Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-09-07/Discussion report

The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see last week's edition.

Do you have the right to edit policy?
Full disclosure: Your writer has participated in some of these discussions

Currently, across Wikipedia there are a number of discussions regarding the ability of editors to make bold edits to policy. At Wikipedia talk:Consensus User:M and User:Blueboar debated whether mistakes in policy should be corrected immediately or whether a discussion over the nature of the mistake was more appropriate first. User:Ohms law disagreed with what they depicted as an "extra hoop for people to go through in order to edit any project pages that happen to be policies", to which User:Xandar countered "that a change to POLICY and some major guidelines can often cause widespread troubles that the few people making the change don't consider or foresee." While Blueboar argued that '[t]he point of "discuss first" is that you can often avoid rigidity in the first place' M stated the opposite, that '"discuss first" does not avoid rigidity, it condones and offers support for it'. Over at Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines a similar debate is playing out, as a rewrite of the page has foundered over whether to remove guidance that editors can edit policy directly.

Historically, Wikipedia's rules to follow, as they were then known, were proposed at Rules to consider, with editors endorsing or rejecting them by adding their signature. Popular rules would be written up on separate pages, with anyone free to amend and suggest simply by editing the text. These rules were drafted in order to ensure the project could meet its stated goal of creating "a free encyclopedia--indeed, the largest encyclopedia in history, both in terms of breadth and in terms of depth. We also want Wikipedia to become a reliable resource." Policies and guidelines noted that our policies are ever evolving and changing from its start on 1 November 2001 by User:Larry Sanger until an edit on 6 May 2006 by User:Wereareyou, one of only two edits this account has made, the other being to their talk page.

Why do we have naming conventions?
There is much debate over the purpose of our policy on Naming Conventions, largely initiated by attempts to revise the wording. User:M suggested that the main principle was that "Wikipedia articles are given the name that the greatest number of English-speaking readers would expect in a reliable source. Naming is for the benefit of readers over editors, and for a general audience over specialists." User:Hesperian felt "[t]he name of an article should be optimised to be as acceptable as possible to as much of its audience as possible." User:GTBacchus offered a view on the fundamental objective, based on experience, that: "Where a particular WikiProject reaches a consensus on some particular naming convention, is is de facto the case that their naming convention supersedes the general principle of WP:COMMONNAME."

Debate now continues as to whether there is a logical loop in the relationship between the Naming Convention policy and separate Naming Convention guidelines. This loop is caused by text at Policies and guidelines.

Defense is not the best form of defense
At Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion, editor and administrator User:GTBacchus opened a discussion about the best way to "save" an article listed for deletion, noting that "[s]ome editors claim that they would be better able to improve articles if they didn't have to defend them against deletion." User:Ikip suggested adding "a statement at the top of all AFDs: All articles which are deleted can be userfied by request by admin." User:Jclemens suggested "some sort of an 'AFD reset' button if someone has changed a certain percentage of an article".

The discussion also took in administrator behaviour, with User:A Nobody offering anecdotal evidence that "at least one admin ... does not look at the articles under discussion when he closes AfDs, but only the discussion." GTBacchus responded strongly, stating "Admins who close AfDs by nose-count need to be stopped. I will help you stop them, if you bring it to my attention. It's unacceptable; someone doing that should not have the mop."

Polling
''A round up of polls spotted by your writer in the last seven days or so, bearing in mind of course that voting is evil. You can suggest a poll for inclusion, preferably including details as to how the poll will be closed and implemented, either on the tip line or by directly editing the next issue.''

Talk:Organ harvesting in the People's Republic of China/FG poll is a poll on whether Reports of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China should be merged into Organ harvesting in the People's Republic of China. The poll runs from 13:50, 3 September 2009 (UTC) and concludes 13:50, 14 September 2009 (UTC).

Deletion round-up
''Your writer has trawled the deletion debates opened and closed in the last week and presents these debates for your edification. Either they generated larger than average response, centred on policy in an illuminating way, or otherwise just jumped out as of interest. Feel free to suggest interesting deletion debates for future editions here.''

