Arf arf! No, no that kind of seal...
There are a number of U.S. federal agencies which have seals the
usages of which are restricted by federal law. For example, about the
seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA):
Use of the Central Intelligence Agency Seal
Federal law prohibits use of the words Central Intelligence Agency,
the initials CIA, the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, or any
colorable imitation of such words, initials, or seal in connection
with any merchandise, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial
activity in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression
that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Central
Intelligence Agency.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/notices.html#seal
Now I don't know what it's *copyright* status is -- is it a work of
the federal government and thus in the public domain, or is it
considered an exception? -- but it seems clear to me, anyway, that it
is not "free" in the sense required to be listed on Wikipedia Commons.
In the United States its usage is restricted fairly heavily, including
the "non-commercial" bugaboo. It looks to me like, in effect, this
would be a "copyrighted with permission but no commercial use" tag.
Which, as I understand it, is verboten.
Of course, when I raise things like this on Commons, I seem to incite
a lot of ire from people who want to pick nits about whether or not
its usage is limited because of its *copyright* or because of federal
laws. I have to admit, for a place which is supposed to care so much
about whether or not things are actually free, people seem to think
deleting images is the worst thing in the world, even if there is
little compelling reason to think they are truly in the public domain.
Personally, I'd shoot at first suspicion that something was not really
in the public domain -- there would be nothing worse for Commons than
to be in continual doubt whether or not its licensing information was
correct, it would defeat the entire point -- but that's just me.
Any ideas? I tend to think that any image with this sort of legal
restriction does NOT qualify as "free" in the sense required by
Commons and is antithetical to its purpose -- to provide a repository
of "free" images.
FF
Dear Sirs,
It is not usually my nature to bring others into my problems, but I think this has gone too far. People are effectively being banned indefinitely without any oversight, in order to associate their misdeeds with me. I don't have anything to do with these people, and I can't figure out, from their edit history, what they have done wrong. Yet, I am blamed for being them and blocked for periods of up to 48 hours for each instance.
1) I am not these people.
2) Nobody has presented any evidence on the Administrator Board that I am in any way associated with these people.
3) According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#When_blocks_may_be_u…, there is nothing in the edit history of these people that warranted a block.
4) I'm being blocked based on unfounded accusations that I'm associated with these people who have done nothing wrong. I'm being accused of something, with no evidence, that's not even on the "exhaustive list of the situations that warrant blocking."
The two administrators involved, User:Jayjg and User:SlimVirgin, apparently think they can make up whatever rules they want and enforce them with no oversight. In trying to hurt me, they have blocked at least twelve other people, some of them permanently, for doing nothing that could remotely be considered against the rules of Wikipedia. They are all accused of being my sockpuppets, even though most of them have IP addresses from other nations or states.
EXAMPLES
User:Go_Cowboys was blocked indefinitely on the accusation that he is me. Looking through his list of contributions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Go_Cowboys), it appears that the worst thing he did was catch Jayjg's friend Smyth misquoting the OED (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Terrorism#I_draft_a_proposal:).
User:Felice_L%27Angleterre was blocked indefinitely before posting a single change to an article. Apparently, Jayjg's buddies User:Jpgordon and User:Calton didn't like her refusal to give up personal information on her User_talk page. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Felice_L%27Angleterre). I received another 48 hours block for being accused of being her. I didn't even know who SlimVirgin was talking about, until someone emailed me, because she misspelled her name "Felix" on my discussion page and only referred to her as a sockpuppet on my block description.
HISTORY
After resolving the long-standing NPOV dispute for the article on al Qaeda, I thought I would try to do the same for the article on Terrorism. It took over a month, but after many compromises with all other editors involved, I successfully posted a proposal on the talk page that nobody expressed disagreement with for three days. At that point, I updated the article with the introductory text that I had proposed, along with an editing request that all intro changes first be proposed in discussion. Even though he had not been involved with the discussion for months, Jayjg immediately gutted the article and demanded that I replace the obvious holes he had made with something that he liked better. I suggested that he was the best person to know what he would like better, but he said he didn't have time for that. He made a few vague demands and then disappeared. Of course, I reverted the article to what I had written, with a reminder to everyone involved with editing the intro to
first make their suggestions in Talk.
