Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 25

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Copyright compliance

Per request I am posting a notification of a bot request Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MBisanzBot 2 that will remove non-compliant copyrighted logos owned by the WMF from userpages per our non-free content policy. Please add comments or questions to the Request page. MBisanz ^talk 09:59, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Stopping search engines from indexing the user talk namespace?

See User talk:Pseudomonas#PseudoBot's warnings for background on this. Many speedy deletion notification templates, such as Template:Nn-warn, include the article title in their output. Removing this would make the templates quite confusing - "Your article, the article-that-must-not-be-named is up for speedy deletion...". The problem is that user talk pages are indexed by Google, and Google ranks Wikipedia quite highly. If I was promoting something, I wouldn't like the top Google hit for it to be some random Wikipedia page about the thing being deleted off the site, especially if I had nothing to do with the article's creation. When I am searching for a conversation, I usually remember which page it is on, so I rarely have to use a search engine to find user talk pages. The user talk namespace can be searched with Wikipedia's internal search engine by typing "user_talk:<Search string>" like this. I can't think of a reason not to exclude user talk pages from search engine indexes. Graham87 10:06, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

One argument for continuing the present situation is that Google's search engine is better than Wikipedia's internal search engine. But there are clearly good arguments in favor of changing this - see, for example, this Wikimedia Foundation blog posting about privacy in general. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:11, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

On the surface, this doesn't seem like a bad idea. I often find Wikipedia user pages in my Google search results and they are, for the most part, useless. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 01:56, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

This proposal makes sense. As for the 'their search engine is better than our search engine' I can only add that their search engine doesn't appear to index talk pages any better than our search engine. :)

Btw, in the foundation blog Cary Bass suggested filing a bug report. Has anyone done this yet? All I could find were requests to exclude talk pages of anon and blocked users (i.e. more reasons to block user talk pages), and to inhibit archiving of all talk pages. -- Fullstop (talk) 02:19, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I've filed a bug at bug 13890. Google doesn't index Wikipedia talk pages on its own volition - our robots.txt file doesn't mention them. Here's a [permanent link to the blog post mentioned above. Graham87 07:22, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to change the instructions at Requests for Adminship

The proposal and discussion can be found at Template talk:RfA#Proposal to change the following sentence.

The Transhumanist 19:30, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

feedback from readers?

Argh, I've made a liar of myself now! But this really will be my last proposal for now :-)

I'm just wondering if articles should have a place where readers can submit any concerns they have about them, ie anything from poor spelling/grammar to factual inaccuracy, etc etc (this could potentially be an alternative to my other proposal of offering more information to novices on how to edit pages).

I thought of this as a bit of a spin-off of my concerns re POV tags above, as I was thinking perhaps readers could register concerns about non-neutrality of articles, but I now think it could have a much wider application.

Any thoughts on this one? Jonathanmills (talk) 17:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

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I think it would be great. Kevin Baas^talk 18:00, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the vote of support, Kevin! :-)

I like your template, although I had in mind something more like:

"If you believe this article contains spelling/grammar errors, factual innacuracies, or a lack of neutrality [etc etc], please register your concerns here." Jonathanmills (talk) 18:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and that should probably be 'spelling/grammatical errors' ;-) Jonathanmills (talk) 18:12, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The talk page serves this function already. -kotra (talk) 18:27, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. If you want to "talk about" as page, you go to its "talk page". Simple, really. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:32, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Anyone else remember when Yahoo news stories used to have "discussion" pages? To describe what went on there as trolling would be putting it mildly. I shudder to think what the discussion sections of George W. Bush or Islam would look like. Right now, we can pretty much keep a handle on this on the talk page by cutting stuff out that doesn't seek to improve the article, it would be a much more difficult task to keep a "What do you think" section constructive. AlexiusHoratius (talk) 19:58, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikinews articles do have discussion pages. I don't think this should be brought into wikipedia though since we are an encylopaedia Nil Einne (talk) 20:03, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

There are times where I wish I could discuss the topic, rather than the article. I think as long as we kept true to WP:CIVIL, it could work. *shrug* EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:26, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree, talk pages are already a good place to leave feedback for the most part. We don't even need separate section. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 20:43, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, on second thought, I think it might be a good idea to have one for Wikipedia in general. Wait a minute, that's what Village Pump is! What if we were to move Village Pump to Wikipedia:Feedback? GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 20:46, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

It maybe wouldn't be such a bad idea to have something like that for developers to see. I think it would be a fantastic idea to have something that says "Rate this article" on the side of the screen like the ones at Wiktionary and Uncyclopedia. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 00:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I think this suggestion could be substantially different from talk pages. That's one reason I suggested the template that i did. If people could have a simpler, more direct means to entire comments about the article, I think we'd get a lot more feedback. My template, above, is for at the bottom of the page - so they can't miss it. And you don't have to browse to another page, you just type right there - and you don't feel compelled to wait for a response. you just type and click. the purpose of it would be completely different. it would be a means of customer review, rather than a means of coordinating changes and improvements to the article. It would be closer to a rating system (how many stars?) than a discussion page - but it would be a free-form system, which could be much more helpful. Kevin Baas^talk 14:44, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Like I say, my idea was to allow a place to register concerns about actual errors/problems (whether in language, matters of fact or issues of non-neutrality) rather than a general comments page. It could function as a sort of e-form where boxes are ticked and a one-line description of the concern is entered. Does anyone have any thoughts on that idea? Jonathanmills (talk) 00:53, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

That's really what the talk page is for, though. -- Kesh (talk) 14:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Kesh. Yeah, I think my idea is partly based on what I've suggested in my proposal above ('Explanation for Wiki novices'), in that I do believe there are many people out there who won't even get to that stage (ie going to the talk page) unless it is 'formally introduced' to them (for want of a better expression).

But beyond that, I think it could serve a useful purpose for readers who don't have the time or inclination to go to the talk page but just want to highlight the presence of errors/non-neutrality.

Cheers for your feedback. Jonathanmills (talk) 16:54, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

You know what, one could just put a text box at the bottom of the article like the template above, and when the comment is submitted, it creates a new section on the talk page and puts the comment there. This would solve the argument about the suggestion being redundant w/talk pages. And it would be very simple to implement. It also more clearly shows the intention of it in relation to talk pages: to provide a more quicker and more visible mechanism of getting reader feedback - and thus to get more feedback.

It might, in fact, get too much feedback, filling up the talk page, making it difficult to carry on a discussion. The obvious solution to this would be to have it stored and displayed separately. Hence the original proposal. Kevin Baas^talk 15:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Images proposal

I have made a new proposal regarding images here Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#New_proposal_on_images - I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, advice etc. Thanks Gustav von Humpelschmumpel (talk) 20:48, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

"Watchlist" terminology clarification

Wikipedia pages use the term "watchlist" for two very different things:

• The list of pages being watched
• The list of edits that have been just been done to the pages being watched

I propose that the first be called the "watchlist", as is the case now, and the second be consistently called the "watchlist report". Consider how the "Watchlist" tab in "my preferences" should read (these are six options, each with a checkbox in front of it):

• Hide my edits from the watchlist report
• Hide bot edits from the watchlist report
• Hide minor edits from my watchlist report
• Add pages I create to my watchlist
• Add pages I edit to my watchlist
• Add pages I move to my watchlist

Now remove the word "report" from the first three items. Much more confusing, yes? But that's the way it reads now (note the attempt to make a distinction by saying "the watchlist" rather than "my watchlist"; very subtle). Similarly, Special:Watchlist generates something called "My watchlist", but it should really be called "My watchlist report" (or just "Watchlist report"). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:38, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I never considered it ambiguous, as the first three options refer to types of edits, the latter three refer to auto-add conditions, and they can't be reasonably thought of the other way around. However, if this is a common misunderstanding, I'd support rephrasing the first three to "from watched changes", since that's how the watchlist itself distinguishes Special:Watchlist from its /edit and /edit/raw versions. --erachima talk 00:18, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

As yes, "watched changes". Somehow I think "display watchlist report" is more understandable than "display watched changes". But at least we agree that there is are inconsistencies in what things are called. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:27, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

We should allow original research (with certain constraints)

I propose adding an "analysis" tab to every mainspace article. The purpose of this Analysis page is to have a place where users can write original research about the article topic, however, with the following constraints:

• wp:verifiability applied more strictly than on article page. All assumptions made in analysis essays must be verifiable, but conclusions can be original research. Unsourced assumptions should be removed, even if uncontroversial.
• Any conclusions reached in the analysis page must be relevant to a specific statement in the article page.
• Empirical data must come from reliable sources. Users are not allowed to include surveys they have conducted themselves, for instance.
• WP:neutral still applies.

I feel that a lot of useful information has disappeared from wikipedia since it began its heavy-handed crackdown on original research. It's a shame, because three or four years ago the best part of many wikipedia articles was often the original research. It was often the reason I came to Wikipedia and not a traditional medium. So many articles have become so ... dry since then. Often users have made well-reasoned, well backed-up arguments. Why should wikipedia remove those arguments simply because a scholar hasn't bothered to publish them in a traditional medium yet? I know that technically this would go beyond an the scope of an encyclopedia, but wikipedia is not about emulating a paper encyclopedia, it is about spreading knowledge. Cambrasa 02:19, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that such a proposal can really go beyond larval stage, WP:OR has become one of the key policies in terms of content quality, I don't even want to imagine what effect this will have on some articles, particulary the fiction ones. - Caribbean~H.Q. 02:25, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Just to expand on the above comment, what I meant was that the introduction of a "analysis page" in some fictional topics will undoubtly just leave us with massive forums of endless fanboy theories and other fanfics, it would be a huge mess in those that cover extremely popular characters or shows. - Caribbean~H.Q. 02:30, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

if it meets an even stricter standard of WP:V, how is it original research? Johnbod (talk) 02:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

The conclusions are original research, not the assumptions. For example, a study published in a reputable journal would be allowed to be used as a criticism of a statement in the article. There would be no more requirement that the connection has been made by a notable person. Cambrasa 11:35, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:RSs are not required to be produced by the notable, but I suppose I see what you are getting at. Johnbod (talk) 16:26, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

to do this right would require editors of acknowledged competence capable of evaluating the quality and of the article. As our editors are not screened, this cannot be done. There are other projects where the editors are, and this way of working might be appropriate there. DGG (talk) 13:05, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I am opposed to this idea for two reasons. One, it would greatly complicate Wikipedia, adding extra bureaucracy and distracting from our goal. Two, it is beyond the scope of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the sum of all human knowledge, not the sum of all human opinions. This might work on another project, but not here. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 22:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems a bizarre distinction to me, that opinions published in journals and newspapers are considered "knowledge" and allowed in Wikipedia, but opinions by Wikipedia users are not. What makes the journal editor so much more trustworthy than the Wikipedia editor? Sure, journals have peer review, but so does Wikipedia, and the majority of "opinions" published in journals are junk too. Cambrasa 15:12, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

• I apologise if I seem dense, but if a statement is verifiable (and attributable to a reliable source), then it is not original research — at least as far as I can see. — Thomas H. Larsen 04:29, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Again: The "analysis" page is not simply a collection of verifiable statements, it a page that allows conlusions to derived from those statements. Basically it is a place where WP:SYN should be legalised. Cambrasa 15:01, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

To respond to Cambrasa's comparison of wikipedia editors and journal editors: while it is true that the WP editor may be as knowledgeable, or even more so, than any given editor in a journal, WP is not set up to prove expertise or even to confirm real-life identities. A significant part of giving weight to, or ascribing merit to, conclusions is the reputation of the person drawing them. WP's "peer review", for example, is often merely a review by any passing editor who takes a shine to the title. "Peer review" in a journal is a review by acknowledged experts in the specific field. WP may have such experts, but has no real way of identifying them. ៛ Bielle (talk) 15:45, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

And, to state the obvious, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia - of human knowledge -- not a journal. There's a big difference.Doug Weller (talk) 23:39, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

You say that the analysis has to be neutral, however that's extremely difficult to achieve. Confirmation bias would be almost unavoidable, I expect. --Tango (talk) 23:45, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

This is a recipe for disaster. We already have enough problems in fiction articles and articles which attract controversy like Global warming and Evolution or even something in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (let alone articles on psychics and stuff). Can you imagine the amount of problems that will occur if people are allowed to add what junk conclusions they want? At the current time, we just have to deal with the often silly conclusions drawn from various sources but these conclusions at least usually come from experts and undue is usually relatiely easy to establish there. Allowing every person in the street to add their own conclusion is just a recipe for disaster. Nil Einne (talk) 09:48, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Despite my initial sympathy for Cambrasa's proposal to accommodate what might be called "original deductions" (I'm interested in paleontology, where the fossil record is very stingy with evidence; occasionally the academic papers propose ideas that are based on the limited evidence but fly in the face of well-accepted wider biological principles), I oppose the proposal for exactly the reasons that Nil Einne has just stated. Philcha (talk) 10:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

The analysis would not simply allow every conceivable conclusion. It would only allow sound, logically consistent, well articulated and well-backed up conclusions. Consensus would decide which conclusions are sound and which aren't. A balance of supporting and opposing conclusions should be presented for a contentious topic. This arleady works in article space, despite people adding junk all the time. Why should it not work in "analysis" space? Remember, 4-5 years ago Wikipedia did not have the clear policies for style, neutrality, verifiablity, etc. that it has now. Yet users still managed to reach an agreement organically, and the policies crystallised over the years. I believe that a similar set of policies would eventually emerge for the "analysis" pages, and those would prevent disaster. Cambrasa confab 08:51, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, let's play fair and balanced! From the "Wikipedia is not censored" point of view, this fits Wikipedia policy perfectly. However, from the common sense point of view, a policy like this would probably support the unreliability theory; this could potentially open the door for false information on Wikipedia. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 19:51, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. I'm against it for all the reasons already mentioned. Let Google Knol deal with this sort of stuff. We can consider admitting original research once we have a reliable encyclopedia and nowhere to go. --Adoniscik^{(t, c)} 04:27, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

And one more thing

I hope it's not bad form to raise two proposals at once!

But I just wanted to also voice my concern that there appears to be no real sanction on even quite blatant violations of 'Wikiquette'. IE, despite the directives on 'no personal attacks', 'being civil', etc, editors who blatantly ignore them face no punishment (or very small punishment, only when the behaviour reaches a total extreme).

I think the tone of debate would improve immeasurably on certain talk pages if, through judicious use of 24-hour blocks (gradually extending for repeat offenders), editors were made aware that they in fact *had* to stick to 'Wikiquette' rather than choose to ignore it.

And as I said in my previous post, I don't want to adopt a self-righteous tone here. I would be more than happy to receive the odd 24-hour block if I stepped out of line, if it meant others faced the same rules.

Anyone who thinks this isn't necessary IMHO needs to check out the tone on some of the more heated pages, and the quality of article that comes from them.

Again, any thoughts on this from anyone? Jonathanmills (talk) 01:40, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

My thoughts on this issue are "Welcome to Wikipedia." Its the way the cookie crumbles, and the only solution is to grow a thick skin. In the long run you'll be respected for it. Incidentally, this page is not the right place for your questions :) You can either ask on your own talk page and add {{help}} (someone will be along shortly), or ask at Wikipedia:New contributors' help page. -- Fullstop (talk) 02:23, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Erm... not sure about this Fullstop. I thought this was a proposal page? I am making a proposal, not just asking for clarification... But I beg your pardon if I've misunderstood what you're saying.

As for the 'welcome to Wikipedia'... hmm... I don't know why allowing poor behaviour (stuff that is specifically, but toothlessly, warned against) is, or should be, integral to Wikipedia. If editors have to be 'thick-skinned', as you put it, it is inevitably going to diminish the number who will bother (at the very least), which seems to me a fairly bad outcome.

