Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 36

NIMH battery question deleted
See. Yes, there was some soapboxing in the questioner's post, but it is a technical question, and answers to it would have been interesting, and the "soap" is answerable by reference to factual sources and is not just a matter of opinion. Was there a patent which was sold? Factual Q and A. Is a battery with certain specs available in Europe by not the US? Again can be answered based on facts. What am I missing here? Edison 02:24, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, first of all, it was a new section for an old question -- the old question is still present. Second, it had the "wall of text" appearance, was on a subject that's a common trope of conspiracy theorists, and was posted by a user with a username that corresponded to the subject matter. I said to myself, here's a pattern I've seen before.
 * But if you want to restore it and respond to it, be my guest. --Trovatore 03:01, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I have to agree with Trovatore. I also reverted the addition, and asked the user not to use Wikipedia as a soapbox. S/he could have rephrased the "query" better, but instead re-added it. -- Flyguy649 talk contribs 04:28, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I suppose this is the original question, from an IP address . Perhaps a link to that in the comment deleting the question would have headed off my find it necessary to raise the question here. It looks like the original question was answered appropriately. (How does one link to a section (question) in an article(or a set of Ref desk questions)? I too often see links which go to a very long page of coments or questions and answers, and it should be possible to link directly to the question of interest. Edison 00:00, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * In fairness, the poster of the question (who is really User:TripleBatteryLife seems to run a business whose claim is to have some gadget that will triple the lifespan of batteries (check out the link on his user page). So it's rather unlikely that this was really a genuine question - the guy claims to be a total expert on batteries (although IMHO, his science is a little shakey) - so why ask the question?  So it's much more likely that this is a troll of some kind.  His random claims for the beliefs of others (he accused me of believing in time travel and a variety of other weird shit on the 'Creationism' thread) have been the subject of long discussions elsewhere over the past few days - and he's VERY upset at being "censored". SteveBaker 02:41, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * NIMH is one of those ambiguous acronyms. Edison 18:52, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Purpose of the desk (help)
The reference desk process helps the growth and refinement of Wikipedia by identifying areas that may need improvement. If an article that could answer a question is lacking the relevant information, look for a way to work the information into the article. This provides a lasting value to the project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities#Looking_for_an_article_.231

--Savedthat 05:02, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes...? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I think Savedthat is asking for someone to create the article. Whenever a question prompts a volunteer to notice a particular lack of information on the encyclopedia and add the missing info to article space, this is a cause for celebration. WP:RDAC is one attempt to bundle and encourage these efforts. WP:REQUEST is another place where you can ask for missing articles. (Simply repeating the question won't create the article as if by magic, the "look for a way to work the information into the article" is directed at every user here, including the questioner. :-) ) ---Sluzzelin talk  18:32, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

RefDesk in the Media
Wikipedia as a whole has been discussed and critiqued a great deal in the media. I'm just wondering if anyone is aware of any media attention or critique focusing on the RefDesk in particular. Serinmort 04:19, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Not that I am aware of. Though I seem to recall that a question addressed at the desk led to an error being corrected in the New York Times, when a regular contacted them. Also, I believe one of our regulars may be being interviewed for an article in the near future, so perhaps that will lead to some media discussion. Rockpock  e  t  05:10, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Really, who is it? A.Z. 05:17, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The person may prefer to remain anonymous, so I'll leave it to them to identify themselves should they wish to. Rockpock  e  t  05:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * OK. A.Z. 06:01, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, the approach is on my 'public space', Rockpocket, but I thank you for your consideration. The said 'interview' has now been done, incidentally.  Clio the Muse 06:03, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, it was Clio the Muse. She had been my second guess, right after Rockpocket himself. A.Z. 06:10, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Would it be appropriate to ask just where and when would the article be available to the public? I'd really be interested in reading it! Serinmort 18:11, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It was for a French periodical by the name of L'Histoire. I have no idea if they will use what I wrote or not, or when they will use it.  It's really no big deal.  Clio the Muse 22:32, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The magazine has an article: L'Histoire. A.Z. 23:16, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Word association and the purposes of the reference desk


I think that the reference desk is comparable to the game at Wikipedia talk:Sandbox/Word Association. When I read the arguments to keep the game when it was nominated for deletion, I thought they could be used to save the reference desk as well, should someone suggest its deletion. A.Z. 04:46, 5 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The various deletion discussions are indeed interesting. One of the things that has preserved the Word Association game is that it is in the sandbox, where a bit of silliness is expected. Another is that it seems to genuinely aid building of the encyclopedia, unlike the other games and variants which were deleted. On top of this, note that later deletion discussions only emerged after the game started sprawling over many pages. It became too big. Many of those pages were deleted. Skittle 20:27, 5 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I think that the fact that it helps building the encyclopedia is what saved the reference desk so far. I hope it will never be moved to the sandbox. A.Z. 22:24, 5 August 2007 (UTC)


 * OMG! Salvation is us. - hydnjo talk 22:42, 5 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't get it, despite the links. A.Z. 23:02, 5 August 2007 (UTC)


 * This might be a good opportunity to note that I have been recording exactly how the Ref Desk has contributed to the encyclopedia, here. I suggest we direct anyone who asks what good the Desk does there in future. Much of the content and translation into articlespace has been the good work of Clio and Ghirla. I urge anyone who significantly improves an article in response to a question, or even as a subsequence of reading a question, to add the appropriate templates to the question and talkpage. That way I can keep track of what the Ref Desk has contributed. Alternatively, feel free to drop me a note on my talkpage. Rockpock  e  t  07:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * At this point there's no question in my mind that (a) the [1] primary purpose of the Reference Desk is to improve the encyclopedia, and (b) it's working quite well at this, but also (c) the side benefits of [2] helping people and [3] enjoying ourselves are working well as well. So it's a win-win-win situation, and I don't imagine any attempt to eliminate the Reference Desks (if anyone was silly enough to try) would get very far.  But having actual, concrete documentation of the articles which have been improved is a very nice ace in the hole, so it's great that the RDAC folks are doing what they're doing. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:47, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

The Hebrew link
It should be דלפק ייעוץ & not דלפק יעוץ. Please fix it. GOER 17:38, 13 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Fixed. By the way, the link is actually in the template Reference desk/RD header which is not protected. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:17, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, that wasn't correct. The hebrew equivalent of the Reference desk is he:ויקיפדיה:הכה את המומחה, where he:ויקיפדיה:דלפק ייעוץ is the equivalent of the Help desk. I fixed it to the correct destination. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:26, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Correcting archives
Following a query on my talk page, I just corrected my own answer to my own question in the archives! See here. I feel like I'm caught in some recursive storyline here... Seriously, is correcting the archives like that the normal thing to do? Carcharoth 14:57, 15 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't see any problem with continuining to edit threads after they have been archived. In fact, that was a great idea. Now we have more than five days to address the questions! A.Z. 02:46, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Seconded. I pretty regularly add to archived threads.  The additions probably won't be seen by the original poster (or perhaps by anybody), so if they're frivolous they're not worth it, but if they substantially improve the completeness of correctness of an archived answer, then swell! (And see below.) —Steve Summit (talk) 02:56, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I think they're gonna be seen from now on. If the archives are alive, they get more interesting! A.Z. 03:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * What do you mean by "from now on"? Has something just changed? —Steve Summit (talk) 03:10, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * This section brought our attention to the fact that you people are editing the archives. I had no idea that people were doing that, and I guess I wasn't the only one. A.Z. 03:12, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay. (But who's "us people", and who are y'all?) —Steve Summit (talk) 03:25, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Carcharoth and you are you people so far, but I think there are more of you, editing the archives. Me and others are all talk page regulars. A.Z. 03:46, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I edit the archives too although I've never gone that far back yet. And I agree there's nothing wrong, provided you don't change something especially in such a way that makes other comment confusing. Simply adding a response or saying ooops I was wrong is fine. As we sometimes direct question askers to the archives, it's probably going to be occasinally useful at least 10:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Highlights?
I've been reading some of the reference desks again, and have been remembering how great they are! :-) I know the archives are available to read through, but is there a "highlights" area anywhere? Carcharoth 16:31, 15 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I think people could make their own list of favorite discussions. There are people that are listing articles that have been improved because of reference desk discussions, as seen a few sections above. A.Z. 02:48, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I have several ideas for indexing and rating our archived answers. I'm not sure when I'll get around to implementing them, but if people are interested, suggestions and encouragement would help. :-) —Steve Summit (talk) 02:58, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I wish to hear more, Steve, and I like Carcharoth's idea of a highlights page. I once sandboxed something like this myself, but it has only one entry. I'm interested in the indexing perspectives - it would be great if there were a way to synergize this with transferring the useful archived information into the encyclopedia - the pay-off would justify the possibly tremendous efforts a topical indexing would consume. (But then, what do I know, see also another editor's thoughts on a comprehensive index). What kind of rating were you thinking about? Anything beyond binary "highlights" or useful vs not useful? ---Sluzzelin talk  05:47, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * What I was thinking of doing was building a little web tool which interested RD regulars could use to capture some statistics about our archived entries. The web tool would present an entry and make it very quick&easy to provide:
 * a rating on the quality of the answer (from 0 = we didn't answer it at all, to 5 = one of our best, stellar answers)
 * a list of keywords on the actual topic(s) discussed
 * a list of Wikipedia articles created or significantly improved as a result of the discussion
 * (maybe) a list of existing Wikipedia articles which already answered the question adequately well


 * From these answers, along with information mechanically derived from each entry, I could create a little database of every answered Reference Desk question ever, useful for searching and other kinds of data analysis. Ideally, the categorization process would be so quick that, with a handful of interested volunteers putting in not too much work at the task, we could process not only new entries going forward but, in time, all of our historical archives as well.


