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Wikiquote:Village pump archive 15


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Village pump archive 15

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During July 2007, originally posted to Wikiquote:Village pump.


Request for endorsement

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I'd request for endorsement on those two policy-drafts. If there are no objection and three or more explicit endorsement, I'd propose we consider them as our official guidelines (In my opinion user conduct is not the subject to be regulated by "policies". It is rather a matter of moral and ethics).

Thank you for your attention. --Aphaia 08:57, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiquote:Assume good faith

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Besides minor link changes, it is almost identical with the latest w:WP:AGF. Aph.

I've started the talk page for this draft with my endorsement at Wikiquote talk:Assume good faith#Call for endorsement. Thanks for working on this, Aphaia! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your feedback (and also to Cato, many thanks!). Your "brief history" is quite helpful and accurate in my opinion. I'd prefer to add the similar happened on Wikiquote:Civility too: copied by Essjay, and labeled as official thing, my change of its status to draft, some revisions and call for endorsement. --Aphaia 08:08, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be set-in-stone and with three clear supports, no dissent. Unless a dissent come within a week, I think we can consider it our "official guideline". If you have an opinion, please input your idea on its talk. --Aphaia 10:50, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiquote:Civility

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Since we have no official meditation system, info about mediation are rewritten. I hope my changes reflect the reality of our community. Aph.

I'd withdraw request for endorsement on WQ:CIVIL. Two editors expressed their idea it would be better to be more refined, and one of them is willing to make a major change. We'll later ask the community for review. The major concern is on "rewording/removing incivil wording by the other editor, not the original author". Your opinion to its talk will be appreciated. --Aphaia 10:50, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oliver Stone

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Obviously, Oliver Stone is notable enough for an article, so I won't start a VfD. However, it currently consists of one very long extract. It may be long enough to be a copyvio. It is certainly not a short, pithy quote of the sort that I assume we want. What should we do?--Cato 10:48, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiquote:Deletion_policy suggests that it may have to be deleted and re-created.--Jusjih 11:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would suggest being bold and trimming it to some pithy essences before slapping a {{copyvio}} tag on it. Wikiquote's interest are better served first by attempts to reduce potential copyright violations by trimming, than by jumping right to the start-over requirement of a "copyvio" designation. And although we often use a VfD nomination to stimulate community review, direct editing is preferable. If the original editor (or anyone else for that matter) disputes your selection of quotes, it becomes a basic content issue that can be discussed on the article talk page. Hope this helps. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 11:53, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've been bold. Please don't shoot me if you don't like it!--Cato 11:59, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Cato. I've bulleted your quote arrangement and tweaked the use {{DEFAULTSORT}} for better performance. (For a reason I don't recall offhand, the colon [:] separator results in slightly less load on the system than the pipe [|] for this specific wiki tag.)
Just for those who don't know, to avoid adding those annoying sort labels (in red below) to categories, like this:
[[Category:Film directors|Stone, Oliver]]
[[Category:Living people|Stone, Oliver]]
[[Category:Screenwriters|Stone, Oliver]]
one can add a "DEFAULTSORT" tag, and just add the category tags without the name, like this:
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stone, Oliver}}
[[Category:Film directors]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Screenwriters]]
This is a good idea even for when there's only one category because (A) people often forget to add a sort label when they add new ones; and (B) the more editors see this, the more likely they are to use it themselves. These sorting tags are only necessary when the article should be sorted by something other than the first word in the title, like for most people articles (sorted "surname, given name") and any works articles that start with "A", "An", or "The". For more information on category sorting, see Wikipedia:Categorization#Category sorting. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 12:29, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As I renew the oldest pages, I am adding more DEFAULTSORT tags for standardization. The article that we talk about is much better now.--Jusjih 17:17, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Difference between [rewording] and [action explanation].

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Hi. The Icelandic Wikiquote is not very active so I thought I'd ask here. In one line from an Icelandic movie I wanted both to change the wording (because it don't make seance when it's out of context) and add explanation on action taking place. Both seem to use [ and ].

For example in Jimbo Wales there is a change of wording like: "[Wikipedia is] like a sausage". The original line might have been "It's like a sausage".

In Star Wars you can find the same code used for an action. "Han: Uh... [Shoots the intercom] Boring conversation anyway".

Readers should be able to use common seance for the two examples, but when we start using these two in the same sentence, it start's getting confusing. Should we use another formating for rewording? --Steinninn 22:30, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think I found it. Am I right that the difference is [] and ''[]''? --Steinninn 22:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Correct. Take, for example, this quote from Doctor Who on Saturday:
Toclafane: Because [killing]'s fun! [laughs maniacally]
Will {talk) 19:02, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Eh I agree. Sometimes we may find irregularity, but the formula mentioned by you two looks reasonable. --Aphaia 10:44, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Will, for giving Steinninn a prompt and succinct answer, although I don't completely agree with it. Steinninn, I see a lot of separate parts to your question, so I'd like to give it a more comprehensive reply. (Sorry it's taken so long, but I've been having some home and computer problems lately.)

