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I deny that; I did it to improve the articles, which is how Wikipedia gets improved. AnteaterZot (talk) 02:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * So you admit and then deny all in one breath. You said experiment now you deny what's there in black and white.  Your agenda is now noted.  I have other things to do.CelticGreen (talk) 02:13, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll say "experiment" again. An experiment is not a bad thing if the goal is to improve the articles. AnteaterZot (talk) 02:47, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Articles are not the place for “experimenting” which is what you are clearly admitting to doing. This alone should be enough for the admins to either force you to stop or give you the boot. --MiB-24 (talk) 02:27, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * My experiment, such as it is, is to see if Wikipedia articles can be encouraged to be improved or consolidated by placing a perfectly legit tag on them. The tags are not wrongly placed, and so I doubt that the admins will block me for placing them. However, as I stated earlier, I am willing to suspend my reliable sources tagging for a while to see what happens. Do you have a problem with that? Will you remove my tags without providing the sources the articles so badly need? AnteaterZot (talk) 02:47, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

AnteaterZot (talk) 02:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I also think that, given that I tagged thousands of articles, the reaction has been muted. AnteaterZot (talk) 01:37, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think we can draw any conclusions from "muted" reactions, especially over such a short period of time. Arthurrh (talk) 01:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've been doing this for a couple of weeks. AnteaterZot (talk) 02:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, here is a question for everyone. Why is it so easy for any user to tag a page, but once done, why does it take the Wiki equivalent of an atomic bomb to get rid of it? --MiB-24 (talk) 02:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It takes sources. Why do you want to get rid of it any other way? AnteaterZot (talk) 02:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Wrong answer. I can drop a deletion, merger, source, facts, etc. etc. etc. tag onto tens of thousands of pages and if someone else removes it, I can go cry to an admin who will put it back nearly every time without even bothering to examine if it should be there.  And we already know your opinion on sources, no matter how many there are, it is not enough for you.  Your whole end game is to have these pages deleted and you’re just using the source tags which you placed to justify your upcoming deletion suggestions.  --MiB-24 (talk) 02:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I haven't gone crying to the admins. I would like to see a couple of sources on every page, wouldn't you? The tags are legit. Do you disagree? AnteaterZot (talk) 02:20, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said You did.  Please learn to read what I say.  And no, most of your tags are not legit. --MiB-24 (talk) 02:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I was just saying that I haven't gone crying to the admins. As for my tags, I disagree–my tags are on pages that have no sources. That means they are legit. It's not like they are Prod tags or Notability tags. AnteaterZot (talk) 02:30, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * They’re legit in your opinion, but that does not make them so. Most people here would agree with me that your tagging is irresponsible and many of the pages should not have been tagged. --MiB-24 (talk) 02:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * They're wrong. The pages are sourceless. AnteaterZot (talk) 02:36, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, yes, everyone is wrong but you. NOT.  You admitted to your tagging being an experiment.  That's good enough for most of us to your motives. CelticGreen (talk) 02:38, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You are the only one who seemed to have a problem with that. AnteaterZot (talk) 02:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * All of Wikipedia is an experiment. Adding a tag which WP:V policy supports is quite reasonable.  Tell him on his Talk page if he's making mistakes, just as we do with Betacommandbot. -- SEWilco (talk) 03:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I really can’t believe you’re not dizzy by now given the amount of circular reasoning you use. “The tags are valid because I say they’re valid and everyone else is wrong because I’ve declare the tags to be valid.”  Now, if you’ll excuse me.  Arguing with someone who cannot carry on a conversation at my level is giving me a headache.  I have a 20 page paper due on Friday so I cannot afford to waste my time arguing with someone who cannot do anything more than claim “it’s right because I say it is.” And please learn to add.  Far more than 1 person has a problem with your excuses. --MiB-24 (talk) 02:43, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm tired, but I stand by my statements, which I think are internally consistent. The tags are valid because the articles lack sources, and the tag asks for sources to be added to the article. Again, I have heard that people don't like the mass-reliable-sources tagging, and have offered to stop for a while. Why do you persist in arguing with me? AnteaterZot (talk) 02:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * According to WP:V it is quite reasonable, perhaps even mandatory, for every article without sources to be tagged. Because there is no automated tool to do so, a human has to find these articles which have no sources.  It's nice that someone is looking for them, particularly the notably ill-sourced groups chosen such as schools.  -- SEWilco (talk) 03:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * You do realize that he is tagging thousands of pages everyday and there is no way he could be reviewing even 10% of them as to whether or no they should be tagged. He has admitted this is simply his own, private “experiment” and his justification is “I think they should be tagged.”  In other words, he is trying to force his own personal opinion onto all of Wikipedia. --MiB-24 (talk) 03:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Observations on the Anteater tagging controversy
Just a few observations on the tagging controversy with Anteater.