SlimVirgin, someone who had not been involved with the article at all but is often accused of working with Jayjg as a team, threatened to revert the article to an older definition unless I did as Jayjg said. When I refused, she wiped out all of the changes we had made over the past month and called in her friends to support the revert. A revert-war started between the people who wanted to keep the new article and those who were loyal to Jayjg/SlimVirgin. When it became obvious that more people wanted to keep the new article, Jayjg and SlimVirgin started blocking everyone who voted for it or expressed any support for it. Despite the blocks, people kept reverting SlimVirgin's punitive efforts anonymously (without logging in).
Pretty soon, the discussion of terrorism had more administrators than I've ever seen at one article. Virtually none of them had ever expressed the slightest interest in terrorism before. Even after arriving, none of them seemed interested in making any proposals for a better article. Everyone merely wanted to express their support for Jayjg and for the old article. It didn't seem to matter that the old article was not definitive: it didn't convey information.
Ever since reading a spread in Wired Magazine and joining Wikipedia, I had been in heaven. This promised to be the fulfillment of a dream introduced by Ray Kurzweil over a dozen years ago: a large society of true equals, enabled for the first time through global communication. However, at that point, my blinders came off. The best articles were not automatically rising to the top. Bad articles were being used as punishment to get editors to do administrator bidding. Terms like "original research" were being thrown around as excuses to delete factual information until sources were sighted, at which point relevance was questioned. When relevance was shown, "original research" was questioned again. The cat & mouse game continued until the administrator got bored and threatened to block the editor for being a trouble maker. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:State_terrorism).
One of the most humorous examples I've seen of this was when User:Pmanderson accused User:Go_Cowboys of creating "original research" with his assertion that John Locke's "Two Treatise of Government" preceded the United States "Declaration of Independence." It may be true that no scholar has ever specifically said that 1689 came before 1776, and using the same logic, Jayjg's arguments with Zain in Talk:State_terrorism might make a certain kind of sense, but is deleting information on these grounds going to make Wikipedia "the sum of all human knowledge?"
I'm not one to sit around and let corruption destroy something I admire. I spoke up in the discussion of terrorism. I defended myself against attacks and I said exactly why I thought the article for terrorism was not definitive: that a few administrators were so wrapped up in securing power, and subverting information failing to show their group in a positive light, that they were willing to make articles worse and accuse innocent people to accomplish their aims.
This made people mad enough to propose that I be banned for life. The proposal was rejected and cited as a definitional dispute because it related to one article and involved personal comments from both sides. SlimVirgin apparently took it upon herself to override consensus and keep me blocked for things that have no link to me whatsoever. It doesn't seem to matter to her that, in doing so, she is effectively banning other editors who have broken no rules and sometimes have made considerable contributions.
CONCLUSION
I'm sure that SlimVirgin and Jayjg are nice people, but some folks can't handle administrative power without it getting mixed up in their personal life. Jayjg and SlimVirgin use their administrative tools to artificially increase their influence on articles. When people call them on it, they use their administrative tools to cover up the truth of their actions. I think it's fair to say that Wikipedia cannot accomplish its goal of NPOV articles when administrator power is used to bias the content of articles. I ask that you remove administrative privileges from SlimVirgin and Jayjg so that everyone can contribute equally to the articles.
Thank you for your consideration,
Zephram Stark (zephramstark(a)yahoo.com)
(432) 224-6991
__________________________________________________
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It has come to my notice that, contrary to undeletion policy, there is a
fashion on Votes for Undeletion for citing "Valid AfD" (shorthand for
"validly closed debate on Articles for Deletion"). The citation of the
undeletion policy had apparently also been edited to remove reference to the
possibility of petitioning for undeletion on the grounds that a valid
argument had been ignored.