Other projects

First, English Wikiquote can't really speak for Icelandic Wikiquote on this matter. It's solely up to the participants of each project to determine style issues, subject only to Foundation policies (which I don't recall offhand having anything significant to say on this issue). If is:WQ is anything like en:WQ in its earliest development, each editor can have a significant impact on the style directions simply by bringing up the possible ways of handling such questions and making suggestions. But you folks in the community there will decide for yourselves.

Following standards

Second, regardless of the standards I describe below, please realize that Wikiquote, being a totally voluntary project in which anyone may edit, will always have articles and quotes that do not follow its standards. This is especially true for smaller projects, where articles may languish for years without attention, and individual editors may have a tremendous impact on the content, for both good and ill (both which are often in the eye of the beholder).

Style issues

On to the actual questions. In our first two years, we struggled with a number of style issues, and came up with two practices relevant to your query. As one of the editors who participated extensively in those discussions and continues to enforce these practices, I'll present them as I see them, but there are other opinions that remain among our editors that they may want to share as well. (Style guidelines are subject to change as the community grows and practices develop.)

Explanatory text

The first and most important rule to consider is that Wikiquote is about quotes, not actions, sounds, music, or scenes. In general, more than 90% of the "action explanations" (often referred to in our discussions as "context lines" or "stage directions") are totally unnecessary. Many people erroneously try to use Wikiquote articles to transcribe scenes, but what we want here are pithy (brief, powerful) written or spoken words. The pithiness of a "quote" is inversely proportional to how much explanation it includes. The more there is, the less useful it is for Wikiquote.

To take Will's example, the Doctor Who quote is of interest to fans, but not as a standalone quote, because it does not appear to be very original (many evil characters have said very similar things), and its true impact comes from watching and listening to the character laughing maniacally. (Sorry, Will — I enjoy the Doctor, too, but I've also done quite a bit of ruthless trimming of this kind of quote from all my favorite TV shows. They just don't represent the very best selection of quotations from these works, and these popular articles always need massive trimming to avoid copyright violations.) The Star Wars quote is another example of a bad Wikiquote quote, because it's a powerful moment, but not a powerful quote. SW4 has plenty of pithy lines that should be in the article; I don't think this is one of them.

One legitimate use for context lines is to provide a brief description of the scene, not to explain it, but to identify where in a film or an TV episode the quote will be found. We need this because there is no convenient, unambiguous video equivalent of a page number to provide a specific source citation, which is necessary to make it reasonably easy for editors to verify the quotes. (Timecodes, besides being a bit ugly, aren't consistent between different presentations of video material; e.g., DVD, commercial-TV broadcast, time-shortened telecasts.)

Here's an example of an arguable use of explantory context lines and how to format them, from Firefly (TV series)#Shindig:

[Mal refuses to kill the prone, humiliated Atherton.]
Mal: Mercy is the mark of a great man.
[He lightly stabs Atherton.]
Mal: Guess I'm just a good man.
[He repeats the poking.]
Mal: Well, I'm all right.

The first line establishes the scene for verification. Mal's three lines alone imply something is happening that one needs to know to understand the last two lines. The context lines provide this, but they are not part of the quoted text, which is made clear by pulling them out of the actual words and into their own italicized and bracketed lines. Of course, the next question is, is this "quote" really all that pithy, especially given the need for visual context? I'd bet that the next time someone does a review of "Shindig", trying to cut it down to 5 quotes, this one may go. (I think I added it long ago, but I'd be the first to agree if it's deleted on the basis of being too visual.)

Exact wording

From my perspective, the most important thing in a quote is presenting the words exactly as they are said. At most, the only changes should be typographic tweaks (like following in-house punctuation style, which is standard in the publishing industry). Many quote compendiums simplify or otherwise "clean up" quotes, but we've tended to favor exact quotes to avoid any potential accuracy problems, especially since Wikimedia projects have no editorial boards to make such judgment calls.

Some quotes, like the Jimmy Wales line above, don't include implied words, so exact quoting alone is not enough. There are two ways to handle this situation that work well in Wikiquote. First, it's often possible to use the context line of a standard article (a double-bulleted line under the actual quote, much like a source line) to provide the missing information:

  • ... like a sausage: you might like the taste of it, but you don't necessarily want to see how it's made.
    • On Wikipedia

The second is to insert the missing words, like so:

  • [Wikipedia is] like a sausage: you might like the taste of it, but you don't necessarily want to see how it's made.