Arthurrh (talk) 00:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) It's not up to wikipedians to judge how other wikipedians spend their time. If someone choose to do vandal patrol as their best form of contribution, then we way thanks for the effort. If someone is tagging rather than fixing, it may not be what we would choose to do, but as long as the tags are correct, it's the same thing. It's a volunteer effort.
 * 2) Assume Good Faith - this conversation has been getting somewhat uncivil. Everyone wants to improve the encyclopedia, each in their own way. Remarks about laziness, trolls, destroying the site, spamming, proving innocence, etc. don't contribute to that.
 * 3) WP:Verifiability IS core to wikipedia.


 * Your first point is where you're wrong. After starting out by assuming good faith, AZot has made that impossible with their admission to having an agenda and that agenda is not to fix Wikipedia. If we allow everyone who comes here to do as they will, can you imagine what Wikipedia would look like? CelticGreen (talk) 00:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, you misunderstood. When I assume good faith, it means they're contributing in ways that agree with the core policies. But given that, some choose to add images, some to correct spelling, grammar, etc. Some choose to create stubs, some to create whole articles, some work on drives like adding pages of a certain class to a particular wikiproject. All are contributions. It is not civil for an editor who contributes a lot of content to tell someone that corrects spelling that they're "lazy", "wasting their time", etc. There are many ways people can contribute to wikipedia, and all of them need to be done. Arthurrh (talk) 00:56, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * That's a valid point, to be sure, but I still have reservations about using software like Twinkle to mass tag thousands of articles.Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:00, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't use software. AnteaterZot (talk) 01:03, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Arthurrh ~ You are correct that I did misunderstand. At issue here is that in less than a week AZot has tagged 7000 articles but contributed to 0.  I've been here since August, contributing, and have maybe 3000 edits if I'm lucky.  Regardless of his explanation, it seems physically impossible for him to be doing what he is doing in the manner in which he is doing it.  I would love another editor to try his "method" and see if it is truly possible.  People are upset with the random tagging that is inappropriate in some cases, incorrectly placed, wrong tag used, and negative comments left when adding said tags.  His motives are just highly suspect with his insistence to tag rather then help. CelticGreen (talk) 01:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've made a number of contributions beyond the tags, which I consider contributions also. Please look more closely at my contribs. AnteaterZot (talk) 01:25, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I have and find nothing of note other than tagging and the conversation here. With 7000 articles tagged it's virtually impossible to look at all your contributes. CelticGreen (talk) 01:39, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Examples:          Connor Temple   AnteaterZot (talk) 02:00, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * So .001 percent of your edits are contributes, not tags, that's a horrific record. CelticGreen (talk) 02:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * My tags are a contribution, and 0.001*0.01*7000= 0.07 edits. Besides, those were only examples. Do you want me to dig up some more? AnteaterZot (talk) 02:07, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Your math is wrong. It's 11 divided by 7000 which equals 0.0015714285714285714285714285714286 therefore .001 percent.CelticGreen (talk) 02:12, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * "Percent" means "one one-hundredth", hence my multiplying by 0.01. And, as I said, I have many other non-tag contribs, I invite others to examine my record. AnteaterZot (talk) 02:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You're wrong again. I work with math all day including percentages.  Your record is impossible to find a dozen or two contributes that might be relevant.  I believe the saying is "needle in a haystack."  Regardless, you admitted your editing is just an experiment.  I think that says it all and I'm satisfied to understand what your real motives are. CelticGreen (talk) 02:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I can't believe this merits a response but here goes. 100% of 7000 is 7000. 