Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss proposed policies and guidelines and changes to existing policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.
If you have a question about how to apply an existing policy or guideline, try the one of the many Wikipedia:Noticeboards.

Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.

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Deletion of picture

Deletions like this one really distress me:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_in_Category:Statue_of_Peter_the_great_in_Moscow

This was just ordinary picture of a very interesting and notable statue on very public view in Moscow. After its deletion, the corresponding article is left bereft and fairly pointless.

I don't care about Wikimedia Commons, but can anything be done to restore this and other pictures similarly deleted to Wikipedia, and to prevent such disruptive deletions in future? I am totally in favour of recognising reasonable copyright restrictions, but the idea that pictures of such publicly accessible views can be subject to copyright (other than the photographer's own) is completely ridiculous. On a scale of anality, the people who perform these kind of deletions must out-anal virtually all other website administrators in existence. Why can't they find something useful to do instead? Really, who is bothered that we have a picture of this statue? No one. Who is harmed? No one. Who is ever going to complain or ask us to take it down? No one. 86.171.42.228 (talk) 01:13, 16 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It appears the images were deleted from Commons because under Russian law, images of the statue in question are considered derivative works, the use of which requires a license from the original creator until the expiration of the copyright. Such copyrighted images can be hosted on Wikipedia if they have a valid fair use justification, but Commons cannot host them. Novusuna ^talk 01:39, 16 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent polemic from the IP. As for Novusana, Russia is full of laws no one gives a damn about or pays the slightest attention to. It can almost be said to be a social pact (origin Peter the Great as it happens). The first place to look for this image would be the Russian wikipedia. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 09:36, 16 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a time limit on these derivative works laws or are statues from Roman times even protected this way? Dmcq (talk) 13:32, 16 (UTC) April 2014

I would point out that the relevant law in the US is similar. Images of copyrighted public artwork like Forever Marilyn can only be uploaded locally under fair use rules or with free licensing from the author as with America's Response Monument. Images of the Peter the Great statue are used on the Russian Wikipedia, but with seemingly contradictory license tags, saying the images are released under CC-BY, but under Russian law, can only be used in non-commercial applications. Mr.Z-man 15:07, 16 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I thought US Law allowed the 2-D depiction of 3-D objects because there is always the "creative element" of what angle the 2-D image will capture. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:14, 17 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In the US , a photo of a 3D work of art installed in a public location in a country where there is no freedom of panorama, where the 3d artwork is still under copyright, is a derivative work, with both the photographer's implicit copyright, and the copyright of the original statue. While the photographer can release the photo as CC-BY, that still makes the image non-free due to the artwork copyright. If we need to illustrate the copyrighted artwork (if itself is notable) we ask that a CC-BY photo be made so that we only have the artwork copyright to worry about. --MASEM (t) 02:19, 17 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

and who said copyright law was confusing....-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 03:40, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What is CC-BY? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kdammers (talk • contribs) 11:18, 30 April 2014

CC-BY is one of the Creative Commons licenses. There have been several versions - the latest is CC-BY 4.0 --Redrose64 (talk) 12:25, 30 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Notability of fictional items and tie-in sources

I hope I'm bringing this up in the right forum; if not, please feel free to move the thread accordingly. I'm also hoping I'll word my concerns as I mean to.

Minas Morgul is a fictional city in Lord of the Rings. For sourcing, the article only includes tie-in material, by which I mean books, DVDs, etc. that are already discussing LotR-related material. In other words, it is to be expected that they would discuss Minas Morgul. Based on the lack of non-tie in sources the article was brought up at AFD, resulting in a decision of No Consensus[1]. This troubles me given that none of the editors involved in the discussion were apparently willing and/or able to provide sourcing that did not involve tie-in material.

To be clear, if the tie-in material specifically discusses the larger impact of the article subject outside of the franchise in which it originated, all well and good, but that's not clear.

I'm concerned that this AFD is setting a precedent that tie-in material can be used as a basis for establishing notability, which I don't believe is appropriate. For instance, as much of a fan as I am of Star Trek, I do not believe that simply being discussed in The Star Trek Encyclopedia, or even dozens of Star Trek-related books/novels/movies/etc. should ever be considered grounds for the notability of any of the numerous subjects the book discusses.