I don't consider myself thin-skinned at all, but I believe the quality of articles suffers (not least in terms of neutrality) when personal attacks, uncivil tone etc are allowed to flourish.

And now I REALLY have to go to bed. ;-) Jonathanmills (talk) 02:42, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

We have a page for Wikiquette alerts, and administrators frequently get reports of harassment and attacks there and at WP:ANI. We do block users for blatant and/or repeated civility breaches, especially after they've been warned to stop. If you're having problems working with users, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution or report the situation to one of the pages linked previously. However, Fullstop is to some degree correct - things frequently get heated, and as I said, we only apply blocks in severe situations, not to cool situations down. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 04:02, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, Hersfold.

When you write, "Fullstop is to some degree correct - things frequently get heated, and as I said, we only apply blocks in severe situations, not to cool situations down", I know that, and it is that policy which I am suggesting needs changing -- ie, punishment needs to kick in at a much lower level than currently, and get more progressively more severe for repeat offences.

This is because I think one of the most glaring flaws in today's Wikipedia is that it is far too easy for articles on controversial subjects to get 'hijacked' by a group of like-minded editors who have no interest in writing things in a neutral, encyclopaedic manner, and a hostile, bullying tone on talk pages means people lose interest in trying to improve them. It also means those *without* thick skins are basically unable to participate, and I don't think this is particularly desirable either.

This seems a fairly poor outcome to me. If you want specific examples, I'd suggest any number of articles on recent Balkan history (where Serbs, Croats and Muslims/Bosniaks are at each other's throats), but I'm sure there are many other similar areas. Jonathanmills (talk) 17:30, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Something you'd learn quickly if you ever participated in an RfA is that cool down blocks are not considered cool. I totally agree with the idea of blocking cyberbullies, but I think that more serious blocks should be used instead of cool down blocks. Aren't cyberbullies already being blocked? GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 01:20, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

feedback from readers?

Argh, I've made a liar of myself now! But this really will be my last proposal for now :-)

I'm just wondering if articles should have a place where readers can submit any concerns they have about them, ie anything from poor spelling/grammar to factual inaccuracy, etc etc (this could potentially be an alternative to my other proposal of offering more information to novices on how to edit pages).

I thought of this as a bit of a spin-off of my concerns re POV tags above, as I was thinking perhaps readers could register concerns about non-neutrality of articles, but I now think it could have a much wider application.

Any thoughts on this one? Jonathanmills (talk) 17:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

What do you think of this article?

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I think it would be great. Kevin Baas^talk 18:00, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the vote of support, Kevin! :-)

I like your template, although I had in mind something more like:

"If you believe this article contains spelling/grammar errors, factual innacuracies, or a lack of neutrality [etc etc], please register your concerns here." Jonathanmills (talk) 18:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and that should probably be 'spelling/grammatical errors' ;-) Jonathanmills (talk) 18:12, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The talk page serves this function already. -kotra (talk) 18:27, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. If you want to "talk about" as page, you go to its "talk page". Simple, really. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:32, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Anyone else remember when Yahoo news stories used to have "discussion" pages? To describe what went on there as trolling would be putting it mildly. I shudder to think what the discussion sections of George W. Bush or Islam would look like. Right now, we can pretty much keep a handle on this on the talk page by cutting stuff out that doesn't seek to improve the article, it would be a much more difficult task to keep a "What do you think" section constructive. AlexiusHoratius (talk) 19:58, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikinews articles do have discussion pages. I don't think this should be brought into wikipedia though since we are an encylopaedia Nil Einne (talk) 20:03, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

There are times where I wish I could discuss the topic, rather than the article. I think as long as we kept true to WP:CIVIL, it could work. *shrug* EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:26, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree, talk pages are already a good place to leave feedback for the most part. We don't even need separate section. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 20:43, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, on second thought, I think it might be a good idea to have one for Wikipedia in general. Wait a minute, that's what Village Pump is! What if we were to move Village Pump to Wikipedia:Feedback? GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 20:46, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

It maybe wouldn't be such a bad idea to have something like that for developers to see. I think it would be a fantastic idea to have something that says "Rate this article" on the side of the screen like the ones at Wiktionary and Uncyclopedia. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 00:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I think this suggestion could be substantially different from talk pages. That's one reason I suggested the template that i did. If people could have a simpler, more direct means to entire comments about the article, I think we'd get a lot more feedback. My template, above, is for at the bottom of the page - so they can't miss it. And you don't have to browse to another page, you just type right there - and you don't feel compelled to wait for a response. you just type and click. the purpose of it would be completely different. it would be a means of customer review, rather than a means of coordinating changes and improvements to the article. It would be closer to a rating system (how many stars?) than a discussion page - but it would be a free-form system, which could be much more helpful. Kevin Baas^talk 14:44, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Like I say, my idea was to allow a place to register concerns about actual errors/problems (whether in language, matters of fact or issues of non-neutrality) rather than a general comments page. It could function as a sort of e-form where boxes are ticked and a one-line description of the concern is entered. Does anyone have any thoughts on that idea? Jonathanmills (talk) 00:53, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

That's really what the talk page is for, though. -- Kesh (talk) 14:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Kesh. Yeah, I think my idea is partly based on what I've suggested in my proposal above ('Explanation for Wiki novices'), in that I do believe there are many people out there who won't even get to that stage (ie going to the talk page) unless it is 'formally introduced' to them (for want of a better expression).

But beyond that, I think it could serve a useful purpose for readers who don't have the time or inclination to go to the talk page but just want to highlight the presence of errors/non-neutrality.

Cheers for your feedback. Jonathanmills (talk) 16:54, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

You know what, one could just put a text box at the bottom of the article like the template above, and when the comment is submitted, it creates a new section on the talk page and puts the comment there. This would solve the argument about the suggestion being redundant w/talk pages. And it would be very simple to implement. It also more clearly shows the intention of it in relation to talk pages: to provide a more quicker and more visible mechanism of getting reader feedback - and thus to get more feedback.

It might, in fact, get too much feedback, filling up the talk page, making it difficult to carry on a discussion. The obvious solution to this would be to have it stored and displayed separately. Hence the original proposal. Kevin Baas^talk 15:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Getting a bot to remove inactive members and maintainers

I'm thinking of getting a bot made that would remove inactive users and maintainers, but it probably needs some wider discussion first. Inactive members (I'm thinking WikiProjects) give the false impression of activity. They should be moved to an inactive list or removed (probably removed for users who have been inactive for a long time, e.g. a year or two). The bot could notify people that they have been removed too, in case they come back (or move them back, if they are on an inactive list).

Even more importantly, we don't want people maintaining articles and then disappearing, while continuing to look like they are maintaining the article. These should be removed within a fairly short period of time, maybe a month or so. The bot could also keep a list of removals and add them back if they become active. Again, it would notify maintainers such that they could re-add themselves if they wanted to when they come back.

The issue is whether we should have such a bot (I can't see any reasonable objection), and how long people should be inactive before being removed. For maintainers, I suggest one month (we don't want to look like an encyclopedia that takes a year to update itself). For WikiProject participants, this could be decided by the project (the bot could accept a time period as an input). On the other hand, it might be better that all projects have their participant list/page swept every now and again to remove inactive users, especially when the project itself is fairly or totally inactive (they'll hardly be getting the bot to do it themselves, will they?). However, this is something that could be worked out at the council. Richard001 (talk) 10:05, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure such a bot is possible, though I haven't received confirmation yet. Richard001 (talk) 10:05, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

First of all, the bot should move editor names from a "Participants" section to an "Inactive participants" section, not delete them entirely. Those names are a potential resource - the editors may return at some point in the future.

Second, I don't understand what you mean by "maintainers" (of articles); per WP:OWN, no one owns an article. For example, I've never seen editor names listed on an article's discussion/talk page as being maintainers. (If you're referring to an internal WikiProject page, I really think you should reconsider a bot doing edits - first, these are probably in a lot of different formats, particularly tables - so there is a high probability of a bot screwing up; second, an active partipant in a project can quickly figure out if an article isn't being maintained. (The participants list is different; it's useful to both individuals considering joining, and for the WikiProject Council to track inactive projects; and, of course, it's typically just a bulleted list.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:07, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I guess there's no harm in moving inactive members to an inactive list, though I have often removed them completely myself when they have been gone for a year or more.

By maintainers, I mean people who maintain an article. The definition is vague and has several dimensions. It's also fairly obscure, as there is only {{maintained}} and no Wikipedia:Article maintenance. You seem to have randomly jumped from 'maintains' to 'owns'. Maintainers simply prevent vandalism and uncontroversial deleterious edits from getting through (which they do so everywhere); let's not create straw men. They may also work on expanding the article and/or be an expert on the subject, thus the concept is fairly broad. They are, as I see them, basically just people who are watching the article, but who are doing so in a serious manner and who are taking responsibility for (not ownership of) it (informal watchers cannot be blamed for letting bad stuff through; maintainers can).

If you have never seen the maintained template, you either haven't looked at many talk pages or have had less luck in seeing than than I have, but it isn't that common. It has been proposed for deletion three times, but survived each time. Your suggestion that a WikiProject member can easily identify an unmaintained article is just plain absurd. Firstly, anybody should be able to identify if an article is being maintained (e.g. a reader concerned that vandalism is sneaking through should have someone to report it to). But even 'WikiProject members' (and there's a continuous spectrum from members to non-members, of course) certainly have no easy way of working this out. There's no way of asking an article who watches it, so all you can really do is look at the edit history. But the edit history and talk page take much effort to look through, and even then you have very little idea of what is actually going on. To give just one example, people can regularly add to an article without making any effort to watchlist it and remove vandalism. As I've tried to explain on my user page, there are numerous benefits to maintaining articles and I think we desperately need a system of doing so. But this isn't the place for that discussion. As long as the maintained template remains in use we need to remove inactive maintainers. I've removed one from an article recently that had been inactive for over a year. Richard001 (talk) 04:03, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's always interesting to discover yet another aspect of Wikipedia. The {{maintained}} template seems to be on about 2,500 talk pages; that's roughly one out of a thousand articles at Wikipedia; so yes, there are a lot, but they're also easy to miss.

More to the point, I agree wholeheartedly with deleting this template if the editor is inactive - and please ignore my speculation about maintenance being done via WikiProjects.

As for deleting inactive editors versus moving them to an inactive list, I can see the point about editors who have been gone for a year being removed. But I think there will be less reason for future complaints if information is retained (but relabeled) rather than just deleted. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:28, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I've filed a bot request, so all I can really do now is hope someone takes it up. Richard001 (talk) 11:38, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Deletion: Strong oppose, why should inactive editors be any different than inactive WikiProjects? Inactive WikiProjects are archived, not deleted. Inactive user list: Support, the bot should also make use of an inactive user template. There's no harm in labeling inactive users; in fact, it would be downright helpful. System of closing user accounts at request of the user and also closing accounts inactive for two years: Support, the idea is to create a system a system where users could close their accounts like nearly every other website has. This system would also apply to accounts marked as dormant (inactive for two or more years). The user pages would still exist, but the user accounts would either be blocked from editing or blocked from logging in entirely. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 01:28, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

'Babel' userboxes in English?

Hi all,

On a completely different note to any of my other recent proposals, I've always found it more than a bit odd that the Userboxes describing which language/s a user knows are written in the language itself, rather than in English.

This would seem to undermine the point somewhat, IMHO, as I thought the idea was to enable people to find users who could translate materials. If someone doesn't speak the language, as they clearly don't if they're looking for a translator, how do they make sense of the userboxes?

And while it may be 'common knowledge' what Francais, Espanol and Deutsch mean (although I'm not sure why one would want to *assume* this), such is certainly not the case for more obscure languages (some userboxes are even written in the native alphabet, which makes them completely unintelligible to English-only users). Cheers Jonathanmills (talk) 15:11, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

They all have links to the relevant language article, so this shouldn't be much of a problem. And Babel isn't really to help find translators: that's what WP:Translation and WP:Translators available are for. Algebraist 15:42, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, they're not really for finding translators, they're for seeing if you can talk to that user in a language you're more familiar with than English (or, that they are more familiar with, if you're feeling generous). --Tango (talk) 16:09, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

In any case, surely if you really wanted to use them to find translators you're not going to be searching user by user to see if they have the language you want. Instead you're going to use Category:Wikipedians by language. So let's say you're looking for people speaking Kazakh language you look at Category:User kk where it not only tells you they speaking Kazahk but more importantly you can easily find the small number of users who speak it rather then having to search probably thousands and thousands of users to find one who speaks Kazahk Nil Einne (talk) 04:36, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a very good point! I think I was led astray by thinking Babel was about translation. Thanks to all for your feedback. Jonathanmills (talk) 13:22, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Go for it! This is the English Wikipedia, so everything should be written in English in my opinion, including Babel boxes. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 01:49, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Images proposal

I have made a new proposal regarding images here Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#New_proposal_on_images - I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, advice etc. Thanks Gustav von Humpelschmumpel (talk) 20:48, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

"Watchlist" terminology clarification

Wikipedia pages use the term "watchlist" for two very different things:

• The list of pages being watched
• The list of edits that have been just been done to the pages being watched

I propose that the first be called the "watchlist", as is the case now, and the second be consistently called the "watchlist report". Consider how the "Watchlist" tab in "my preferences" should read (these are six options, each with a checkbox in front of it):

• Hide my edits from the watchlist report
• Hide bot edits from the watchlist report
• Hide minor edits from my watchlist report
• Add pages I create to my watchlist
• Add pages I edit to my watchlist
• Add pages I move to my watchlist

Now remove the word "report" from the first three items. Much more confusing, yes? But that's the way it reads now (note the attempt to make a distinction by saying "the watchlist" rather than "my watchlist"; very subtle). Similarly, Special:Watchlist generates something called "My watchlist", but it should really be called "My watchlist report" (or just "Watchlist report"). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:38, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I never considered it ambiguous, as the first three options refer to types of edits, the latter three refer to auto-add conditions, and they can't be reasonably thought of the other way around. However, if this is a common misunderstanding, I'd support rephrasing the first three to "from watched changes", since that's how the watchlist itself distinguishes Special:Watchlist from its /edit and /edit/raw versions. --erachima talk 00:18, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

As yes, "watched changes". Somehow I think "display watchlist report" is more understandable than "display watched changes". But at least we agree that there is are inconsistencies in what things are called. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:27, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposal for a fundamental change in the Featured List process

Consensus is being tested concerning the proposal to establish a directorate (possibly two of the regular reviewers) as part of a program to improve the FLC process. Input is welcome. Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates#Should we have a FL director.3F Tony (talk) 12:13, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Elections underway there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:59, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Copied from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:31, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Helping newbies to create new articles

I'm not sure I put this in the right place, but I still get very confused on this site even after a year. It might even be here, but I haven't seen anything so far.

I have seen numerous comments in the Help Desk archives about how newbies are so intimidated by the various rules here. So many people create their first article unaware that the article is likely to be deleted. I know that happened to me on one of my first articles, but it was merely a redirect, and I was able to access the history once I knew how and restore some of my text when someone else recreated the article. In my case, I was to find few sources for this article other than those that made it sound like advertising (mainly the official web site of the business).

In another case, I felt intimidated because I felt a certain person needed a biography on here, but I knew the rules were even stricter for biographies than those for other articles. I asked what to do on the Help Desk and was told to create the article in my user space, and what the article should be called so it would go there. I did that and received approval several weeks later (from the person who had helped me) to move the content to the main space. On other occasions, I have written stub articles and realized, before submitting them, that I had no option other than to rename the article using the rule I was taught in order to put it in user space. To this day, I don't think I have made the articles good enough not to be deleted. I just can't find the information or what Wikipedia would consider really good sources.