10% of 7000 is 700. 1% of 7000 is 70. 0.1% of 7000 is 7. 1 edit is 0.014% of 7000. 10 edits are 0.14% of 7000 edits. 0.0015714285714285714285714285714286% of 7000 is 0.11 edits. How does one make one ninth of an edit? Secondly, the hyperbole in this discussion is interesting. Wannabe_kate's tool shows this user to have made a total of only 2600 mainspace edits. Total. So where does the oft-quoted 7000 number come from? BTW, 11 of 2600, before anyone tries to mangle the math, is 0.42%, if that matters. Of course, I'm not sure where the 11 number comes from, either. *ducking* &mdash; Dave (Talk | contribs) 17:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Obviously from the 10 abovementioned diffs. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:31, 12 December 2007 (UTC) stricken because it it's really not relevant. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:51, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Y'all are just mean. She's gotten multiple comments on her talk page, multiple comments here.  Y'all just aren't satisfied until someone gets really, really hurt, are you?  Was ANOTHER comment really necessary? Did it add anything productive to the subject?  IrishLass (talk) 17:41, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * FWIW, snarky math comments aside, these comments aren't about someone's math error. They're about the sources for the numbers that went in to the math. 17:44, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If that's what you really think, you're wrong. The comments are unnecessary and they serve no other purpose than to be mean.  As to the 7000 that 7000 came from a comment from AnteaterZot, I believe. And confirmed.  The 7000 is the number AZot is claiming. IrishLass (talk)
 * No. Let's be fair. The number "7000" came from someone talking about an anonymous editor who had been blocked despite 7000 constructive contributions; it got picked up, by everyone, as a hypothetical example to toss around in this discussion. AZ never claimed to have tagged 7000 articles. However, it was CelticGreen who took that number, and then 10 examples AZ provided of his edits, and publicly claimed his record was "horrific". If CelticGreen wants to avoid having her feeling hurt, she should double check her math and reasoning before describing others edit histories as "horrific". --- tqbf  17:58, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, please, let me answer the question of why you're still participating, although you'll likely not like my answer. Here is the statement" And of those 7000 pages, how many have been reverted? How many watchlists did they show up on, and yet nobody complained? AnteaterZot (talk) 00:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC) So AZot confirmed the 7000.  If CelticGreen found 11 out of 7000 edits horrific, that's her right.  It's not the right of others to pick on someone over and over when they are clearly not here to defend themselves. After last night, I don't know if she will be back. IrishLass (talk) 18:06, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm less concerned with the volume than with the correctness. If someone is tagging faster than others, that's not the problem. His methodology only concerns me as far as it is either correct or incorrect. I realize some people are upset, the question is, are they upset because the tag was actually incorrect, or are they upset because has was suggested earlier on this page they don't like to see RS tags? The former is cause for specific discussion with Anteater, the latter is cause for discussion with the other editor. That being said, I think Anteater needs to be aware that Wikipedians generally aren't fond of "drive-by tagging" even if it's allowed, and he'll have less contention if he choose to spend more time helping find sources, etc. Arthurrh (talk) 01:13, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * My problem with the “drive by tagging” as it was so aptly named is the fact that this opens the articles up for deletion by either AZ or someone who is like minded. I have no issue with certain pages needing sources (I’m a grad student, I live by sources and citations), but this sort of mindless tagging serves no benefit to Wikipedia. --MiB-24 (talk) 01:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The articles are already open to being deleted. That's just the way it is. AnteaterZot (talk) 01:24, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Don’t play semantics with me. While technically any page *could* be deleted, it will never be unless someone like you comes along and tags it for such and then hides behind the sources tag which you placed as your justification.
