Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-09-28/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.

Revise that deletion!
A discussion has been initiated by user:fl regarding Revision deletion. Revision deletion is described in the proposal as "a software feature that allows individual entries in a page history or log to be removed from public view. RevisionDelete can hide the text of a revision, the username that made the edit or action, or the edit or log summary." fl believes such a process is needed in part because: "of some limitations built into MediaWiki, pages with more than 5000 revisions cannot be deleted by administrators. Because full page deletion is required to hide one revision, pages with many revisions cannot have their revisions hidden by administrators with the delete/undelete method. The Catch-22 here is that the pages with the most revisions are the pages most likely to require revision deletion, and currently administrators cannot hide revisions on the biggest pages. Pages such as Jesus, World War II and Barack Obama cannot have their revisions deleted."

User:MZMcBride disagreed with the proposal, stating that it was: "fundamentally a bad idea to allow admins to delete revisions like this. I think the current user rights surrounding data suppression should be granularized (bug 19199), giving admins the ability to see deleted content, but not delete it. While it's certainly true that admins can currently use hacks to 'selectively delete' revisions from a page history, that is not an excuse to encourage the behavior. Admins cannot be trusted with this ability, period."

However other editors on Wikipedia were more supportive, with User:David Gerard unequivocally desiring its implementation: "May I just say, as an admin who's had to do the delete-all/restore-all-but-one dance to remove a single problematic revision from public view that's nevertheless not oversightable ... HELL YES. PLEASE." User:Stifle felt that implementing the proposal shouldn't be an issue given that administrators "can already do it, just awkwardly, so this isn't giving admins any new powers (except on articles that are too big to delete, I suppose)."

Just what is so popular about culture anyhow?
At the village pump, User:Mfield asked for thoughts on whether 'every "in popular culture" listing [should] require a mention in a secondary source to establish the notability of the reference to the subject'.User:MBelgrano argued against the idea, noting that "Notability is not about the content of articles, only about topics deserving or not a specific article for them. If Barry White or Buzz Aldrin appear in a Simpsons episode, that can be verified even if no secondary source mentions the whole thing." However this point was contested by User:DreamGuy: "If every article included everything with any possible connection to that topic that could be verified we'd have nothing but long lists of indiscriminate information, which is explicitly prohibited by WP:NOT." User:Delicious carbuncle seemed to believe the ship had sailed on this issue a long time ago, saying "Wikipedia is what it is and no matter how annoying you -- and I -- find the needless insertion of pop culture trivia, it really is part of the project and I suspect that any attempt to exclude it will fail miserably". User:Postdlf threw an example into the mix: "Nothing I've seen so far can top [ this] as a contender for most useless pop culture reference ever added to an article."

Postdlf went on to say "the problem is with how Wikipedia covers pop culture topics, not with the mere fact that Wikipedia covers pop culture. Articles that merely regurgitate bits of pop culture and list it without any synthesis, without any reference to how secondary sources have addressed it, are not about it in any meaningful way and fail to cohere as articles". User:Martynas Patasius offered the suggestion that the policy on giving undue weight would likely "apply in this case".

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.''
 * There appears to be an outbreak of polling on a proposal to extend scope of WP:RfD to incorporate disambiguation pages & remove dab pages from the purview of WP:PROD at the village pump. Whether polling is actually occurring or the formatting of discussion is simply giving your writer a false impression is unclear at this point.
 * Although User:Mjroots is looking for a consensus on a proposal that PROD and AfD are "not placed on an article within 48 hours of the creation of the article", most respondents look to have organised themselves into a poll.

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.''

Bullshido.net has been nominated for deletion just over one-and-a-half hours after the second debate regarding the article had been closed as no consensus. User:Black Kite closed the second debate as a simple "No Consensus", although after [ a request] from User:Cunard the closing rationale was [ tweaked] to add "however, following a request, I have no problem with a re-nomination here, as I was very close to deleting this for lack of reliable sources." Although User:Theserialcomma sought a procedural close, stating "you can't renominate an AFD one day after the previous one is closed because you didn't like the results", User:S Marshall pointed out that "Black Kite's closing statement ... makes it clear that this AfD is an exception to the normal rule because Cunard has explicit permission to renominate at once". Debate centres on the amount of coverage the site has received in reliable sources. Cunard provided an analysis of the sourcing in the article and believes that "the passing mentions from reliable sources do not provide enough context to justify a stub." However User:Hobit believes in this instance that Ignore all rules may apply, given that since "the mainstream media cites the site as the main source ... [t]he site is clearly notable in the normal sense of the word."