So this brings up the possibility: what if, instead of just "save page" for creating a new article, we also have some way to move to userspace, so the article can be reviewed before moving to main space? I didn't know about user space for a long time.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:20, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

One option, when an editor finds an article in mainspace (article space), is to "userfy" it - to move it to a (new) personal page of the editor who created it. Details are at Wikipedia:Userfication.

As for the issue of when something is "good enough", if you look at the "Quality" topic in the editor's index, you'll find a number of pages that discuss what a good article looks like, and how to improve articles. You'll also find advice at the "New articles" topic of the index.

Finally, I suggest that if you're unsure about moving an article from user space to mainspace, because of quality concerns or reliable sources (for which see WP:RS, by the way), you can ask another editor to take a look. Some places to ask include the help desk, the drawing board, and editor assistance. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:25, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks; my question is for those who are so new they are not even aware of "user space"--on the page where they "save page," I'm saying show them that this is an option along with some statement that most new articles get deleted.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:43, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

GA Symbols

FA symbols at them top of the page informs the community of Wikipedia's best work. I think a GA symbol at the top of the page (like the FA star) would be a good idea. It would infirm the community and readers of what our good work is, and provide a link to the GA page (like the FA star does for the FA page). Good idea? STORMTRACKER 94 ^{Go Irish!} 14:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Straw poll

Support

1. Support Kevin Baas^talk 19:08, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
2. Support: Considering the fact that we have ugly banners at the top of almost every article that has some reference issues - I guess a little positive info in the form of a small icon is more than appropriate - especially since we are spending so much effort in reviewing and promoting the GA articles. Arman ^(Talk) 04:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
3. I have wondered about this for a long time. Zginder 2008-04-24T14:30Z (UTC)
4. Support A community-ranked article (FA and GA; as opposed to A- or B-, which are usually individual-ranked or ranked by a Wikiproject) should have its status listed on the upper right corner. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 08:13, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
5. Support It's a good idea, and might generate more interest in pushing GA articles up to FA. Doc Tropics 03:15, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
6. Strong support as has already been mentioned perhaps it will motivate people to push the articles to featureship --Hadseys Chat_Contribs 15:23, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
7. Support Sure, why not? GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 19:48, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
8. Weak Support per my comments at GA talk. Majoreditor (talk) 21:35, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

This poll is taking place on another page. Please vote there instead. Kevin Baas^talk

Oppose

1. Oppose This would be completely useless. Then, we would need to put the Stub, Start, B, and A up there. The FA star signifies a highly-encyclopediac article, whereas GA is just "Good". Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 17:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

   Why would we need to put the Stub, Start, B, and A up there? I don't see why we would need to do this, or what good it would do. Kevin Baas^talk 19:08, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

   FA is supposed to be an example of the best work in Wikipedia. Why go around showing what our "Meh, I guess it's OK" work is? And because A is higher than GA, we would for sure need to add that. Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 19:19, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

   "GA" isn't "Meh, I guess it's OK" work, it's "good" work, hence the "good" in "good article". And although I don't think the reader would be particularly interested in knowing what our "Meh, I guess it's OK" work was, I could see them being interested in what our "good" work was. And from the point of viewer of the editor, it provides a reward for good work - it provides an added incentive for improving article quality.

   If A is higher than GA, then every A article is also a GA article, thus "GA" would be sufficient; I don't see why we would need to be more precise than that for something like this. My point with the question was that it seemed to me that you were presenting a false dilemma. Kevin Baas^talk 19:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

   I just don't think it is needed. You can have your opinion, and I don't feel that I have to explain every last reason for my opposing. This has been proposed plenty of times in the past, and every time it gets denied. Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 19:52, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

   Remember we are trying to reach consensus, not to vote. As such, simply saying I oppose/I don't like it, without explaining why, is of limited use to the discussion Nil Einne (talk) 06:33, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

2. "Good" isn't good enough to let the readers know that it is merely "good". =) Malinaccier Public (talk) 16:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

This poll is taking place on another page. Please vote there instead. Kevin Baas^talk

Neutral

This poll is taking place on another page. You may, however, be ambivalent on the issue wherever you wish.

Voting is evil

1. EVIL! --Carnildo (talk) 19:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
2. EVIL!! Nihiltres^{t.l} 16:00, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
3. EVIL!!! too!!! -- Fullstop (talk) 20:24, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

This poll is taking place on another page. Please condemn it there instead.

Wikipedia + Wiktionary interactivity?

Why not have a CSS defined hover box over certain words in an article that would benefit from a definition? It could be linked to Wiktionary definitions. Here's an image I made that explains it better than I can here: http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u241/theUrbanHermit/wikidef.png

Apologies if this has been proposed in the past; I didn't find anything similar in a search.

DeeKenn (talk) 16:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Anything more than a simple interwiki link (example) would require us to duplicate copy on our end, which just makes more work. Neat idea, though. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, you would know better than me! :-) Maybe a script pulling from Wiktionary's database would solve the duplicity issue? I have no idea. Thanks for the reply. DeeKenn (talk) 20:06, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Not necessarily. Take a site like WoWhead, a World of Warcraft site. Their database has all sorts of items from the game and, by including a simple bit of JavaScript, any other site can link to an item and get a popup when hovering over the link. It would require Wiktionary to implement such a system, but Wikipedia would just need to include the JavaScript (possibly as a Gadget). -- 68.156.149.62 (talk) 20:19, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, the difference is that WoWhead has a specific database to pull from, formatted in a very precise manner (I would assume), whereas we'd be pulling from a very different source, one that isn't as particularly formatted. It might be doable, but the end user could be better served by just giving a quick definition in the article itself, or by just clicking a link to Wiktionary (where they could get a lot more information than they could in a hover tip). EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:47, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

There's wp:popups but it wont work because of cross site scripting issues. The workaround is to load the data in JSON script at runtime (example). Perhaps someone could write a client-server script that can output the pages like this? — Dispenser 19:05, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Message box standardisation

Last summer the style for message boxes in articles were standardised and the meta-template {{ambox}} was implemented to allow easy creation of boxes in the standardised style.

Now we are going to standardise the style of message boxes in image space and category space. We have coded up some suggestions. See the new meta-templates {{imbox}} and {{cmbox}} and discuss the style for them at their talk pages.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:13, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Neat! MBisanz ^talk 17:21, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

This definitely looks like a good idea. Standardization is always a good thing. I'm sure it's only a matter of time until every template on this project is standardized. Paragon12321 (talk) 03:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

That is, if people come over and comment. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 22:46, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

POV description of why Encyclopedia Dramatica will not be recreated

See here (If you're not an admin, you will view an "unauthorized" page and text will be displayed that says "Encyclopedia Dramatica will not be recreated. Ever.") - I suggest removing this POV and unverifiable explanation of why the page on Encyclopedia Dramatica isn't allowed to be recreated with a link to it's latest deletion review (excluding the review that I'm working on right now).--Urban Rose 20:55, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the notice. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:21, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

"In The News" reform

The "In The News" section on the main page is broken. Whereas all of the other sections, like Featured Articles, get updated every day, ITN gets two or three new news items a week. For example, the same picture of Fernando Lugo has been on ITN since April 20, almost two weeks. In addition, deaths like Arthur C. Clarke don't make it to the main page, nor items of "local" interest like the London mayoral election. I think a lot of editors would support something more open and dynamic. If you would like to help me in this reform proposal, please see Wikipedia:In The News 2.0. Thanks. Lovelac7 00:01, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Photograph attribution in image captions

I would like to propose that Wikipedia adopt the common practice of crediting the author of a photograph in the caption beneath an image for licenses requiring attribution, i.e. Photo by John Doe. Below are my reasons:

1. After numerous requests from Flickr users for their name to appear "next to, or under" the photo when requesting relicensing from them, it is apparent that many photographers expect attribution to appear beneath the photo. It is often all they ask in return.
2. This will strengthen our legal status regarding attribution, even if we are currently abiding by the terms of CC licenses. Since this has never been challenged in court, we don't really know if we are doing all we can to provide prominent attribution.
3. The option to include credit in a caption should, at the very least, not be prohibited for "non-notable" photographers by guidelines for this very reason.
4. It is in the spirit of many licenses we host, i.e. Creative Commons human readable licenses
5. It is the morally right option, crediting the work to authors prominently
6. It is common to see attribution given in this way in countless other forms of media
7. Photographers are authors of original content, and most images are exempt from WP:OR prohibition. They are thus like the author of a book, who we credit in the reference section on the article page.
8. It is courteous, giving a bit back to those photographers who were kind enough to relicense their work
9. Some Wikipedia users do not know they must click an image, or that it is even clickable, to see source information.
10. This proposal is not intended to apply to templates. Only images displayed in articles to provide illustration of a particular subject matter.

Support

• I support and would like to add that the upfront citation should be considered a "required" practice for all fair-use and CC-by iamges while evaluating FA or GA. Arman ^(Talk) 10:53, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
• I'm a photographer who supported fotographs for Yusef Lateef, Solomon Burke, Wayne Shorter, Wadada Leo Smith, Trijntje Oosterhuis, Toni Lynn Washington, Till Brönner, Sean Bergin, Scott Colley, Russell Malone, Ron Westray, Philip Harper, Philip Catherine, Pat Martino, and many others, and in principle I'm prepared continuing sending photographs in the future. Mentioning the credits is important, since is the only reward that is obtained for work that normally is paid. Of course you can click the photo to obtain the information, but in practice nobody will do this regularly, if ever. Further, the credit may be important information to the reader, especially in the field of jazz wherein I'm active. Particularly, some photographs are as important and well known as musicians (William Claxton, William Gotlieb, Herman Leonard, Francis Wolff to mention a few). Maybe the present photograhers are not (yet) that famous, but without giving them the credits they will never become, and moreover those who are already well known will never contribute for free to Wikipedia. Tom Beetz (Jazzism, Jazzflits) User:Tbeetz April 21, 2008 (UTC)
  • Tom Beetz, your comment suggests that attribution is "only" a small courtesy in exchange for a big favour the photographer is doing to Wikipedia. But this is not always the case. Some articles, such as New York City get a huge amount of traffic. Having one's photograph and name published on the top of a page seen by tens of thousands of people every day can be of high value to a photographer's career, especially for less well-known professional photographers who aspire to break it as artists. If you had to pay for that kind of exposure (eg. through online advertising) it could cost you thousands of dollars a day. Now, I am not disputing that your work is of high quality and extremely valuable to Wikipedia, but I hope you can see that what you suggest potentially creates a confict of interest. Also, Wikipedia is an altruistic project, so nobody who works on it should expect any kind of "reward". Cambrasa confab 12:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Cambrasa, you barely acknowledge the "high value" photographs give to Wikipedia in your statement. Both sides benefit, which is how it should be. If Wikipedia had to pay for these photographs, we would be out of business. So while Wikipedia gets to host their image on the main article page, they can't do something as simple as give a photo credit to them underneath? Who wins in that scenario? If you want to talk about benefits and rewards, Wikipedia is the one winning out. Thanks again Tom for your contributions, they make Wikipedia what it is. I only wish Wikipedia would do a tiny bit more to give back in return, as well. Indeed it is enticing to have one's name under the photo, which is exactly the sort of thing that encourages more submissions! (Mind meal (talk) 16:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC))
• Support - This is a no-brainer. Many photographers only ask for a photo credit, and without this very modest compromise we'd lose hundreds of excellent photographs, remaining in the land of the amateurish with hundreds of photograph-less articles for several more years, or forever. I support this proposal, only if the photographers specify that such a credit appear; otherwise, their credit can appear on the photo page itself, as normal. It's clear that most such photos are not taken by Wikipedians, so our partnership with volunteer photographers from Flickr must be highly valued and not treated with contempt, as I read in some comments just below. Badagnani (talk) 22:56, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
• Image description pages are not known to all readers, for example new readers or less web-savvy readers, so attribution-requiring licenses are currently being violated. Also, they are being violated in printed versions of Wikipedia articles. "Common courtesy" and similar reasons are nice, but the legal reasons are my only real concerns. -kotra (talk) 22:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
• I support the broad thrust of the proposal. Creative Commons "attribution" licenses imply that the use of a photograph will be accompanied by a reasonably prominent attribution, and I consider Wikipedia's present policy to be inconsistent with this type of license. Inhibiting prominent attribution discourages the licensing of photographs for free use by Wikipedia, and I feel that more and better photographs in an online encyclopedia are very important to the project. There is certainly wiggle-room on the details of implementation if the principle can be accepted. Easchiff(talk) 23:15, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
• Support, the direction is the (morally and legally) right one. Attribution doesn't have to be in-your-face, and kotra's suggestion for a compromise sounds great. -- Fullstop (talk) 01:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Strange debate. Here's my story: one editor asked me for some of my flickr photos. I was happy to help Wikipedia for the very first time. I finally understood that I was practically giving away some of my photos. That was still ok with me. I just asked to have my name mentioned as a photographer. Today some of you plan to delete it ... I'm sure it's legal. Like many other things. (Excuse me, I'm new) --Dubluzet (talk) 18:37, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Images are different than quotes and also slightly different than textual content. I say that conventionally. It's common practice in a variety of contexts to include photo attribution on images. Even without explicit copyright symbols on the images. Therefore, arguments below that images are the same as any other contribution is ignoring the conventional. I agree that self-promotion is potentially a problem, but there may be other ways to deal with that. But alternatives like that are only possible if we acknowledge that conventionally speaking images and even image thumbnails are not treated the same as other content with respect to attribution - in related media like magazines, newspapers, flyers, etc. In the very least, we should amend the policies to include an explicit mention that image attribution is conventionally done and may be ok for an article. In other words, we don't have to remove attribution if we don't feel self-promotion is occurring. - Owlmonkey (talk) 21:19, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Note: one idea/variation: instead of textual/link attribution we could eventually switch to another form of attribution like including a "cc" link under all cc licensed photos explicitly to license info for that photo. A technical change for that would be required. - Owlmonkey (talk) 21:19, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
• Support. As long as demands aren't unreasonable (i.e. someone saying that the photo can only be used with a profane or vulgar attribution which would be a very odd request) I think photographer should be free to ask for the kind of attribution they want. Without their work, there would be no photos, and I see no harm in crediting them in the way they would like if it's reasonable.►Chris Nelson^Holla! 04:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
• I have contributed a number of photos of jazz musicians. Attribution for photos should be required. If photographers are being asked to give up their photos then the minimum photo credit should be provided. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Crocon (talk • contribs) 11:15, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Conditional support

• Only for photographs where the license explicitly requires attribution, and only if the photograph is exceptional - ie. a featured picture. Let's face it, 99% of photographs on Wikipedia aren't exactly works of art, and neither do they try to be. Most are purely documentational photographs that require 10 seconds of work operating a snapshot camera and another 30 seconds of work uploading the file to Wikipedia. By contrast, some editors spend days or even weeks researching a topic to promote an article to FA or GA status, and their work doesn't get attributed either. Once we start attributing photographers, then the question is, how come we are not attributing dedicated editors, illustrators, template designers etc? What makes photographers so special? Wikipedia should stick to its principles - it is an altruistic collaborative project and not a collection of individual works. Everyone who chooses to join this project should be prepared to "sacrifice" his/her work to the common good without expecting anything in return. Pictures are no exception to this; they should not be attributed by default. I am also worried that once the author name/pseudonym appears under every mediocre snapshot somebody has taken of his motorbike/pet/electronic gadget, users will start abusing Wikipedia's high traffic for shameless self-promotion. I would even go as far as saying that Wikipedia should strongly discourage picture licenses that require attribution, except for featured pictures. Still, we should give credit where credit is due, and if a photograph has been chosen to be among of Wikipedia's best work, then I don't see a problem with naming the author. Cambrasa confab 10:01, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
• Only for images that can be attributed to a high degree of certainty, attribution can be given to a name that is not unnecessarily offensive or ridiculous, and does not cause problems with the formatting of the article. I'm not sure how to define this, but also think it could be restricted to images that show some skill or effort. I don't think that a license must require attribution in order to have a credit in the image caption; it wouldn't hurt to say "Credit: NASA" in a few captions, even though those images are public domain. --Rat at WikiFur (talk) 05:06, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
• I support such a policy for fair use images, but I most certainly oppose such a requirement for self made images, I'd rather not be required to reveal my real life identity in every image I create nd upload. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 20:04, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
• Only when the photographer actually requires it. Personal experience (and with many pictures relicensed from Flickr) tells me very few ever actually want this. In order to access the full-sized image they need to go to the image page, where credit is given. That should be enough. -- ReyBrujo (talk)