Since Undeletion Policy is an official policy which all editors are expected
to follow, I have replaced the inaccurate description of the purpose of the
page, quoting the undeletion policy.
If there is a consensus to change official Wikipedia policy, this should be
determined by discussion widely advertised and with broad participation;
unfortunately this little corner of Wikipedia seems to harbor editors with
other ideas. If undeletion policy doesn't suit them, they just ignore it.
geni writes:
"Or we can hope that the person createing substubs (these are not subs)
will get a clue and create [[FTSE listings]]."
It isn't going to happen. Moreover it seems to run against the wiki
philosophy. Article creation is *supposed* to be cooperative. If an
editor comes along and decides something needs merging, he should do it.
He can hardly do it if someone speedies it in the meantime!
I'd take issue with your designation of the share index article as a
substub. The article was short, but that didn't stop it explaining
adequately what the index is and giving an external link as a reference
from which it could be extended indefinitely. Thus it cannot possibly be
described as a substub.
By the way, I take issue with one or two of the example substubs on the
Wikipedia:Substub article. For instance: "Anthony J. Drexel Biddle (1876
- 1948) was the man the play and film The Happiest Millionaire was based
upon" is a perfectly good stub. It gives Biddle's full name and his
lifespan, and an inkling of where you might have heard that name before
(The Happiest Millionnaire is a fictionalized biography and features
Biddle under that name). The stub is already useful in itself, and
absolutely nothing else would be required for any reasonably competent
editor to expand it indefinitely.
Once I had a go a storting out
Articles that need to be wikified. by the end of the week I had as far
as makeing sure everything starting with the letter A was either
wikified of on VFD.
Well yes, but that's because there's only one of you and the Library of
Babel is truly vast. If you found any dross in there I hope you tagged it
for deletion. If you didn't then the fact that the text wasn't (horrors!)
wikified doesn't detract so much from its informational value that this
must be viewed as a serious problem. Every article has a search box into
which the reader can type anything he wants to know about.
Dan Grey writes:
"Erm, as you can plainly see it was me who did the deed on that one! It
must've been only the third or fourth AfD I've ever closed. So if you
think I've got it wrong, you know where the undelete link is :-)"
Dan, let me first assure you that, had I also closed that debate, I would
also have felt that I had no choice but to delete, and I would have done
so without hesitation despite my personal feelings. An administrator who
ignores consensus on such a scale needs a *very* good reason, lest his
actions bring the AfD process into disrepute.
But necessarily I had to choose an article that I think most people could
be persuaded to agree probably could have benefited from, at most, some
aggressive editing. I've gone in and shaken up articles myself, it's not
so hard (see for instance the article on Biff Rose, which was an almighty
mess when I found it). If someone went down that list article and
referenced every power ballad with a source for the designation, this
would at least permit readers to make their own mind up on how valid the
designation was. That's all it would require. Four or five hundred
songs, I reckon an enthusiastic editor with a tabbing browser could get
through about 100 in an hour, if not more. I have no doubt that if I'd
done that on day one of the nomination the outcome would have been at
worst a no-consensus keep, and if I'd kept it up for the whole five days
(and I can) there would have been an overwhelming keep vote.
geni writes:
"there are a lot of ftse indexs with the exception of couple of them
merging them into one article would be the sensible thing to do."
Yes, I think that's about right. So instead of speedying an article that
didn't fall into any CSD, the RC patroller here should probably have
tagged it for merge. I don't think he did such a bad thing by speedying,
but it doesn't seem like a terribly constructive way to handle valuable
information.
Jayjg writes:
Re:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_power_…
"The example you have given seems to have been perfectly in order; the
reasons given for deletion are reasonable and policy driven."
I'm afraid we'll have to agree to differ on that. I think it's clear that
this is a case of an article requiring attention; it appears to fall into
no category on the list of problems that may require deletion.