 * #2 might not be necessary; there are those who say that explicitly-supplied keywords are more or less useless for searching.
 * #3 is of course already being collected in various ad-hoc ways.
 * —Steve Summit (talk) 05:27, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Ref desk archiving bot
The new Ref desk archiving bot (a function of User:Scsbot, see also the previous thread) I deployed a month ago seems to be working well. So far I've been manually double-checking all of its edits, which is considerably easier than actually making the edits, but is still timeconsuming. So I think I'll stop doing that now. I mention this not to fish for compliments for the work I've done so far, but just to say that if, going forward, you notice an error the bot seems to have made, please do let me know, because I might otherwise be completely unaware of it. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you a lot for your dedication to the reference desk, and for taking the time to deploy a whole new bot for us! A.Z. 03:10, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Geez, can't you READ? He said he WASN'T fishing for compliments! Some people...  :-)
 * --Anonymous, and very much in jest, August 16, 03:39 (UTC).


 * When you cross a post like that, people think that it was the author who crossed it. I have uncrossed it then. A.Z. 03:42, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Right-o. --Anon, August 16, 04:26 (UTC).

urinal etiquette
I just noticed that the whole "urinal etiquette" thread got removed. I thought it was pretty silly, too, and I probably would have deleted the question myself if I'd noticed it before it got so many answers. But it did get a lot of answers, so apparently plenty of people thought it was interesting, and if so, one of you might like to restore it. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:23, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * ✅ Thank you. A.Z. 03:41, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It is quite interesting, by the way. I didn't know that chatting at the urinal was seen as unproper for men in other places/cultures. Where I live it's common. A.Z. 03:53, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree - a reasonable question, asked in a reasonable way, with an interesting and enlightening set of responses. Replies were based on personal experience, but this will generally be the case with any question about etiquette, custom or usage. No good reason for deletion. Gandalf61 12:23, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

new signing bot available
I just noticed that there's a new talk-page-comment-signing bot, SineBot, filling in for or replacing the defunct HagermanBot. (See discussion here.) It's in beta, but do we want to think about asking it to monitor the RD's too? —Steve Summit (talk) 01:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I do. A.Z. 01:39, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * You mean you support using it to sign the pages? Nil Einne 10:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Ironically I came here because I just noticed it too and wanted to recommend it. I support using it to monitor the RD, will help out Scsbot amongst other things Nil Einne 10:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Violation of "No Medical Advice" guidelines.
We are seeing about daily violation of the "Don't ask for medical advice" - which is somewhat understandable because our questioners don't always read the guidelines. But more disturbingly, I'm seeing at least daily medical advice being dispensed by respondants - even from experienced people who are fully aware of the guidelines. That's not acceptable - and sooner or later it's going to wind up getting someone into a lot of trouble.

The scenario that worries me is when someone asks for advice (like today - someone reports having blurry vision) - and someone says (as today) "Do you have a history of migraines? There is something called a migraine aura, which can affect vision." - this is a medical diagnosis - pure and simple. He's asking the patient for further symptoms and suggesting a cause.

What happens if this guy now says "Oh - OK so this is just something minor relating to a migrane." and thinks nothing more of it - then in a month from now goes blind - or drops dead from some terrible brain disease? Well, his life insurance will be called upon to pay out a couple of million dollars (maybe) - and they'll be looking for someone to recover some of that cost from. If they happen to find out that the unfortunate victim asked about blurry vision on Wikipedia - and was given some terrible advice - they are going to seek redress. The Wikimedia foundation will point to the "No Medical Advice" guideline - and the pile of legal grief is going to fall right into the lap of one of our respondants. Since they are definitely offering a diagnosis of a specific condition - they are practicing medicine. Since it's pretty much certain the respondant doesn't have a medical license - they are guilty of practicing medicine without a license - and will likely get sued for a big chunk of change.

Even something as benign as practicing podiatry without a license can land you in jail for six months.

This is potentially a very serious matter - and I think we have to start taking it seriously.

I would like someone with admin privilages to start handing out formal warnings and 24 hour wiki-bans for people who offend more than once.

Comments please. SteveBaker 03:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I was the one you quote correctly as saying “Do you have a history of migraines? There is something called a migraine aura, which can affect vision.” (You can use my name next time you quote me. I won’t mind.) As a matter of fact the migraines were brought up by another user before me. My post was not a medical diagnoses, but was an addition of two links, migraines and migraine aura, which I added for clarification of the previous statement. Also I went on to say, “A really bad migraine while your driving could be bad. You might want to think about having someone else drive you.” I wanted to make sure the user did not endanger himself or others by driving to the doctor by himself. Migraines are potentially very serious when operating a car, and warning the user of this could potential save his life. However, I agree, my comment “Do you have a history of migraines?” was inappropriate and carless. It has been replaced. Thanks for your concern Steve. --S.dedalus 04:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * These concerns are as old as the reference desk, go through the archives, read what one of our few professional MDs had to say here, which problems TenOfAllTrades identified even regarding professional advice here, or Brad Patrick's response here. Nothing wrong with pointing this out, or "warning" people occasionally, I guess, but calling for a ban (I assume you meant a block) won't change anything and looks like it's intended as a punishment, which isn't what blocks are for. ---Sluzzelin talk  04:50, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * In the case mentioned by SteveBaker, the original poster said that he would see a doctor anyway. They were just curious about what that could be. But I agree that killing someone could be dangerous for the respondant because he could go to jail, and I agree that blocks should not be used for punishment. A.Z. 06:10, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Reminders of the "no medical advice" guideline on the RDs are fine. Polite notes on user's talk pages are fine. 24 block for someone who gives a couple of responses that some admin chooses to interpret as medical advice is over the top. Gandalf61 09:43, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The question, though, is how long we will give intelligent editors the "Stop, or I'll say 'Stop' again!" treatment before we acknowledge that their behaviour isn't going to be changed by polite requests? Unless someone is obstinately giving conspicuously bad advice, I probably wouldn't endorse a block after a single warning&mdash;such a poster means to be helpful, even though their actions are unwise.  At some point, though, we have to stand behind our policies. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Exactly. The number of "Please don't give medical advice" posts is approaching one per day - people very often say things like "I know we aren't allowed to give medical advice but... ...and go see a doctor." It's only a matter of time until this hurts someone - or maybe even gets someone killed.  That's bad enough - you may argue that anyone who takes medical advice here deserves everything they get - but when that happens, the negative press for Wikipedia will be ASTRONOMICAL - and one hapless individual is going to get sued and maybe even serve jail time.  Wikipedia needs to protect itself against these kinds of thing.  Insurance companies are very happy to sue people to try to recover their outlay when someone gets hurt.  If they see a pattern of Wikipedia not actually enforcing it's own rules, then the Foundation itself could be in trouble.  If we handed out a couple of 24 hour bans (which is truly a very minor punishment) will focus people's attention on the seriousness of the issue.  S.dedalus admits an inappropriate post (and I bet I've done something similar on at least one occasion in the past) - we've had people arguing about the correctness of the rule and insisting that they DO have the right to post medical advice.  We need something that makes everyone sit up and pay attention to the problem.  We'd only have to hand out a 24 hour ban a couple of times and this problem would stop overnight.  It's worth it. SteveBaker 15:25, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Um, Steve, before we get too worked up over the lawsuit possibility, are you qualified to be giving this kind of legal advice? —Steve Summit (talk) 16:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Say I met someone at a party, told him about my blurry vision, and he replied "I'm not a doctor, but...", going on to express his opinion of a possible cause. If I were to take his advice and then suffer some ill as a result, what would my chances be of succeeding in a civil suit against him? What would the chances be of his being convicted of practicing medicine without a license? And if the answers to both those questions are "slim" and "none" (as I suspect - but do not know - that they are), how is the situation on Wikipedia any different? - Eron Talk 16:53, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The answer is, in my opinion, authority. Since the question was asked on a "reference desk" linked from the main page of a huge online encyclopedia, this makes it look like the person answering the question should be taken seriously, which is wrong. Asking something here is like asking something to a complete stranger at a party, but the respondant's lawyer would have to convince the judge of that. A.Z. 17:34, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Definition of advice: "an opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action, conduct, etc...." (italics added; Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary). Our advice to this poster is simple and universal: "see your doctor", which the poster has done. Speculating as to what might have caused the problem without telling him/her what to do, is not "giving medical advice", in my opinion.--Eriastrum 18:56, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * This isn't a "reference desk" linked to from a huge encyclopedia, it's a website. On the internet. Made by anonymous posters (unless like me you disclose your identity). Do you really think someone would be prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license for giving unintentionally (or intentionally!) harmful medical advice on some other obscure forum? How is this any different? I think the potential for negative publicity is miniscule- people will think exactly what they should.. "I pay out the wazoo for real doctors to look at me, I obey the rules of society, and if someone wants to cut some corners it's their fault for believing some guy on the internet about a serious medical condition" --⁪frotht 01:53, 21 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's totally impossible that someone be prosecuted for giving medical advice on some obscure forum. It's totally unpredictable to me what the publicity would be, and what people would think of Wikipedia, and what the press would write, if something bad happened to someone because of advice given here.


