Date: Monday, September 16, 2024
Time: 16:27 UTC
Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers
Number of articles (see also Special:Statistics and One million articles):
29 July 2007
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida, United States - With the completion of the 5.28×1047th article last evening the popular Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia has reached completion. "We are now positively sure Wikipedia covers every single thing in existence," commented the site's co-founder Jimbo Wales, "and I actually am the only founder."
The last article, written by Mr. Wales himself, was about a little chosen dish from "The Great Wall", a small Chinese restaurant in Wales' hometown St. Petersburg. Aptly named Nr. 43 (St. Petersburg restaurant The Great Wall meal), the article describes the preparation of the meal, which is a rice based dish with chicken curry and Chinese vegetables, while soy sauce can optionally be added. The article also contains interesting details about how Mr. and Mrs. Auerbach, tourists from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, visiting Florida contracted diarrhea after consuming the dish on November 23, 1998, and that it has (so far) not yet been referred to in an episode of the long running cartoon sitcom The Simpsons.
The Wikipedia community has offered to place a plaque commemorating the event in the restaurant, although the owner Mr. Liu has voiced discontent about the encyclopedia's treatment of his restaurant: "The Mexican restaurant at the other side of the road had articles about all its meals eight months ago already, and the local snack bar more than a year ago." Wikipedia's reaction to his criticism was that he could have created the article himself.
The completion of Wikipedia marks the end of a gigantic effort that has kept tens of thousands of people busy for years. Reactions of Wikipedians vary from spontaneous outbursts of celebration to complete disorientation from contributors not knowing what to do with their time now. Some of the most avid contributors have started to organize a contribution to the Amazon rain forest to check if every tree really has been covered by Wikipedia. Others have suggested to dedicate the rest of their lives to more useful things, such as editing Uncyclopedia.
This article has been cited as a source or otherwise recommended by the mainstream press. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a press source for details.
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List of people by name (closed)
List of people by name – Overturned and deleted. AFD showed a clear consensus to delete which is apparent here too. – Srikeit 03:57, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Comment This has been up for deletion and kept at least 8 times. It appears that this page set is going the way of other perennially nominated pages and it will, eventually, be deleted simply as a matter of time. Radiant's bringing it here is pretty much a death knell for the page set as this is a highly respected contributor and admin. Therefore, though I personally find the pages useful in anti-vandalism efforts, there is simply no way it can be kept for the long term owing to continued attempts to delete by persons who vigorously oppose its existence. It is not original research, it is not useless, and it is not unmaintainable but it is unpopular - and that is the reason why it is ultimately doomed to deletion. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:10, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
- Endorse no consensus as per DS1953. I'd say that to any individual user of Wikipedia, the vast majority of articles are "useless" because they are far outside their fields of interest or study, and many pages appear "unmaintainable" to the uninitiated, but no one would want to see them deleted because of that. Moreover, I don't yet see any consensus among those who wish to delete it as to how it should be replaced. The list of people by name serves the honourable purpose of an alphabetical index, something you can find in any scholarly book. Personally, I can't think of any replacement. <KF> 16:09, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- Category:People? (H) 16:18, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- Category:People does not contain a single name ("Articles in this category should be moved to subcategories where appropriate"), and the subcategories are also maintained manually. Where's the difference? And users like me are interested in people rather than, say, people by revolution. <KF> 16:37, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- Endorse no consensus the notion that there was a clear consensus to delete that article is patently absurd. --JayHenry 16:27, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- Overturn and delete per Nandesuka. Completely unmaintainable indiscriminate collection of information. ElinorD (talk) 17:50, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- I fail to see the point. What Nandesuka says is delete it because it is an indiscriminate collection of items of information. However, the List of people by name is not any of the things mentioned in the relevant "policy" (List of Frequently Asked Questions, Memorial, Travel guide, Instruction manual, Internet guide, Textbook or annotated text, Lyrics database, Plot summary, Statistics). As I already tried to point out, it is an index used for cross-referencing and other things, an essential requirement for any written work of non-fiction which aims at being transparent rather than cryptic. As to its alleged unmaintainability, the List is admittedly incomplete. But tens of thousands of Wikipedia articles are; after all this project still is, and will always be, work in progress.