In this case, this is easier to read, but we must be careful to make the text not actually part of the quote as distinct as practical from the original words. I don't recall that we have a formal "house style" on this. I typically try to use the italicized/bracketed form for consistency. (Just to be very clear, that's a bracketed expression entirely italicized, so if one removes the italicized material, there is nothing left but the actual quote. For some reason, many people don't want to italicize the brackets, even though they are part of the non-quote material, not the quote.)

One variation on the insertion method, adding the missing words without replacing the original, is sometimes useful, as in this example from Will Cuppy:

  • He [Khufu] had discovered the fact that if you tell somebody to do something, nine times out of ten he will do it.

Rather than replace the original "he" with "[Khufu]", this form allows to reader to know the exact wording, see what was implied but not said, and also avoid a separate context line. If it doesn't mess up the sentence grammar signficantly, it can be very efficient.

Conclusion

Sorry about turning your quick question into a style essay, but these kinds of problems come up frequently, so I thought it would be good to review them here. As I mentioned at the start, style practices tend to change over time with the changing community, and we haven't been very good at keeping all of our relevant pages (like Wikiquote:Manual of style) as current as we should. Perhaps this review may inspire renewed work on these matters. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:29, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

anonymous users

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When an anonymous user adds to wikiquote, like e.g 68.36.128.20 did on the Jaws article etc. Do we just take his/her word for it that the dialogue exists. An even better example is this one on article Naruto, the txt was * 'I am not a little pervert! ...I'm a big one!' changed to 'I'm not a pervert! ...I'm a super-pervert!'. How do you know weather or not these changes are for the best or they're something else. I think theres a major flaw is there anything we can do--McNoddy 07:43, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this is a significant problem, but it's not all that different from what Wikipedia articles have to deal with. One advantage we have is that the articles that suffer the most from these wording tweaks, I suspect, are film and TV-show dialogs, and most of the popular ones are available for primary-source checking (e.g., DVDs or telecasts) to interested editors. One difference with Wikipedia is that we often use primary audiovisual sources, which can inspire arguments in trying to decipher mumbled or otherwise unclear dialog, whereas print sources are more easily locked down (especially when we cite specific source information, like editions). But I can say from personal experience that a considerable number of these small changes are done by editors from memory, which is quite fallible for all of us, or they are copied from other websites, which are frequently just as inaccurate as personal memory. So it is right to be suspicious of them.
In principle, these changes are nothing more than content disputes. If you believe the change is incorrect, you can revert it (with an explanation in the edit summary, please, like "rv likely unsourced wording change"). If it turns into an ongoing disagreement, it should be hashed out on the article talk page. (See one I had with an anonymous contributor — Talk:Firefly (TV series)#Heart of Gold — which I effectively conceded.) If the parties refuse to discuss the issue civilly on the talk page, please advise them that they need to do this, and if this fails, please refer it to Wikiquote:Administrators' noticeboard. I hope this helps. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't follow that anonymous users are always less reliable than those with user names (who are mostly equally anonymous).--Cato 22:31, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, Cato. I believe that most of our edits are still coming from anonymous users, so ordinary probability might be enough to explain why many questionable edits come from anons, just as many also come from registered users. And if the latter choose their names carefully, registered users are even more anonymous than IP editors, since nothing public ties them to anything personally identifiable, like a location or an ISP. One could argue that the more anonymous a person is, the less concerned they may be about responsible editing, but all of Wikimedia is a testament to how inaccurate this rule of thumb can be for a large enough community. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:18, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Jeff is right. The latest stat based the dump of this June says 59% of edits of the project has come from unregistered users. Interestingly the most edited articles tend to be edit by anons. For instance, On Family Guy, the most edited articles on this project, the registered users edits share 25%, on Mitch Hedberg 19%. For further information, see Erik Zachte's stat table, more detailed version of "most edited pages". And we know disruptions come not only from anons, but also from registered users. The same stats ranked Zarbon as the 13th most active editor among us as of June 2007. --Aphaia 15:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. But Aphaia and I have tried to get anons accounts a few different ways. We have created an anon-notice notifying anons that they can create accounts, created a page explaning the benefits, and made the anon-editing notice stand out more (among other things). We have yet to see if this has really changed anything. :) Cbrown1023 talk 21:57, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Check user nominations