 * Exactly. And it is far from true that these articles were "open to deletion" as most would hold up to AfD including but not limited to the Edith Bunker and Ben Cartwright articles.  And your backpeddling again. CelticGreen (talk) 01:34, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with Shawn in Montreal, I don't agree with high speed automated tagging. I don't see it as a useful contribution to the project, I see finding sources as a good contribution. All the other areas you suggest are useful in their own right, but tagging in itself adds nothing and is lazy. I would never say that about things like typo correction etc because these still accomplish things. A lot of the tags have also been questioned, there is not consensus that they are correct. And Assume Good Faith is being broken on both sides - he/she is being highly uncivil to his opponents as much as/more than we are to him/her. And Annteater youv'e claimed that before. You still haven't proved it though. Caissa&#39;s DeathAngel (talk) 01:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * You are free to not like automated tagging and to encourage Anteater to work on other areas. I personally don't agree that tagging is inherently useless. Yes good faith is being broken on both sides, but when I put together my observations, I found much more of it against Anteater than by him. Your own statement above about "tagging in itself adds nothing and is lazy" could be construed as a form of incivility, and certainly hasn't been effective in helping Anteater learn and grow in the community. I'd prefer that he found a way to be productive without contention than have him disappear. Arthurrh (talk) 01:17, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It was a comment on tagging itself - which I feel is only useful sporadically (with Wiki policy itself being Edit don't Tag whereever possible) and not any user who places tags. Therefore although it could have been interpreted as uncivil, I feel it would be incorrect to do so.Caissa&#39;s DeathAngel (talk) 01:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Please provide a link to this policy. AnteaterZot (talk) 01:26, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Based on the rate of tagging it's obvious that Anteater is taking at best a very cursory look at these articles. The tag is redundant to information that it already obvious to anyone viewing the page. It's sort of like going through pages and adding tags like "this page has no images" or any other such trivially obvious facts. That said, we have lots of useless tags and people who have a lot of time to waste seem to enjoy wasting it by pasting them about, so there's probably no harm done. Christopher Parham (talk) 01:39, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 7000 tags in less than a week is no harm? I just don't see that at all. CelticGreen (talk) 01:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure where the 7,000 number is coming from. I get a much smaller number which seems like it can't be more than 2600. At any rate, the summary there does indicate that there isn't any in-depth editing on any particular articles. Arthurrh (talk) 01:49, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If you think the tags themselves are disruptive then try to have the templates deleted (more power to you) but otherwise adding them doesn't seem to do any harm. It's not as if anyone looking at the fellow's contributions will be fooled about the value of them (or lack thereof). Christopher Parham (talk) 01:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Look, verifiabilty is indeed at the core of this project, and it's no secret that a huge number of articles are not properly sourced, if at all. But if this mass tagging were taken to extremes that Anteater is proposing -- indeed, enacting -- it is going to become disruptive. This editor has been on Wikedpia a short while and taken it upon himself to enforce guidelines. Fine. As noted above, we need editors to do that, even if that's all they do. But while the edit summaries on his mass-tagging are civil, the cumulative effect of what he is doing is not, I feel. As for helping him to "learn and grow," I don't get the sense he's interested. He knows he has policy on his side and I get distinct impression that he rather likes all this. It's a shame. I'm going back to writing and editing articles. All the best, Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:42, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Hiding behind the rules is what a lot of disruptors like to do. They quote the rules left and right, pick and chose bits and pieces in order to support their actions, and ignore everything else. --MiB-24 (talk) 01:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Shawn's right, there's editing to be done. While I was arguing this point the page was blanked.  If I'm going to be here I should be vigilant to what needs my attention.  I've stated my feelings very clearly.  I haven't changed my mind about the behaviour, but I can't keep fighting like this. CelticGreen (talk) 01:50, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * As much as I hate to, I'm going to have to agree, it doesn't appear as if he's willing to work toward a consensus. Best of luck all - I'm back to work. Arthurrh (talk) 02:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I said I would be willing to stop tagging for a while. How is that not compromise? AnteaterZot (talk) 02:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * As I said, it's BOTH chairs . Not necessarily relevant to the total discussion, but I felt a demanding need to prove that point. CelticGreen (talk) 02:57, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * And thus an article is improved.... Recall that not only was there no sources on the page, but nothing was mentioned about the chair. AnteaterZot (talk) 03:00, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the All in the Family article which already had several sources. CelticGreen (talk) 03:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I just read through this whole thread and I don't see what the issue is. I tag things all the time. Two things:


 * If he's tagging an article you're working on, and he's wrong, delete the tag. If he cares, he'll restore the tag, and if he's serious about improving the encyclopedia, he'll add inline-cites and a talk page message about what what's wrong with the article. This is the wiki process. The tags are there to help, not to cast judgements on your work.


 * If he's tagging articles you're not working on, it's really not your problem, is it?