- Also, I'm still waiting for someone to suggest an alternative. It would be plain crazy to delete the effort of many years without making it accessible for further use, so what about projectifying it? <KF> 20:28, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- Overturn and delete, not only is this completely useless, but it is totally impractical, will never be complete, and is a textbook example of WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE. The delete arguments in this case are much stronger than those for keeping, and that should have been considered. If the "no consensus" closure is endorsed, the list should be relisted on AFD. --Coredesat 18:08, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
- I still fail to see the point. What people say here over and over again is delete it because it is an indiscriminate collection of items of information. They even quote the relevant Wikipedia policy. Now the List is even a "textbook example". However, the List of people by name is not any of the things mentioned in WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE (List of Frequently Asked Questions, Memorial, Travel guide, Instruction manual, Internet guide, Textbook or annotated text, Lyrics database, Plot summary, Statistics). Referring to WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE is probably the weakest delete argument of all, as no one is willing, or able, to explain why it applies here in the first place. <KF> 22:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
- Overturn and delete, that looks like a pretty clear delete consensus to me. That's a pretty clear case of "what categories, redirects, and search are for." Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:00, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure if you realize this, but the list of people by name article has something like 1400 subpages. Does your DRV closure encompass these? --- RockMFR 04:16, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, all the subpages are covered under the close. I realised that after the closure and was trying to figure out the best way to go about it when I received your message. I requested Eagle_101 to help me out and he has graciously accepted to help me out using a script. --Srikeit 04:40, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
- You're carrying a huge load of responsibility now. In your closure, you have failed to address the concerns of all those, including myself, who were against deletion without any replacement. Various suggestions have been made for that, but it seems no measures have been taken. Could you comment on that, please? All the best, <KF> 09:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
- I don't believe that it is my responsibility to clarify and counter each and every argument in a discussion before closing. I considered the arguments offered, determined the consensus achieved in both the former AFD and the DRV, used the discretion I have been afforded as an admin and made the call, which seems to have been accepted as fair by most (as indicated by the lack of complaints here). However if this close seems grossly unfair or irresponsible on my part, please feel free to start up a discussion about it on WP:ANI or any other avenue suitable to you and if you can garner enough support for your cause, do bring it back to DRV. In the meantime, I stand by my decision. Thanks --Srikeit 10:19, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
- It would be awful, wouldn't it, if you as an admin didn't stand by your decision, so I didn't expect anything else. I'm talking about an altogether different thing here, as the inevitability of this bulk of information being eventually deleted was clear to me (although, personally, I don't see any consensus anywhere). No, I'm talking about an alternative to the c.1,400 pages that are now lost. Their removal has orphaned what may well be hundreds of biographical stubs, and the next step might be their being tagged for deletion by an insensitive bot.
- Carcharoth has made a suggestion (at the end of Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/List of people by name) what could be done to counter this, and my (and other people's) humble idea was to "projectify" all those pages in the way it was done with User:Black Falcon/Sandbox/List of German actors (from 1895 to the present) or Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/List of literary works with eponymous heroines. That's what you haven't addressed in your closure, and I just want to know what you think about it. Best wishes, <KF> 10:50, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Current project (starting October 30, 2006):
Adding names to Wikipedia's list of people by name. One might think that this task can be done more quickly with a bot, but there are so many messy situations that a bot would not handle satisfactorily. For instance, there are people who are commonly known by one name or more than two. Also, it would be difficult to program the bot to determine the occupation(s) to include in the entry. So, here I am, using part of my spare time to plug away at it manually.
Wikipedia's list of names is useful, and it was fortunate that it has survived several deletion votes. Here's hoping it will never face another one again!
List of People by Name
I somehow blundered into a project: the very mundane task of cleaning up and enhancing accessibility to this, by which i mean not so much the article, but the list that is implemented as several hundred similarly named pages linked, treewise, by the article. When i started doing more to it than add names,
- List of people by name: Ha-Hd was a 34kB page embodying an unbroken list of 555 names (which drew my attention),
- List of people by name: Ma (though i didn't know it yet) was progressing toward its peak at 54 kB with about 870 names, and
- the tree had
- the LoPbN page as its root,
- 26 children at the first level below it (6 of them -- J, O, Q, U, X, and Y -- having no child-pages), and
- fewer than 300 pages as "grandchildren" of the root, none of them having child pages.
As of 07:49, 16 May 2005 (UTC), there are around 600 pages (not all of them listing any names); not only are there now great-grandchild pages, but 9 among them have child-pages, which are great-great-grandchildren of the root. This subdivision has been directed by crowding in specific parts of the tree, permitting, for instance, the Ma... names (which have since grown by about a quarter) are divided among 17 pages, the longest of which has 13 kB and about 200 names, in turn divided into about 14 sections accessible through the ToC, the longest of them numbering 23 names.