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Would all member of the community please look at the request and nomination for Checkuser rights for Aphaia & Jeffq. In order to obtain these rights there must be 25 supporting votes for both users. These rights enable a much better level of vandal control on a Wiki as - for vandal accounts - it is possible to check the source of the account. Comparing this to information on other Wikis often reveal a pattern of vandalism which can then be better controlled. I would ask anyone reading this to visit the page and consider offering support to this - it is important for the project. As someone who has CU rights elsewhere I will happily give further information if it is required. Thanks --Herby talk thyme 08:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Herby, for introducing those nominations. I'd add not only 25 supporting votes, but also 75% of supports from the whole votes is required. --Aphaia 10:30, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Normally canvassing is frowned upon in general but it might be good to spread the word a bit among those that WQ users trust and that already know Aphaia and Jeffq but who might not be aware that this is going on. ++Lar: t/c 10:43, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Guideline on use of images

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There needs to be guidance on the use of images. T. S. Eliot is saturated with them and it has turned the page into pure kitsch. We don't need a picture of a peach to accompany a quote about a peach, and a picture of a fractal to suggest - what? the ghost of a dead poet? I could go on. Most of it is downright corny and it's all original research, which would one suspects make Eliot despair. The irony is the complete absence of an image of Eliot himself. I suggest images should have a strong justification for inclusion, not just an editor's fancy of how to interpret the quote. Thus for example, a quote about London Bridge (not actually in the article) would merit a contemporaneous photo of the bridge. A quote about a cat does not justify someone's pet being included in the article. Nearly all the images on the page should go, and the article would have a lot more integrity without them.

Another case in point is David Hockney, who is an artist, but this page has none of his work, which would put his quotes into proper context. There are copyright issues here, but that's no reason to include irrelevant images - better none at all, or else have a look at fair use rationales. As it is, the impression given visually in this article is that Hockney is a Victorian artist rather than a contemporary one!

Tyrenius 13:26, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Amen! 121a0012 16:39, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is a very heavy thunderstorm raging where I am at, so I am pretty much expecting to be cut off soon, but I have typed a brief response.


Through the thoughtful use of images I believe the pages are for the most part enhanced, and would not want to be a part of establishing any strong prohibitions on their use.

I am sure that there are some people who are inclined to complain about many things, including graphics that don't appeal to their particular sensibilities and attitudes, but I do not believe that those who would complain about the addition of non-commercial images to web pages will ever be the majority. Thus far it is only very rarely that the even the particular choices of images have been criticized, and even more seldom has the practice of using them at all been complained about. In the four years of the project there have only been a very few instances that I am aware of, though these few instances were sometimes rather strongly sarcastic.

We are set up here to use only images available at the Wikimedia Commons, and are limited to what they contain. I have come to believe that it is best when no image is used without a quote as a caption, and would like many more of the more notable quotes to be accompanied by images. Others have shown different preferences, and I would not want to constrain anyone from making explorations that are truly aimed at enhancing the pages. Sometimes the associations with a statement are tenuous or obscure, but for the most part the images I myself have used, I do believe have some association, and I do not believe that the more obvious ones reduce their use to mere "kitsch". Unfortunately we cannot presently use an image of Eliot, as the one that had been used was deleted from the Commons, nor any of Hockney's work because it will likely be many decades before it is available. I selected images for his page that I believed were relevant to statements he was making within the constraints that exist.

As someone who has been with the project since nearly its beginning, I believe that most people are inclined to appreciate the addition of images rather than are inclined to complain about them. Not only do I believe they make the page more aesthetically pleasing when well arranged, but on the larger pages where they occur they also provide a means of quickly scanning down a page for points of interest on them. People looking for Eliot's famous quote "Do I dare to eat a peach?" can easily find it, and many of the associated lines by scrolling down to it. As someone who frequently consults what people have stated on various subjects throughout the ages, I think it is a proper thing to augment these statements with images that are interesting, as many of the images at the commons are. I believe that most people would agree that they add rather than detract to the interest of a page and the quotations presented.

There are only a relatively few editors here, and most of our pages do not yet have any images, but I would hope that eventually most will. Since the number of images available at the commons has grown I have tried to use much of what time I can to use more of them, and think ideally most pages should eventually have at least a few images on them. ~ Kalki 17:53, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, I think I'm with Tyrenius on this. I think that images have their place, but T. S. Eliot is definitely pushing the limits. I would definitely like to see an actual image of Eliot to accompany the short bio at the top of the page, and it could probably do without many of the other images, many of which don't really seem related to the quote they accompany (and all are just the result of an individual's interpretation of the quotes, not any established research or even common association (that I'm aware of)). For example, nearly all of the photos in the "Murder in the Cathedral" section are of cathedrals, regardless of whatever meaning they quote attached may have. Maybe a single cathedral photo at the very top of the section would be OK, but it's unnecessary to have eight of them.
Images can be used to goof effect, especially when they strongly relate to a quote, but many of the images in Eliot's page do not, and almost certainly probably be trimmed down with no real loss to the page. —LrdChaos (talk) 13:39, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would of course, much prefer to have an image of Eliot heading his page, but unfortunately the image that I had gladly used for a year, added on 1 May 2006, and taken by E. O. Hoppé on 1 November 1919, was for some reason deleted from the Commons on 1 May 2007, and there are no other images of Eliot that remain there. At Wikipedia a smaller version of the same image has been re-added as public domain in the U.S. but that argument for public domain status seems to have not been accepted at the commons.