Oppose

• Our editors don't sign the text content they add to the articles, so why should the photos be any different? We do cite quoted text when the quote needs to be verified or the person quoted is relevant, but we don't put the names of the Wikipedians that wrote the article into the article itself, it is one click away in the history. Articles should be limited to the content of the article. One click on an image and you get full attribution and license. _(1 == 2)^Until 15:33, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
• As Until(1 == 2) put it; we separate content and credits. Besides, imagine the case when an image is repeatedly modified: can you imagine crediting each person who has touched up an image, as part of the article text? Or for compound images, should we list each author and reviser of each image, separately? I might support inclusion of author credit and license information as metadata, but article text should be relevant to the article with exceptions only for minor navigational and status additions such as hatnotes and template notices. Nihiltres^{t.l} 15:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
• Agree with others. Attribution should be included only where it helps to understand the topic - if you're displaying an image because the person who created it has a notable involvement in the topic, and the image illustrates their involvement or position in some way, then putting their name there is important as it's informational. The same applies to quotes. Attribution for the sake of "crediting" alone is not practiced on Wikipedia. However, if I were compelled to compromise, I would sooner take textual captions then the abomination which is embedded watermarks. Dcoetzee 20:39, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

• I agree with all that's said above. Mind meal's point above comparing authorship to photo credits is somewhat misleading. Print publications that include caption credits, like magazines, usually also have authorship included in the article. Publications that have separate authorship pages, like books, frequently place the photo credits in a footnote or bibliography section. We're more like a book than a magazine in that regard, so we're consistent with general publishing practice and offer the unparalleled benefit of a much more sophisticated and granular credit system that is also available for images (although not quite as robust, but still more informative than a single caption credit). As far as problems like not knowing to click on images and asking people to relicense stuff that's already licensed, this is common inexperienced-user/editor stuff that just requires climbing the learning curve that any endeavor includes. (And frankly, clickable images are practically de rigueur these days, so that's a fairly low curve.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:29, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
• I agree with the Oppose views given above. We are most similar to a print publication that keeps the photo acknowledgments in a separate section. Clicking on the photo does not seem to be too high a barrier to seeing the credit. EdJohnston (talk) 21:37, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose People may come to see the pretty pictures, but no one care who took it. Many times I have removed photo credits from articles. If it is needed to know who created an image, it is already required on the image description page. The only exception is if the photographer is famous. For example, it should be pointed out that it was taken by Ansel Adams. Also, there should never be any cross-namespace links to userpages, and often people prefer to be anonymous. Anyway, that would be way too much work for is already there. Reywas92^Talk 21:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
  • A couple more reasons: 1) Readers don't care. They really don't. They don't want to see Photo by John Doe. It is not directly relevant to the topic, and it really is distracting. 2) We don't attribute article authors in the article; it's in the history. We shouldn't attribute article authors in the article, it's in the image description page. 3) This can be a major form of self-promotion. Reywas92^Talk 16:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose Attribution, whether for writing or images is separate for readability, accessibility and standardization across the site. When the photographer is notable or in some way important to explaining the photograph, its a different matter. Clickable thumbnails is a pretty standard sight on the interwebs, so we'll actually be helping people by educating them about it ;) Shell ^babelfish 21:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
• We present content first and foremost. All attribution is connected to each article. Readers who don't know to click the thumbnail don't need to know who took the photograph or who collaborated on the article. For kotra's suggestion below, it is entirely unnecessary to have an icon link to the exact same target as the thumbnail. For the print version, do people print the edit history when they print an article? –Pomte 02:59, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose per others above. Johnbod (talk) 03:06, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose Full attribution, in accordance with BY-SA licensing, is already available by clicking on the thumbnail versions in article namespace. The legal concerns here are almost certainly misplaced (see below). Contrary to the hand-wringing above, BY-SA licensing contains no stipulation that a credit must always appear wherever the image does and Wikipedia already attributes authorship in accordance with the letter and spirit of the license. The proposal is concerned mainly with relicensed Flickr images; while they may well be valuable to the project, I don't agree that Flickr image use policy should dictate image use policy on Wikipedia. So anyone not prepared to accept WP policy won't upload their images – this has always been the case. A bigger reason by far for not uploading is the commercial use issue, which deters a great number of otherwise willing image contributors. Donating images here should be an altruistic act, not a means of getting your name into a popular online publication: the scope for abuse of this proposal is way bigger than the imagined absence of images it claims to want to address. Finally, giving special consideration due to photographs being primary source material and original research is also completely moot, as no other form of user contribution is credited in any way at all; photographers already enjoy more detailed attribution than authors of original texts on which the encyclopedia is based, for example. Let's stop conflating proper attribution with ugly, undesirable and unworkable caption credits. --mikaul^talk 00:48, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Well said, mikaul. Not to be rude, but can we kill this idea now, Mind Meal? If you want image attribution, then why not list the article editors at the bottom? No, the photographer is credited in the image description page just as the authors are credited in the article history. As I said above, and did mikaul, this will cause undue self-promotion and a distraction from the encyclopedia. The fact that magazines, etc. credit the photographer next to the image is moot, as Wikipedia is WP:NOT a paper medium. This has been fine for years and is in no way a legal problem. I have and will actively remove the photo credits in articles. Sorry, but this is not going to happen. Reywas92^Talk 01:05, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Not a chance this debate is being closed at this stage in the debate. Do you jest? "Sorry, but this is not going to happen." What arrogance. Watch and weep over the coming weeks. You say things have been fine for years. That suggests Wikipedia has reached a stage of impenetrable perfection in which improvement is not possible. (Mind meal (talk) 01:42, 23 April 2008 (UTC))
• Attribution on the image description page is sufficient for cc-by and GFDL. I have been contacted several times regarding re-using images I have uploaded here. Many history books have a page of commercial photocredits at the back, and it doesn't seem to cause any problems. No objection to the credit being included in the metadata however. Megapixie (talk) 02:10, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose Just about everyone else above me summed it up well. This will put needless clutter in article. I'm not big on copyright law, but wouldn't this bring problems with photos taken anonymously? "Photo taken by some guy who we don't know" doesn't look too good. Paragon12321 (talk) 03:24, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Who proposed we do that? (Mind meal (talk) 04:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC))
• Oppose. Geez, please, no! This proposal is a slap in the face of everyone who is doing serious article space work. Attribution on the image description page is sufficient. Full stop. Also if an image really is that great, people will click the thumbnail. Under no circumstances should credits be manually added to caption. If any such proposal should ever be accepted a software solution should be created which automatically displays image page credit in the caption. But I hope that day never comes. Pleas note that my main contributions are pictures and I'm still opposed. --Dschwen 14:53, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - Attribution is already given on the image page, and adding it to the captions will just clutter up [especially image-heavy] pages. Editors are 'credited' through the history, they don't sign each individual edit, so why something different for pictures? ><RichardΩ612 15:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Quite obviously, most photographers are not Wikipedia editors. Their motives for allowing us to use their work often comes under a different' license than that which Wikipedia does. Not to mention photographers are authors of original content. We are editors of original content. (Mind meal (talk) 04:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC))
• Oppose - It's given on the image page. Looks a bit like a promotional thing in the article. A CC icon or small link seems fine, however. -Fnlayson (talk) 21:17, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose I disagree that the way we are currently doing it is inadequate. I'd rather not be attributed in the article page for my images. You run into even more problems with cases like images used in templates or very small images. I also happen to think that most of our readers, especially those who will be looking for source or copyright information, are web-savvy enough to think to click on the image. Mr.Z-man 23:52, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose until I get my name credited next to the text I contribute, since that would be the: "morally right option, crediting the work to authors prominently" Aboutmovies (talk) 01:40, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • What is with all the paper tiger and straw man arguments? Everyone keeps equating this to attribution of Wikipedia editors. Reality update: This discussion isn't about that! Lmao! (Mind meal (talk) 01:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC))
    • OK, how about this: Wikipedia is not about you, me, or Flickr photographers, its about making an encyclopedia. Pictures are decorations (i.e. optional as they only equal 1000 words, so we can always type more instead), and adding attribution does nothing for improving the content of the encyclopedia. I and plenty of others contribute lots of images to the project, many times not even asking for attribution. If you are "donating" your pictures to Wikipedia in the hopes of receiving attribution beyond the description page, then you are here for the wrong reason. Now, if we are talking about getting Flickr pictures, we should really avoid those as I'll bet quite a few pictures on Flickr and similar sites are copyright violations in their own right, and most pics on Flickr are not compatible with Wikipedia's copyright guidelines (that is most prohibit commercial use, and Wikipedia requires that there not be such a limitation unless its fair use). So, no real loss if we lose Flickr pics in my opinion. Aboutmovies (talk) 01:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
      • "If you are "donating" your pictures to Wikipedia in the hopes of receiving attribution beyond the description page, then you are here for the wrong reason." This kind of perception doesn't acknowledge reality: To encourage more contributions, we should prominently display credit. I'm surprised to see such little appreciation for photographs and photographers in the oppose section. Undoubtedly, few of you ever deal with Flickr users or know what considerations photographers make when deciding whether to relicense their work. "Now, if we are talking about getting Flickr pictures, we should really avoid those as I'll bet quite a few pictures on Flickr and similar sites are copyright violations in their own right." You need to prove this, and right now. "So, no real loss if we lose Flickr pics in my opinion." You obviously have no idea how many images we host come from Flickr. If you are going to make comments like this, educate yourself on the matter a bit before shooting so haphazardly from the hip. So many of these oppositions are way off topic. (Mind meal (talk) 03:18, 24 April 2008 (UTC))
        • Rarely have I read such patent bullshit. We are at least as badly in need of good editors as we are of good photographers, so your argument about encouraging submissions is completely irrelevant to the discussion. It applies equally well to both positions. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 21:18, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Just about any argument is a "paper tiger" if you disagree with it. 72.10.110.107 (talk) 16:53, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose- First off, it looks disgusting, second, credits are not important at all since <0.01% of any reader on Wikipedia will take an image from us and publish it, and if they did, I'm overly confident that they will click on the image and unintentionally view the image summary (containing author info), or just cite Wikipedia, which is equally good. Why make a disgusting and cluttering link for all people when hardly any will ever copy-paste the image and publish it. Besides, most images are GDFL so attribution is not neccessary unless the uploader is so full of themselves that they would like everyone to know their name. -- penubag  (talk) 03:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • "First off, it looks disgusting"..."disgusting and cluttering link"..."Besides, most images are GDFL." Most images are GDFL? Where do you get such statistics? "Unless the uploader is so full of themselves that they would like everyone to know their name." This discussion is amazing. So many sentiments like this expressed. Why does it have to be narcissism for a photographer to want their work to have their name appear with it? Complete garbage. (Mind meal (talk) 04:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC))
    • "It looks disgusting" is a perfect argument. You tell me if this is pretty not to mention hard to read. What about an image with multiple authors who are all now suddenly wanting credit? And yes, most images are GDFL or Public domain, you can view WP:FU for our strict rules pertaining to images under any nonfree license. -- penubag  (talk) 04:28, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
      • This has become absolutely insane. Wikipedia hosts Creative Commons licenses. Also, you have provided absolutely no reference to where you get the info on the majority of images here being GDFL or public domain. Due to your inability to produce how you arrived at this, we can only assume you made it up. (Mind meal (talk) 04:35, 24 April 2008 (UTC))
        • Uh, that was explained, but maybe not well enough. The majority of images have to be free ones due to restrictions on fair-use of non-free images. -Fnlayson (talk) 04:38, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
          • And yes, CC says we need to give attribution, which we are doing in the image summary. What more could they ask for? Their names in the article itself? (disgusting) Soon the authors of individual paragraphs will want that. Besides, if they are that passionate, they should just watermark their images. -- penubag  (talk) 04:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
            • The GDFL is a specific license. Creative Commons licenses are separate. All they require of us is attribution. What more could they ask for? A photo credit beneath the actual photo, or at least a small link that says something about credits. A rectangle that says "enlarge" does not demonstrate that there are credits on that page. Users have no way of knowing where attribution is located. Obviously you haven't seen all the arguments and whining about watermarked images. Most who oppose here don't seem to care whether we host images at Wikipedia or not. They act like we are doing the photographer some giant favor by hiding their credit as author. The truth is, it is photographers who are doing Wikipedia the favor. Unfortunately, consensus thus far demonstrates Wikipedia doesn't appreciate it. (Mind meal (talk) 07:28, 24 April 2008 (UTC))
• Oppose - I have several problems here. One, the creative commons licenses require that attribution be made in at least as prominent of a way as for other content. If we follow through with the ill-conceived idea to port the entire site to CC licenses, that would require that text contributors be recognized in the article itself. In short, it would make it untenable. Even without the license port, it would make a painful job of making sure that all captions are equally prominent. It also opens us up far too much for advertising. Contribute a photo and you can get a mention of your company in a Wikipedia article. No, this is a really bad idea. --B (talk) 13:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - I am very tempted to think that we should employ our own guidelines (WP:MOS and related ilk) first, and if a photographer wants us to use images with a specific type of crediting on articles, we shouldn't use the image (and delete it?). We're an encyclopedia and I think that sometimes we have to say, "Thanks, but no thanks." A crediting system would encourage more people to upload more pictures - but will it be for the correct reason, to improve the encyclopedia, or the other version, to self-promote? x42bn6 Talk Mess 13:10, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose User:Until(1 == 2) said it perfectly. If photographers are getting acknowledged, I'd like to get my credits in there, too. For some articles, that would be a very long list. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 21:03, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose extremely strongly I resent that photographers should get credit, whereas people creating graphics or writing text go unmentioned. Maybe I will make a point of modifying every picture I see credited and replace the credit with my own name?--345Kai (talk) 04:44, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
• Absolutely not Who took a picture has absolutely nothing to do with the article it is used in. A paper encyclopedia may need to attribute it in-line with the photo, but that's one of the perks we enjoy over a paper encyclopedia; attribution information can be easily found by just clicking the image itself. Putting photographer names in the articles is a massively horrible idea. EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:44, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose bad idea. If the viewer wants to see who took the image that information is in the image description page, where it belongs. Cacophony (talk) 03:10, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Credits link in caption, but no name

The Audubon Ballroom. (Credits)

• I propose that we modify the Images code so that there is an automatic link to the image description page, displayed as a link to "Credits". The advantage of this is that it makes attribution easy to find for newbies without encouraging narcissism among photographers, and a simple software change could implement this for all pictures.--Pharos (talk) 03:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