 * But when I said above that the difference was authority I wasn't answering Eron's question anyway. Instead of thinking about the chances to succeed in a suit, which was what the question was about, I thought about the chances of someone taking the medical advice of a total stranger seriously. In fact, I have crossed that post now. Sorry about the misunderstanding. A.Z. 03:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I've just returned after a wikibreak and I noticed this discussion. If one of us gives out inappropriate medical advice, and the questioner acts on it, to their detriment or even death, the 3 main issues are (a) the damage/death itself, (b) the lawsuit that would follow, and (c) the bad publicity we would attract.  (b) and (c) are direct consequences of (a), and cannot occur without (a) happening first.  Seems to me that by far the most important principle we should be adhering to is "do no harm" - that is, don't give out potentially damaging advice in the first place.  Lawsuits and bad publicity are serious concerns, but they rate very low in my personal worldview compared with doing actual physical damage to people.  The risk of this happening may be small, but one case is one too many, and what if it was your friend or brother at the receiving end?  I favour a very firm policy on this issue.  A lot of general medical questions are ok to answer, but anything that could be taken as advice on how to deal with a specific medical condition should be avoided.  We can't expect questioners to abide by the rules if we violate our own rules.  --  JackofOz 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I think I agree that it's more important to care about someone dying than to care about bad publicity. Do I? It might be possible that bad publicity to Wikipedia eventually causes more harm to mankind than one questioner's death... Fewer people contributing could cause information not to be free and the children in Africa wouldn't have their free encyclopedia. I don't know, but I do care about people getting hurt and dying. That's included in my personal worldview as a serious concern, and I want to make that clear.


 * I need to clarify something about my reply to Eron: I thought that he was imagining a situation (a suit) in which it would be questioned whether the dead person took the advice seriously and whether it was the advice that caused the person to die. He was actually just asking whether someone could possibly succeed in a civil suit against someone who you met a at a party and gave you some medical opinion even though they weren't a deoctor, and how this would be different from asking something at the reference desk. A.Z. 04:10, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Worst Medical Advice ever
This example comes to us from Wikiversity. It's a small Wikimedia project and it's much newer than the English Wikipedia. Consequently, it's a lot more like the Wild West at times than the university it aspires to be. Because of the low traffic, their Help Desk deals with all questions, so it's an interesting mix of Wikiversity and general knowledge requests for assistance.

By sheer coincidence, I saw the following example of medical advice mere moments before I read this thread. Names have been redacted. From Wikiversity:Help desk#Intracranial pressure:


 * My EEG revealed a slightly high intracranial pressure. However IMHO after downing the pressure to normal I will a bit more passive and slow. Does it make much sense? -- (name removed)
 * I believe that doctors, upon finding something "abnormal" (outside the typical range), often decide, incorrectly, that they need to correct it. If this condition has been with you all your life, your body may have adapted to it and may actually function better with that pressure. It may adjust to the new pressure, or it may not, only time will tell. -- (name removed)

The original poster clearly has no idea what intracranial pressure is, nor what it might mean for it to be slightly elevated. He seems to have the idea that a higher intracranial pressure will let him think faster and be more alert (do the thoughts get squeezed out faster?).

The response fails to provide any useful information about what the original poster's condition is or what it means, and offers the advice that the difference is probably meaningless and doesn't need correction. The responder opines that doctors are generally inclined to overdiagnose and over-treat, and that their medical recommendations are often useless. The original poster may well take these comments as implicit advice to experiment with stopping any medication he is taking.

This is a superb cautionary example of the worst sort of advice that we're desperately trying to avoid here on Wikipedia. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * This is a slippery slope: As sympathetic as I am to the concerns voiced here, and as much as I have protested against inappropriate claims that border on professional advice, there are serious problems when you start talking about bans. Who gets to set up the "WP board of professional responsibility" that will be in charge of handing out the bans in specific instances, once the line has been crossed?


 * Who will be responsible for the widespread CYA that becomes necessary when a WP user is harmed because she detrimentally relied on the "ban system" to keep out bad advice, but nevertheless gets some, because it either "slipped through the cracks" or the ban on a "repeat offender" has expired and they are back to their old tricks?


 * Once you set up a formal system of "professional review and censure" (which you can bet is how the ban system would be "spun" if it ever went to litigation) you are setting up the entirety of Wikipedia for those instances when the system of review fails, and you are directly undermining the authority of the various disclaimers that are supposed to be the authoritative mechanism for preventing detrimental reliance on crappy advice here on WP.


 * Community disapproval should be enough. Post your personal disapproval right at the end of the question, or on the user talk page of the offending user. Once you set up any kind of "standardized substantive review" of quasi-professional advice, you're injecting your own "professional standards" as well, which defeats the very purpose you purport to serve. dr.ef.tymac 16:09, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * (This is in response to the entire thread, but I'm just placing here under dr.ef.tymac's post): If you believe someone's post constitutes medical advice and poses a clear and present danger to Wikipedia (or to the person who posted it), then you must remove it immediately. This shouldn't stop you from going to the "perpetrator's" talk page and explaining your speedy removal, gracefully and emphasizing the assumption of good faith. If the user then still reverts your revert or disagrees, you can take it to this talk page. Only when it becomes clear that the same editor is repeatedly and frequently adding dangerous medical advice, despite having being told not to, to spite us, to make a point, to prove his independent or relativist grass-root stance, or for whatever useless reason, only then does it become disruption, and only then can we even start talking about preventive blocks. Punitive blocks have no place on Wikipedia, in my opinion. ---Sluzzelin talk  17:16, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm wondering though, Dreftymac, how you would draw a distinction between removing medical advice (which policy says doesn't belong on Wikipedia) and removing libellous material from articles and talk pages (which policy says doesn't belong on Wikipedia).
 * In the latter case, editors regularly remove defamatory content without batting an eye, and we warn – and if necessary, block – the involved editors if they persist. I don't there's any reason that we should be more aggressive in protecting our readers' reputations and professional wellbeing than in protecting their actual physical health.
 * Recall how WP:BLP arose out of the Seigenthaler debacle. Wikipedia got a black eye from a few POV pushers and our own lax enforcement of WP:RS, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV.  Was all the criticism fair?  Were the media entirely balanced and reasonable in their coverage?  Of course not; it's not the nature of the media.  Did Wikipedia get dragged through the mud?  Yep.
 * Do you think that we'll look better or worse when someone, despite our disclaimers, takes medical advice from the Ref Desk that turns out badly? Do you think the press will treat Wikipedia kindly, or will the editorialists knives come out?  Don't you expect comparisons and parallels – fair or not – to be drawn to the Seigenthaler mess?  Even though our disclaimers may cover Wikipedia's collective ass from a legal standpoint, there would be tremendous harm to Wikipedia's reputation&mdash;and there are costs to Wikipedia associated with defending even a frivolous lawsuit. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Good point, TenOfAllTrades, but there is a meaningful distinction. As you know, the Seigenthaler scenario involved false and defamatory statements. Yes, the press coverage was unfavorable, and we definitely want to work together to prevent anything approaching a repeat of that unfortunate outcome, but "unsubstantiated factual assertions" are dramatically different from "professional advice that falls below a requisite standard of care".


 * WP is in the business of putting out publicly-available "facts" that are capable of release under GFDL (though, technically, even the accuracy of those are disclaimed -- even though we all acknowledge that false information is inimical to the interests of this project -- and even the WP disclaimer itself admits you may be able to find *some* accurate information in WP).


 * WP is not, however, in the business of putting out "professional advice" under any circumstances. This is true regardless of whether the professional advice is either "good" or "bad"; either "competent" or "negligent"; either "auspicious" or "unconscionable". Nowhere in the WP disclaimer will you find an admission that "WP might contain useful professional advice that you can rely on."


 *  "Bad" medical advice is against the interests of this project, but so is "Good" medical advice. 


 * Technically, none of it should be here. In fact, technically advice such as "you should seek medical assistance and stop asking medical questions on WP" could be classified as "professional advice".


 * Don't get me wrong, if you apply your individual expertise and professional training to sniff out crappy RefDesk posts that would otherwise not have been detected, your individual efforts should be supported and encouraged. Such efforts, however, are a function of individual effort, and not a function of WP community review.


 * As far as press coverage goes, I suspect detrimental reliance on bad medical advice really would not garner much attention, because anyone who uses an "encyclopedia" for self-diagnosis and treatment would probably be unsympathetic and subject to ridicule.


 * If the name changes to "WikiHospital, the free Hospital where anyone can practice medicine" ... that would be different. dr.ef.tymac 10:34, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It seems to me you're missing the point. While I'm not too supportive of bans myself, we aren't AFAIK proposing a ban for 'bad medical advice' Instead, what's being proposed is a ban for people who violate a putative policy on giving any professional advice. No one is going to review whether the advice is good or bad. It's irrelevant. It's really IMHO the same as the way we enforce most wikipedia policies. It doesn't matter for example whether what you are trying to add to wikipedia is the truth. If it's unreferenced particularly in a BLP it goes. If you keep adding it, you get banned. Even if it later turns out you had some secret information and what you were adding was the truth, it doesn't matter. We don't have to investigate whether or not what someone is adding is 'the truth'. We don't even have to investigate whether it's referencable. If you keep adding unreferenced info, you get banned. Also, I think you're quite wrong about the press coverage that may result altho I can't be bothered discussing it further Nil Einne 21:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * One problem is, the so-called "bad" advice gets all the attention, because that's what people respond to emotionally (look at the header of this thread). There are lots of "professional advice" type posts that apparently don't even get noticed at all here on the Reference Desk, because people do not seem to complain about them.