With pages for people my own strong preference is for having at least one image of the author when possible at the top, with one of the more notable or famous quotations used as a caption, and more images of the author, or relating to the author and his or her statements throughout the page. These most often should have some plain relevance, but I think there should sometimes remain leeway for obscure or even very light and humorous associations.

It is an easy thing to say there should be less images, or even no images, but though the relevance of some might be slight or even puzzling, I think that generally they can enhance interest in many of the quotes, and in the pages in generally, which might otherwise be largely overlooked. On the Eliot page and others which I have have contributed many of the quotes, I have spent quite a lot of time in selecting interesting images that in at least some way seemed relevant to the quotation I have used for a caption. I know that not all of these are ideal choices, but I am more inclined to accept that when clearly better or more relevant images can be found they should be replaced with these, than the idea that many or all should simply be removed. ~ Kalki 20:07, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As for cathedrals, it's about a murder in Canterbury Cathedral so photos of other cathedrals are a tad pointless.--Cato 21:15, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Calendar Pages

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As an individual who uses wikiquote primarily via the random page function, I have noticed that there are a lot of empty calendar pages. Since it seems to me that it would be rather difficult to source quotes by date, and in almost every circumstance, it would be easier to search for quotes by the individual, I would like to make a motion to delete all the calendar pages. I don't have an account here, but I am wikipedia user Ficksquoose, if you wish to leave personal feedback.

Does this mean pages for individual dates like 2 March? These are useful for noting exact dates of birth and death, and other exact dates that may be relevant (for example date of publication of a book).--Poetlister 11:29, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Though most of these pages are currently merely "placeholders" which permit date formatting functions to work without a mass of red-links, eventually they could be used to list people born on that date, works publshed on it, and links to pages for associated holidays by name, as well as perhaps some other things as yet undetermined. I don't think developing them is actually a high priority for anyone as yet, but most were deliberately created simply as to "get the red out" of date links, and I don't see that their deletion is actually useful for most people at present, nor in the long run. ~ Kalki 15:01, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]


I had actually been referring to the calendar pages for years. 290, for example. There are calendar years from 44 BC through 2012. 2057 pages of no content seems very wasteful to me. Ficksquoose 01:33, 12 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The New Paul O'Grady Show

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The New Paul O'Grady Show needs a clean up tag added to it, I dont know now to do it could someone add it instead please? Thanks--McNoddy 13:50, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done - the tag you need is {{cleanup}}, feel free to have a go and ask if you have a problem, regards --Herby talk thyme 13:54, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Herby once again (o:--McNoddy 14:41, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, we're trying to encourage genre-specific cleanup tags where possible, which also have a date option (not quite the same as Wikipedia's), like so:
{{tv-cleanup|2007-07-18}}
I'm afraid this is yet another of those Wikiquote things that we haven't gotten around to documenting properly yet. RoboAction long ago created a user page, User:RoboAction/templates, to collect these templates, and 121a0012 expanded the genres and added dates to give us a better idea of how long we've identified the problems. (I think WP's month/year system, which also implements maintenance collection categories, was fairly new at the time, and more work than we were prepared to deal with.)
We should probably establish a Wikiquote equivalent to w:Wikipedia:Template messages. Wikiquote:Templates, to the new user, probably seems like it should be this, but is actually our de facto article formatting guide. At some point, we need to invest some work in broadening and clarifying these easily confused aspects of Wikiquote editing. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 11:33, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

English people?

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Why do we have two categories, Englishmen and Englishwomen, when for other nationalities we have unisex categories?--Cato 21:52, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  Done: Contents of categories merged. Will {talk) 02:15, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to Will for that. I've deleted the sexist categories.--Poetlister 11:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Keep remaining fair use images?

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I would like to request comments as to whether we should keep or delete the only remaining nine fair use images. English Wikipedia requires fair use images to have rationales to explain why they are fair in relevant articles without violating GFDL. Based on http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy (March 23, 2007), I am not convinced that keeping these remaining fair use images here are fair enough while our articles using them all have corresponding Wikipedia articles that are using or better able to use them much more fairly. Therefore, I would like to discuss if we should delete remaining fair use images.