• Support I support anything that strives to give more prominent attribution to photographers. (Mind meal (talk) 03:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC))
• Oppose. Not every image is formatted as a thumbnail. This also create 3 links to the image description page, all within a few millimeters of each other. If we want to make the little link in the corner more prominent, it should be done through a software change, not by adding another link next to it that will require users to manually add the link (I can't think of an easy way to do that with a template that would save much typing). Mr.Z-man 03:53, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

It is so astounding to me how much objection there is to giving back to photographers. Absolutely stunning. Why don't we change the text from enlarge to credits when the mouse floats over the square and rectangle? (Mind meal (talk) 03:56, 24 April 2008 (UTC))

Maybe a look at our policy Wikipedia:Ownership of articles-- penubag  (talk) 04:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Changing the hover text would be a far better idea than adding yet another link to the description page. Mr.Z-man 04:28, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

This is a much better idea, having credits in the tooltip! :)-- penubag  (talk) 04:35, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Hover text?! Since when do newbies (or anyone else for that matter) read hover text? We should keep our goal in mind, which is making this information obvious to ordinary people.--Pharos (talk) 05:20, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Replies: (1) Almost every image in an article is formatted as a thumbnail. (2) Redundancy is useful in this case, because many newbies still can't find the link. (3) I would support adding a "Credits" link through a software change (that's actually part of this proposal), I believe this could be done very easily.--Pharos (talk) 04:00, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Ownership of articles is not Wikipedia:Ownership of photographs. Creative Commons licenses are not GNU licenses. Please, will anyone recognize this? (Mind meal (talk) 04:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC))

Just because it is titled articles, doesn't mean it applies solely to articles, please have a skim of the first paragraph -- penubag  (talk) 04:08, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but it does apply to articles. I don't see images mentioned in there at all in any substantive way. You have introduced yet another off topic, irrelevant issue to this discussion. What a surprise! I need to write an essay on living inside of a WikiBubble. This entire discussion makes my skin crawl and hold my fellow editors with contempt. I'm sorry i started it. I will remind you that images in infoboxes 99% of the time have no enlarge link.(Mind meal (talk) 04:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC))

It mentions all forms of content in the opening paragraph. Besides, which, this debate is about putting names into an article. I'm not sure why your skin would crawl at the suggestion that one type of contributer should not be held in higher esteem than others. Especially as the project depends so heavily on contributer moral. 72.10.110.107 (talk) 16:50, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose for same reasons as before. We don't do it for articles, we shouldn't do it for photographs. All the necessary information is on the image description page. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 21:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I wish I knew who you were a sockpuppet of Papa. Nobody spends a month at Wikipedia and suddenly begins working behind the scenes like this. You have another account. What account is it? (Mind meal (talk) 23:21, 25 April 2008 (UTC))

I've replied on your talk page. I followed a link from the WP:FPC talk page to find this discussion. I might add that your paranoia and attacks on fellow contributors cast you in a very bad light. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 00:07, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

We sort of do this for articles currently, we have an explicit "history" tab that shows textual contributions. But image attribution does not appear there. - Owlmonkey (talk) 07:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

• Support - avoids the self promotion issue but simply makes it easier for new folks to find attribution for photos, which are not currently found under the history tab like other attribution, and in infobox formats that lack an enlarge icon hint. I'd also support a provision that these could be optional, since they're not specifically attribution, so we don't have to add them everywhere at once just as desired or as photos are added. So not traumatic to current articles. - Owlmonkey (talk) 07:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

I'm pretty sure something like this has been suggested before. I've never seen the outcome but I would suggest links to previous discussions would be helpful Nil Einne (talk) 11:13, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

At Wikipedia talk:Captions: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive98#Images, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive302#Photography edit war on model Ana Beatriz Barros and WP:IUP#User-created images may be of interest. The second one is the one closest to the issue at hand, I think, and it is related to the third link. I don't know about legal issues but I think these are likely best raised with the Foundation lawyer, Mike Godwin, User:Mikegodwin. x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:04, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I've emailed Mike. I'll let everyone know what he says. (Mind meal (talk) 16:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC))

Thanks for those links x42bn6. It seems that there is much previous consensus that captions do not go in the article. As to the idea below, it's just getting too rediculously complicated. The image description page just as easily has the author attribution. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Reywas92 (talk • contribs) 02:12, 22 April 2008

See also Commons:Watermarks#Signatures and photographer names. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:48, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

As a group of beggars, we sure are picky on here. (Mind meal (talk) 20:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC))

Or, on the other hand, I could say "We're builders, not beggars. We don't need our names all over that which we construct." Neither of these analogies of "builder" or "beggar" describes the situation completely. Let's avoid slanting the debate, please. Nihiltres^{t.l} 21:07, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

---

For those who don't want to see "Photo by John Doe." in image captions for appearance reasons, here's a compromise that might be acceptable: An Attribution icon in the caption, similar to the existing Enlarge icon, that would be conspicuous enough to notice at a glance, but not as obtrusive as the full "Photo by John Doe." text would be. It would link to the image description page, and for printed versions, it could be replaced with the full attribution via a print stylesheet. This would involve some creative coding on the back-end, but I believe it's possible. -kotra (talk) 23:03, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

That's an interesting idea, and I'd be fine with embedded metadata as long as it didn't visibly interfere with the content. Indeed, it would probably be quite useful if MediaWiki caused images to have data about their authorship and license embedded within the source code of an article, perhaps visible on print (ideally at the bottom of the page). It'd be a technical hurdle, but it's tantalizing. Nihiltres^{t.l} 23:31, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

See, for example, www.eol.org/. The idea has been suggested many times. I believe the usual answer is: if you write the code, we'll collectively consider using it; otherwise, add it to the long wishlist at bugzilla for the devs to get around to when they can. Possibly there already is a bugzilla entry for it? Currently, the closest thing I can see is the enhancement request at bugzilla:13070, which asks about changing the "magnify" symbol used below thumbnails, and links to this example gallery at User:Thebainer/thumbtest. -- Quiddity (talk) 04:58, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The bugzilla entry and the example gallery you linked are exactly what I was thinking about. Thanks! I also thought there could be some extra functionality where the author information for attribution-requiring images could be displayed by default when the article is printed, but to me that's a less important feature and could be difficult to code (mostly because author information isn't completely standardized on image description pages). Perhaps that bugzilla thread can be revived (it seems to be stalled since February), though I don't know the proper etiquette there. -kotra (talk) 17:56, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the best way to revive the thread, is just to "vote" for the bug (it's a bit complicated so, if you havent done it before:- create an account there. go to the correct bug's page, and at the very bottom of the page is a "related actions" box, click "Vote for this bug". Then at the voting page, select/click the radio button for the bug, then click "Change My Votes" to save.) I dont think they appreciate "yes please"/"ditto" comments at the bug, so only add a comment if you have additional information to provide, for fixing or diagnosing or clarifying the request. But voting freely is encouraged. (afaik) -- Quiddity (talk) 22:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! I've gone ahead and voted for it. As a graphic/web designer by trade, I may be able to help out there even. -kotra (talk) 23:48, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

---

I am concerned that many of the support votes include text that implies that the basic Wikimedia attribution system is fundamentally flawed; i.e., that credit on another page is no credit at all, and that Creative Commons licensing implicitly requires a credit that is part of the immediate presentation. If this is so, then any prose work done is also in violation, since all such work is credited only on a page that one must follow a link to get to. (In fact, many contributions require multiple clicks, especially for heavily edited articles.) This claim is either misleading or a serious problem with the Wikimedia system. Which is it? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

As only one of the supporters, I can only speak for myself, but I do believe the attribution system for images is fundamentally flawed. I do not, however, believe that credit on another page is no credit at all, just that it's not good enough. The attribution Wikipedia gives to the authors of its text, however, is different. We voluntarily give up the ability to prominently attribute our contributions when we edit Wikipedia, and we know (or should know) we do so. However, images secured from other places like Flickr do not fall into this category, as they may not be voluntarily giving up prominent attribution for their works. Instead, other people (Wikipedia editors) are bringing their works into a context where they may not be attributed as they require. So, I think it's neither of the options you give. -kotra (talk) 03:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Also speaking for myself, I don't think allowing attribution with the thumbnail means something is fundamentally broken. This is because conventionally - in journalism and other publication forms - image attribution is treated differently than attribution of text authorship. But even if conventional usage differs from our system, that doesn't mean our system is broken just that we're not meeting conventional standards or behavior. The legal standards and behavior are then another issue, yet they may intersect in that sometimes legal standards are based upon what's conventionally expected. Potentially then we also may need to pay attention to what's conventional done for legal reasons. - Owlmonkey (talk) 21:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

No legal issues

Just in case anyone is worried about legal issues of attribution, please read what the perennial proposals page says on the subject. Until Mike Godwin or someone else at the Wikimedia Office tells us that we must attribute images directly, we don't have to. The aura of paranoia is stifling. Nihiltres^{t.l} 03:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree that we should probably wait until Mike Godwin (or other legal counsel) responds before making a policy/guideline change, at least if it's based on legality issues, but I take slight offense to the view that I (and like-minded people) are being paranoid just because we are interpreting the licenses in a stricter way than you. As for Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Legal_issues, I don't see anything enlightening about this particular issue there. -kotra (talk) 03:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The only compelling argument for caption credits posted above is the suggestion that we may be in violation of the terms of CC-BY licenses by not permitting them. Nihiltres' point is that if such a massive legal timebomb really existed, the foundation's lawyers would have long since defused it. The perennial issue here is this assumption, based on a mis-reading of a legal text, that a qualified legal person has disregarded copyright law and allowed endemic license violation throughout the encyclopedia. Paranoia or nay, I know which horse my money's on... --mikaul^talk 09:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

My opinion (yes, opinion only) is that we are violating the spirit and possibly the letter of the CC-BY licenses because we are frequently not attributing the images in the way the author intended. This is evidenced by the numerous complaints we receive from photographers not knowing where their credit is given.

I can see why one would assume that it's ok if Wikimedia's legal counsel didn't consider it a problem, but nobody (even a lawyer) is infallible, and Wikimedia/Wikipedia is a huge enough project that there are bound to be places where the legal footing can be strengthened. I don't see anything wrong with discussing how to make it more secure; even if we are not trained in intellectual property law, we still can offer legitimate concerns. -kotra (talk) 18:13, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm saddened to see those who oppose not acknowledge the wonderful donations photographers make here, many of whom never edit on the site. Another compelling argument should be that we do this because it is fair and gives authors of images they donate proper attribution that goes beyond the status quo we have for authors of text. The difference between authors of text and photographers is that we are citing sources (hopefully). The photographer, on the other hand, is making original content. It is their own work, as much as any author we "authors" cite and reference make their own work from which we make articles from. That is a difference, and it is stunning nobody seems to recognize it.

Also, mikaul mischaracterized the entire discussion by stating we say we are currently violating the CC license. I don't believe we are. I am saying that providing attribution beneath the photograph makes our position even stronger, and should a court case ever arise we will have done all we can to ensure Wikipedia is not held liable. I'm not sure why we wouldn't be doing everything we can to ensure we adhere to the licenses properly, even if it is what some characterize as "paranoia." What is that old saying? "better safe than sorry." (Mind meal (talk) 10:07, 22 April 2008 (UTC))

I stated nothing of the sort, I pointed out that there was a suggestion on your part that our current image use policy may violate CC license terms, a point you just used your last paragraph reiterating. --mikaul^talk 12:43, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, all I'm saying is: Why can't we do both? It both strengthens our legal standing and only requires a minimum amount of text. When one reads a newspaper, one doesn't say to himself, "I can't focus on this article. That photo credit is too distracting." It is an odd argument. You did mischaracterize things. You wrote "the suggestion that we may be in violation of the terms of CC-BY licenses by not permitting them" was the most compelling argument. In this current proposal, no such remarks were made. For me, to be clear, my foremost argument is that we should do this because it is the right thing to do. End of story. I just can't see the downside in providing a simple photo credit. Photo by John Doe. Did that distract you from my post? (Mind meal (talk) 16:01, 22 April 2008 (UTC))

Yes, that is distracting to me because I don't give a damn who took the photo, and because it doesn't contribute to the encyclopedia article. If I did, it's on the description page. If it's "the right thing to do", then I expect a list of all article contributors at the bottom of every article. Wikipedia is WP:NOT the newspaper, and it's usually small and on the side there. I'm sorry if you may find this rude, and it is in no way toward you personally, but I hate this idea and will not allow it. Reywas92^Talk 01:12, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

And so your not "giving a damn" means all people on the face of this earth do not give a damn. "I hate this idea and will not allow it." It is sad to see these and other such sentiments expressed when speaking of the wonderful contributions photographers make to this site. Yes, I do find it rude and no, I don't believe you are sorry for that. Your giving "a damn" about who took a photo is irrelevant to this discussion, as you are not "all people." Look at things from a perspective outside of only your own limited scope. "If it's "the right thing to do", then I expect a list of all article contributors at the bottom of every article." That is such a straw man argument. You would need consensus for that, just as we need consensus for this. Don't turn this issue into something it is not. Your telling me you can't read an article with a photo credit in it? Or, am I misreading your statement. You say it is distracting. Perhaps that is because you aren't just ignoring it. It isn't jumping out at you with bright flashy colors throbbing in and out. This issue is being blown way out of proportion, and frankly the opposition argument is extremely weak. (Mind meal (talk) 01:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC))

I did not say that no one else gave a damn either, and I know that not everyone agrees with me, but some do, per here. You think that you're perfect and everyone agrees with you: "Watch and weep" in your edit summary? Yes, photographer have wonderful contributions, but the way that Wikipedia works is that it is collaborative and attribution does not need to be everywhere, though it is duly given. What the hell is a "straw man argument"? Whatever it is, you still haven't said why attribution should be in articles for photographers but not for writers. Yes, we do need consensus for that and this; I know that. Per the Support/Oppose section above, there evidently does not seem to be a strong consensus for this. Now you're telling me not to read the credit and just ignore it. I like to read what is in an image, so I'll read the caption. Them being so short, I find it hard to ignore another sentence, and it is in my nature to read everything there. This may not be the case for you and you can easily ignore it, but I and surely many others find it distracting. For something that affects hundreds of thousands of images on a couple million articles I'm not blowing this out of proportion. If this were to happen, it wouldn't happen easily or quickly. Personally, I find the proposition arguments rather weak. If your reasons at the very top were numbered, #1 and 2 are the same. The little something back is on the description page and the fact the image is used. Listing the name is self-promotion. #6 and 7 are the same as well, and that could be corrected in a different way. #3 is that the photographer is credited on the image description page. #4: Because we can is not a reason, and the should is elsewhere. #5 is for non-freely liscensed text that is quoted; images are often released. #8: Sure, that's true, but as an image contributor, I have donated my images to Wikimedia by freely liscensing them. I do not expect any attribution and I'm sure many others don't either. Reywas92^Talk 02:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Straw man. "Whatever it is, you still haven't said why attribution should be in articles for photographers but not for writers." These are two separate issues. Please stay focused on the actual proposal at hand. "Now you're telling me not to read the credit and just ignore it. I like to read what is in an image, so I'll read the caption. Them being so short, I find it hard to ignore another sentence, and it is in my nature to read everything there. This may not be the case for you and you can easily ignore it, but I and surely many others find it distracting." This has entered the territory of absurd.(Mind meal (talk) 02:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC))

Please elaborate on my absurdity. I'm stating that we have different styles of reading and I cannot easily ignore it, so I find it distracting. Reywas92^Talk 03:18, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I find absurd that anyone would claim three words beneath a photo "distracts them." Distracts you from what exactly? Do your eyes continuously get pulled back to the credit while reading the text? Does the credit have magnetic superpowers that speaks to you in a hypnotic tone? Do you find it "distracting" when you see an author's name on a book beneath the title? Can you not read a book that states who the author is for you? It is absurd! It doesn't make sense, that is the gist of it. You make it sound like seeing a credit is some traumatic experience one cannot recover from. (Mind meal (talk) 06:41, 23 April 2008 (UTC))

