Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals pages, or – for assistance – at the help desk, rather than here, if at all appropriate. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Proposals: policy	other	Discussions	Ideas
RfC on adding example to "case-by-case" exception to OUTING policy, for links to paid editing sites like Elance, for COI/SPA discussions Proposal to enable HTTPS by default for all readers Several new proposals to reform the appeals process for banned or long-term blocked users. Note: inactive discussions, closed or not, should be archived.
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Mischievous Easter Egg , found after five and a half years

Talk:Arthur_Jensen

Revision as of 18:19, 11 August 2009 146.244.138.85 "conceptual learning, or synthesizing ability, occurs with significantly greater frequency in whites than in blacks. He suggested that from the data, one might conclude that on average, white Americans are more intelligent than African-Americans.ref http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0001/ai_2699000187 Encyclopedia of Psychology ref"

Revision as of 16:01, 12 August 2009 69.112.3.52 "conceptual learning, or synthesizing ability, occurs with significantly greater frequency in Asians than in whites. He suggested that from the data, one might conclude that on average, Asian Americans are more intelligent than white Americans.<ref http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0001/ai_2699000187 Encyclopedia of Psychology ref"

single contrib by 69.112.3.52 reference is now a dead link.

Five and a half years, is that a record? And what race might you be, 69? GangofOne (talk) 02:05, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

It's not unusual to find really long-lasting vandalism like that, especially on the less well-trafficked articles. Sometimes it causes a problem where external sources have used the false information, leading future editors to re-add the information. In those cases I'll add a hidden note explaining the situation. One slight defense to this is to use the |quote= parameter of the cite templates so people know exactly what text is being quoted. If the vandal only changes the text in one spot, the mismatch is a clue that something is amiss. Jason Quinn (talk) 08:49, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

While I cant be bothered to trawl through the sources right now, it could be the case that it wasnt vandalism at all. Jensen's successors Hernstein and Murray definitely argued that Asian Americans are more intelligent on average than white Americans. So it wouldn't be surprising if Jensen made both the original claim and the Mr/Ms 69's claim in the now dead linked article. Bosstopher (talk) 21:31, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

World Heritage Encyclopedia

I accidentally run into this super-aggregator of encyclopedias when loooking into Stevens County, Washington: the WHE page looks like a complete rip-off of ours. Two problems:

• WHE does not have reference to Wikipedia as source (nor vice versa :-)
• Wikipedia has several references to WHE and the number will grow, since WHE seems to be a 2014 project. This poses a famous problem of circular referencing.

What is the best venue in wikipedia to discuss the issue? Staszek Lem (talk) 20:49, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

P.S. I figured out myself to post an expanded text at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#World Heritage Encyclopedia. Any other venues to be alerted? Staszek Lem (talk) 21:03, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

WP:MCQ may be helpful. Also, emailing info-en-c@wikimedia.org may be useful. --Jayron32 21:31, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

No. I am not interested how to handle copyrights in wikipedia. I am interested how to handle suspected violations of wikipedia copyright by other websites. Staszek Lem (talk) 23:36, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

The stuff in Wikipedia is simply not copyrighted. Anybody can use it. GeorgeLouis (talk) 00:02, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

If you don't know the subject clearly, please don't answer. Yes, wikipedia is copyrighted. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:45, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Try for WP:Civility. I am confused, then: What is this section, concerning trademarks and copyrights, all about? Thanks. GeorgeLouis (talk) 01:00, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

It's about how Wikipedia is copyrighted, but the content is licensed for use by (just about) everyone. Anomie⚔ 10:30, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, when you view a page, at the bottom you will find the message "Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use ..." (it comes from this page); and when you make an edit, you are shown this message. Notice in particular the links to Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The text of that license indicates that Wikipedia is copyrighted. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:55, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks#Non-compliance process it one suggestion for how to go about trying to get it resolved. Anomie⚔ 10:30, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. According to your link, WHE ic compliant after all: there is no requirement to have the word "Wikipedia" , it is sufficient to have a link to it somewhere, which WHE has (concealed). Staszek Lem (talk) 21:23, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

A Wikipedia Profile

For quite some while have I encountered that my search engine, Google, comes up with the usual variety of websites to a keyed in search but will not allow me to go any further than Wikipedia. It is Wikipedia, only, that immediately opens up upon my command; almost every other website opens up delayed by ten to twenty minutes. I have been wondering if this means that a virus is in my Wikipedia or if it means that someone wants my browsing activity to be dominated by Wikipedia and has therefore blocked almost all other sites, which would be censorship, not of Wikipedia but censorship for the promotion of Wikipedia. If this were the case, has anybody ever heard of anything like it? What kind of profile would be established or assumed by a browsing history of almost exclusively Wikipedia? Cornelia T. Bradford — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:3299:C080:B59E:27F7:4094:A29F (talk) 00:37, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I tried; I have no problem. Wikipedia even not the first when I search "copyright laws". When asking such questions, please tell which device are you using (computer, tablet, iPhone, etc.), operation system, search engine, and search string.