By the way, the only other five images here are uncategorized. While we can probably keep the logos, the other two pictures, Image:JeanPaulSartre.jpg and ;Image:Mystique User Picture.jpg, are open to questions as to whether we can keep them while they are not well sourced.--Jusjih 17:55, 19 July 2007 (UTC) (English Wikipedia and commons admin)[reply]

I've nominated all of the remaining images at Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Remaining non-free use images. We may not want to delete them all (some, like the logos, might be kept by adding proper free licenses), but putting them all on the table will allow us to complete the process we started two years ago. Thanks for bringing this up, Jusjih. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:29, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Articles prefixed "Transwiki"

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Dozens of articles are prefixed "Transwiki:" and I need comments as to how to clean them up.--Jusjih 11:53, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, Jusjih, you've come across a skeleton in the Wikiquote closet. We've had very few folks work on transwiki, which is, for those who haven't heard of it, the official means to transfer the contributions of one Wikimedia project to another without losing the editors' credits required by our GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). It is a little bit complicated, and so is frequently ignored by Wikimedians, especially (for our interests) by Wikipedians who are trying to move huge tracts of quotes from WP to WQ articles. (We still have a lot of unfinished work trying to recover from massive violations of the GFDL because of this faulty work.) Instructions can be found at Help:Transwiki, and the log of work done is found at Transwiki on each project (which is usually a redirect to a project page). meta:Help:Transwiki is the cross-project policy page. The basic approach is this:
  • Source-project editor copies-and-pastes material from an article into a "Transwiki:" page on the destination project, logs it on both projects, and then takes some action on the source project (often deleting the source article).
  • Destination-project editor (often the same person) decides what to do with the page based on the destination project's inclusion and other policies, takes that action (usually a move, merge, or delete), and logs it on the destination project (and the source project, if they're throrough).
It was originally envisioned as a way to transfer entire articles between projects, but has also been used to "fork" off a copy to allow the other project to weed out stuff they didn't want, while the original article is trimmed similarly.
Example: a Wikipedia article titled "Less is more" (just containing the quote and attribution) was copied-and-pasted here (to "Transwiki:Less is more") by an anonymous editor, who recorded the original editing credits at "Transwiki talk:Less is more", and the first transwiki step itself at Transwiki. I merged the quote content into two relevant articles, Robert Browning and Buckminster Fuller, copied the editing credits to Talk:Robert Browning (as Browning is the correct origin, based on the info given), made a similar credit note in the edit summary of my addition to the Fuller article under "Misattributed", tagged the "Transwiki:" page for speedy-deletion, and logged this activity at Transwiki.
Often the work to be done is more straightforward than this: it's just a merge of the transwikied content to an existing Wikiquote article (e.g., merging Transwiki:Winston Churchill into Winston Churchill, which I'm sorry to say I've had on my to-do list literally for years). I'd love to see more folks get involved in this backlog of transwiki completion. Jusjih (and anyone else who wants to try this out), take a look at the Help page and the log. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.
One final note: somewhere along the way, MediaWiki implemented an "import/export" capability which is supposed to make transwiki easier. I haven't really looked into it yet, as I've been too busy with so many other things. It also appears to be restricted in several ways that might require some community effort to start using. In any case, it won't help with the backlog of partially transwikied pages, so it's beyond the scope of the original question. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:47, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
While I administer some Chinese Wiki sites, I have importing privileges there so the full edit history can be transwikied. Unfortunately, disabling this function at many Wiki sites forces us to cut and paste. To reduce the GFDL violation, the only way that I can think of is to copy the edit history page into the destination, such as a talk page or an image description page. As I administer multilingual Wikisource, I have seen the mass transwikiing into dozens of language subdomains, but should any pages be moved to wrong places, no easy way can move the full edit history. It is so strange that truly full transwikiing is not widely available. Thanks for your answer. Many transwikied pages are uncategorized, so I asked what we should do with them.--Jusjih 16:31, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure any categories are necessary (besides the transwiki maintenance category that is automatically added by the {{move to Wikiquote}} template that the source-project editor is supposed to include). After all, these aren't articles, but potential material for articles. The three usual methods for editor credits are:
  • Copy the original page's edit history onto the "Transwki talk:" page (which should have been done by the source-project editor). If the transwiki page is moved into the article space (e.g., "Transwiki:Jane Doe" → "Jane Doe"), the talk page goes with it. If a merge is done, the edit history should be copied and pasted to the merge-target article's talk page.
  • If there's only a single editor of the original article, include the editor's username/IP (and maybe edit date/time) in the edit summary for the move/merger. (Be sure to include the project prefix; e.g., "w:User:OriginalEditor".)
  • If the original article on the other project still exists and is not likely to be deleted (e.g., if someone just transferred a block of quotes from a Wikipedia article), including a link back to the original article (e.g., "transferred quotes from w:Objects in Space") is arguably acceptable for GFDL purposes, since the original article's edit history is still available for review, and the link back is much like we require for any downstream use of Wikimedia material. This is a transwiki "shortcut" that we are increasingly using, especially given the amount of quote extraction and dumping we're getting from impatient Wikipedians.
Hope this clarifies things a bit. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:05, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