There are now eight thousand five hundred words in this thread. Is it moving towards some kind of policy discussion? If not, can it be taken somewhere else? This isn't RfC. --- tqbf 03:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Start with his Talk page, not policy
If he's making mistakes, tell him on his Talk page. This is policy talk, so let us know if he's violating policy such as WP:V. -- SEWilco (talk) 03:13, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I do believe it's up to an ADMIN to close this discussion, not users. This was about policy if you look at the original entry.  It's not up to editors to tell people "where to take it."  An admin can, but this was started about a policy matter.  It's still about a policy matter.  At the heart: Is it acceptable policy for an editor to experiment on pages tagging thousands of articles without actually thoroughly reviewing them?  It is about policy regardless of the direction it may have taken.  Village pump is for discussion, that's what this is, a discussion. Sorry some don't like that. CelticGreen (talk) 03:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * This isn't the admin noticeboard. He's asking you politely to take this conversation elsewhere. With all due respect to your work on the encyclopedia, can I do the same? Please, there are better venues for this discussion than WP:VPP. Would you mind finding one of them? --- tqbf  03:20, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Would you mind not telling me what to do? Read the first entry.  See what this is about.  You've got no right to tell people who are trying to get to the heart of policy to take it some place else.  That's pretty uncivil is you ask me.  No one was putting him on admin notice, they were trying to get to policy information.  What I don't understand is how this discussion is hurting you in any way.  You attack people and tell them what to do.  Why is that?CelticGreen (talk) 03:26, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, thank you for at least considering my suggestion. Good luck with the debate. --- tqbf  03:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, not even an admin tends to close these. Usually a bot cleans up these debates.  -- SEWilco (talk) 05:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh my
Well, this got totally out of control since I left yesterday. For those saying take it to his talk page, it has been on several talk pages but that is really neither here nor there. The reason, and I did have a reason, a legitimate one, that I brought this here was to discuss POLICY (isn't that where we are, a place to discuss policy) and is it, or isn't it, a policy or should it be a policy that mass tagging that comes off as spamming be allowed/encouraged/discourage. Obviously this cause more flack than intended. AnteaterZot feels he's right, several others feel he's wrong, several are offended by the term "experiment", and so on. This was, in all sincerity, an attempt to question/make/modify policy and I took it here rather than admin warning/notice because that's where I have been told to take things in the past, albeit never done and maybe this is why.

Fact is, I started this to delve into the policies of tagging. Are there any? Should there be any? You'll notice that while I did include the link to AZot's contributes, I never mentioned his name in the first paragraph. It was only after others did that I said it. True, his actions started my questioning, but I've seen other people do it for trivia sections, albeit not to AZot's lengths. But, at the end of the day this is about policy and what is or isn't good for Wikipedia. Although, I feel compelled to add, experimenting on Wikipedia is never a good thing no matter what the end intentions. IrishLass (talk) 13:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * To get down to brass tax, the problem seems, to me anyway, that the rules and policies seem to be becoming incresingly subjective of late. For instance it would be a helpful start, if its actualy stated what they consider an exeptable secondary source. Because, in my case anyway, thats the source of all the tagging and then the source of the nominations for deletion for not providing such sources. Yet they repeatedly refuse to tell me what is exeptible, despite my asking. Nubula (talk) 14:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Can I ask an example of where you're being told of what a secondary source is needed, as to help? (WP:PSTS describes what are differences between primary, secondary, and tertitary sources - while there is debate on their exact meaning, primary is nearly always a source directly from the topic matter involved, secondary is nearly any source that talks and evaluates/reviews/expands/synthesizes/etc. about that subject material but is not related, and a tertiary source is something like an encyclopedia. ) --M ASEM  15:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * They say the pages for Primeval (TV series) need such sources. That's fair enough, some of the character pages are in urgent need of updates I admit. What's confusing me, however, is that they, no just AnteaterZot in this case, insist that interviews with the creators, press releases and websites articles don't count as secondary sources as they are, and I quote, trivial and keep tagging the articles. Yet the rules and guidlines, and please corect me if Im wrong, say they do. Thus we get the problem IrishLass identifed. Are taggs justified as they seem to be used on personal, subjective criteria with no review process to insure the wikipadia rules themselves are being followed rather than a users personal preferances and views. In my case with hit and run tagging, I suspect a growing bias against fictional topics on wikipedia hence they tagg but do not stick around to work the article itself. Nubula (talk) 15:57, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * My personal opinion is that interviews with the creators in reputable publications (the Radio Times etc) are acceptable (there are several featured articles that use similar sources). However http://www.douglashenshall.com probably doesn't qualify as a reliable source (it appears to be a fan site for an actor), so a suitable replacement might be needed.  By the way, it looks as if most of the character images suffer from aspect ratio problems - you probably have to stretch them horizontally by 33% (the difference between widescreen and non-widescreen TVs). Bluap (talk) 16:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with this: interviews with creators (where the questions posed are from the secondary sources as to generate the analysis/synthesis/etc of the primary information) are generally acceptable secondary sources. Fan sites are not reliable sources; this doesn't mean they can't be used, but they should not be used as supporting sources for the article.  I'd be careful with press releases, as they are also primary sources.