But what I noticed is that google sorts my results; e.g. there is a group titled "In-depth articles" I've never seen before. May be google is experimenting with engine. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:54, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Big Brother 8 (Albania)

Big Brother 8 (Albania)#Housemates section is in Albanian, but I do not know how to tag this article or section for foreign language text. Please provide help.--DThomsen8 (talk) 18:14, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

@Dthomsen8: As a minimum, mark it {{notenglish|section|date=March 2015}}. You could also list it at WP:PNT; see also WP:RFT. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:46, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Elements of the NYPD caught using IP addresses to subvert the wikipedia's integrity?

Journalists have found that the New York City Police Department had close to 100 IP addresses which made questionable edits to articles that covered cases where the NYPD was involved, that seemed intended to mislead the wikipedia's readers.

• Kelly Weill (2015-03-13). "Edits to Wikipedia pages on Bell, Garner, Diallo traced to 1 Police Plaza". Capital New York. Retrieved 2015-03-13. Computer users identified by Capital as working on the NYPD headquarters' network have edited and attempted to delete Wikipedia entries for several well-known victims of police altercations, including entries for Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo. Capital identified 85 NYPD addresses that have edited Wikipedia, although it is unclear how many users were involved, as computers on the NYPD network can operate on the department’s range of IP addresses. 

To what extent should the documented efforts of NYPD IP addresses to edit the articles on Eric Garner, Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo contain coverage of elements of the NYPD attempting to subvert the wikipedia's integrity?

Question: What advice should we give to off-duty NYPD officers, who want to edit articles that cover accusation of abuse by other NYPD officers? Should their user page out them as an NYPD officer? Should they be told they need to read WP:COI prior to editing any article that touches on the NYPD?

These articles should probably be locked so only registered contributors can contribute to them. Geo Swan (talk) 18:10, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

@Geo Swan: I find that Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide is easier to understand than WP:COI. GoingBatty (talk) 22:28, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Seems to go beyond COI and to meat puppetry. Chillum 22:31, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Slate magazine on the arbitration committee's ruling WRT gamergate...

Amanda Marcotte, reporting in Slate magazine described on-going controversy in wikipedia's coverage of the Gamergate controversy. In her account anti-feminist vandals, in violation of various policies, unfairly used the wikipedia to attack feminist critics of computer games -- and, in its ruling, the arbitration committee applied sanctions to both the vandals and certain vandal fighters.

After agreeing that, eventually, the work of the POV-pushing vandals was undone, she concluded:

Still, Wikipedia lost the very people who were trying to guard the gates in the first place. What happens to the next victim of a Wikipedia harassment campaign if the defenders are getting squeezed out through this pox-on-both-your-houses system?

I think Marcotte's criticism deserves attention. I have personally been harassed by very persistent uncivil POV-pushing edit-warriors, who were eventually blocked for policy violations. When the most persistent of these POV vandals was eventually indefinitely blocked, so was a good contributor, who had merely been trying to undo the vandal's policy violations. Geo Swan (talk) 19:08, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

• Amanda Marcotte (2013-03-06). "On Wikipedia, Gamergate Refuses to Die". Slate magazine. Retrieved 2015-03-14. 

High islandic

Hi all, I am busy reviving a previously deleted article on NL Wikipedia on High Icelandic. Here its a redirect, but it exists as real articles on a lot of other Wikipedia's, even Icelandic. It has a history of spamming. I have the impression that due to the fact this article exists on Wikipedia, the constructed language from the 1990s still remains a bit alive. Almost all websites about it have disappeared. Is there a scientific evidence, that Wikipedia itself creates a new sort of "truth". And could this language be a sign of this? Could you provide any sources of this happening in more cases? Pieter1 (talk) 12:59, 17 March 2015 (UTC)