CheckUser capability notice

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With the support of the community, Aphaia and I have been approved to use CheckUser tools to investigate certain kinds of persistent, widespread vandalism and/or sockpuppetry. Ordinary content disputes are still the domain of article and user talk pages, and most truly bad-faith editing will still be handled by standard means, including edit reversions, user warnings, and sysop blocks where necessary. But suspicions of individuals performing large-scale abuse through many different usernames and/or IPs can now be investigated locally, without having to appeal to stewards on Meta-Wiki.

If you find repeated, coordinated disruptions occurring within Wikiquote, please post a request for assistance at Wikiquote:Administrators' noticeboard. The community will have to work out more permanent processes and instructions for how and when to do this (subject to all the restrictions and guidelines at meta:CheckUser policy, of course), but for now, I think this will work. Also, as I am (and I believe Aphaia is) new at this, I ask for patience while we learn the ropes. If anyone has ideas or suggestions, please feel free to bring them up here or at Wikiquote talk:Administrators' noticeboard. Thank you for your attention. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:39, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting: A proposal

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I have written an essay for an alternative style of formatting to hopefully co-exist with the current style guide lines. This is not meant to be a replacement but simply an alternative. Could I have some opinions of what people think? Visually it looks very different to what we have currently, so please don't simply dismiss it on the fact that is its different. :-) It may take some time to get used to it. A new article, Mount Kenya that I have created uses the new formatting. If the community consensus is eventually to ignore my proposal, then I will convert the article over to follow the style guidelines. Please do not edit the formatting until a consensus has been reached.

Please give opinions on the essay's talk page. Thank you. Mehmet Karatay 11:45, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it good to have two different system. It will increase our problems to keep the coherency of this website and make it looks just messy. So I would reject the idea of co-existence. And as replacement, as I wrote in another place, sorry, I don't like your proposal.
I think your way of presentation is not acceptable. You should do under your user page or I think the page you mentioned is enough to show formatting. You should not have done such in main namespace. Generally if you think your edit shouldn't be altered, you should not have released it onto this project. Also I would the community remind this "Mehmet Karatay" is a group account, which is not accepted generally on Wikimedia project. --Aphaia 12:02, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I moved it to your user page. --Aphaia 12:08, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I was just going to ask you to do this but then got an edit conflict. Mehmet Karatay 12:27, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would caution the creators of this recommendation that changes on Wikiquote take a time and effort proportional to the signficance of the change, and you're talking about one of the most signficant, visible changes we could have here. If it is not quickly dismissed outright by the community, it could easily take months even to get a decent amount of feedback. And I would ask the Wikiquote community not to dismiss this right away just because it recommends a major change. Even if it is not eventually accepted as is — or at all — it may suggest ideas about possible future changes to address ongoing issues, like better quote atomicity and the need to make sources accessible without overwhelming the quotes. (Please note that French Wikiquote does something similar with templates, which is also worth examining.) There's quite a bit to talk about on this subject, so let's not be hasty. For now, I agree with Aphaia that it is probably unwise to populate articles with this formatting before such discussions occur. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:49, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Great work and ingenious, but unacceptable for the basic reason of its complexity. The current system is very easy to use for anyone. Tyrenius 00:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimania

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Anyone will come? I'll arrive there in the Aug 1 evening. --Aphaia 22:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Regrettably, I will not be able to come. But I suggest that anyone who can come, should definitely come. Wikimania is a very good event and all who are able to, should try and get there (or get to a future one). See the official website for more information. Cbrown1023 talk 16:23, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Now I'm sitting in a big auditorium and listening to Joi Ito (Creative Commons Chair), who is talking about "share community". It's a shame no Wikiquote related presentation is given, even a poster. The project was mentioned in a documentary film, which we saw at a party, with the logo, just in a second, though. I believe we will be able to give a better representation next year :)
To Welcoming Committee member and other whom may concern
Among interesting talks, Brianna Laugher, sysop of enwiki, commons etc gave a close research of newcomer behavior on English Wikipedia. I expect her presentation is soon available on Wikimania website http://wikimania.wikimedia.com under the name presentation BL1. Please give a look to it, if you are interesting in communications with those newbies :) --Aphaia 03:02, 5 August 2007 (UTC) greeting from Taipei[reply]