 * Remember that sources should be used to source any statement that may be considered controversial or is not simply a statement of fact (though sourcing facts is perfectly fine too). For example the statement "It has been suggested that there will also be further series of the show." in "Episodes" is not a statement of fact, so does need a source.  You have the fan site as its source, which is not sufficient here.  You need a good secondary source here. --M ASEM  16:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * What's the policy you have in mind for tagging? I don't understand how "mass tagging" impacts individual editors, unless tags are being re-added without explanation or consideration to corrective edits. It sounds to me like you don't like the tags that were added to your article, so you clicked over to the tagger's "contribs" and drew a conclusion about whether they were editing in good faith. Instead of doing that, why not remove the tag and fix the article? It's a better use of your time. --- tqbf  18:13, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That works if an editor has tagged a couple of articles. However, when someone tags 7000 articles, that's spamming.
 * There's a similar policy against talk page spamming, and that policy proscribes the level of posting, not the act of posting itself. I suggest a similar policy be put in place against this level of tagging, restricting an editor to, say, 100 articles in 24 hours.  I would suggest that it takes 5 minutes to properly and thoroughly examine and then tag an article, so 100 articles would take 8 hours.  If the editor is still looking for something to do, why they s/he can start referencing some of those 100 articles!!!  Madman (talk) 20:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I object; I've tagged things in less than 5 minutes that have died in AfD. 7000/day seems extreme, but 100/day seems overly conservative. I also object to the idea of basing policies on what we think other people should do with their wikitime; it's not for us to say that some other editor should add references, rather than pointing out the lack of references. Both are valuable (though one is clearly more valuable than the other). Regardless, thanks for proposing something concrete to discuss; looking forward to what other people have to say about the proposal. --- tqbf  20:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * This person has tagged TV episodes that have at least TV.com as their source. Is that not a good "secondary" source? And he also seems to want more sources. How many sources are preferred, and for a stub article of an episode?


 * Recently losing an AfD conflict over an entire hip hop battle (tagged AfD by another "episode" deletionist four minutes after initial posting! Now how was THAT found, read, and decided on that fast); it seems like a lot of people are doing stuff like this to try to become "Wiki stars", through actions that are technically correct, and hence, they can claim they are doing good, but it is just gaining attention. Wouldn't it be nice to be widely known, or have something like BetacommandBot drawing notoriety to you, (and to some people) even if it is negative? So It seems this is getting ridiculous.
 * We have "stub", "sources needed", "fact" and numerous others to illustrate that an article is, basically, not complete. One of the great things about Wikipedia is, as Cassia DeathAngel said, is that it is a "work in progress". So it is good to tag individual statements that you think are in question, rather than suggest it should be deleted, just because it is not "perfect" yet. And then the way these people will tag certain things, and leave others right next to them, that have the same sources. (like in the TV show I added episodes to, only the ones I edited were tagged, where the ones already there had the same source, yet were not tagged. And how the hip hop battle I posted was so scrutinized, though it used the same types of sources as all the others, which are not challenged. Yes, it is easier to just tag stuff, than it is to be given a list of books to look up in the library, because someone decides that no online sources, even reputable ones; are good enough, nor the primary source, be it an episode or lyrics; and hence the article is just deemed "original research" based on a technicality, and you get an admin to agree with you). There are also horribly written articles that are not even noticed at all. It seems there is bias against certain subjects, or other kinds of agendas, as was basically exposed here. Technical deletability should not be an issue forced because of reasons like that. There are plenty of other bad articles that deserve that more.Eric B (talk) 00:35, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Template:Primarysources OK?