Okay, really, that's enough. I and others above find it distracting because it does not contribute to the article. It is irrelevant to a topic and I don't care to read it. If I want to know who took a picture, I can click on the link, not have it redily visible. I don't want it, okay? Reywas92^Talk 10:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Respectfully, it matters little if the readers want this or not. Attribution is mostly for the benefit of the photographer/artist/licensor, not the reader. Abiding by the spirit and/or letter of the license overrides any minor distraction a credit in the caption might cause in readers. -kotra (talk) 23:17, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

The CC-BY license states (Section 4b): "The credit required by this Section 4(b) may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Derivative Work or Collective Work appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors." Clear attribution on image pages seems sufficient, and indeed even arguably more prominent than being part of the large list of contributions in the history tab. Some attention may be required to provide proper attribution on the image pages, and cross-license use may have other consequences, but those are distinct issues from this discussion. Vassyana (talk) 02:11, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Related but somewhat rhetorical question. Who determines "may be implemented in any reasonable manner" and is "any reasonable" related to what's done conventionally in similar contexts? Is the determiner the licensor / owner of the photo who may well be expecting attribution credit for thumbnails as well as the full image resolution? or is it considered "reasonable" in terms of conventional usage for images in print and other media? in either case I think it might be the case that our current usage might not 1) fulfill the expectations of some image owners who are used to seeing attribution in other contexts (not wikipedia) also on small image sizes not just large image sizes or 2) that conventionally images have attribution no matter the size in other contexts like magazines, flyers, newspapers. Wikipedia is a new kind of media so i'm not sure the courts have defined well what "any reasonable" really means for a usage like that. Our own familiarity with how wikipedia is now would not be the standard that we're measured against. For those reasons I don't think we should actively remove attribution in thumbnail captions for CC-BY images. Not sure if it's necessary to add them. But an active effort to remove those without a reason - like abuse of self-promotion - seems to me like we're just setting our own standard of what's "any reasonable manner" and not measuring against other media types or expectations. Have we made any effort at all to ask photo CC-BY owners what they think is reasonable, for example? - Owlmonkey (talk) 06:30, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

You have to assume that the phrase "in any reasonable manner" is deliberately open to interpretation, in order to accommodate the wide variety of media and contexts an image may appear in. Usage conventions are as varied as usage license types multiplied by the range of available media. As any sociologist will tell you, convention is a complex, reflexive phenomenon. Wikipedia itself has conventions arrived at via very thorough debate and consensus and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find our conventions followed for other online media. If they weren't reasonable to the multitude of WP donors, we'd have no images at all.
Attribution appearing next to thumbnails is a convention on Flickr, which is reasonable given that images and their authors are the whole point of the site. Attribution on a linked sub-page is the convention on Wikipedia, which is reasonable as the thumbnails and every other non-plain-text element in our articles hyperlink to another part of the knowledge database, which is the whole point of this site. The fundamental difference in conventions between Flickr and Wikipedia is that one exists to share images and showcase authors, and the other exists to share knowledge and keep the authors anonymous.
What is clearly unreasonable is crediting some CC-licensed images in captions and not others. This is why the CC license wording is much more specific on this point: "at a minimum such credit will appear [...] in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors." Until such time as each and every thumbnail has an inline credit, we would be in breach of license for hundreds of thousands images, just by crediting one CC licensor in a thumbnail caption on the same site. That's why they should be removed wherever they are found. --mikaul^talk 13:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Well my point is not to say it is this or that, just to suggest that it might not be clear really what the legal requirement is exactly nor what the expectation is for photo authors. If we upload our own photos, then we're familiar sure. But what of flickr photo owners we ask to change their license? What's their expectation? The license is written vaguely. As you suggest probably because all the types of uses are too difficult to enumerate. But nonetheless I don't think that means one can take as liberal an interpretation as one likes. Further, as an interaction designer, my expectation is that an appreciable number of first time users would not know to click on one of our thumbnails and expect to see a larger version - even with the small icon in the corner implying they can enlarge it. That's a learned behavior experienced users may take for granted. Therefore, if I did a large scale user test I really doubt it would be reasonable that all users would find attribution for the photos even if asked to do so explicitly. If you put a small (cc) link in the corner or more likely (c) logo in the corner that was clickable I think you'd have a much higher user test success rate for people looking for attribution. If I'm right about that, then where does one draw the line for what is reasonable? when 70% of new users can find it? when 90% of new users can find it? My point is just that perhaps it's a gray area. Therefore, we might want to over correct slightly for our own bias blind spot in the favor of photo authors we license content from. - Owlmonkey (talk) 15:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I really appreciate everyone's thoughtful opinions on this. Let me re-summarize my point: we may not know for sure if we're fulfilling the requirements adequately, even with council review. It may not be black and white. Is textual attribution via a "history" tab sufficient? probably. is attribution via clicking on a thumbnail equivalent to a "history" tab? perhaps but i don't think it would user test as well; in my experience running consumer user tests. also, i believe photos are somewhat different than textual content, just conventionally speaking. We're more likely to be considered in the same realm as flickr than in our own realm, because our distinctions are more sophisticated than the general public but the general public probably decides what is reasonable. If you asked random people on the street if photo attribution was needed on small photos as well as large ones what would they say? - Owlmonkey (talk) 16:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

That's as may be, but if there's no such stipulation in the CC license text, the legal argument is moot. If this is to be a proposal to make attribution easier to find, then that's different; an icon, as pointed out earlier, is way less controversial than a byline which links nowhere and carries all sorts of burocratic baggage. It could replace the zoom icon and no-one would be inconvenienced apart from those who have to code for it. --mikaul^talk 17:42, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see it as moot just untested in courts, who ultimately clarify the ambiguity. It's the ambiguity that is the center of my point though. If we aren't completely certain that our attribution scheme is sufficient, then we should endeavor to improve it until there is confidence. Currently we can only do that by adding textual linked attribution as per this proposal. But that approach has others issues. So yes I think a "cc" style link or similar would be better. But overall I think there probably should be more clear attribution for photos than for textual CC-BY included content, because the standard in other domains is different for images. I find arguments that we're just fine the way attribution is now as over confident basically, and any ambiguity as an argument for increasing attribution not reducing it... in my opinion... - Owlmonkey (talk) 18:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Also I'd like to bring up that the human-readable version of the CC-BY licenses states that "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work)." So, at least according to the human-readable version, it's up to the author/licensor to decide how they want their work to be attributed. And as evidenced by the large number of complaints we get from photographers at Flickr not understanding where they are attributed, we are not attributing them as they intend (at least initially, until (and if) they are convinced that we are actually attributing them properly). Crediting them more prominently somehow (either with "Photo by John Doe" or "Credit: John Doe" in the caption, or with an Information/Attribution icon instead of or additional to the Enlarge icon) would certainly prevent most of these complaints, and for those who still want more credit (via a watermark or something), we are free to not use their image. The legalese version doesn't seem to say who decides the proper attribution method, but the human-readable version is very clear. -kotra (talk) 23:17, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

It may well be up to the author to specify how an image will be attributed, but the fact is that most authors don't specify anything, they just use the default CC-by license and as the default terms that license are honoured here, we don't have a problem. We only have a problem when Flickr photographers want to see their names appear the way they do at Flickr, ie next to thumbnails, in article namespace. As I noted earlier, this is a Flickr convention that we are not legally bound to follow, and if Flickr photographers insist on thumbnail credits, then we must decline their work. I really can't believe this is the serious barrier to migration of Flickr images here that you imply. I repeat, it's a question of convention, not legality, and simple unfamiliarity with our project. If this regularly amounts to angry rejection of it, I'd be very surprised, but so be it. We really could do without the help of any self-publicists who are militant enough to insist on non-standard terms, just as we've rightly declined a great many in the past. --mikaul^talk 00:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Looking at your contributions mikaul, I'm not sure how you would know that "the fact is that most authors don't specify anything." If you look at my contributions, maybe you'll see why this has been brought up. You have no idea the amount of photographers I speak with daily. Your statement is, to put it quite frankly, false. You say, "I repeat, it's a question of convention, not legality, and simple unfamiliarity with our project." That has not been demonstrated. (Mind meal (talk) 07:32, 24 April 2008 (UTC))

What do you mean, "not demonstrated"? Lack of user awareness is plainly the only point in this proposal with any validity, and the only issue on which there's anything approaching consensus here. I can prove that most photographers don't specify anything: just check almost any CC-licensed image on the encyclopedia. It would be much harder to find a CC-licensed image here which has been modified with specific requests for attribution. Do you seriously mean to say this fact needs to be demonstrated? All we hear from you is hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims about "numerous requests" for caption bylines. Where are these requests? I would love to know how many photographers you speak with daily. Why aren't they here, adding credibility (and much-needed support) to your proposal? Let's see some substance to your claims, instead of huffing and puffing about other people having "no idea". --mikaul^talk 09:33, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Is that a request for me to canvass them to add their voice? I don't think you'll like the result, but okay. Why in the crap would I be lying about this? You haven't even looked at my contributions. If you did, it would be 100% clear to you I am dealing with Flickr users on a regular basis. Again, why in the gd hell would I be "lying" about this? Don't you ever call me a liar again, or even insinuate it. To the contrary, it is you who have made unsubstantiated claims. You have made them about my integrity through character assassination, and you have claimed "hardly any" photographers desire this. How would you know? I don't see any photograph additions in your contributions. You call yourself a professional photographer, though. If anything you might contribute a few you make here and there, and maybe you don't care about attribution. But here is a clue: case studies don't mean much. (Mind meal (talk) 09:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC))

It's a request to substantiate your claims. I wouldn't advise canvassing opinion. "Take my word for it" is worthless in this medium, as you well know. Please, enough with the groundless accusations, I might start to take offence. --mikaul^talk 10:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[1], [2], [3] (You think I save all of these emails? I don't have the time or room! I realize you have no or little faith in your fellow editors, assuming them to be liars instead of thinking, "Hey, you know what? This guy does deal with them much more often than I. Maybe he knows something I don't.") How can you ask for evidence, and then tell me not to provide it? If you really wanted to hear from these photographers, you would say, "By all means, contact them all." Perhaps I will. Also, I acquired almost all photographs in this category for Wikipedia, among many others: [4] (Mind meal (talk) 10:15, 24 April 2008 (UTC))

Here is an email I received this morning about a Miles Davis photo: "Thank you for your interest, Adam. I'm not inclined to change settings on Flickr, but I could e-mail you the photo in question for the mentioned purpose. Credits should show right below the picture IMHO, as seen in the biography text (and not just when one clicks on the picture). Let me know!" (Mind meal (talk) 10:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC))

Another email from today: "Thanks for the info. Frankly, I'm reluctant to make other photos available without a visible credit since, as you point out, there's no guarantee anyone will actually click on the image. I've "lost" quite a few photos that have made their way around the Internet after I let one person (often a musician) use them for a website. Keep me posted, Ed." (Mind meal (talk) 18:07, 24 April 2008 (UTC))

Mind meal, I know you won't take this well, but I can't help you there. You've missed out on a huge chunk of the debate surrounding free content. Part of the wisdom behind the GPL (love it or hate it, it's a reality in our lives) is that attribution requirements are outlawed there. This was done because otherwise, things will spiral out of control. Who do you attribute for an image that is a composite or several images taken by different photographers, which has since been edited once or maybe twice (as does happen in some cases)? The basic truth here is that some people cannot participate in the free content society, because they don't want their content to be free, and that's okay. If you're encouraging them to impose conditions, you're making a grave mistake. Tell them what licenses we have, where the attribution appears, and what the implications are. Yes, we could be using a whole lot more content on WP if we allowed people to retain copyright, but that is exactly what we are NOT trying to do. I really hope this message gets to you. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 00:15, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Put simply, you are wrong. We cannot host Creative Commons images and not provide attribution. You have stated, "Yes, we could be using a whole lot more content on WP if we allowed people to retain copyright, but that is exactly what we are NOT trying to do." Please understand that Creative Commons images are hosted by Wikipedia and they are still copyright. Perhaps you understand attribution is required, though you did state, "Part of the wisdom behind the GPL (love it or hate it, it's a reality in our lives) is that attribution requirements are outlawed there." You have also stated, "Tell them what licenses we have, where the attribution appears, and what the implications are." Please don't speak to the content of my discussions with Flickr users when you don't know even a fraction of what my communications entail. I've just tried to alert users to a real problem Flickr users talk about. If you choose to ignore it or assert Wikiperfection, so be it. It won't be my fault when we are sued. (Mind meal (talk) 00:58, 26 April 2008 (UTC))

Well, unless I'm mistaken, your ass isn't even close to being on the line, so why bother bringing up proposals like this one, if you're concerned about the legal implications, which, btw, Nihiltres has given you a perfect answer to already. And yes, I will talk to you if you bring up a proposal. No way is anyone going to let you push something through because of "what [your] communications entail" (which you haven't shown anyone). Please don't base your arguments on vapourware, and your communications might not impress too many people anyway, as you're not the only one who is doing that kind of work. The Foundation will worry about it when it's time to do so. They have a lawyer. End of story. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 01:12, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

First, just because Nihiltres states a position doesn't make it correct. That is what discussion like this is for. Also, please don't talk about my buttocks, it is inappropriate. I know they look nice, but hands off. You say, "No way is anyone going to let you push something through because of "what [your] communications entail" (which you haven't shown anyone)." I am sick of insinuations that I proposed this measure because it was some invention of mine. You are supposedly new here, so we'll let it pass due to your inexperience with Wikipedia. (Mind meal (talk) 02:05, 26 April 2008 (UTC))

As you very well know, Nihiltres was only directing you to a page about perennial proposals that represents a consensus reached by many editors, including several admins and members of ArbCom, about proposals that have been dealt with time and again. Your proposal is listed there almost verbatim, and has been since at least September 2006. Nothing has changed. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 14:41, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Number the issues, please

Mind meal, would you be so kind as to give us a numbered list of each reason that we should use captions in the way you suggest? I'm interested in this proposal and even though I currently oppose it, I'd like to evaluate each point individually so that it's easy to consider the benefits and drawbacks of the proposal objectively. Ideally, we can have a pro/con section for each reason you suggest. Nihiltres^{t.l} 15:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Copied the newly numbered list here, added pros/cons. Each number starts with the original argument; either pro or con. Feel free to edit, add to, or re-sort the list. Nihiltres^{t.l} 15:47, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

1. Pros

   After numerous requests from Flickr users for their name to appear "next to, or under" the photo when requesting relicensing from them, it is apparent that many photographers expect attribution to appear beneath the photo. It is often all they ask in return. Some authors may not be willing to license their work to us without more direct or noticeable attribution.

   I do believe that finding attribution implicitly via clicking on an image is less obvious than the explicit "history" tab. Though an image appears in an article, clicking on the "history" tab does not display the attribution of that photo necessarily which is how one finds attribution of textual edits. It's inconsistent. Providing attribution under the thumb or as a "credits" link or "cc" icon alleviates Flickr user concerns. - Owlmonkey (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

   Cons

   We can then educate them about our practice of attribution. It's merely a matter of asking them for the particular conditions we use as a part of the style Wikipedia articles follow. Our authors do not get direct credit, but indirect credit of a similar form - and some argue we are giving them even better representation than editors already, via the image description page, though others argue that it may be just as - or more - difficult for inexperienced visitors to find the image page than the history tab.