It's just not cricket!
A number of articles, amongst them Featured Articles have been nominated for deletion at Articles for deletion/Sam Loxton with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948. In nominating, User:Hammersoft seemed most concerned with "the precedent being set here", noting that "the level of detail here is excruciating and absolutely astonishing" and would therefore seem to contradict What Wikipedia is not. In response, User:NuclearWarfare pointed out that "we aren't creating an article for every season for every player in every sport. These are 15 articles on the most important season for the most important players for one sport. Entire books have been published on this one team."

Debating the fact that some of the articles nominated are amongst Wikipedia's Featured Content, User:Nick-D noted that "their creator, User:YellowMonkey is trying to develop a featured topic on the 1948 'Invincibles' cricket team". WikiProject Cricket is also listing The Invincibles as its Featured Topic drive at WikiProject Cricket, having done so since the 19 May 2008. However, User:Calathan, who has argued for a merger of the articles, felt that "[b]eing a featured article doesn't necessarily mean that something is an appropriate article to keep in the encylopedia."

User:Juliancolton, expressing the view that the articles should be kept as they are, said "[t]hese are as I understand it the most notable players of the most notable team of the most notable year in cricket" with User:Bridgeplayer pointing out in an impassioned argument to keep that "[a]t the same time as one group of editors is effusing over these articles and awarding them coveted featured article status, another group of editors is 'policy wonking' i.e. trying to get the pages deleted on fine nuances of guidelines. Bizarre! What we have here is a unique set of pages; informative, accurate, well sourced, objective, and tolerably well written. If all the time spent on this discussion was spent on writing new material how much better would the project be?" Attempting to remain neutral, User:Resolute commented "On the one hand, this is a horrendous precedent, but on the other, enough sources exist that four of the articles are featured."

Articles

 * Articles for deletion/Wayne Herschel has seen a Facebook campaign by the subject in order to keep the article. The article has been nominated by User:Darrenhusted as lacking "notability".
 * Articles for deletion/List of stock characters in science fiction debates whether such a list is warranted as a navigation aid.
 * Opinion is split on whether to keep, merge or delete List of books by Ian Stevenson.
 * Similarly, should List of Britney Spears' songs be kept or redirected?
 * Staying with lists, is List of riots "statistically skewed, incomplete, and even inaccurate"?
 * Does List of zombie novels make Wikipedia creep slowly closer to being a directory?
 * Is Language fragment an acceptable stub or original research?
 * Is Collapse of Socialism a content fork?
 * Is Third Sikh Holocaust 1984 point of view pushing?
 * Should Communist Party candidates, 2006 Canadian federal election be kept separate or merged to Canadian federal election, 2006?
 * Graphical methods of finding polynomial roots is subject to a deletion debate, although during the debate the article was moved such that the title, topic and contents are now completely different from the nominated version.
 * Articles for deletion/Norton Canes services (2nd nomination) was closed the day it opened by User:Nick, given "the potential this AfD has to become a massive time sink, generating more heat than light".
 * The notability of articles on Cassius Marcellus Clay, Sr., Jose Fadul, Doctor Steel, Tea and Biscuits with Maggie Pritchard, The Greatest BBC Children's Video Ever, Ten Little Dinosaurs, Thomas A. Edson, FAIL Blog and Diane Schuler is discussed in the respective deletion debates.
 * This week's too long didn't read award goes to Articles for deletion/Kuvaputki.
 * Mentioned in last week's round-up, debate on Nan You're a Window Shopper has been re-listed due to lack of comments. Your writer takes offence!

Categories

 * Should be deleted, listified or kept?
 * The renaming of categories related to bilateral relations to use a longdash has been proposed at Categories for discussion/Log/2009 September 5.
 * Should be deleted, kept or renamed to Category:Civil servants from Wales or Category:British civil servants from Wales? Similar debates have been opened for the Scottish and English versions of this category, all at Categories for discussion/Log/2009 September 4.
 * Crater categories are discussed again with the proposed renaming of Category:Possible impact craters to Category:Possible impact craters on Earth
 * Is pushing a point of view in its categorisation?

Files, templates, redirects and stubs

 * Is Northern Epirus "based on irredentist views of a particular ethnic group"?
 * Is Coming out a bad idea?
 * Is this picture greater than a thousand words?
 * Should redirect to Prison or be re-targeted to Jail?
 * Are → Geology of Great Britain and  → Geology of Great Britain misleading or are they useful search terms?