Consequently I'd like policy to clearly establish that tie-in material does not satisfy notability concerns unless the tie-in material does in fact discuss the article subject's impact beyond its area of origination...which should be made explicitly clear within the article itself.

Pinging @Mendaliv: at their request. DonIago (talk) 13:48, 24 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

With "The Lord of the Rings"/"The Hobbit" the only true tie-in work is "The Silmarillion" written by Tolkien himself. All the other references are third-party sources and would not be normally called "tie-in" sources because they were written far separated from Tolkien. Or to put it another way, a tie-in source is not going to be an "independent" source as it is written by the original author or people directly involved with the production. Tie-in media would be a non-independent source, and alone are not appropriate for notability.

Now, there are questions remaining if those other sources are "secondary" (if they are just redocumenting the books without any additional original thought or analysis they are at best tertiary, perhaps primary, but definitely not secondary). There is also question if they are "reliable", both also facets in considering sources for notability. I don't make any claim for those if they are or are not good enough but clearly those aren't "tie-in" works. --MASEM (t) 14:16, 24 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies if "tie-in" wasn't the correct term to use, hopefully my concerns are clear to anyone reviewing the thread nonetheless.

I suspect the books would be reliable in terms of, say, discussing Minas Morgul's significance within the LotR body of work, but the point of this thread is whether such books discuss Minas Morgul in an out-of-universe context. DonIago (talk) 14:32, 24 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I will say that looking at the article that there is something wrong with the sources as the only out-of-universe discussion was how Minas Morgul was depicted in the recent LOTR films (Which is more about the films, and less about the fictional aspects of the city) and not the importance of the actual city to the work. I do think that that's a tricky issue to conclude from how little the AFD brought, so its hard to say that the AFD closed "Wrong". But that said, this is a tip of the iceberg problem - I was going to say that this is a prime candidate to merge into a larger "locations in middle earth" article but find that we have Outline of Middle-earth which spot-checking has dozens of articles in similar or worst shape, each able to attempting to latch onto the LOTR films to provide the location or other aspect notable. That's a problem in terms of notability of the location, not the film's representation of the location. --MASEM (t) 15:11, 24 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for investigating this further. I'm a little concerned we're getting a little too focused on LotR...while there are, as you noticed, a number of potentially problematic articles there, I think the problem exists in a more broad context. For instance, we've got List of Star Trek planets (C–F), where the "references" are the episodes in which the planets appear and little else. I feel we need a general policy regarding what I initially referred to as "tie-in" sources to make it clear that with regards to the Wikipedia definition of notability, such sources are not applicable. Granted the article I just linked to is a List, but even lists are supposed to have inclusion criteria, not "every planet that ever appeared in Star Trek". I would hope we could all agree that even if all of the planets were listed in The Star Trek Encyclopedia that would not in and of itself make them more notable. DonIago (talk) 15:43, 24 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This has LONG been a problem at Wikipedia... The major problem is outlined at WP:INUNIVERSE, Wikipedia articles should write about fictional concepts as though they are fictional, and provide an out of universe perspective. If things worked write, ONLY those fictional subjects which were themselves subject to reliable third-party analysis completely independent from the work they were created for would be subjects of their own articles. If all we have to rely on is the actual works of fiction the characters appear in, we have no source for out-of-universe writing, and properly the concept shouldn't be at Wikipedia, it should be transwikied to Wikia (e.g. Wookiepedia, Memory Alpha, One Wiki To Rule them All, etc.) However, this is one of those "practice overrules policy" things, there's SO much of this stuff at Wikipedia, and a lot of it is pretty well cared for, that in practice there's no way to get rid of it. Years ago, there was even a guideline of sorts called the Pokémon test to give some guidance as to what sorts of fictional items should be subjects of stand-alone articles. --Jayron32 17:35, 24 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In previous deletion discussions, I've successfully argued that comprehensive, in-universe guides do not establish notability. Perhaps this could be explicitly stated somewhere, but I'm not entirely sure where. Maybe someone could resurrect the attempt to pass WP:NFICT. WP:LSC would work for lists, but it seems a bit specific to speak explicitly about fictional works. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 00:40, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- With the presumption that bringing a NFICT to consensus is near impossible, we could use WAF to explain how to avoid using recapping guides extensively, and other related issues. --MASEM (t) 00:47, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'd really prefer that whatever we put together be a policy rather than a guideline...but at this point I also think anything would be an improvement over nothing. I was rather surprised by the outcome of the AFD and it troubled me that there was nothing to fall back on to establish that the sources being provided were insufficient for notability purposes...but I imagine I'm stating the obvious. DonIago (talk) 02:23, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:N itself is not a policy, so it would be strange if a clarification of how to interpret it were policy. --Trovatore (talk) 02:48, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind. :p DonIago (talk) 04:02, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have argued that the sources barely meet notability guidelines and would have suggested a merge, on the weakness of the secondary nature of the sources on the fictional location as written by Tolkien. The only reason sources that are good for notability talk about the city as shown in the movie, and that's not the same. Unfortunately we can't repeat the AFD (DRV wouldn't accept it), but I do think that there is merge possibilities --MASEM (t) 04:06, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with Masem; editors need to more easily accept the result of merging as opposed to delete/keep. There is some content of value here, some not, but it could easily be covered in a longer, more suitable article (which probbaly exists) called "Geography of Middle-Earth", or some such. Articles like this kind get more edits, and therefore more eyes to keep quality up and vandalism down. --Nick Penguin_(contribs) 11:38, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would have been fine with merging...in fact I started a discussion at WT:AFD to make the discussion pages for AFDs more friendly and provide a basic explanation of the common options; unfortunately, despite apparent agreement with my view that discussion seems to have stalled. I also would have been fine with keeping the article provided sources were added that provided a real-world context. Merging was brought up during the deletion discussion but apparently failed to gather any momentum. As it is, I fear the article will remain in its unsatisfactory (IMO) state indefinitely. DonIago (talk) 12:54, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Merger suggestions often go unnoticed in AFD debates... the "inclusionists" and the "exclusionists" among us are often too focused on saving/destroying the article to even consider that there may be a third option.