 * Conjecture: this kind of proposal pretty much guarantees that the "bans" will be applied disproportionately to "apparent medical quackery" ... and the majority of other kinds of potentially dubious "professional advice" content will continue to fly "under the radar". Perhaps people are happy with that kind of outcome though. To me, it seems unbalanced.


 * It seems there are multiple ways of looking at this, but no way of objectively applying a non-arbitrary standard that provides a neutral "safe harbor" ... such as you have with WP:RS and WP:V. dr.ef.tymac 04:43, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Template proposal
My idea is that a template should be used for the first and second violations. (Just like any other infraction of policy.) I quickly created this template for the purpose. Any thoughts? --S.dedalus 21:42, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I think templates are a bad idea. A.Z. 22:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * That is possible. Why do you think so? --S.dedalus 22:09, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I think that someone leaving a template on your talk page may make you feel bad. It's too unpersonal and it makes it look like you're a vandal. A.Z. 22:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Templates are currently used for everything from improper humor to "Biting" newcomers and Not using edit summary. Although a personal message is often better, we cannot expect every Wikipedian to come up with a properly worded message of their own. This template would not be required; for those who do not wish to use it, it can simply act as a guide to the necessary tone in the personalized warning message. --S.dedalus 22:41, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Perhaps (at least) two templates would be best&mdash;one for the first warning, one for subsequent ones. It's the same way we approach vandalism warnings; offer the carrot first, and only use the stick if necessary.  The first time around, it's worth assuming good faith, and offering a courteous and polite explanation of why offering medical advice is both forbidden by policy and a bad idea in general:  "Thank you for trying to be helpful, but please don't offer any more medical advice.  Giving medical advice on the Ref Desk can have negative consequences foo, bar, and flibble.  Please see our policy at somelink for details.  If you are unsure about what constitutes medical advice, feel free to ask on WT:RD.  Your cooperation is appreciated."
 * The second template would be more along the lines of "Please stop offering medical advice on the Ref Desk, per linktopolicy. Your account may be blocked..."
 * We want to encourage voluntary compliance as much as possible, and we want to be sure the first template – however impersonal – is at least friendly and courteous. These people are almost always trying to help, even if they're going about it badly. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:38, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, that is my thought as well. So you think this would be a second level template?
 * I would have created the other template at the same time if I’d had the time. If no one else wishes to do it, I will create the second and third ones latter today. --S.dedalus 22:47, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, here’s a first warning template. What do you think? --S.dedalus 06:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * This is a fairly low-volume problem, and can usually be resolved without a templates - templates usually come across as fairly patronising, and always come across as impersonal.  Neil   ム  09:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed. See WP:TEMPLAR, just an essay, apparently a controversial one at that, but it reflects my feelings. You don't have to write everything from scratch, and can cut and paste parts of a standardized warning about giving medical advice, including reasons and links to policies. I believe what looks like a form letter from the authorities, an automated post, or a yellow card has the potential to unnecessarily dramatize and antagonize good faith editors. This can really make all the difference - we've all seen the same users react quite differently depending on how the message was delivered. ---Sluzzelin talk  09:25, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Vehement disapproval: Folks, with full respect to those proposing templates (and possibly systematic bans), this is a *huge* slippery slope, and I would be astonished if the Foundation gave express approval for something like this if it ever gained traction and became common RefDesk practice. Remember, professional advice of *any* sort is out of bounds for Wikipedia. Regardless of whether it is "good" or "bad".

Are we prepared to equally warn and ban contributors who consistently give "good" advice as well? Are we prepared to determine which contributors can be trusted to determine which posts constitute "advice" in the first place?

Yes, I know the template proposal was just a draft, so please don't take this as premature criticism, but language like this should make your hair stand on end:

If you are unsure about what constitutes medical advice, feel free to ask on WT:RD

Please, people, give this whole thing some very serious consideration. Stuff like this is red-hot, and is precisely the kind of thing that can land the entire Reference Desk on MfD. Let's not give the anti-RefDesk faction any more ammo than they already have. If you see some persistent refdesk quackery; why not just handle it with the usual tools? Tendentious editing, Disruptive editing etc. dr.ef.tymac 11:01, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Er, I'm not sure what you're arguing here. For what it's worth, yes, we would absolutely bar 'good' advice as well.  I think we're all on the same page here&mdash;there is wide consensus that we don't want anyone to be giving any sort of professional advice on the Ref Desks.  (It is agreed that the only 'good' medical advice we can offer is 'Go see your doctor or pharmacist'.)  We're only discussing medical advice here because a) it seems to be the most commmon type of armchair advice we see, and b) it is the type of advice that's most capable of going spectacularly wrong.
 * The few editors on the Ref Desk who actually hold proper medical degrees already know (and have commented to this effect)
 * The 'ask on WT:RD' is meant to serve two purposes, and neither is to encourage people to verify their advice. Rather, some people have trouble distinguishing between the questions that seek medical advice and the questions that simply ask a question about a topic related to medicine.  In other words, given the two questions
 * What is intracranial pressure?
 * My doctor said I have high intracranial pressure, what should I do about it?
 * We can answer the first question with links to the appropriate articles; we shouldn't touch the second with a ten-foot pole. If an editor has been warned not to give medical advice, I'd prefer to see them come to the talk page and ask first if it is appropriate to answer other questions.
 * The other thing is that encouraging those editors to start on the talk page any time they're not sure will keep both the medical advice and any subsequent edit warring off the main Desk. (In a few cases, there have been editors who have been too zealous in enforcing the 'no medical advice' rule, and they have removed answers to question #1 and not just question #2; prior talk page discussion saves us from some of those disputes.)  TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:21, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Correct - the answer to those two questions would be:
 * See Intracranial pressure.
 * Ask your doctor.
 * It probably should be pointed out all of the above also applies to legal advice. Neil   ム  12:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Clarifying opposition to proposed "anti-professional-advice" template
TenOfAllTrades said: The few editors on the Ref Desk who actually hold proper medical degrees already know that they can't give advice here ... (we need to) communicate this concept to the remaining completely unqualified editors who 'just want to help' .

This is *precisely* the problem (which I explain in detail below). Also, I'm glad that Neil interjected his point about legal advice as well, because I've seen a few out-of-bounds whoppers from that category also; (and I've even contested some of them [on the RefDesk, and elsewhere within WP]) and clearly, this discussion pertains to professional specializations of all kinds, not just medicine.


 * (Note: Considering the scope of the issues, let us take this out of the "medical" profession, and simply call a WP contributor with professional credentials "Accredited", and let's call a WP contributor without credentials "NonAccredited".)

Problem 1: WP (as far as I know) maintains *zero* safeguards for verifying whether or not someone is actually "Accredited" if they claim to be. This is understandable, because under no circumstance is professional advice within the scope of Wikipedia's responsibility to begin with. Also, without abolishing anonymous accounts, any such verification would be bogus and unenforceable anyway.

Problem 2: This proposed system simply provides no net benefit. To understand why, let us consider how things would play out if WP established "professional warning templates" allowing "scoldings" (and eventual bans) for people who violated the "no professional advice" disclaimer.


 * Blind leading the blind: In this scenario, the "professional warning template" adds *zero* benefit, because neither is a professional in the relevant field anyway, and any apparent abuses can be handled by the already-existing WP safeguards (e.g., Tendentious editing).


 * Words without knowledge: In this scenario, the "professional warning template" is actually a detriment, because there's nothing to stop the "Cliff Clavin" alums from using their bogus "credentials" to attack (and potentially ban) people who actually know what they are talking about.


 * A house divided: In this scenario, the "professional warning template" again adds *zero* benefit, because all you've done is acknowledge that two "Accredited" users disagree on whether something constituted professional misconduct, and those kinds of debates add *nothing* to WP. In fact, you could also put this in the "detriment" column, because it might give onlookers the mistaken belief that professional debates actually have a place here within WP.


 * Professional spanking: This is the only category where one might derive a benefit from the "professional warning template" system. And even here, it is riddled with problems:
 * 1) We still have not solved Problem 1 indicated above, people can easily "game" this;
 * 2) The professional "standard of care" may not be the same in all relevant jurisdictions; a "spanking" that is appropriate in the U.S.A. may not be appropriate in Ghana;
 * 3) You confuse onlookers by making it look like WP has a retinue of professional "overseers" who protect the reference desks from bad information, as I've already mentioned, this undermines the very purpose of the disclaimers;
 * 4) You set up bias favoring clever answerers who can cloak "advice" in terms that do not show up on the "radar".
 * 5) You mislead good-faith users into assuming that the "scolder" is asserting his authority or credentials in a given profession, where such assertions are inherently unreliable.