Articles

 * Is the Exploding tree article a hoax, original research or notable topic?
 * The article Communist genocide has been re-nominated for deletion as the nominator, User:Simonm223 believes there has been "no improvement in article since [the] closure of [the] last AfD". During the debate the article has been moved to Mass killings under Communist regimes
 * The deletion debate regarding Exploding animal was closed by User:ThaddeusB as speedy keep for being "a disruptive nomination"
 * The article on Clea Rose is nominated for a fifth time since its creation in September of 2005. User:Jennavecia believes it does not meet standards for coverage of news events
 * Articles for deletion/Harry Benjamin's Syndrome saw the relevant article deleted and redirected to Transsexualism after a robust debate. The article was nominated for lacking notability, and most participants agreed, with neurobiologist User:Basket of Puppies finding "nothing on pubmed which describes a specific condition by this name"
 * The Shona Holmes article is facing its third deletion debate. The debate is based upon the applicability of our policy on being notable for one event
 * Similarly, the article on Miriam Sakewitz is listed for deletion over concerns that it too may not meet policy on living people. Debate currently stands at 159 kilobytes, with 98 editors making 358 edits between them.
 * The article on Joachim Cronman has been relisted for deletion following a deletion review. The debate is split over whether the deeds of the subject are eminent enough to qualify for notability. The verifiability of the information has not been questioned in this debate
 * The deletion debate regarding Singles Collection (Britney Spears album) remains open despite twenty-four people expressing it should be kept against three voicing a deleting opinion

Other

 * Is Subdivisions of Malaysia redundant to Infobox settlement? See debate
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Jack Merridew/Blood and Roses (second nomination) sees the contentious issue of whether copyrighted text can be quoted in user space under a fair use rationale debated again. (See Signpost 2009-08-24 and Signpost 2009-09-14)
 * User:Good Olfactory has listed a number of categories for renaming. The categories are in the form Scots of fooian descent. Good Olfactory proposes "changing "Scots" to "Scottish people" in order to standardize"
 * Is Category:Anti-gay propaganda violating the neutral point of view policy and the policy against original research?
 * Category:Batman characters was previously deleted in June 2007. Has consensus changed, or should it be deleted based on that previous debate?
 * Does Category:Half-blind people cause issues when categorising biographies of living people?
 * Should Category:Constituent countries of the United Kingdom be renamed to Category:Countries of the United Kingdom?

Briefly

 * The notability guidelines for aviation accidents and incidents, WP:AIRCRASH, have been significantly reworked over the past few months. Comments are requested on the talk page
 * A lengthy discussion to resolve a dispute regarding a March 2009 merger of Leeds and City of Leeds has reached a consensus to undo the merge. The discussion which led to the merge may have been tainted by possible meat-puppetry. Posts were made to an outside forum encouraging people to edit that article in a proscribed way. Work has begun on the splitting of the articles
 * Discussion over whether to allow a bot to perform some speedy deletions is initiated at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion

Requests for comment
Thirty-one Requests for comment have been made in the week of 21–27 September:


 * Talk:Carly Fiorina 27 September 2009
 * Talk:Donald Friend 27 September 2009
 * Talk:Persian Empire 27 September 2009
 * Wikipedia talk:Local Embassy 27 September 2009
 * Wikipedia talk:Revision deletion 26 September 2009
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pokémon 26 September 2009
 * Talk:William Shakespeare 26 September 2009
 * Talk:Parents Television Council 26 September 2009
 * Talk:Awesome Android 25 September 2009
 * Talk:Augustine of Hippo 24 September 2009
 * Talk:Kevin Coughlin 24 September 2009
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics 24 September 2009
 * Talk:Galveston Bay Area 24 September 2009
 * Talk:Romulus and Remus 24 September 2009
 * Talk:Yue Chinese 24 September 2009
 * Talk:New religious movement 24 September 2009
 * Talk:Squash 24 September 2009
 * Talk:Eating utensil etiquette 24 September 2009
 * Talk:National Caucus of Labor Committees 23 September 2009
 * Talk:Gibbs paradox 23 September 2009
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names) 23 September 2009
 * Talk:Lewinsky scandal 23 September 2009
 * Talk:Nudity 22 September 2009
 * Talk:Acupuncture 22 September 2009
 * Talk:Greg Fitzsimmons 22 September 2009
 * Talk:George W. Bush 21 September 2009
 * Talk:Big Three (automobile manufacturers) 21 September 2009
 * Talk:List of countries by GDP (nominal) 21 September 2009
 * Requests for comment/Megistias 21 September 2009