2. Pros

   This will strengthen our legal status regarding attribution, even if we are currently abiding by the terms of CC-BY licenses (though some argue that we may not be, depending on interpretations of CC-BY licenses). Since this has never been challenged in court, we don't really know if we are doing all we can to provide prominent attribution.

   In thumbnail views, there is an explicit 'enlarge' icon that helps novice users discover that they can click on the image. In infobox thumbnails, this is not present. So we're not consistent in how we help users find attribution. Image attribution is similarly not included in the "history" tab where other attribution is found, further making finding attribution inconsistent and not explicit. - Owlmonkey (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

   Cons

   Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Legal_issues. We need not restrict ourselves unnessessarily.

3. Pros

   The option to include credit in a caption should, at the very least, not be prohibited for "non-notable" photographers by guidelines for this very reason.

   Cons

   According to current policy, credits in captions are only relevant in an article where a notable photographer took them. Otherwise, they are merely credits, which should then be discouraged in the same way that signing an article text is discouraged. This is based on the assumption that images with attribution-requiring licenses require the same level of attribution as article text contributed by editors (typically licensed under the GFDL).

4. Pros

   It is in the spirit of many licenses we host, i.e. Creative Commons Attribution licenses, particularly the human-readable versions of these licenses.

   Cons

   We already give credit on the image description page, which some argue is fully within the spirit of these licenses, particularly the legalese versions of these licenses. The separation of credit and content justifies the separation while, some argue (see above), still providing image authors with better credit than text authors.

5. Pros

   It is the morally right option, crediting the work to authors prominently.

   Cons

   By what morals? This argument is fallacious. We already attribute the images to their source.

   Part of this moral basis may be that image attribution of CC-BY content is different than textual attribution of GFDL content. Further, standards for image attribution conventionally may also differ, implying precedent or rather that deviating from precedent is done with some moral cost and must be justified. - Owlmonkey (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

6. Pros

   It is common to see attribution given in this way in countless other forms of media, thereby giving an idea of what conventional standards are.

   Cons

   Wikipedia is not other forms of media.

7. Pros

   Photographers are authors of original content, and most images are exempt from WP:OR prohibition. They are thus like the author of a book, who we credit in the reference section on the article page. Article text is different from images, in that it should not synthesize new ideas or concepts, and thereby deserves a lesser degree of attribution.

   Cons

   In contrast, some argue that our editors synthesize original content (if not original information) – "like the author of a book" – yet we do not directly credit our editors, including instead a history page. The "authors of original content" argument misses the point - if text on Wikipedia is not original content, it is generally a copyright violation and gets deleted. Book authors themselves often cite sources as well.

   Again, photographers make original content. They are the primary source of the image. They are the author of the work, not the author of work derived from another author. You have skewed the point. We credit the author of the book we use to reference, because that book is the primary source. An image produced by a photographer is most often the same. Only one individual made it. there are no "multiple" authors, and there is no synthesis. (Mind meal (talk) 17:19, 24 April 2008 (UTC))

   Most photographers are not sole creators of original content. They build on original content created by many others (the subject matter) or they convey a reality that has not been created by them (the subject matter). The "creative value added" of most encyclopedia photographs is very small - the photographer is more reporter than creator. Artistic photographs are exceptions, but these must by by notable photographers.

8. Pros

   It is courteous, giving a bit back to those photographers who were kind enough to relicense their work

   Cons

   Yes, it's courteous, but courtesy need not override the style we use in articles.

9. Pros

   Some Wikipedia users do not know they must click an image, or that it is even clickable, to see source information.

   Cons

   By analogy, this falls apart: "Some Wikipedia users do not know they must click [on the history tab], to see source information." If this argument is valid, people would be justified in signing every (non-talk; we already sign talk, obviously) contribution they made.

   It's not a dichotomy, showing more UI elements to find attribution helps and showing less hinders discovery of attribution. If "history" was renamed "credits" or "sources" that might improve the ability of novices to find attribution. If "history" was renamed "deltas" it might hinder it. Similarly, if you show a "credits" link under every image I argue you greatly improve finding attribution for images. Similarly, if you were to add an "image attribution credits" link on the "history" page you also help people find the attribution. Right now with infobox image usage there is no explicit visual cue showing how to find image attribution. One just has to know implicitly that they can click on an image for more information or larger sizes. Same issue in Gallery view, there's little indication that you can enlarge or find more information by clicking. - Owlmonkey (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

10. Pros

    This proposal is not intended to apply to templates. Only images displayed in articles to provide illustration of a particular subject matter.

    So if someone takes a picture that is used in 1 article, they get attribution in the article, but someone who takes a picture used in a template on 1000 pages doesn't? If we use the moral argument, don't we have more of a responsibility to credit the latter? Mr.Z-man 01:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

    Cons

    This isn't an issue if we don't need to use credits. Besides, this clause complicates issues of credit by contradicting the "expectation of direct credit" pro issue above.

    This was a response to a vote in opposition. I put it there because people are daydreaming about 1,000 what if scenarios in all this. At least you have taken the time to pro and con them all, however erroneous I may view it all to be. (Mind meal (talk) 17:26, 24 April 2008 (UTC))

11. Pros

    Allowing self-promotion will encorage more submission of high quality work.

    I don't think "self-promotion" was conflated with the idea of attribution in this proposal really. But that's been listed as a reasonable concern about it. One could also say, adding "credit" and "cc" links to images is not self-promotion but also encourages submission of high quality work. - Owlmonkey (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

    Cons

    Wikipedia rejects the idea of using any form if advertising, however small, to improve aticle quality. See Perennial_proposals:Advertising.

12. Cons

    This proposal argues for the bundling of credit and content. Wikipedia articles should separate credit and content somewhat so that the article text itself does not contain references to its authors. This is currently the case for text. This proposal would disrupt that separation.

    Pros

    Were this truly something to shoot for, our reference section would be a square link with nothing to indicate what it is, which when clicked takes you to works cited.(Mind meal (talk) 17:28, 24 April 2008 (UTC))

13. Cons

    If multiple revisions of an image exist, we should then credit each editor who has contributed to them via this proposal. Image captions might then contain large lists of authors, which would exacerbate the disruption to a given article involved in this proposal.

    Pros

    Not a problem if the proposal is merely to add a "credits" or "cc" link to CC-BY image captions instead. - Owlmonkey (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

14. Cons

    Attributions would clutter the articles, make them look ugly, distract from the article topic, and interfere with the project aim of creating an encyclopedia.

    Pros

    A small and unintrusive name written in the caption creates negligible distraction.

    Also not a problem if the proposal is merely to add a "credits" or "cc" link to CC-BY image captions instead. - Owlmonkey (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

General comment Since you have failed to identify one positive in all of this, one assumes there is a lack of unbiased assessment here. Even the most partisan politician concedes some points to the opposition. (Mind meal (talk) 17:34, 24 April 2008 (UTC))

I haven't identified any positives because I oppose the action. Of course I am biased, but I merely am presenting counterarguments to what is presented. I leave the interpretation of the relative merits of each pro/con to the reader. I don't want to compare this to politics; my job is not to convince, but to challenge. I don't think that this is an appropriate measure, so I present the reasons that we should not do it as a contrast. If it cannot hold its own against a "devil's advocate", it probably isn't a good proposal. Nihiltres^{t.l} 18:31, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Bias is a term used to describe a tendency or preference towards a particular perspective, ideology or result. All information and points of view have some form of bias. A person is generally said to be biased if a reasonable observer would conclude that the person is markedly influenced by inner biases, rendering it unlikely for them to be able to be objective. (Mind meal (talk) 17:16, 25 April 2008 (UTC))

What wikipedia is not

Wikipedia is not a mean to self promote. People who write articles deserve to be credited as much as people who create images. This is what page history and file history is for. This issue has been proposed many times and has been rejected many times. Anything extra you do has legal implications you do not want. Such was the case with disclaimers on the GFDL template. -- Cat ^chi? 12:01, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Should we move this issue to Wikipedia:Perennial proposals? -- Cambrasa confab 17:13, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Seems there is still room for variations on the idea. For example, the idea of changing the icon below thumbnails or adding a "credits" link may weight very differently for consensus than adding the names of the photo authors. And those proposals don't have nearly the same self promotion concerns. So let's be careful not to wave this all away as talked about before, I see good ideas still coming out of the discussion. They should probably be presented separately though since this conversation is deeply invested in whether or not the name of the photo author appears below the thumbnail. - Owlmonkey (talk) 18:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Clicking the image gives you all the credit you can dream of. :) -- Cat ^chi? 20:58, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

What should be in a picture caption

I suggest people read Wikipedia:Captions. It is clear that captions are intended to integrate the image with the text, and that, for various reasons, stuff such as "click here to enlarge" or "click here for credit", distract from this (though the options should be there, but without being obtrusive). Many books list picture credits in a separate section, not because they are paper, but because the credits are distracting. Newspapers put credits with the pictures because they are newspapers and don't have sections at the back for that sort of thing. What should go in the article and caption is stuff about the photograph that is relevant to the article. For example, if the photographer is famous for taking the photo, is in some cases is just famous. Or if the way the photo was obtained is relevant (eg. NASA pics from satellites and so on). As much information as is needed for the context, and the rest on the image description page, is a good rule of thumb. The same applies for credits. Carcharoth (talk) 11:49, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Remove image credits from name space, portals, etc.

Rationale: We don't attribute work to our editors, so we shouldn't attribute photographs. AFAIK, the GFDL requires explicit attribution of at least the five most principal authors only for modified works, that is, it applies to citizendium when they copy our material, but not to us. That is, there is no legal requirement to attribute photographers, and I propose that we cease doing so to stop putting editors at a disadvantage, many of whom spend as much, if not more, of their time on creating content, and who are, in fact, more essential to this exercise than the photographers - let's be realistic about that! Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 21:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

• Support Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 21:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
• Strong oppose Why ban something when banning it is not necessary? You also have not defined the disadvantage this places editors at? You make it sound like photographs appear out of thin air, and editors then put them here. You are also delusional when you say there "is no legal requirement to attribute photographers." (Mind meal (talk) 23:17, 25 April 2008 (UTC))

Let's not fork discussion - there's a thread above this one discussing the same thing. x42bn6 Talk Mess 23:57, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Mind meal removed it from that thread. It was also originally titled "Counter proposal:" etc. He's taking a rather aggressive position. I'm going to try to avoid confrontation on this one. But please, if anyone feels like putting it back in its place, do so! Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 01:32, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean not attributing photographers in the image page, or in an article? bibliomaniac15 Do I have your trust? 20:36, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Article. See the above discussion from which this thread was detached. Like I said, anyone who wants to put it back should do so. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 22:54, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I raised this point some time ago in Jimbo's talk page. Suppose an image requires credit in the image caption in order to be used under Creative Commons. So, that text becomes part of the article. According to the GFDL, though, you should be able to delete it, but then we would breach the CC license.

Personally, I don't think it is necessary to just do this. Regardless of what Papa Lima Whiskey, users are credited in the page history (and the static Wikipedia credits all users at the bottom of the articles). The question is, is credit in the image page enough? Personally, when I contact a Flickr user I always explain them how their images are credited, and very few times they require credit in the image caption in the article. In fact, as far as I know, only professional photographers require that. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 01:15, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like your question was to some degree about whether including CC content in an article means that it is also then covered and subjected to GFDL. - Owlmonkey (talk) 19:04, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Kind of. Both licenses are right now incompatible, the attribution itself is CC required, but the text itself would be released under GFDL per the license agreement. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 23:12, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

• Support – now that we have clarification of the proposal. I do believe that the image description page attribution currently given to photograhers, above and beyond that of article editors, is a perfectly adequate and fair reflection of the value that images provide the encyclopedia. Under any reading of CC and GFDL licenses, there is no legal requirement to attribute photographers in article namespace. Crucially, it is expressly stated in CC licenses that images appear with equal attribution to other similarly licensed images. Crediting some photographers more prominently than others is a clear breach of the spirit and letter of Creative Commons releases. When requesting images from photographers, inline credits should never be offered, nor should any such requests be granted, and any authorship quoted in article namespace, which is not wholly relevant to the article itself, should always be removed. It should be the same deal for everyone; no special favours, no undue prominence. --mikaul^talk 01:11, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - not all textual contributions are works by editors nor therefore have attribution in the "history" page. for example, if I quote an author that has released content under CC-BY or as a fair use copyrighted quote. I'm the person adding it to the article, so my name appears in the history, but my name is not proper attribution. In quotations, I may have to attribute the blockquote of text to the author. Therefore, there may be cases when attribution of textual content or other content needs to appear somewhere other than the history tab, is not covered by GFDL, and is still required. - Owlmonkey (talk) 19:04, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Are you responding to the right proposal? The suggestion here is the removal of attribution wherever a photographer has been credited in the caption beneath their image in article namespace. It has nothing to do with the attribution of editors or other kinds of authorship. --mikaul^talk 23:07, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for commenting. I'm trying to also pointing out an error in the logic of the proposal. It's based on the idea that attribution of photos in namespace is inconsistent and unfair. And removing them would improve parity. But because photo attribution does not appear in the history we're already putting photo and textual attribution on uneven footing. Further that we never attribute work in the namespace for textual content. Which is not true, search for 'blockquote'. But aside from the logic problems I oppose it. - Owlmonkey (talk) 17:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

It appears in the image history, which is exactly where it should appear. Remember that you can browse images independently from articles. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 00:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Also blockquotes are cited because they are original texts, which are cited (credited) at the foot of the page under "References". I fail to see any logical reason to oppose to a proposal which simply expresses a fundamental precept of the Wikipedia project. --mikaul^talk 10:16, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

• Surely this proposal is unnecessary. image use policy is quite clear on the issue: "All photo credit should be in a summary on the image description page." If that's too unambiguous, take the issue to the image use policy talk page and try to get the policy wording changed. As it is, photographers should not be credited in article mainspace and therefore editors can remove caption credits with impunity. --mikaul^talk 23:07, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

• Strong oppose: Anyone can grab a few books, read them, and take from them the most important facts and add them at let's say Lytton Strachey. It takes time, true, but it's a personal choice. The same does not happen with images, take this image of Gene Wilder for example. It's a great once-in-a-lifetime 784 × 1,000px shot which the author could have sold, specially given Wilder's age which increases the value of good pictures of him. Au contraire, I wouldn't in a million years be able to sell any of my contributions to Lytton Strachey, people could just buy the books or settle with what was written on its article before I started working on it. SO, if some people request to have their name under the shot, I say let them, as it's not harmful and it could possibly encourage other photographers into releasing some of their pics. Besides, it seems unrighteous to go into a credit removal rampage when some people (see Colin Firth) released the image under the impression that they would be credited under it.--Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 15:42, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't want to come over as wikilawyering, but that credit was blatant advertising and has quite rightly been removed. Anti-advertising policy is fundamental to Wikipedia, one of the first five pillars of the project. It isn't a petty rule, there are complex legal and ethical reasons for it. Images are primary sources and require attribution similar, but not equal to, referenced source texts, which is why comprehensively-detailed wp:image description pages exist for them. Editing Wikipedia (even writing an entire article) is noted in the history of the article page, and as it's only based on primary sources, needs no more formal attribution than that.
If a contributor could sell an image rather than donate it here, no-one is stopping them. Even if it were the only existing free image of a subject (as often happens) we dont make any exception to the rule for it. I guess the fundamental point here is conditional use is not free use and is therefore unsuitable for the encyclopedia. Hope that explains things. --mikaul^talk 09:23, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Not every photographer asks to be credited, so it's not like there's a huge threat of being flooded by spam in the near future. In any case, most of the arguments seem to say "If I don't get credited on the article namespace, why should they?" which seems rather childish, but I guess that if you really want to respect all rules you should quickly remove this super small and harmless courtesy tags.--Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 10:00, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I realise that on the face of it, it looks like petty rule-mongering. The threat of spam is real enough, as editors already spend a great deal of time removing blatant self-promotion and advertising from "See also" sections. Allowing some people to do this would make a mockery of this effort and exacerbate the problem. The same is true of inline credits, especially those with links to external sites like the one you cited. The "fairness" issue is a real one too. Of course many photographers would prefer an inline credit, myself included, but they upload their images on the same basis as everyone else and agree to restrict their self-promotion to the image description page. This is also a condition of the CC-BY-SA free license, which stipulates that an image must receive the same level of attribution as other images. The rule, as I mentioned, exists to protect a legal requirement, as well as a "fair-play" ethos. Rules like this are just basic common sense. --mikaul^talk 10:30, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Spam links on see also sections are not the same thing as credit links, as those sites have in no way contributed to the community. I don't think every photographer wants attribution on the article mainspace, right now I can count with one hand the articles I know have the photographers name, so this is really not a pending threat, in fact, you guys are Supporting the removal of less than a dozen names. About the licences, I'm not sure I understand what you are saying, as both of the Creative Commons licenses accepted by Wikimedia Commons (Attribution and Share-alike) clearly state that we have to give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these. And if someone has released a picture under the GNU Free Documentation License and then asks to be credited, well we can't just say no only because they didn't fully understood what GNU means.--Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 15:55, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

