Alex Rosen wrote:
>So if something doesn't have to notable to be in Wikipedia, then would
>an article on every single elementary school in the world be OK? How
>about every single person in the world?
As far as I'm concerned, articles on any person and on any school are fine
*if* we can verify the information in those articles. We can probably argue
about exactly what is meant by "verifiable" for a looong time (see
[[Wikipedia:Verifiabilty]] for some thoughts), but I think that by most
standards, it would mean that we wouldn't have articles on most of the
people in the world. Requiring things to be verifiable cuts a heck of a lot
of stuff out.
>If so, then how will we ever get *done*?
We won't. That's part of the fun :)
Lee (Camembert)
>
>Charles Matthews wrote:
>
>>"Delirium" wrote
>>
>>>... I'd propose we remove titles from both article names and
>>>the beginning of the first sentence of the article, unless they are
>>>absolutely integral. This includes both official titles (President,
>>>Prime Minister, etc.) and honorific titles (Blessed, Sir, etc.).
>>>
>>
>>I'd agree with the general sentiment. Had a ''Sir'' imposed on an article
>>I
>>wrote, and felt this made too much of a non-hereditry title. Isaac Newton
>>doesn't need the "Sir", for example.
>>
>If you don't want titles in the articles that you write that's just fine.
>Others may prefer to include them in the articles that they write; that's
>fine too.. Going around and removing these titles just because they don't
>please you is a disrespectful act.
>
>Ec
Wiki's policy on titles was worked out in detail in a debate raised on
wiki-L, on talk pages and the results pulled into a detailed naming
convention. On this basis /thousands/ of articles have been pulled together
in a uniform structure, having been a hilarious mess (I first found
wikipedia, having received an email from a colleague of mine - we both had
edited texts for two of the biggest US encylopædias - under the heading
'look at this for a laugh'. The email went around to quite a few academics,
writers, journalists, quoting some of the farcical rubbish that passed for
titles on wikipedia, and did wikipedia considerable damage at the time
because it suggested - wrongly - that wikipedia was sub-high school
standard, or as one academic in Harvard is supposed to have said, 'National
Enquirer-opedia'. While I cringed at the amateurish handling of the naming
issue, I was impressed by the rest and stayed and regard wikipedia as a
superb sourcebook).
After a thorough debate, and detailed discussion, not to mention extensive
research, the naming conventions were implemented, having been agreed here
and elsewhere initially by a small number, including Zoe, Deb, John Kenney,
myself and others, then by /everyone/, worldwide, from Swedish users to
Australian users, Americans, Europeans and from Asia, who worked on articles
about people with titles. As a result, what had been a hilarious mess based
on farcically simplistic presumptions (eg, all British royals have the
surname Windsor, actually there are 19 names used by members of the British
Royal Family, and according to his own staff, the Prince of Wales's surname
is not Windsor but Mountbatten-Windor, the name he married under in 1981,
similarly Queen Victoria's marital surname was 'Wettin' ) is now
professionally organised and academic-standard; a senior editor on a rival
print encyclopædia said that /they/ should try to be as good, as factual and
as correct in the area of titles as wikipedia, having slammed wikipedia a
year earlier as 'amateurish and opinionated' in the area.
As we have an agreed naming convention, applied to thousands of articles, by
a range of people from professional editors like Zoe and bookworms like Deb
to experts on constitutional history like John Kenney, any unilateral
attempt to abandon what has been agreed because Mark has a POV he wishes to
push, would be a gross abuse of wiki and grossly insulting to the many
people who solved what had been a glaring problem. Mark may not like titles,
but the fact that they exist. Covering them accurately and factually is
NPOV. Trying to push an agenda that says 'I don't like them, therefore I
will remove them', is pushing a POV, is unencylopædic and grossly
disrespectiful to the large numbers of people who debated the issue, made
observations and have spent a year implementing the agreed wikipedia policy
in a professional, encyclopædic NPOV manner.
