Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-21/Discussion report

Proposal to block out the Wikipedia logo in protest of proposed U.S. censorship laws
On November 15, a proposal was put forth at the Village pump asking the Wikimedia Foundation to place a black bar over the Wikipedia logo on November 16, site wide, in protest of two laws moving through the United States Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). The proposal garnered more opposition than it did support, and the 16th came and went without a change to the logo.

The Wikimedia Foundation blog placed the bar over its own logo, and released a statement endorsing American Censorship Day, the name adopted by the websites that have altered their logos. In the post, Head of Communications Jay Walsh made the argument that the proposed laws would threaten Wikipedia, saying "In short, our users and all of our projects, would be forced to operate in an untenable legislative environment, putting Wikipedia at the beck and call of the rights owners as opposed to the distribution of free knowledge."

Proposal to integrate a user status display
MediaWiki developer put forward a proposal that the OnlineStatusBar extension be integrated into Wikipedia as an opt-in feature for registered users. The extension checks when a user last viewed a Wikipedia page while logged-in, and uses that information to display a message in the top right corner of an opted-in user's talk page indicating whether or not that user is online at the moment (example). According to the developer, a key advantage that this system has over the existing Qui and StatusTemplate scripts is that OnlineStatusBar does not require the user to make an edit to update the bar.

The proposal initially met with a large amount of opposition, centered mainly around the social networking aspects of such a tool, as well as potential privacy concerns. Support for the proposal came strongly in the days after the proposal was made, however, and at the time of writing the proposal has been archived without being closed, with a 5:1 ratio in support for the implementation.

Multiple discussions over Occupy Wall Street
A Request for Comment was started on November 8 to decide whether or not the article Occupy Wall Street should mention that the movement has been endorsed by the American Nazi Party and the American Communist Party, as well as to determine if anti-Semitism expressed by some of the protesters warranted inclusion. Consensus against covering either point has emerged since the RfC began.

A second RfC, this one regarding the usability of a specific image, was initiated on November 11. The image in question, taken by and displayed to the right, is alleged to be unusable because of the logos on the flag and on the poster that the protester is holding. While large in size, the discussion has attracted only a few editors. The matter has since been brought to Media copyright questions, where an editor judged that the image was allowable under the principle of de minimis. The RfC was closed on November 16, with instructions that further concerns should be raised at Wikimedia Commons, where the image is hosted.

Finally, the lead section of the article is also in dispute, with several editors each submitting their own proposed leads for consideration. Thus far none of the suggestions have gained any significant amount of support, and a formal Request for Comment has not been filed on the matter.

RfC on NOTCENSORED and "incidental material"
A Request for Comment was opened on November 4 asking the community to decide whether or not NOTCENSORED protects "incidental material" from being removed from articles. The RfC mentioned a number of articles in which disputes over images have erupted, including Pregnancy and Muhammad, but did not actually define what the author meant by "incidental material". A number of threads were subsequently opened below the RfC in attempts to resolve that question. With the discussion largely ground to a halt, the view that NOTCENSORED does protect material from being removed has more support than the alternative by a 3:2 margin.

In brief

 * Change proposed to the wording of the citation needed tag: A proposal was made at the beginning of the month to change the template Citation needed so that the template text, when viewed in an article, would read "please add a citation" instead of the current "citation needed". Participation in the discussion has been low, and the proposal has received near unanimous opposition.
 * Two RfCs about the content of the Ugg boots article: After the article Ugg boots was placed under full protection for edit warring, an RfC was started on October 17 asking the community whether or not a specific section of the article, on a study of boot quality done by an advocacy group, should be removed. Support for removing the section, which had had been the source of the edit war, is high. A second RfC was opened on November 4 to seek consensus for whether or not court cases involving counterfeit boots should be included in the article. It is still ongoing.