Perhaps what is needed is a separate WP:AfM (Articles for Merger) process page... where that third option is the sole focus of the discussion from the beginning. Blueboar (talk) 15:02, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is a page called Wikipedia:Proposed mergers. Would this suggestion be different enough to warrant an additional page?--67.70.140.89 (talk) 17:35, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

PM's existed but it suffers the problems of not being well advertized (a feature that Deletion Sorting helps to attracted commentors) and doesn't have weight of admin closures behind it, even though a merger should not require admin power. --MASEM (t) 18:51, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

PMs could be closed by admins, just like AFDs that end in merge or keep are already closed by non-admins.

Deletion Sorting could probably be expanded to cover merges, but WikiProject clean up listings like this one already list all merge-tagged articles. It might be more helpful to get them listed at Article alerts. WP:Requested moves are already listed there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So...I guess I'm left wondering a) whether anything should be done specifically with regards to Minas Morgul and b) whether there's anything we can do to keep this from coming up again. DonIago (talk) 13:22, 30 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for not dropping in here until now, finals kind of crept up on me. My general feeling is that notability isn't exactly the right way to address this. As was stated above, the Pokémon test might provide some guidance, but I think it would be even more instructive to look at the policy arguments that were made later, when the Pokémon test was deprecated (i.e., when all the sundry Pokémon articles were merged to the master list article). I'm not sure where that discussion took place though, but I think the same general policy considerations should be equally applicable. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 05:03, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We do clearly need more clarity on this; there's an tremendous amount of fan-geeky stuff on WP that belongs on fandom wikis (BattlestarWiki, Memory Alpha, etc.) and is not encyclopedic in WP's sense. I don't see that this VPP discussion will achieve that, but it at least suggests that figuring out where to make a more formal proposal should be the next step. I'm thinking WT:N is where that should be discussed. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 20:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

First mentions of place names should mention the country

As a Singaporean reader and editor of the English Wikipedia, I chanced upon a newly-promoted good article about a bridge in "Bridgeport, Connecticut" and initially thought that Connecticut was a country. To reduce systemic bias and make the English Wikipedia more accessible to its global readership, I am proposing a policy that the first mentions of place names should include the country, except when obvious from context. --Hildanknight (talk) 02:47, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