> From: Matt Brown <morven(a)gmail.com>
>
> I'm also tired of the use of '<whatever>-cruft' as a reason for
> deletion.
> There's a certain mindset that seems to think that the existence of
> articles
> on minor but factual and verifiable topics detracts from Wikipedia.
> To that,
> I'd say: everyone's pet interest is a fringe interest to someone.
> Whether a
> Wikipedia article should exist on a topic should have nothing to do
> with how
> well one can disparage the subset of people interested in that
> particular
> topic.
>
> That said, if there's not enough to say about a topic, it might not
> deserve
> an article of its very own. I'm all in favor of e.g. grouping minor
> fictional characters together in an article 'Minor characters in
> <novel>',
> or whatever.
>
> -Matt
OK, this fool will walk in, donning asbestos suit, etc.
There are contributors, who enjoy contributing to
Wikipedia, who do not embrace or understand the
rudiments of scholarship.
Here's what I mean by "rudiments.
"List of people believed to have been affected by bipolar disorder"
which was originally just a completely unsourced
list of raw names; confirmed, plausible, asserted,
and unlikely, all mixed together. It was nominated for
deletion, and consensus was that it was OK _provided
that_ the list confined itself to names for which there
was _a verifiable source citation._ I.e. it is OK to tell the
reader that the source was Kay Redfield Jamison's book
and let the reader decide how credible Jamison is.
The opening paragraph was rewritten to say "This is a list
of people accompanied by verifiable source citations," etc.
On a fairly regular basis, people will simply add names to
the list with no explanation or citation. OR, they will add
names accompanied with statements like "he has been very
open about this" or "it's been in the news" or "One of his
songs is entitled 'Lithium.'" I've been fairly pestiferous
about removing unsourced entries, usually moving them
to Talk with an explanation, and trying to half-coach the
people who added them.
And indeed some of them have been surprised that I
mean exactly what I say, and that while "Adam Ant:
Has spoken openly on television about his condition"
will not do, a web reference to an arts.telegraph article,
"Adam and his fall," is just fine.
Other have felt that the onus was somehow on _me_
to research and provide references for the names _they_
had added, thought I was questioning their honesty
when they asserted the existence of references, etc.
Now, all this is fine as far as it goes. There are some
inexperienced contributors, I try to police the article
a bit, I try to help a bit, I try to coach a bit, some of
the inexperienced contributors "get it," some of them
don't. The article slowly improves over time. All
Wiki-good.
The problem occurs when you have a topic area that
attracts a very large volume of contributions from
editors who do _not_ get the idea of what it means
for an article to be well-researched, thorough, and
accurate.
Wikipedia depends on the notion that bad articles
will get improved. That implies a certain kind of
balance or equilibrium.
I believe the "cruft" label, which I don't like and
try to avoid using myself, is shorthand for
"topic area in which low-quality articles are being
created faster than they are being improved."
Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution
isn't clear.
Wikipedia works only when _most_ articles are
in at least a quarter-decent state, and articles
that are really just drafts or placeholders or
article _requests_ disguised as articles are a relatively
small proportion of the whole.
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
> Having a "bland" opinion doesn't mean that the opinion is incorrect.
>
> I think all schools are inherently notable. I also think all US
> Presidents are inherently notable. Both are "bland" opinions, neither
> deserves less respect than the other, but judgements about their
> correctness must be made independently.
Calling all US presidents notable can be backed up by the sheer amount
of written material on them and their profound effect on US history.
While I find education a noble thing, I don't see how that makes all
schools inherently notable and I've got no similar argument as with
presidents to back that up. The written material on schools is sparse
and often written by somone involved with the school itself, making
3rd party sources hard, if not impossible, to find. Hence, I'll look
at schools on a case by case basis.
Just a little more info to begin with would keep a lot schools out of
AFD. If the original creator added some piece of info (Famous alumni,
first school to..., or location of ...) to an otherwise common article
with basic info it would satisfy a lot of "deletionists" with regard
to notability.