Is it acceptable for the template Primarysources to be used on articles with few or no sources? (that template has some aliases) -- SEWilco (talk) 15:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Primarysources acceptable

 * 1) Policy WP:V requires sources.  -- SEWilco (talk) 15:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) I have no problem requesting primary sources but this second and third sourcing with an emphasis in the edit summary is a bit much.  Sources are supposed to support the claims made, so sources such as TVGuide.com should be acceptable.  It's not a fan site, it's respectable, and it should be counted without a condition of finding two more sources. IrishLass (talk) 16:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Curious: is someone disputing that TVGUIDE.COM is a valid source for TV show articles? --- tqbf  18:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Quite some time back, yes they were. IrishLass (talk) 18:36, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Here's a featured article that sources TVGUIDE.COM. Hopefully that puts tangent to rest. --- tqbf  19:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Using templates with wide community support for the purpose for which they were designed is always acceptable Dsmdgold (talk) 18:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Per WP:V and WP:RS, sources are required. WP:Notability says that primary sources should not be used to establish notability.  Articles need independent sources, hopefully more than one. Karanacs (talk) 19:36, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * So your opinion is actually NO they are not acceptable. You say secondary sources must be used. IrishLass (talk) 19:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Karanacs ~ I removed your comment in an effort to fix the page. Something is completely throwing it off.  Maybe you could add it in a different manner.IrishLass (talk) 19:57, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Weird...anyway, the question is whether the tag called primarysources is acceptable to use. The tag mentions that reliable third-party sources are necessary.  My opinion is that yes, the tag is acceptable, and yes, people should use reliable third-party sources to avoid the tag.  Karanacs (talk) 19:58, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, that's funny you interpret it that way as that is not how I interpret it. It says: This article or section needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications.  Alone, sources affiliated with the subject of this article are not sufficient for an accurate encyclopedia article. In addition, to avoid original research, any interpretation or analysis of a primary source must be found within the source itself or cited to a secondary source. Please include more appropriate citations from reliable sources. To me that means that primary sources alone as long as the editor doesn't analyze are appropriate. To me third party publication is the indicator, verses source.IrishLass (talk) 20:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Here's a compromise, Anteater
Anteater, you want a compromise? Here's my suggestion: that for every 10 articles you tag, you properly reference one of them. Madman (talk) 20:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * So if he finds 11 articles that don't have references, he needs to stop at the tenth? --- tqbf  20:49, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That's not helping move things along. Let's be civil, put comments where appropriate, and don't make section titles after the fact, hours and hours after the fact. IrishLass (talk) 20:54, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The proposal is not to stop at 10, but rather to fix one of those 10 before tagging another 10. Madman (talk) 21:58, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I understood your point. I'm suggesting that it's possible to run into 11 straight articles that can't be sourced notable. I'm not trying to quibble; maybe the number should be higher? I'm queasy about policy suggestions that demand that one editor allocate their time to another's article, but I understand that you're talking about a specific case. --- tqbf  22:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I am talking about a specific individual who actually requested suggestions for a "compromise". I am not proposing a general policy.  Thanks, Madman (talk) 00:51, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm missing the incivility here. --- tqbf  20:59, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought the tone of Madman's comments were rather harsh and uncivil. IrishLass (talk) 21:00, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Or here's another compromise. Because you are processing the articles by category, when you tag a group of related articles, a lot of your edits will appear on a user's watch-list. Instead of browsing by category, how about browsing via the "Random article" link. In this way, your tagging will be more evenly distributed across wikipedia, and you are less likely to aggravate individual users Bluap (talk) 20:57, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a good thought. The issue is having 100 articles on a watch list pop up within a few minutes worth of time.  I had that happen by a well meaning person and it freaked me out.  It wasn't tagging, it was implementing a new info box.  