JT
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>From: Delirium <delirium(a)rufus.d2g.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints
>Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 14:48:09 -0700
>
>James Duffy wrote:
>
>>As we have an agreed naming convention, applied to thousands of articles,
>>by a range of people from professional editors like Zoe and bookworms like
>>Deb to experts on constitutional history like John Kenney, any unilateral
>>attempt to abandon what has been agreed because Mark has a POV he wishes
>>to push, would be a gross abuse of wiki and grossly insulting to the many
>>people who solved what had been a glaring problem. Mark may not like
>>titles, but the fact that they exist. Covering them accurately and
>>factually is NPOV. Trying to push an agenda that says 'I don't like them,
>>therefore I will remove them', is pushing a POV, is unencylopædic and
>>grossly disrespectiful to the large numbers of people who debated the
>>issue, made observations and have spent a year implementing the agreed
>>wikipedia policy in a professional, encyclopædic NPOV manner.
>
Mark wrote:
>
>I disagree strongly, and your attempt to leverage credentials is both a
>logical fallacy (look up "appeal to authority", or the equivalent Latin
>phrase if you prefer) and grossly un-wiki.
>
>The issue is that Wikipedia is endorsing certain titles, and not endorsing
>others, which is inconsistent and POV. When we use Sir, Blessed, and so
>on, and refuse to use His All-Holiness, His Excellency, and The Honorable,
>this is a POV judgment, and unacceptable in a professional encyclopedia.
>
>If you do wish to use some honorifics, I would like to see some conventions
>adopted indicating which we should use, and which we should not. Why
>should the article on [[Mother Theresa]] start off "Blessed Mother
>Theresa", while the article on [[Clarence Thomas]] does not start off "The
>Honorable Clarence Thomas"? Is there a principle behind this decision?
:-) If you are going to discuss titles, honorifics, styles, etc, do try to
know what they are!
Sir is not the same as All-Holiness. One is a manner of address, one is when
inherited or awarded as part of one's name. 'Blessed' is not the same as
'The Honourable'. They are two fundamentally different things. 'The
Honourable' is not part of a name, but a mode of address, the diplomats and
most presidents are 'His/Her Excellency', monarchs are 'His/Her Majesty',
popes/Dalai lamas are 'His Holiness. 'Blessed' becomes in effect part of the
name of a beatified person and over time the standard reference when
referring to them. They really are fundamentally different concepts, which
is why wikipedia has clear agreed rules for how one uses styles, titles,
courtesy titles, honours, etc. They are fundamentally different things, a
fact your comments here and elsewhere suggests you have completely failed to
grasp.
To give a practical example, courtesy titles are often so identified with a
holder that they are almost impossible to recognise without them. So anyone
who has ever studied British or Irish history knows immediately that ''Lord
John Russell'' is the British Prime Minister in the 1840s. Nobody would have
a clue who the article was about if it was referred to as ''John Russell'',
because no-one but his mother ever called him that. But Bob Geldof, Ronald
Reagan and Ted Health, who were awarded knighthoods, are recognisable
without using 'Sir'. So there is no question of including the 'sir' in the
article name. This was all discussed in intense detail and a structure for
when to use what, and when not to use what, agreed and followed by wikipedia
ever since.
JT
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Vicki wisely wrote:
> Start by calling people by the name they're best known by, and
> optionally add others. So Mother Theresa gets listed as that
> ("Saint Theresa" needs to be a disambiguation anyway), and
> the article should note her birth name as well as the fact
> that she was [beatified] by the Roman Catholic church in 2003
> (other churches also have saints, but not the same list-- so
> we need to be specific). Ringo Starr isn't a redirect to
> Richard Starkey, and Gerald Ford is listed as that, not
> primarily as "President Ford" or by his birth name.
Looks like a common sense approach like Vicki (a professional
Proofreader) suggests, is better than creating more rules.
Ed Poor
I don't think we need any special policy for personal titles like:
* Mr.