Yes, you've said that this applies to "medical advice" because so much of it has been seen, and it is an immediate problem. The fact is, the mere act of seeing something entails a certain degree of professional judgment, and there is *plenty* of *crap* on the reference desk and WP in general that goes uncommented simply because no lawyer, accountant, physician, psychiatrist, risk manager or financial planner ever saw fit to speak up about it, or never saw it to begin with. This is another reason why this is not just a "medical" issue, and why this system (although a laudable idea with good motivations) seems totally unworkable and ill-advised. dr.ef.tymac 14:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm a bit confused. In general, one doesn't need to be a medical professional to identify cases where medical advice is being given.  (There's a fair working guideline at Reference desk/guidelines/Medical advice.)  Further, one doesn't need to be able to tell good advice from bad, because we're removing all advice.
 * I don't quite understand the 'accredited answerer' and 'accredited scolder' bits in your table above; we're not in the business (nor are we proposing to start) of giving medical (or legal) professionals some sort of special veto over medical (or legal) advice, or special permission for them (and them alone) to violate our policies on medical (and legal) advice. In any case, as I've noted before, no genuine medical or legal professional would give advice in a forum such as this.
 * As for the templates, if you would prefer to leave detailed, personalized messages for editors telling them to stop giving medical (or legal) advice on the Ref Desk, you're welcome to. However, it's sometimes useful to have comprehensive, thorough, ready-to-use boilerplate templates when one has to deal with a situation on a regular basis. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * There are some problems with the analysis in your previous response, but the biggest one is your qualifying statement: "In general". Wikipedia already has a "general" mechanism for officially specifying its duties and obligations regarding professional advice, it is the disclaimer.


 * Once you start attaching "specific boilerplate" to "specific posts" on the reference desk, your qualifying statement "in general" no longer applies, because you are creating an "official looking" response to individual messages. WP is not in the business of case-by-case professional review.


 * TenOfAllTrades said: one doesn't need to be a medical professional to identify cases where medical advice is being given
 * Response 1.1: As I and others have mentioned already this is not just an issue of medical advice it applies to *all kinds* of professional advice.
 * Response 1.2: Ironically, this is actually true, but for reasons you may not anticipate. Sometimes, not even a medical professional is well-placed to precisely determine what constitutes "medical advice" in every case. For example,  who do you think has a better handle on this issue: 1) an intern just out of medical school; or 2) a medical malpractice attorney with fifteen years of experience;  or 3) even a medical malpractice insurance salesman with fifteen years of experience? Sometimes the line between "medical advice" and "general information" is *not* obvious. Subtle differences in wording can have a major influence.


 * TenOfAllTrades said: one doesn't need to be able to tell good advice from bad, because we're removing *all* advice
 * Respectfully TenOf, I'm really quite surprised if you really think removing *all* professional advice is even possible let alone advisable. As I've mentioned a few times now, the minute you purport to "scrub" the RefDesk clean of all professional advice (and not just medical advice, because medical advice is not the only problem) you set up an even more compelling case for "detrimental reliance" for any advice that happens to "fall through the cracks" ... and the cracks are huge. I don't really have the time now, but if you'd like I can give you specific links to reference desk posts that arguably fall within the bounds of "inappropriate professional advice", some of which *never* gets commented on at all.


 * TenOfAllTrades said: no genuine medical or legal professional would give advice in a forum such as this
 * Response 2.1: This is begging the question, because sometimes it *requires* the assessment of a professional to determine what constitutes "professional advice" in the first place.
 * Response 2.2: This is an unsubstantiated factual assertion that I am pretty certain you are not in a position to verify. Remove the qualifying word "genuine" (and all "wiggle-room" that it gives) and I'll guarantee that you cannot verify it. Indeed, it's directly contradicted by the very reference in Reference desk/guidelines/Medical advice, that you just cited to me.


 * TenOfAllTrades said: However, it's sometimes useful to have comprehensive, thorough, ready-to-use boilerplate templates when one has to deal with a situation on a regular basis.
 * That boilerplate already exists, it's live, ready-to-use, and it's directly linkable. It's also been written, reviewed, and critiqued by licensed attorneys: General_disclaimer, Medical_disclaimer, Legal_disclaimer.


 * TenOfAllTrades said: don't quite understand the 'accredited answerer' and 'accredited scolder' bits in your table above


 * The basic point is this, if there is no "rule" for who can "scold" (and potentially ban) a specific individual and a specific message for giving "unauthorized professional advice" (something that cannot be substantiated or checked against a reliable source, which is what WP is supposed to care about) then what you are essentially saying is a 16 year old sophomore can template anyone with this kind of "specific and official-looking" warning.


 * If you consider the words without knowledge scenario I mentioned above, this could amount to a direct accusation of professional malpractice by someone who has no clue of what such an accusation actually entails.


 * If you are trying to ensure that no licensed practitioner would have the nerve to post *any response* in this forum (let alone professional advice). Your proposal would be an excellent way to do it, and also an excellent way to ensure that a bunch of legal, medical, financial and other "tricky" questions get no answers at all, except by the Cliff Clavin alums; the very scenario supposedly prevented by this idea. dr.ef.tymac 17:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

What problem we are attempting to solve

 * Actually, we're trying to be sure that such questions receive no answer at all, beyond a referral to a qualified professional. I advocate a two-pronged approach of removing such advice where it appears, and warning (and blocking, if necessary) editors who insist on offering it.  What do you think we should be doing?  I genuinely can't tell what your proposed strategy is for dealing with medical advice.  Since you bring up the 'detrimental reliance' argument, are you suggesting that we never remove medical advice or block the editors who offer it?
 * As for there being no "rule" about who can "scold", we don't need one. We don't have one for who can use other warning templates or enforce other policies on Wikipedia.  Anyone can revert the addition of libel to articles, whether they are a lawyer with experience in defamation suits or not.   As with other warning and disciplinary processes on Wikipedia, an editor who misuses those processes will himself be censured by his colleagues.  TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:42, 20 August 2007 (UTC) (extended 17:54, 20 August 2007 (UTC)).


 * Yes I am pretty sure I understand the attempt ... but what I'm suggesting is that "solving this problem" may be more complicated than others seem to acknowledge here. For example, should *you* have been warned for giving the answer you gave here? Reference_desk/Miscellaneous? If no, why not? If yes, why? ... and what guidance is offered by the current "consensus" guideline at Reference desk/guidelines/Medical advice? If the answer is "none" then why are we imprecisely distinguishing the various issues related to "medical" and "legal" advice?


 * As far as what *I* would propose, I'd start by avoiding any claim that the reference desk talk page is a "good place to go" to determine what meets the definition of "medical advice" (or any kind of professional advice, for that matter).


 * There is a huge difference between:


 * Defin1: "stuff that is likely to be removed from WP RefDesk as 'medical advice' (or legal advice), pursuant to RefDesk guidelines and RefDesk consensus"; and
 * Defin2: "stuff that is likely to get an individual in legal trouble for violation of UPL, or practice of medicine without a license"


 * Perhaps our level of disagreement is actually very small. Perhaps I've misunderstood, so let me ask you. Are you o.k. with my assertion that any "warning templates" must absolutely clearly, unambiguously and *directly* state that RefDesk guidelines have *nothing to do* with determinations based on medical and legal expertise?


 * If so, then you and I may indeed have very little disagreement, if any, and it's all just a matter of making the issues *absolutely clear* to avoid totally inappropriate interpretations. dr.ef.tymac 18:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * While I can't speak for everyone here, I've been operating under the assumption that we've been discussing the former and not the latter. You are correct judgements about the latter would require the advice of a competent (legal or medical) malpractice lawyer.  It is likely that everything that falls under the latter is encompassed by the former&mdash;our definitions are likely to be more conservative, erring on the side of caution where we cannot expect our editors to make legal jdugements.  I would be appalled and aghast at any template that actually said (or implied) "Don't say that, it's medical malpractice" or "You may be engaging in the unauthorized practice of law".  TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Perhaps, then, you can understand at least some basis for my opposition, because as far as I have seen, there hasn't been *any* clear indication that people recognize the two principles could even be considered different concepts, let alone that definition "Defin1" has been the working definition. This seems like a very very terrible thing to trust to basic assumptions, especially since some contributors may not even know the difference.


 * Also, that still leaves out the question of who "defines" this "reference-desk-only" standard, or how such a standard could possibly be defined without confusing people into thinking the WP reference-desk is "sharing turf" with the various Boards of Medical Examiners of the world. dr.ef.tymac 19:50, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

&larr; (unindenting) From what I've seen, editors here tend to enforce policies and guidelines as they are written on Wikipedia. I don't recall ever seeing an experienced editor refer to 'malpractice' in criticising a response on the Ref Desk; editors refer to our internal guidelines barring medical advice. Whether it's because we're too lazy to go to outside governing bodies or because we have a subtle and nuanced understanding of the limits of our experience, authority, and expertise, the effect is the same. We use our internal, conservative definition of medical advice (essentially anything that offers a diagnosis, a prognosis, or a suggested treatment). TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:45, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't doubt your assessment of current WP practices, but what I do doubt is whether this important distinction will be clear enough to all participants, especially when new practices are incrementally introduced that blur the singular authority of the General disclaimers.


 * I also doubt whether the definition is always as "conservative" as one might like to think. For example, I've seen at least a few instances where law students (I've reason to believe that's what they were) gave responses that they might not be inclined to give as practicing attorneys. I would not doubt that the same is true for current and aspiring students of *many* professional fields.