Still, it was a little freaky to have that happen all of the sudden. IrishLass (talk) 21:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I edit almost exclusively Computer security articles. "Random page" is utterly useless to me. It's also worth pointing out that some categories are inherently more susceptible to NN or superfluous articles. --- tqbf  21:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * When comments line up under each other it is confusing if they don't indent in. Please be civil in your edit summaries and please attempt to make this a pleasant and clearly readable discussion.  Your reply was to the same things as I was replying to and followed mine, therefore it takes another step it.  Again, please try and remain civil in your discussions and edit summaries. Thank you.  IrishLass (talk) 21:12, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Fine, since you are obviously unwilling to be civil, I'll just report the behavior. IrishLass (talk) 21:15, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, you're slightly wrong about the indentation. You indent by one level more than the comment you're replying to.  Multiple replies to the same comment keep the same indent level.  (Here I'm replying to your 21:12 comment, not the 21:15 comment.) Bluap (talk) 21:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Not according to what I've been taught. I guess since there's no policy on that we should beat that horse to death too.  Sorry, but this is getting ridiculous.  Is it that difficult just to say who you are replying to or make it legible for everyone? IrishLass (talk) 21:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, IrishLass, but there are 20+ years of Usenet/email precedent that say that Bluap is correct.--uɐɔlnʌɟoʞǝɹɐs 01:02, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Hey, don't pick on the one person trying to keep the peace during this discussion. She's a good person.  Wikipedia isn't 20 years old, the internet isn't 20 years old as a user friendly entity so don't throw crap like that into the discussion.  She's trying to keep us all from killing each other.  Be nice.  If you don't have anything constructive to add to the discussion at hand, leave people alone.  Check your math Junior, email hasn't been around for 20 years in a user friendly, all involved aspect.  CelticGreen (talk) 02:23, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't say she wasn't a good person. I just said that there was a long tradition of responding to threaded discussions using indentation (or prefixing with &gt;) in the manner that Bluap specified. And I was using email and Usenet before 1987, thank you very much. Please keep it WP:CIVIL and skip the ad hominem attacks next time, ok? Thanks.--uɐɔlnʌɟoʞǝɹɐs 14:29, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * OH, I am far from a good person today. While you may have been using email, the statement she said was "user friendly."  I worked for a big bad insurance company 19 years ago and we did not have email and it was something that hadn't even been discussed.  So your 20+ comment is coming off as pompus.  Your sole objective, and my major complaint about this discussion, is you did not come here to do anything other than tell someone (me) they were wrong.  I find that to be rude, but maybe guidelines say otherwise.  Either way, your comment is noted.  If you have something relative to add to the tagging discussion, feel free.  Otherwise your comment is noted. IrishLass (talk) 16:51, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * An alternative idea: most categories "belong" to some Wikiproject. It may be polite to drop a message to the appropriate project page that says "Hey, I'm going to do a notability sweeps on articles in this category", and then proceed, possibly following up with some statement saying "Ok, of 50 articles, X of them lack sources.  You may want to look here, or do this, or blah blah blah".  Ok, this still can possibly spam some users' watchpages, but it also increases the awareness at the project level that some articles have been tagged (I don't watch every page that falls in a Wikiproject).  It will come off less of a surprise, and shows good faith effort to improve the wikiproject and wikipedia as a whole. --M ASEM  16:28, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Asked for this to be closed
Having never seen the extreme level of rudeness, misrepresented facts, and the like, I've asked this discussion be closed to further comment. AnteaterZot has contacted me on my talk page and I'm just going to discuss this with her there. I am amazed at all I've seen here. The level of rude is inconceivable to me. People who have nothing to contribute come in and make rude and false statements when all that was asked was a clearer way to see the comments made. I have to wonder if they have nothing better to do than instigate problems. So I've asked this be closed. End of discussion. No more dealing with rude and uncivil people and their unnecessarily rude comments. I'm truly appauled at so much of the behavior I've witnessed. I am grateful my experience on Wikipedia has not been anything like what I witnessed here. IrishLass (talk) 14:18, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * And to all those going to other pages saying rude things to people, please stop. It does not create a harmonious atmosphere screaming 'YOU'RE WRONG' at people.  Let's just all try and be nice to one another. Please! IrishLass (talk) 15:51, 12 December 2007 (UTC)