* President-for-life
* The Honorable
* Blessed
* His Holiness
* Father
If anyone objects to a *particular* use of a title, they can add an NPOV
qualifier, like:
* Sun Myung Moon - called "Father Moon" by friends of the movement
* Pope John Paul - called "His Holiness" by Catholics
* George Bush - called "Dumbo" by critics - he, he, just kidding
* Isaac Newton - known as "Sir Issac Newton" during his lifetime
* Mary - known by Catholics and most Protestants as the Blessed Virgin
Mary
Etc.
Ed Poor -- known as "Uncle Ed" by one or two Wikipedians of note
As the administrator of English Wikipedia mailing list (Wikien-l), I
would like to *request* that contributors avoid cross-posting to the
International Wikipedia mailing list (wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org).
The international list should only be used for issues which affect all
languages, or the project as a whole.
I believe that all discussions relating to the [[Mother Theresa]]
article should be confined to Wikien-l and kept off the international
list.
The difference of opinion between Erik & James is purely an English
Wikipedia issue, so let's keep it there.
NOTE: If you reply to this post, please CHOOSE either Wikien-l or
Wikipedia-l (one or the other, NOT BOTH :-)
Ed Poor
Mailing List Administrator
English-language Wikipedia (Wikien-l)
Take a look at how criticisms are handled in the Pokeman article. I think
this is a reasonable way if all material is to be put into one article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%e9mon
Fred
>Wheteher someone is "notable" is more often than not a determination
>based on somebody's POV.
Well it's frequently based on someone's opinion, which to me is
different than POV. I'd say that *sometimes* it's based on somebody's
POV, but then so are lots of other things on Wikipedia - e.g. whether a
particular article is POV or not is sometimes based on somebody's POV.
We live with that.
So if something doesn't have to notable to be in Wikipedia, then would
an article on every single elementary school in the world be OK? How
about every single person in the world? If so, then how will we ever get
*done*?
>>Official or not, many people seem to use an 'important' standard when
it
>>comes to biographical articles. 'Wiki Is Not a Biographical
Dictionary'
>>(wherever that is) describes teh policy a lot seem to follow.
>>
>The rule is that Wikipedia is not a dictionary, biographical or
>otherwise. That is no bar to biographical articles which are an
>important part of the 'pedia.
The actual page he's referring to is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_Inclusion_of_Biographies,
it has nothing do with dictionaries.
Alex
We all know the policy, or should. Because Jimbo has said it many times.
The best way to resolve a conflict, is by talking it out. Sometimes,
other users can contribute to a resolution by mediating, but this
doesn't always work.
If a party to a conflict so desires, he may request that Jimbo consider
blocking the other user's login-name. Such a block could be temporary or
permanent.
I do not consider _suggesting_ that Jimbo order a username block to be a
"threat" (as one user put it) or an "abuse of sysop powers" as a couple
of others put it. Saying, "stop reverting my changes, or I will
personally ban you" MIGHT be a threat or an abuse of authority, but that
isn't what Erik did. (He might have said he wanted to - as I did a week
or 2 ago in a similar context - but "wanting" and "threatening" and
"doing" are all different.)
Anyway, I'm hoping this will all blow over, so no one has to ring
Jimbo's cell phone in the middle of that wedding. This should be a
joyous time in his life. Let's make it so.
Uncle Ed
> I still vote for "verifiable".
> Someday we'll have all of the elementary schools, and good for us.
> But we shouldn't let crap slip in because of our generosity either.
> This is what "verifiable" does.
>
> Is that criterion still in use on VfD?
>
> -- Toby
I wasn't aware that there was any "official" policy as to whether
something had to be important, or if it just had to be true and
verifiable.
If verifiable is the current standard, nobody seems to be following it
- for example, look at the votes for Ellen Oshey on VfD right now. She
is verifiable but 8 out of 10 people voted to delete her article because
she's not very notable.
Alex (axlrosen)