 * I also think it is not necessary to utter the word "malpractice" in order to unfavorably "smear" a contributor with professional experience who may answer on the Ref Desk from time to time. The potential and likelihood of unfavorable interpretations only increases when "warning templates" and other "official looking" texts start getting used as a substitute for individual communication (IMO). Unless, of course, we are just talking about linking to the General Disclaimer, and diligently reminding Questioners to be familiar with it. dr.ef.tymac 03:31, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Follow-up: Minor note, I am also sure you recognize that: 1) malpractice; 2) practice without a license; and 3) intent to establish a "professional-client relationship" are all distinct issues, the conflation of which could also lead to confusion and cause an unfair "smearing" of a qualified contributor. These distinctions also seem too important to leave to assumptions based on current WP Ref Desk convention. dr.ef.tymac 03:46, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

It's not about the nature of the rule - it's about enforcement.
There are two separate problems being discussed here:


 * Should there be a 'no medical advice' rule - and what should it say?
 * What do we do when someone infringes on the rule?

The first question should be moot. It has been discussed fully in the past - and the rule we have is the result of some kind of consensus. As such, I'm not interested in discussing it further. The second question is the problem at hand. Even though I posted a strong warning on the thread (Reference_desk/Science), people are STILL offering medical diagnoses in response to the guy with the blurry vision - we now have astigmatism, kerataconus and cataracts - as well as migranes. My warning didn't even slow them down. This isn't about correctness of advice given or the qualifications of the respondants or the verifiability of what they say or what the OP will or will not do in response to the advice. It's about enforcement of a rule when a clear breach has occurred.

If a simple warning would work - that would be perfect - but it plainly doesn't - just look at the thread and you'll see. So do you abandon a rule because it's unenforcable by a simple "Please don't do that"? No! If you did then we'd be allowing linkspam and all sorts of other nastiness that carries on despite warnings. When a rule is broken, we take action of some kind. So how do you escalate the warning to the point where people will pay attention? I guess some sort of stern warning in a big red templated box would be a reasonable escalation - it would certainly wake people up to the problem and would be more noticable. Asking people not to do it on their talk: pages might help - but if they ignore the complaint in-thread, why would they pay more attention on their talk: pages? I think handing out a 24 hour ban to repeat offenders would be OK - it's not a serious punishment - but it's something that clearly screams "THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR HERE".

But no matter what, we just need SOMETHING to make our respondants follow the rules here.

What sort of consensus can we get here? How about everyone answer with one of the following options, escalating from minimum to maximum action. Let's see what the highest level of action we have that pretty much everyone can agree on:

When someone offers medical or legal advice in contravention to the ref desk rules we should: SteveBaker 17:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Do nothing.
 * 2) Put a complaint into the thread then do nothing more. (This is current practice)
 * 3) Put a complaint into the thread and into their talk page, then do nothing more.
 * 4) Do the above repeatedly but do not escalate.
 * 5) Put a templated ("big red box") complaint into the thread, then do nothing more.
 * 6) Do one of the above - then consider some kind of 24 hour Wikiban for re-offenders.


 * (6) SteveBaker 17:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Revised list: (with modified numbering for easier cross-referencing and changes)
 * 1. Do nothing.
 * 2.1 Put a complaint into the thread then do nothing more.
 * 2.2 Put a complaint into the thread with a link to the relevant disclaimer.
 * 2.3 Put a complaint into the thread with a link to relevant disclaimer and copy the message to the user talk page.
 * 3. Do any combination of items under (2), and if the problem persists provide a user-page link to Disruptive_editing.
 * 4. Do any combination of (2) and (3) and if no change results, give the user one last opportunity to explain why the content was not inappropriate, and if the explanation is not satisfactory, Follow the procedures enumerated under Disruptive_editing.
 * 5. Put a templated ("big red box") complaint into the thread, then do nothing more.
 * 6. Do one of the above - then consider some kind of 24 hour Wikiban for re-offenders.

One basic point to reiterate, there should be no need to directly accuse contributors with "official looking" templates that imply or assert a breach of "real-world" professional standards. WP is not a State Bar Association nor a Board of Medical Examiners. Any "official warning template" should give absolutely no hint or suggestion that it is. dr.ef.tymac 18:02, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

♠ Why not change the emphasis from "punishing" the respondent to eliminating the question? It seems a much simpler task to identify a question that seeks professional advice than to assess the apporpriateness of the various answers. Any editor can delete a question, leaving a simple Edit Summary: "Request for Professional Advice is inapporpriate on the Ref Desk; see guidelines" or something similar. (Some encouragement, by way of the immediate removal of any current question seeking professional advice by this community involved in this discussion, would be helful.) If someone has already started to reply to such a question, the answer gets purged with the question. If there is disagreement about the nature of the question, that can be hashed out here on the Discussion page. Perhaps the text in the Edit Summary also needs to appear on the page where the question first appeared, just to keep the questioner informed. Change the focus. Help the editors who might not understand the ramifications of answering ; don't punish them for trying to provide an answer. Bielle 19:02, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Contrary to the subheading, this discussion seems to be, in part, a proposal for the creation of one or more policies. Therefore I propose that further discussion should be moved to WP:VPP so that it is more visible to the general Wikipedia community. Of dr.ef.tymac “Revised list” proposals 4, 5, and 6 would require some kind of policy or guideline in my opinion. --S.dedalus 21:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Bielle expresses it well. It's about damage control. Just like with violations of WP:BLP, the immediate reaction (putting out the flames) is to remove the damaging posts from the desk. The long-term and sustainable measure (prevention) should be educating the careless and ignorant and discouraging their behavior. Polite explanations can work wonderfully here, while waving the big stick may ignite a whole new type of flaming (check November's archives, for instance.). The stick is a last resort, when assumption of good faith is spent, and the same editor's behavior has become disruptive. ---Sluzzelin talk  10:29, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Crazy desks
I've spent all night in another CSSing frenzy trying to get the RD header to look right. I'm trying to force the bottom of the (new) Contribute box to be flush with the bottom of the fat left column if the left column juts down farther. I had it perfectly laid out (I think it's this diff, but it's impossible to tell without making it live) but when I added "height:100%" to the Contribute box, it wouldn't take up the rest of the very available empty space at the bottom of its perfectly sized container. So the container is flush, but of course it's invisible so that's not much good :) Anyway with the firefox DOM Inspector I verified that the space is in fact free, and belongs to the direct parent of the contribute link box, and that absolutely no margin settings or anything are interfering. But "height:100%" has no effect.. so I chalk it up to a bug in gecko, since this is pretty easy, obvious stuff that's just not working. It's been reverted to its original, more elegant table-based code.

So yeah, that's what was going on if you happened to load a ref desk and the header was in bloody pieces all over the floor.

As always, the header is barf in IE. Use firefox please! And websites always look better windowed, I use a 1100 pixel wide window out of a 1400 pixel screen.

Frustrated with the layout, I just decided to document it, so.. there you go --⁪frotht 04:25, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * How do you propose I alter the IT policies of a 30,000+ employee corporation so that they'll let me use Firefox at work? -- LarryMac  | Talk  13:25, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not my fault that internet explorer is non standards complaint. I didn't make it for firefox, I made it per web standards, which firefox follows. It still works fine in IE, but missing is my beautiful perfect-pixel precision. And what are you doing posting on the ref desk at work anyway? :) --⁪frotht 13:39, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It's ummmm, research. Yeah, that's the ticket.  The desks look fine in IE6, and I do appreciate the time you've spent working on all this.  Perhaps I'm just bitter because Slashdot (once again) mucked up their main page so that it barely works with IE.  Maybe I'll just go "work" from home today.  -- LarryMac  | Talk  13:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Good lord you're right about slashdot in IE. Remember thiiis? :) I don't get the polls though. Lucky that you mentioned it now so that I had the opportunity to see my political views reigning supreme in this week/month/year/forever's poll --⁪frotht 20:31, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

"shortcuts" box
These really look terrible! They're way off to the side and cause too much whitespace between the header and the table of contents. I removed them before but someone put them back- can I get some opinions?

Note that something will have to be done in any case about the whitespace. The RD header actually is meant to be called like:

or

=August Whatever=

with no spaces at all in between- the header puts a line of whitespace in automatically as part of the container page, and the table of contents creates line breaks around it anyway. But in addition to those 2, two more are manually added at the top of each RD! I can't remove them because my internet connection times out when I try to save an entire RD page, so can someone else remove all of that whitespace? --⁪frotht 04:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Even worse
My browser (Safari) and my preference (Classic) are and have been for some time now disallowing proper rendering at the upper right corner at all of the desks and this talk (color wheel overlaps). I bring this up at this time for the obvious reason; is there an end to this or is it to be perpetual? Thanks to Froth for initiating this bitching opportunity! Oh, and BTW, I plead guilty for those awful shortcut boxes. Please improve at will. - hydnjo talk 04:42, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I changed the size of the color wheel to the standard "icon up there" size and took off the text (I wasn't the one who came up with that thing! :o), is that better? I'll take a look at the shortcut boxes in a second --⁪frotht 04:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Much better (the color wheel problem) - thanks Bri - hydnjo talk 04:57, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * OK all shortcut boxes have been fixed up. I tried my best to get the shortcut link floated on the left side of the ref desk title bar, but it just wasn't happening so I moved it up to be positioned absolutely on the upper right. Looks good in firefox for all viewing font sizes and resolutions, looks all right in IE. How's safari? I hope my fingangling to get rid of whitespace doesn't affect archiving.. --⁪frotht 06:03, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Thread of the week award




Just to let you know that a gob-smackingly useful thread on the Science desk prompted me to create a Ref Desk thread of the week award --Dweller 13:24, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. How about this pic to go with the award ? StuRat 03:14, 28 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I like it, and here's a more hyped and dramatic suggestion. ---Sluzzelin talk  13:06, 28 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Nice ideas. Keep em coming. Meanwhile, just so everyone knows, to spice it up, I'll be keeping a scoreboard of how the various Desks are doing against one another. So far, the Science Desk rules. --Dweller 16:44, 28 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Nice idea. Is anyone besides Dweller going to actually stay on top of this? Even Dweller concedes: When I remember ... Not to rain on anyone's parade, but the "scoreboard" idea seems a tad misleading considering there are many outstanding contributors on all of the desks, but not everyone reads (or responds) on all of the desks. Sometimes, outstanding refdesk content is found only fortuitously, by way of a search, or a talk page thread somewhere, or via reference in the New York Times.