I would certainly support ignoring overly vague nominations or votes
based on the category an article falls in rather than its individual
merits.
--Mgm
MacGyverMagic/Mgm writes:
"Is there any article that was wrongly deleted within
the past 3 days as a result of ignorance of the nominator or sheep
voting by others without check the article and possible sources?"
Sorry, that was my fault. I wasn't following the discussion properly and
thought it was about speedies. My apologies for dragging us briefly (if
entertainingly, at least for me) up the wrong trouser leg.
Your timescale for this is a little short, but never mind. Let's take a
look at the deletion log, this time only AfD deletes.
Well it was hard searching, because of the way in which the AfD link gets
screwed when an article is deleted. So I stopped when I reached the first
deletion that I think is rather dodgy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_power_…
Now I hate those bloated, overdramatic monstrosities that are known as
power ballads, but I cannot deny the encyclopedic value of having a list
of them. The genre is well known, and is well described in the
introduction: "a slow, quiet intro, and a gradual build to a dramatic
climax, often followed by a quiet outro. String arrangements and even
full orchestration are not uncommon. Lyrical themes tend toward romantic
yearning, loss, pain or introspection."
The article was listed for deletion on the following premise:
"Unmaintainable list. There are obviously thousands of power ballads."
Say what? The name of the article is "list of power ballads", not list of
every single power ballad ever written." In fact I estimate that the
article must have contained the name and artist details of about 400-500
songs. A valuable resource for a musicologist looking for source material
for his thesis.
Reasons for deletion given by delete voters were:
"there is no pinpointed criteria to the nomenclature". True, but life is
full of fuzzy categories. Normal editing and dispute resolution processes
can be used to resolve ambiguities and differences of opinion.
"useless and unmaintainable list " Well useless to ''most'' people. But I
find it useful if only because it gives me a list of artists and albums to
steer clear of. The claim that it's unmaintainable is contradicted by the
fact that it ''had'' been maintained, lovingly, with almost daily edits,
by several editors, ever since its creation in April.
"Kinda hopelessly POV... What is a power ballad? Is "The Time Has Come
(Pikachu's Goodbye)" a power ballad? Pika-Pika?! CHHHUUUUUU!!!! GMAFB"
Perhaps it is! Why didn't he just discuss the question on the talk page?
A neutral choice can be made by discussion. This is how Wikipedia works.
"the scope of the list is much, much broader than outlined by the power
ballad article (which is in line with the I Love the 80s definition, for
instance). I'd say cleanup, but if it's gotten this far it may be
unsalvageable/unmaintainable." If true, this is a good reason for bold
editing, not radical amputation. However the Power ballad article does
admit of the wider definition, though it claims this is less common.
Personally I'd be inclined to identify the power ballad as the mutant
offspring of soft rock and torch song, and I'd have no hesitation in
classing the works of Heart (1987, Alone) and Bonnie Tyler (1982, Total
Eclipse of the Heart), and the like as power ballads, and it's easy enough
to find credible references for these. Items for which no such reference
can be found could be removed.
"A pointless list, with no clear definition or upper limit of entries."
Seems to be a permutation of arguments already considered.
"Cleanup if possible, otherwise delete. Some songs IMO don't come under
the category of "power ballad". 50 Cent is a rapper/hip-hop artist - since
when did they write ballads? The list was good when it was uncluttered
(see page history)." This "problem" could obviously be solved by a simple
revert.
And in the keep arguments:
"Cleanup. This page doesn't seem to fall under any of the categories in
Wikipedia's "Problems that May Require Deletion" table. (See
Wikipedia:Deletion policy.) The list in itself is a useful one, (I
discovered it because I was searching for just such a list). The problem
is that incorrect information has been added to the list, 50 Cent's song
being the most blatant. Delete misleading entries and keep the list."
There you are, apparently the one person in the entire discussion who had
read and understood the deletion policy. Looking at the list of "Problems
that may require deletion", I have to agree: this article seemed to be
very far from falling into any of those categories.