But spam isn't defined by the credentials of the spammer, it's defined by relevance and notability to the article it appears in. The name of an image's author is usually irrelevant to an article, and its appearance is only ever not spam when it is relevant.
A license constitutes an agreement between two parties, creator and user; if the license fits, we can use the image. If it doesn't, we can't. As per the standard wording of the CC license (here, section 4b) we are legally bound to say "no" to requests for credits for some photographers and not others, and if the license has been specifically modified to request inline credits (which is rare but not impossible) we have to either renegotiate the license or delete the image. It's not a question of what photographers ask for; as with all free-license uploads, it's about persuading them to release under terms we can use.
My guess is that there are many more than 12 instances of caption credits around at any one time, but if you have a reliable way of tracing them and confirming your count, I'd be interested to hear it ;o) --mikaul^talk 02:13, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• Comment I'm a little surprised that nobody has commented on the main page, where the most visible change would result from this proposal - technically, the main page is in article space. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 00:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's an odd one, I'm surprised it didn't come up during the earlier caption credit debate. I think it's because it's on the main page that a credit was deemed appropriate. OTOH, why the other images on the front page aren't similarly credited, I'm at a loss to explain. Maybe ask over at featured pictures. --mikaul^talk 09:27, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposed new talk page template

I have recently received a message on my talk page about the {{Round In Circles}}. It was proposed that, perhaps if circumstances warrant, we might have a separate template for when such circular arguments appear a few months down the road from the initial discussion. The template was mentioned as possibly referring to the Groundhog Day (movie) in some way. Do those of you who know more about this than me, which isn't saying that much in this case, think it might be a good idea to develop such a template, particularly for when circular discussions appear again a few months after their first incarnation? John Carter (talk) 22:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I think this would be very useful, especially if the template gave the difs or archive location of the previous identical discussions. Renee (talk) 23:51, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Nice template... Useful and funny (or pathetic, depending on the occasion) at the same time. In any case, the idea makes sense; the wording could include something like periodically, and links to the archives could be provided at the end (are diffs really used for archiving in the Talk namespace?). Waltham, The Duke of 20:06, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

This might be useful, but I think the {{FAQ}} template is better for this. No one ever actually reads through archives when told their points have been brought up before, because it's too tedious. The FAQ template concisely goes through all the points frequently brought up, so there's no searching involved, and people are much more likely to actually read. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:58, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

So how do you do this? Do you just paste in difs of previous discussions or present as "facts" the outcome of previous discussions? Thanks, Renee (talk) 00:31, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Probably best to do both -- state the consensus of those discussions, with diffs to back them up. Equazcion •✗/C • 00:34, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Require accounts to register an email address before editing

If Wikipedia would require accounts to register an email address before registering, malicious sockpuppetry could be greatly reduced, as sockpuppeteers would be forced to create a new email account for each sock. Simply having to confirm an email address should not deter people who are already willing to create an account, and those not willing to do so could simply choose to edit anonymously. I know that sometimes there are legitimate uses for sockpuppet accounts, so I also recommend making it so that administrators can allow a particular email address to be used for multiple accounts if requested by email.--Urban Rose 17:56, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

No, they wouldn't. I've got a couple different accounts I've registered (including one to prevent impersonations), and they all use the same email address. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:01, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Or perhaps it should be made so that autoconfirmed users can create accounts while logged in through the "create account" feature without requiring different email addresses or even an email address at all for that matter. There should also be possibly a limit to the number of accounts and/or a restriction on the number of accounts that can be registered within a certain time period.--Urban Rose 19:12, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Or instead, administrators would be allowed to create accounts without email addresses or with an already taken email address, and a forum could be set up where registered users who wish to create alternate accounts or create accounts to prevent impersonation could request that an admin do this for them. (Or they could request it by email).--Urban Rose 19:15, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Not trying to kill your idea, just playing devil's advocate... I own several domains. It's a trivial matter to sign up a dozen accounts with a dozen different email addresses that are all "valid" as far as MediaWiki is concerned (I know this for a fact because I've done it with one of my socks). Voila, easily bypassed, despite all the work being put into it, plus we'd be screwing over legitimate editors as well.
Also keep in mind that we're talking about people very, very willing to put in the time to vandalize the site; the prospect of having to set up a few extra accounts on Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail is not a particular hurdle. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:21, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I know. That's why my original idea was to make only email addresses provided by the ISP valid. If we were to do that, then only vandals dedicated enough to change ISPs every time they wanted to create a new sock would continue their behavior. But a user commented that not all ISPs provide email accounts, so I withdrew this idea in favor of the one I've now posted.--Urban Rose 19:47, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I sorta breezed by that. Good thing, too, since I don't have an ISP-provided email address... still, the posts above strike me as a massive amount of effort for a minimal amount of payoff, especially since people could just as easily game the system. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Limiting it to ISP addresses doesn't help much: I can easily get my hands on a dozen email addresses that meet that requirement. --Carnildo (talk) 03:56, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about what "most" people do, but in my family three of us have discarded ISP mail and have gone freemail. Unlike our previous ISP, we aren't shoved with the AOL interface every time we get on the Internet, and in nearly all cases freemail is just as good. In fact I've progressed to paying for Yahoo Mail Plus for three years now. It's a huge pain to have to dig up my old ISP address for places that require it (such as a certain review site) and would certainly turn me off some if I was new and couldn't use my freemail. hbdragon88 (talk) 01:48, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, the ISP I use has a sucky email system which I have stopped trying to use after about a month of banging my head against the desk. I would hate to be forced to use that terrible piece of crap. Corvus cornix_talk 21:32, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Add Encyclopedia Dramatica to Ed?

Should a description of Encyclopedia Dramatica be added to the article Ed? Right now the page "Encyclopedia Dramatica" is deleted and protected from recreation, but I think the sight may be notable enough to deserve at least a mention if not an article (it currently ranks above "Encyclopedia Brittanica" on hot Google searches). There was a description of the site in the article ED but User:Sceptre removed it [5], and I'm not sure that this is justified as I recently created an account on the site and I know that the site has an article attacking Sceptre, so I feel that he may have unjustly removed it just because he doesn't like the site. Remember that Wikipedia is not censored.--Urban Rose 17:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Eh, if we don't have an article on it, I don't think we need to link to it. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:49, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages should contain links to pages we have articles about or plan to have articles. I don't think an entry for a topic deemed not sufficiently notable for coverage is needed. Disambiguation pages are there to help people find articles, not to list all things a term could mean that we don't propose to have content about. People aren't looking for information about what "ED" might mean, they are looking for an article about Encyclopedia Dramatica. As we do not have one and aren't inviting people to create one, I don't think there should be an entry for it. WjBscribe 17:53, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I see what you're saying, though we aren't saying that there will never be an article on ED. If the site becomes more notable or is covered by more reliable sources over the years, or if the arguments that it isn't are dismantled, then there may be a chance that Wikipedia could include an article on ED in the future. Basically what I'm saying is that we aren't trying to prohibit people from ever creating an article on ED; we're just trying to prohibit an article on ED from being created without the previous arguments in favor of its deletion being taken on first.--Urban Rose 18:14, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me the point of redlinks is to invite people to create content. Until we are inviting people to write an articles about ED, I don't think we should link to it. When we delete the article about a band for non notability, we tend to remove links to that page rather than leave them in case the band may become notable. The same logic would seem to apply to ED. WjBscribe 18:18, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree. And I don't think we ought to be serving as an advertising platform either. -- Fullstop (talk) 00:32, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

We should definitely have an article on Encyclopedia Dramatica. I don't know much about it and I'm more concerned with meaningful articles, but if anyone feels inclined to make it, let me know so I can vote in favor. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 00:48, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you on that, but good luck convincing all the people who let emotion cloud their objectivity on this subject. Some even regard it as harassment to even suggest that the article be recreated. *Dan T.* (talk) 01:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm definitely leaning more toward thinking that the site does merit an article despite having had my photo posted on the site without my consent myself (though I released it into public domain, so they did nothing illegal). If anyone here can help me come up with reliable sources I might be willing to propose a recreation.--Urban Rose 02:18, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

See User:Shii/ED. There was a DRV awhile ago, no consensus. And that picture really is you? I thought it was just a spoof of some random person they decided to illustrate as you. hbdragon88 (talk) 04:36, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's really me.--Urban Rose 18:34, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I've added the mention of ED back on the page with a link to the Craigslist ad controversy. Feel free to revert this if you wish.--Urban Rose 20:37, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Encyclopedia Dramatica is currently covered at Criticism of Wikipedia. See Criticism of Wikipedia#Humorous criticism. I think that is the only reference to it in Wikipedia mainspace, though I may be wrong. Carcharoth (talk) 11:01, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Community noticeboard

NB. When following the links below, please note that Wikipedia:Community noticeboard has been turned back into a redirect pending discussion.

This is a page I have been thinking about for a while. I'm very surprised such a page has not been set up yet. Currently, there is no page on this project that is there as a kind of bulletin board, for the purpose of every user. For instance, it could be used to announce backlogs at WP:GA, WP:AFC and other areas that don't necessarily involve admins. I set up a very basic page here and would appreciate comments. Thanks, Majorly (talk) 15:04, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. Too bad nobody has thought of this before.  :) The Transhumanist 16:27, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Heh, on some wikis, the CP is the main page, and it is linked from our sidebar. MBisanz ^talk 11:05, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Note - Majorly, you didn't "set up" the page. You turned a redirect (see here) into a new page without fixing the old links. I've commented at Wikipedia talk:Community noticeboard. Carcharoth (talk) 11:08, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposal re: Redirect template standardisation and categorisation

See here. For an example of the proposed meta-template, see here [relatively complex template-code]. RichardΩ612 Ɣ |ɸ 12:22, May 4, 2008 (UTC)

Featured Article Categories Problem

I have been discussing at length a problem with the categories at Wikipedia:Featured articles, being the combination of Psychology and Philosophy into a singular category, when these two subjects are so utterly different and unrelated. I won't repeat the discussion here, but would like to draw attention to it: please comment here! Thanks. --Aquillyne-- (talk) 12:46, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Use of Flags in Television Infoboxes

Over at Template:Infobox Television we are trying to guage a final consensus as to whether flag icons should or should not be used in television infoboxes. If you have a view on this, please go HERE, and voice your support/opposition/neutrality. You may also wish to look over the discussion immediatley before this section. Thank you. _TalkIslander 12:47, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Addition to format of musician articles

I was wondering if it would be possible to add a couple lines telling what a band's most definitive song is. Or this could be their most acclaimed song or their biggest hit or some piece that is considered seminal, or something for each category. My reasoning is that to see a band described in print does not indicate if you will like their music or not. To pick a song from a band at random to sample them can be hit or miss. I could think of songs by the Beatles or Led Zeppelin that if that were the only song I had heard I would decide I didn't like the band. These could be very disputable but possibly worth the inclusion. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 19iamis77 (talk • contribs)

Which song is a band's most "definitive" is subjective, ie. a matter of opinion. If a reliable source can attest to a song having garnered a lot of acclaim by reviewers, or if one song made more money/topped the charts for longer than all others, that could be mentioned -- but I believe that's already done for most band articles. Equazcion •✗/C • 20:07, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Count accesses to non-existing pages and create a "most wanted new pages" list

Dear Wikipedia,

This proposal is about the pages that are linked from existing articles, but currently don't exist yet. That is, the articles that are linked in red color.

We could add a counter, visible only to administrators, that counts how many times somebody has tried to access the non-existing page. The counting can be filtered so that clicking from the same IP only counts once. Then, Wikipedia software could create a sorted list of most wanted new articles. We could then publicly post the list of (say) top 1000 most desirable new articles. This list could be published, say, somewhere on the Wikipedia main page, or elsewhere (as appropriate). This way, our editors could easily locate pages that are most in demand.

From my experience, many people do not know that existing articles are linked in blue and the non-existing in red; so people keep clicking on it, providing valuable information as per how much a certain page is in demand.

Another way to estimate the demand of a page could be to count how many pages are currently linking to the non-existing page. We could also combine this with the number of attempted accesses.

We could also group these pages as per the particular topic. So, if we have an expert on (say) geography out there willing to help, they can go to the "Most wanted new articles: Geography" list and pick a topic to write on. This might be a convenient way of matching people's skills to articles in demand.

Wikipedia:Requested articles links to Wikipedia:Most wanted articles. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:52, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:31, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Limit diff display for very long diffs

I'd like to propose an auto-limit for the display of extremely long diffs. Especially when pages are vandalized, by blanking and replacing with some inane comment, the diff display can take a while to load, during which time my browser freezes (Firefox/WinXP). All I really need to know in these cases is that content was blanked and that a stupid comment was put in its place; but on a 100k or 200k page, regardless of the fact that I know everything I need to know in that first split second the diff is loading, I need to wait for the diff display to load the entire 200k of blanked text.

I don't think it's ever necessary to display more than, let's say, 20k of consecutive removed text. The rest can be replaced by a symbol or message telling us that the remaining text, up until either the end of the page or a point which the message would specify, was also removed. Any thoughts? Equazcion •✗/C • 20:20, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

That functionality is already available for users with popups - popups allow you to hover over the diff link to see the diff - and does cut off if it's too long. You can enable popups by either selecting the option in Preferences --> Gadgets or by going to User:Lupin/popups.js and following the instructions there. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 21:16, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I've tried popups and I don't like it too much. I already use Twinkle for most such functions. I think limiting the fundamental MediaWiki diff function would be beneficial as a site-wide change, rather than merely as a customization for users to implement via a script. I don't think there is ever a need to display over 100k of changes, for anyone. Equazcion •✗/C • 21:33, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with Twinkle, but watchlist reports show the number of bytes changed, and page histories show the number of bytes for each version. It's pretty much a 100% guarantee that if a page versions have been fairly consistent (at whatever size) and then an editor comes along and reduces the page size by 200K, without any explanation in the edit summary, then you're looking at vandalsim. Given that, you can skip the diff by simply using the rollback option. (If you don't have rollback, then I recommend getting it.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:38, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I've got it. Neither rollback or twinkle are available from the watchlist -- you need to look at a diff screen first. You can go to history to use rollback, but I think it would be beneficial if we didn't have to remember to do something different depending on how much data has changed. And the point still stands that it's never necessary to display over a certain amount of change in a diff. In a general sense this would be a good change to make. Equazcion •✗/C • 22:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)