 * Yeah, I know, no one claimed this was scientific. I'm just wondering if there is enough momentum to make this good idea a sustainable one. dr.ef.tymac 16:55, 28 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Heh. --Dweller 15:41, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

removal

 * from Reference_desk/Language —Preceding unsigned comment added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

I removed a response and my angry reply to it since it does not help the question I originally asked. I have left a message on the users talk page about this.

This was removed


 * You asked the selfsame question eight days ago: Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 August 16. Apparently you are not seeking a translation, but something else. Could you indicate why you consider the translation inadequate? If you are looking for an alternative, less poetic, characterization; you should realize that only someone familiar with the game can give that. From the description "blooming on the battlefield, a wild lily" it cannot be deduced that the person so predicated is young. So a "plain English description" cannot be based just on the Japanese text alone. --Lambiam 20:00, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh for fucks sake - what does "strong and descendent of the blue wolf." actually mean? I need a proper plain english translation - for an article. Does 'blue wolf' have some contextual meaning in japanese that is lost in english? If so can you tell us what it is?
 * Given that the game is set in 12th century France do you imagine that " a "death god" that becomes a seductive dragon. " is a good translation?
 * (Maybe you think that all of wikipedia should be written in prose?)
 * I reasked the question because it didn't get a proper answer -and was soon to be archived.
 * Do you intend to help (by translating)
 * Have you looked at the japanese text and translated it?87.102.75.201 21:14, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I imagined (wrongly it seems) that it would be patently obvious that a 'prose translation' is not suitable for a factual article on the english language version of wikipedia. I already asked the same question previously but got an equally unhelpful answer and no more. As the question would soon be archived I re-asked it.

I thought it would be clear to all that the current 'english' translation actually makes no sense. Does japanese simply not translate at all?87.102.6.217 21:56, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * You could simply have asked for a check and if necessary correction of the translation. It is the "plain English" part that is problematic. If the Japanese text speaks of blue wolves, faithful samurai, and seductive dragons, how is one supposed to "translate" that into "plain English"? Replace "blue wolf" by "red herring"? --Lambiam 04:19, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The 'blue wolf' part is still a mystery..87.102.84.56 14:21, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It doesn't seem appropriate to me to try to strip out all the flowery phrasing and descriptive passages and replace them with "plain English". If it sounds like lyric poetry in Japanese, it should sound that way in English after a good translation.  I can appreciate you asking what those flowery phrases might represent, but that's not the same as replacing the original translation with a "plain English" version. StuRat 03:28, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I understand what you two are saying but the work was specifically for an article about a computer game that will be eventually available in US/UK. I'm sure there is a rule "Wikipedia:what wikipedia is not#wikipedia is not written in prose" (joke) - it really was 'engrish' or 'japglish' as it stood, and as such - nonsensical in english. The new text is here by the way Bladestorm:_The_Hundred_Years'_War.87.102.18.14 14:15, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * That does not take away the fact that turning the (bad) translation into plain English – whether prose or not – as was requested is not at all the same as providing a translation into proper English. The simple solution, by the way, is to leave out these characterizations, meaningless to all except possibly people immersed in the game. This is the solution chosen at the Japanese version of the article. --Lambiam 15:23, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

SineBot again
Not many people have responded to the suggestion to get User:SineBot to monitor the RD. Before we go ahead, one last time, is anyone opposed to this? Nil Einne 13:26, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Nope. Go for it. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Just as a suggestion could the bot automatically sign for me, so instead of doing this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)  It does this:87.102.84.56 14:19, 25 August 2007 (UTC) and saves me any embarressment and a little typing.87.102.84.56 14:19, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd prefer that the format remain the same&mdash;we want to know that the signature was added by a bot because it sometimes makes mistakes. On those rare occasions it would be very confusing (and potentially quite upsetting) for the bot to 'sign' in a way that wasn't distinct from a regular signature.
 * If you're concerned about the appearance of your signature, then just be careful to always sign your remarks. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:36, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Content edits made by bots should always be clearly indicated as such, I like the unsigned template anyway. The bit of embarassment will make you remember next time ;) By the way yes, sign us up for sinebot --⁪frotht 18:27, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Please do it! Also, completely agree with Ten and Froth re bot sig ID. Another useful aspect to always having sig/date/time is the simplification  when we need to manually add date headers- hydnjo talk 19:11, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I've added the necessary cat to all the pages. Possibly we could have added it to the header but that would likely have caused other problems. I added it to the top before the header so it wouldn't accidently get archived. I also had to put it in line with the header or it added a whitespace line. Initially I added a white space between the headercfg and the cat but I stopped when it caused problems with the languages desk with a unicode template. I didn't bother to correct the earlier ones but as there is no ill effects as far as I can tell it doesn't really matter. Nil Einne 22:56, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Belated side note: while it's fine to keep the archiving bot in mind when you're tinkering with the page format, please don't let its existence overly constrain any changes you might make! There are two different reasons for this:
 * The bot's heuristics for the work it does are both pretty specific (in terms of what it looks for to archive) and pretty generic (in terms of what it ignores and doesn't archive). In fact, I've specifically designed it to properly handle unexpected changes to the ref desk format. :-)
 * Even if it were to break, I can always fix it.
 * So if there's a change that needs making to the page format, please don't make it in some horribly suboptimal way just on the archiving bot's behalf. --Steve Summit (talk) 22:01, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The unicode template just changes the font of the text called, to a more unicode-compatible font. Since the template was being called on nothing, it was doing nothing. I took it out and cleaned up --⁪frotht 05:11, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Scsbot problem?
I noticed this (see number 17) which I've corrected here. I'm lazy to look into it but could it be a bot bug? I note someone mentioned a abortive bot edit so alternatively perhaps that's why. Nil Einne 23:05, 27 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I've noticed those a few times too.  I haven't figured out what causes them.  (But they've been happening for a while; they have nothing to do with the problems last night.) I don't feel too bad about them, because all they do is leave the subject entry un-hotlinked (and strangely punctuated), but prior to this month, those subject entries were never hotlinked. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:44, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Anonymous voting on RefDesk posts
Here's one for my "great ideas that are probably never going to happen" file, but I present it anyway, partially in response to User:Dweller/Dweller's Ref Desk thread of the week award and Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk. Dweller presents a great idea. I'd like to suggest it could be made even better by allowing people to vote once on every refdesk post.

This could be implemented by allowing contributors to either "upvote" or "downvote" individual posts on the Reference Desks. The thread of the week for any given ref desk would be the thread with the most upvotes.

For an example of what this might look like in practice, see one website that supports this very feature, indicating both the Best and the Worst, based solely on the vote count. See also Other projects similar to Wikipedia and search for "voting on posts".

To prevent abuse, this would have to be restricted to users with a WP account. To prevent chicanery, the votes would be anonymous. All the WP end-users will see is a negative or positive number, reflecting the sum total of "upvotes" and "downvotes".

Although this will probably never happen here, there ya go. dr.ef.tymac 17:17, 28 August 2007 (UTC)


 * What chicanery are you concerned about ? (The only one I can think of is "you voted my thread down so I'll vote yours down".) StuRat 13:47, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Exactly. Anonymous voting enables the voter to independently evaluate content without fear of reprisal for downvotes, and without hope of future reciprocation for upvotes. Admittedly, one has to assume that, in this circumstance, people will have a greater incentive to cast aside any personal "leanings" regarding other contributors. dr.ef.tymac 15:27, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Seems like that would require a (fairly extensive) modification/addition to the software&mdash;or is this already a supported (but unused on Wikipedia) feature of the Wikimedia engine? Do we need a formal ranking or voting process?  Seems like a lot of bureaucracy and a lot of structure. I mean, if someone wants to do all of the work, I won't get in the way of the beauty contest, but perhaps we're overthinking.


 * Perhaps someone who wants to recognize and preserve the 'best' or most 'interesting' Ref Desk threads should just adopt what I will call the 'benevolent dictator model'. The 'benevolent dictator' selects threads based on his judgement and the advice of any other editors who feel like commenting.  These threads are harvested and collected (or linked from) on some special page.  Interesting facts that come to light may be distributed via a template, a la Did You Know; such a process and template might work to raise the profile of the Desk and highlight how it contributes to the encyclopedia. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:58, 28 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, the technical limitations were the primary reason why I heavily disclaimed feasibility for the idea. Actually, though, enabling votes on entire threads would not be that difficult. Here is a very crude sketch of what a voting form could look like.


 * This would actually be doable today if we accept the limitation that the voting form has to be on a separate page (separate from the freely-editable desks). This is obviously a deal-breaker, though, if people are required to login separately from WP itself.