Deletion review and miscellaneous

 * Currently at deletion review is User:Stevertigo/Obama and accusations of National Socialism, a user page which was deleted three times on 4 September and the subject of a deletion debate and a thread at the administrators noticeboard. A shortcut, WP:DRV/SV/ONS, has been created for the debate, such is the interest in the nuances of policy this user page raises. User:Sceptre believes that "there was no possible way this article could ever be NPOV compliant." User:DGG argues for a re-listing, stating the "present page is not a BLP violation nor an attack page. That it might 'easily venture into BLP problems' can be said of any BLP."
 * After the sixth deletion debate of Ashida Kim is closed as "no consensus", User:Crotalus horridus lists the debate at Deletion review.
 * Comparison to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is nominated for deletion as being an "irrelevant useless essay".

Briefly
At Village pump (all), a proposed change to the editing interface was put forward by User:Anxietycello. Anxietycello described their proposal as "simpler, clearer and prettier than the current situation". User:Noisalt like the proposal, adding that Anxietycello was "absolutely right about the hodgepodge of the current interface. It needs developing but it's a good start." Further revisions based on suggestions at the village pump were made to the draft before it was posted to the Wikipedia Usability initiative.

There is a debate at T(t)he Manual of Style over when to capitalise the definite article. User:Boson proposes we make it clear that it "is conventionally not capitalized, even when it is (or could be regarded as) part of a proper name: the United Kingdom, the Hebrides, the President of the United States." While there is consensus on some sort of standard, there is no consensus as to appropriate wording as yet, and there is some discussion over possible exceptions such as band names.

At Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion User:MZMcBride questioned how the right to vanish affected requests for user talk pages to be deleted. MZMcBride felt there "some sort of consistency. Currently it seems to depend entirely on who the admin going through the category is." User:Rd232 regarded the general consensus to be that "user talk pages shouldn't be speedied; where deletion is required, they should be referred to Miscellany for deletion" and edited Wikipedia:Right to vanish accordingly.

After discussion, Edit war was moved to Edit warring. The page was initially created on 26 April 2003 as a redirect to what is now Requests for comment, before User:Ed Poor wrote a brief description on 4 October 2003. On 29 October 2005 User:Radiant! proposed a merge with Three revert rule, a merge User:Kim Bruning rejected after finding no discussion. In the same edit Kim Bruning marked the page a policy, 6 November 2005. A merge with Wikipedia:Three revert rule was finally achieved on 21 June 2009 after discussion.

At Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy a change to the wording of the Indefinite block section has been suggested by User:Atomic blunder. Consensus among administrators who rely on the section is that the change does not detail current practises.

Requests for comment
Twenty-four Requests for comment have been made in the week of 31 August – 6 September:


 * Talk:Denial of the Armenian Genocide 5 September 2009
 * Talk:Jehovah's Witnesses and congregational discipline 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia talk:Non-free content 4 September 2009
 * Talk:Copper Scroll 4 September 2009
 * Talk:United Kingdom 4 September 2009
 * Talk:Galveston Bay Area 3 September 2009
 * Talk:Classical liberalism 3 September 2009
 * Talk:Modern Buddhism 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Talk:Severe weather 3 September 2009
 * Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Audit Subcommittee 3 September 2009
 * Talk:Severe weather 3 September 2009
 * Talk:Communist genocide 3 September 2009
 * Talk:2009 Honduran constitutional crisis 2 September 2009
 * Talk:Timewave zero 2 September 2009
 * Wikipedia talk:No original research 2 September 2009
 * Talk:Mail forwarding 2 September 2009
 * Talk:Smiley face murder theory 1 September 2009
 * Talk:Conversion therapy 1 September 2009
 * Talk:Power ballad 1 September 2009
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Hebrew) 1 September 2009
 * Talk:Aiko Yanai 1 September 2009
 * Talk:Bernard Foing 31 August 2009
 * Talk:Virtual 31 August 2009
 * Talk:Kenny MacAskill 31 August 2009 (UTC)