While I can understand your perspective, I think that it's safe to say that Wikipedia has always assumed a minimal level of general knowledge in its readership - or has assumed that readers that don't have sufficient knowledge will understand how to look up things they don't know, when it matters to them. Possibly assuming that readers will know where Connecticut is might be asking too much, but would 'New York, the United States', or 'New Delhi, India' really be necessary for the majority of our leaders? Telling readers too much may tend to drown the significant in the insignificant, and make comprehensibility worse rather than better. Judicious Wikilinking will help, clearly, though again overlinking is best avoided. To some extent it is a judgement call, depending on context, and I have to say that hard and fast rules seldom make for good writing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:18, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I totally agree with Hildanknight: countries must be named on first used on the first sentence of every article on a geographic place or organization. Most United States states are very little known. --NaBUru38 (talk) 01:49, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly the problem is much larger then US articles. There are plenty of articles out there that provide no context for where the place is in the first sentence. So yes, something needs to be done, but the US articles are the least of the problem. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:04, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@AndyTheGrump: @NaBUru38: @Vegaswikian: Is there any existing policy or guideline on this issue? This problem occurs most often for the USA, but also happens for other countries, such as Canada and England. Hence any policy or guideline on this issue should apply equally to all countries. We should not assume that Western readers would know the major cities of China, India, Japan or Russia. The "except when obvious from context" cavaet is intended to prevent "hard and fast rules". For example, for an article listing electoral districts in New York, it is sufficient for the first sentence of the lead to mention that New York is in the United States. No reasonable reader would argue that the country should be repeated in the first mention of each district. --Hildanknight (talk) 03:05, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed wording for the Subject preference RfC at the WP:NCP talk page

Over a month ago an RfC on subject preference was initiated at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#RfC: Subject preference.

In one of the subsections of that RfC a new wording to be included in the guideline is proposed: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#Approach.

It was suggested to avoid mere local consensus, so this proposal has been listed at Template:Centralized discussion.

Feel free to chime in! --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:45, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No one needs free knowledge in Esperanto

There is a current discussion on German Wikipedia on a decision of Asaf Bartov, Head of WMF Grants and Global South Partnerships, Wikimedia Foundation, who rejected a request for funding a proposal from wikipedians from eowiki one year ago with the explanation the existence, cultivation, and growth of the Esperanto Wikipedia does not advance our educational mission. No one needs free knowledge in Esperanto. On meta there has also started a discussion about that decision. --Holder (talk) 09:51, 5 May 2014 (UTC) [reply]

WP:MULTI, people. Discuss at Meta please.

I am minded to agree. doktorb _words^deeds 11:20, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Esperanto truly is the Power Glove of languages. Reyk _YO! 11:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Inasmuch as Esperanto is no-one's native language (and the same applies to the various 'dead' languages that also have Wikipedias), I can see a point. Any Esperanto speaker will have another language in which they are more fluent already. These non-native language Wikipedias are fun projects or academic projects. They are not necessary for spreading the availability of knowledge. Peridon (talk) 17:30, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Actually there are native Esperanto speakers. --cyclopia ^speak! 17:54, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Mobile site strapline

Hi. I've started a request for comments at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Mobile site strapline. Any and all are welcome to participate. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:39, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Current consensus for a specific infobox, might affect all infoboxes

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump § Current consensus for a specific infobox, might affect all infoboxes

– Redrose64 (talk) 10:53, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Theres currently a discussion for change for infobox to use template:ubl and/or template:flatlist at template:Infobox album for the issues of WP:ACCESS and MOS:LIST shown here at Template talk:Infobox album#Consistency. Since this reasoning doesn't apply to specific infoboxes but "ALL" of them, i thought it was best to bring it here for not only a wider consensus, but if it passes or fail, the consensus will optimize wikipedia. Lucia Black (talk) 09:10, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Request for temp sysop, but more specific a new special user right

I am requesting a new special user right be established for the right to view and restore deleted material. I am active on DRV and see many articles whose decision can be reverse. It would be easier for me be able to see this articles beforehand be make a better assessment. Valoem ^talk ^contrib 13:44, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Back in the old day, the need for accessing deleted material was my primary motivation for seeking adminship, this was when becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*., not sure if that is still the case though. Have you considered undertaking the journey to adminship? Can you expand on why a new special user right for non-admins is a better choice then only giving the right to admins? JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 14:19, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]