 * The "benevolent dictator" model definitely sounds more doable, but even then, I'd probably just prefer if people kept their own private lists of what they considered to be the "best of" the reference desks, and then just rely on people individually to make sure they put their "best of" lists in a WP category, so they can be easily found.


 * Some ref desk regulars have already done that, or something substantially similar, but there's not much momentum for people to do it on a regular basis.


 * The whole idea is pretty interesting though, we all know there are some real gems (and real turds) out there just waiting to be gawked at and recognized :) dr.ef.tymac 19:12, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Here's my idea - how about if (signed editors) could mark questions as "sound question, unclear, diatribe, flamebate, wrong desk, hasn't searched, etc"..87.102.18.14 14:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC) That said I'd tend to oppose the idea here since it's more likely to cause problems than solve any...87.102.18.14 14:10, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * To tell the truth, I'm not a great fan of qualifying questions and answers, unless it's something along the line of Carcharoth's highlights page or Dweller's Thread Of The Week. I'm skeptical about the added value of giving bad grades. Awarding or identifying the RD raisins is one thing, it can be fun to visit these questions (just like it can be fun visiting featured articles or pictures), decorating a thread can also be encouraging to those who contributed, and inspiring to others. I don't see why we should attract readers to bad or badly answered questions though. In addition, receiving a bad grade can be very discouraging and even hurtful to whoever contributed to the thread in question. We're all volunteers here, we all try to help out in good faith. When the answers are problematic, it should be pointed out to the user. But the net value of displaying "turds" in public is negative, in my opinion. ---Sluzzelin talk  14:28, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmmm ... good points, Sluzzelin (and anon-IP), admittedly, in referencing "turds" (very poorly-chosen word in retrospect), I was thinking more along the lines of threads where the questioner is obviously presenting a trollish question, and the replies (although perhaps entirely appropriate, and even very witty) were not in any way helpful to WP article space. Since even a "turd" can be salutary for fertilizer, I should have called them "stones" or "noughts" or ...


 * Frankly, I was not even thinking about the use of "downvotes" as a way to intentionally persecute individual contributors, perhaps I "assumed" too much Good faith. You've added a noteworthy "reality check" (humble bow).


 * Although, I probably would not have even proposed this idea, but for the fact that I've seen it used on the wide-open web before, and (despite intuition) the crazy idea astonishingly seems to work. (The same thing they say about WP itself).


 * Important disclosure: One of my absolute favorite threads of all time here on the WP reference desk is one where a student asked an obvious homework question in apparent desperation, and then came back and said she got the first A+ ever in her life because of the help she got here. There were some follow-up threads (some disliked them, others thought they were fine) that portrayed an entertaining story for those who happened to follow it.


 * The point is this: regardless of whether you thought the thread (and follow-up) was astonishingly good, or amazingly inappropriate, there currently is no systematic way of flagging RefDesk content for long-term recognition. This, to me, is truly a shame. dr.ef.tymac 15:27, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Ooh. That's a fine mess I've gotten you all into. --Dweller 15:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Not at all, Dweller. Many of us encyclopedists like lists and clicking our way through categories (I do). I definitely like the idea of presenting a collection of good contributions, and dr.ef.tymac, I don't see why you shouldn't use your own criteria to link to your personal favorites. This could also include threads you/we found particularly hilarious, surprising, controversial (as long as interesting) etc. Regarding a wider long term recognition, how about a combining this with an index, as already addressed by Steve Summit above, and also combining it with the contributions to article space (RDAC etc.) We could build a topical index only adding the questions we find worth linking to. It could be every contributor's responsibility to review a question (new or archived) before deciding whether to add it or not. Useful or not useful being the question, I guess, but without directly pointing out the useless. I don't know whether it's worth it, but I'd be willing to contribute (I'd probably enjoy browsing through the archives). ---Sluzzelin  talk  06:31, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the best way to do this would be to have an individual or small groups of individuals to propose a shortlist of questions, answers and/or threads each week on a separate page. Then give it a day or two for any interested Ref Deskers to cast a !vote in favour of their choice. Finally, someone can judge consensus/count !votes and award the weekly gong appropriately. That way everyone gets a say should they want to. We could then incorporate the winners into a DYK type box on WP:RDAC and then archive them at the end of every month, so our best work each will be collected in one place. Rockpock  e  t  06:47, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I love the way Wikipedia develops. Will I live to see the day that abuse of whatever emerges from is reported at ANI? lol. --Dweller 12:01, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

A Much Simpler Proposal
I think it's pretty clear when a great answer has been given to an interesting question and it's worth saving for posterity. I suspect that all we really need to do is to create a page called 'Best of the Ref Desk' (or something like that) and let people edit it in true Wikipedia style. It's going to grow - and it'll doubtless accumulate cruft - and someone will periodically clean it up. It would have a 'discussion' page where people may choose to passionately argue about what should and shouldn't be there - and polls may occasionally happen when there is debate over whether some article should be there or not. But I suspect that in the end, the standards for what makes it into the page will be quirky and that the quality you'll need to have to make it into the page will gradually grow over the years. It is likely (as with most Wikipedia pages) that one or two people will come to informally 'own' the page and keep it alive and relevent. Whether it contains witty (but irrelevent) answers or off-topic (but clever) answers - or merely the ones that helped the OP the most, is anyone's guess. But this way it can evolve and grow into whatever we want it to be.

This approach is taken with lots of other 'Best of' Wikipedia pages such as Unusual articles. Voting adds red tape and is not 'the wikipedia way'. A weekly pick would mean that in some weeks a basically weak choice has to be made because there was nothing better - and on really good weeks, two excellent answers have to fight it out to be included. The 'Benevolent Dictator' model only works when more or less everyone agrees with the dictator - there is no easy way to ensure that we have the right person for the job.

A less formal mechanism would be much nicer. Let's just make a page and let people populate it - it's the WP way.

SteveBaker 14:40, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * (And while we're about it - a Ref Desk FAQ would be handy too. There are a bunch of questions we get very frequently and a succinct pointer to the FAQ would often save everyone a lot of time.) SteveBaker 14:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I nominate Steve to write a FAQ answer about torque curves and mechanical advantage as they relate to car acceleration. Friday (talk) 15:25, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * There is a Reference desk/FAQ, only nobody is maintaining it. --Lambiam 18:05, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Well it's not exactly well advertised is it?! I couldn't find a single link to it other than in >8 month old archived questions.  The link labelled 'frequently asked questions' on the main Ref Desk page links to WP:FAQ which is not at all the same thing?  It's really, really hard to contribute to something you don't know about!  But anyway - that's just an aside.  We're supposed to be talking about a 'Best of' page. SteveBaker 19:25, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Non-talk pages with subpages that are automatically signed
On page Reference desk the category
 * Category:Non-talk pages with subpages automatically signed by HagermanBot

should be changed to
 * Category:Non-talk pages with subpages that are automatically signed

--Lambiam 13:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Why, shouldn't we be as specific as possible ? StuRat 13:40, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Because user:sinebot does the signing?87.102.18.14 14:06, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Because Hagerbot has been superseded and the category in question is intended to be empty, with the ref desk being the only link it in (due to protection) Kuronue | Talk 15:43, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I've removed the editprotected request, since this doesn't involve any edits to protected pages. There is no such category on Reference desk. Nor is there one on Reference desk/RD header, the categories are all manually added to each Reference desk page, and have, as of this date, all been corrected.--69.118.235.97 21:47, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I've re-added it, as I don't believe the problem has been resolved. As of this writing, the page Reference desk includes the category Non-talk pages with subpages automatically signed by HagermanBot. It's right there at the bottom, beside "Wikipedia help forums" and "Wikipedia resources for researchers". And that category still includes the page Wikipedia:Reference desk. - Eron Talk 22:25, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. --- RockMFR 23:15, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that, I must have missed seeing the category there. --69.118.235.97 13:40, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Out of Xanadu
Hi guys! I've just checked the Humanities Desk history, as I usually do in the evening, and see a quite legitimate question on Kublai Khan was removed altogether by an anonymous IP, on the grounds that it was a 'homework question' (An answer was also removed). I sincerly hope that the questioner did not notice this, because I cannot imagine anything more discourteous and hurtful. The thread was restored by Lambiam, exercising his usual good sense. I am in favour of the instant removel of obvious trollish questions, and I can just about tolerate a 'we do not do homework' response; but the complete excision of an honest question, homework or not, is for me quite intolerable. I hope you do not think I am making too much of this, but I would not wish to see this action as part of a new pattern. Incidentally, on the matter of trolling, I am beginning to feel that the Haiti and West Africa questions are beginning, ever so slightly, to fall into this category. Several superb answers have been produced, but the same old thing just keeps on rolling along! Love to you all Clio the Muse 22:54, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree that questions should never be removed for looking like homework. In fact, I never type "Do your own homework!" and then leave it at that either. There are always ways of pointing a questioner to references or abstractly showing what might be a good approach for answering the question. Assisting with homework is not the same thing as doing the homework. (But that's just my opinion.) As for the Haitian questions, I do know what you're saying, but I'm not sure it's in the same category as the antisemitic, anticatholic, antimuslim series we saw a couple of months ago. I admire Lambiam and Marco's patience in explaining it over and over again. To me this is model referencedeskship. It's tricky to determine what is trolling and what is an innocent nuisance, but, once again, assuming good faith isn't the worst of all options. The alternative would be to simply ignore the question when they annoy us. My 2¢. ---Sluzzelin talk  08:58, 31 August 2007 (UTC)