On 7/20/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Its notability derives from Quackwatch.
Quackpotwatch is basically a "QuackwatchSucks.com" website. To say an
attack/hate site is notable and/or reliable simply because the site it
attacks is notable/reliable doesn't seem to match up with established
policies. Further, since Quackpotwatch is being used to source
defamatory statements about a living person, it appears to fail not
only the guidelines at [[WP:WEB]] but the official policy at
[[WP:BLP]].
Reminder that all of banned user Andrew Morrow's new edits on all parts of Wikipedia site should be reverted and removed from view. Articles started by Amorrow after he was banned need to be deleted. Some of his edits need to be removed through oversight.
It is helpful if the editor seeing the edits reverts them. But there is not a mandate for any particular editor to make these changes. If you do not have the time or the interest in dealing with this situation, you can email me and I will take care of them.
Take care,
Sydney aka FloNight
>I've asked a few times, but I'll do so again, more bluntly: How do you
>intend to encourage this, beyond occasional rants to this mailing
>list? Are we authorised to make big changes to WP:V and claim that
>Jimbo said it was ok? How far are we going with this? Is it just a
>cultural change, or policy change?
>Steve
First mailing here, not sure I have the formatting in accordance with the
norm, but hopefully it will suffice.
I would like to know the answer to this as well. The amazing ambivalence
towards uncited information in articles, even those where the lack of
citation puts the article into significant NPOV violation, is appalling. If
we could require sources on any significant addition, especially to
controversial articles, it would solve some of the content and NPOV disputes
in serious articles. It would also be of benefit in our fandom driven
articles, as stricter sourcing rules would be enable us to slash out
speculative "information" without hesitation.
I recently added a note on the Template:Fact page cautioning about its use
on biography pages, based on a message Jimbo posted here on the 12th, but
considering the way people ignored the previous caution on using it on info
that appeared false, I don't expect it to have much of an impact.
--tjstrf
_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
G'day Guettarda,
> It's nice to be able to find out what you've missed when you walk in
> half-way through an episode of 24, but it's a complete policy
> violation...
There are all sorts of reasons why our traditional approach to pop
culture is Really Super-Awesome or The Absolute Worst Thing About Us,
but "because it's a complete policy violation" ranks somewhere down near
infinity ...
Policy has its uses (for instance, brow-beating process wonks who refuse
to do the Right Thing unless it's written down in legalese and they get
a receipt in triplicate), but wringing one's hands and worrying about
whether you're living up to its demands is useless and, fortunately,
unnecessary.
Cheers,
--
Mark Gallagher
"But the visibility was very poor, and you yourself admit that you were
being struck by thunderbolts all the time, which must have distracted
your attention, so it is more than probable you were mistaken."
- Esmond Haddock, /The Mating Season/
Then I apologise, I thought I'd better show the list this spam.
On 19/07/06, Adam Lorenz <kungfuadam(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hey, I think this was spammed to many admins. I got it too.
>
> Adam
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)
So, I've been going through the endless barrel of fun that is
[[Category:Rapists]], slapping prod tags on the people of no
encyclopedic significance ("X priest got two years in jail for groping
some choirboys") and, in a couple of cases, encountering entirely
unsourced articles. Perhaps the most obvious of these was:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sedley_Alley&oldid=64313689
What ought we to do with them? I mean, policy is aggressively attack
anything unsourced that would be defamation if it was false; where
there were other avenues of notability, I've done that.
But in this case, when we remove all forms of the negative material, we get
> Sedley Alley (August 16, 1955 – June 28, 2006) was married to a military person
...which is in and of itself a candidate for speedy deletion, though I
suspect doing that would get me brickbatted for nefarious deletionism.
What I've done in the three or four cases where I ran across this was
put a prod tag on, saying that we simply cannot have any article of
this form without sources. Better, I feel, to have it deleted than to
have a dodgy article left up (even if the subject's dead, it's still
ethically iffy) I've been told this is "impatience"; I'm jumping past
normal cleanup procedures and slapping a "fix in X days or else"
warning on.
Thoughts? I'm really not convinced we have another way to deal with
things like this that actually works...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
Jimmy, I think this is a case where your famous divine intervention
might be helpful to establish a general principle, so I'd appreciate
your input.
We have Angela (Beesley) on AfD now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Angela_Beesley…
The fact that Angela does not want this article to exist has been
cited as a reason to delete. It looks like this deletion will go
through.
Two related examples are Seth Finkelstein:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Seth_Finkelste…
He also prefers the article not to exist, but nevertheless, it was
kept. Then, of course, there's Daniel Brandt.
Angela is co-founder and VP of a company that has received $4M in
funding, and hosts over 1,500 wikis, including some of the largest
ones besides Wikipedia. Seth is a noted anti-censorship activist.
Brandt is, well, Brandt.
Whatever principle we establish here, I think fairness demands that we
establish it with consistency and thoughtfulness. Special treatment
would be a dangerous precedent.
Do we want to respect people's wishes if they are borderline notable
to begin with?
If so, how do we define borderline notability?
If not, should Angela's article be deleted, or would that amount to
special treatment?
One possible answer is: We respect your wishes if you ask nicely. Is
that a fair answer, though? It is a fact that some people are, given
their psychological make-up, _incapable_ of asking nicely.
I don't have any clear answers here. Certainly, given past
experiences, I understand if some people prefer not to be mentioned on
Wikipedia. But, given that we also want to go in the direction of
changing the way Wikipedia works to increase its credibility (stable
versions etc.), is it wise to establish a precedent to keep out
material which could, theoretically, be well-maintained?
I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
Erik
While Reuters initially meant to report on [[Kenneth Lay]]'s article
on enwp and the pace of the edits on that page, it gave a nice insight
into the mechanisms of information delivery:
Version 1:
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=…
Ken Lay's death prompts confusion on Wikipedia
Wed Jul 5, 2006 8:53 PM BST167
Lay, 64, died of a heart attack early on Wednesday, a family
spokeswoman said, just six weeks after a jury found him guilty of
fraud in one of the biggest corporate scandals in U.S. history.
Version 2:
http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&story…
CORRECTED - Ken Lay's death prompts confusion on Wikipedia
Thu Jul 6, 2006 3:25 AM IST166
Lay, 64, died of an apparent heart attack, according to a pastor at
the Lay family's church in Houston. It was six weeks after a jury
found him guilty of fraud in one of the biggest corporate scandals in
U.S. history. A family spokeswoman said that Lay passed away early on
Wednesday morning in Aspen.
Version 2 contains a "sorry, we failed to make factchecking before
sending it to the wires" header:
"(Corrects and recasts paragraph two to show that a spokeswoman for
the Lay family did not give the cause of Lay's death. It was given by
another source.)"