Articles with a single quote

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A discussion on WQ:VfD raises a general issue - should we allow articles with just one quote? I believe that we should, if it is an important quote. Most published dictionaries of quotations have many names with just a single quote against them. Looking through articles that I have created myself, I see for example Lancelot Andrewes and John Armstrong. (There was also Ludovico Ariosto. Being a substantial poet, he deserved more quotes so I've added some. I doubt that I could find much worth adding to the others.) These are both notable people with Wikipedia articles, and famous quotations that deserve a place in any dictionary of quotations. Are there any grounds for deleting articles like that? - Poetlister 16:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • As I mentioned in the VfD discussion Poetlister refers to, I believe we've deleted these articles in the past because we felt there was no way to make these more than a stub article, in a kind of parallel to Wikipedia's dislike of permanent stubs. But our situation is a little different, and there is precedent in printed publications, as she says, so it's worth considering. We would still want to avoid single-quote theme articles (for an example, see the "You're either with us, or against us" discussion), because there is little precedent for this in quote compendiums, and they invite unsourced commentary. We would also have to consider what kind of thresholds might serve to decide whether a person's fame for a single quote justified an article. Just food for thought. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:40, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Should be a case by case basis, I think. If the subject only has one famous quote, I think putting them in a theme or topic article might make more sense. I do not think not having an article is a slight against the overall importance of the person, rather it speaks to our efforts to impose standards about the best manner to display content. The reality is that many of the single quote subjects are going to be less edited and watched and thus more prone to being improperly formatted or vandalized, and often resulting in a disproportionate amount of low quality articles. If the material can be adequately displayed in other articles this may be the best way to use the content. There can be exceptions to this so I do not think that this should be a hard and fast rule. FloNight 17:59, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • It partly depends on whether anyone is likely to look up that person by name. I confess I've never heard of John Armstrong, though the quotation is famous. On the other hand, Mandy Rice-Davies is famous (or notorious) in her own right, not just for the quote.--Cato 22:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Even if we only have quotes from someone in theme articles, they'll be found when the name is entered in "Search". Enter Verity Stob and press "Go", and you'll get a link to Computers for a quote from this developer-columnist currently without her own article. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • If there are single quote articles, then they won't need a stub template. Tyrenius 03:27, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Should be a case by case basis per FloNight. A kept single-quote article should preferably have intro, Wikipedia link, and reliable source. If proposed for deletion, participants can comment and I often talk there.--Jusjih 17:35, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Assume good faith" policy ratification imminent

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We've had a stable version of Wikiquote:Assume good faith now for two months, with no opposition to any of its content. Wikiquote being what it is, the three users currently supporting can be interpreted as a consensus of the interested participants. Based on this, unless anyone else in the community raises significant objections, I believe we have a ratified official policy and will update its banner to reflect this sometime after 18:00, 30 July 2007 (UTC) (seven days hence). Last call for comments! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. :) Cbrown1023 talk 16:13, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. When others never talk about it, they never care about it, so if no one opposes after allowing a lot of time, just interpret as a consensus. The same things also applies in Chinese Wiktionary, Wikisource, and Wikiquote where I administer with even fewer active users than this site.--Jusjih 17:40, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. --Herby talk thyme 18:12, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, wholeheartedly. Phaedriel - 20:25, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed Tyrenius 03:35, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

After copying the above votes to Wikiquote talk:Assume good faith to collect all the votes in one place, we now have 11 supporting and no dissent. I've therefore updated the banner notice to show WQ:AGF as official policy. Thanks to everyone for helping move this to completion. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:11, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oops! I forgot that this was ratification of a guideline, not a policy. I've changed the banner notice to say "guideline". Sorry about that, folks. (That ought to deflate any wild rumors that I never make mistakes, eh?) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:41, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WQ:PROD

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I ask you to review the draft WQ:PROD (Proposed deletion) and two relevant drafts for the existing policies' revision, at Wikiquote talk:Dehttp://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Wikiquote:Village_pump_archive_15&action=submitletion policy and Wikiquote:Deletion review/Draft respectively. I didn't bring all the WP templates, I am not sure if we would like to use them all. Later we find some remained useful, we could bring them too. Please review those three pages, and input your opinions into Wikiquote talk:Proposed deletion.--Aphaia 06:46, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your all inputs! Regarding those, the draft was slightly modified, and the prod term is proposed to set in seven days as long as normal deletion. Please join the discussion and give your opinion if we are ready to begin the experimental use of this new system. --Aphaia 19:29, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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