Other than work by bots, i'm pretty sure i've done virtually all of the restructuring at the page level, and more within pages than any one other editor.
I worked out the mechanism for generating the links to other LoPbN pages, that appear at the top of each page (and one of the two styles on the root page), and virtually all, maybe all, of the utilization of it has been my work. It eases effort and avoids clerical omissions that would likely break the within-tree link structure. (Unfortunately, it so far conflicts with the attractive box-oriented layout of the link structure that a colleague worked out and that will hopefully return as the software involved advances.)
And handling these entries leads me constructively astray into a wide variety of bio articles. For me, this is a satisfying gig.
[...] Finally, can I ask what went wrong here? If I make detailed proposals, and cogent arguments, is it normal for them to just be ignored? Should I have advertised them more widely? Should I have not looked away after the MfD and had in the back of my mind that a DRV might have been possible? Should those at the DRV have noticed that one of the most vocal participants in the AfD seemed to have missed the DRV entirely? I really don't know what to think abot this any more. I know I should have been more alert, but I feel the system is partially at fault as well in that numbers were being looked at rather than arguments and, that detailed proposals to move from one system to another before deletion, were just ignored or brushed to one side.
In essence, the way I see this went is something like:
- Delete, unmaintainable.
- Oh, but why not do it this way?
- No, delete.
- But look, I've made this proposal.
- No, delete.
- But I'm willing to do the work on this
- No, delete.
- Are you listening to what I've said?
- No, delete.
- Hello, is anyone there?
- No, delete.
I hope this gives some idea of how frustrating this has been for me.
from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 September 21
Category:Novels by Alan Bennett
- Non-free image showing an athlete for which there are free images available. No fair use rationale, and source information is "scanned from an old magazine". Abu badali (talk) 21:36, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
KeepDelete delete delete. Free images available? How do you get them? Just get into your time machine and go back to the 50s? The image shows Toni Sailer, an icon in the world of skiing 50 years ago, doing exactly what he was famous for, and that is how people remember him. I don't think it can be replaced (that's the fair use rationale). Yes, scanned from an old magazine. I don't have any source. <KF> 21:49, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
- It may be speedy-deleted per uploader request now. --Abu badali (talk) 22:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
- Delete as unsourced and replaceable. You get a free picture of him by taking a picture of him. 17Drew 21:52, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
- Comment Drew, Sailer was active decades before you were born. What would be the point of taking a picture of an old man? <KF> 21:56, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
- Is that a rhetorical question? The article already uses a picture of him from three years ago (which is placed at the top of the article, unlike this one). This image does not contribute any encyclopedic information; the fact that he skiied is already contained in the first sentence and is pretty easy to understand without a picture. 17Drew 21:59, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
- Why would that be a rhetorical question? Of course it isn't. Believe me, skiing in 2007 is something very different from skiing in 1957. What Sailer looked like back then—that's the encyclopaedic information contained in the image. But please delete it if it makes you happy. I usually find my happiness elsewhere. <KF> 22:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
from Talk:List of actors from Germany:
I do realize that with the creation of List of German actors (from 1895 to the present) (which had been listed at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English) we now have two lists of German actors and actresses. I also realize that the recently created one is long and under certain circumstances might fall prey to deletionist efforts ("unmaintainable", "We like our lists short and sweet" etc. — I had such an experience only yesterday with List of song titles phrased as questions).
As I see it, there are various courses of action for the future (deletion is not one of them though):
(1) Maintain the status quo and keep two separate lists. (They are cross-referenced anyway.)
(2) Merge the two lists.
(3) Merge all names which already have articles into one list and keep the rest (all the red links) separately for future reference, as a repository for ideas for future articles.
Any ideas or comments? <KF> 10:50, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
- No ideas, no comments for one and a half years, but the deletion request at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of German actors (from 1895 to the present) (March, 2007) shows again how a handful of people who hardly know enough about the subject-matter in question exert pressure on the silent majority. I am long past caring, but deleting the comprehensive list and keeping this one is utterly ridiculous. <KF> 17:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of actors from Germany:
This list is a random collection of names only which is not being maintained. No effort has been made since the deletion of the good, comprehensive list (which would have been worth keeping; see User:Black Falcon/Sandbox/List of German actors (from 1895 to the present)) to improve this one here. Category:German actors serves the purpose of this list much better. <KF> 16:17, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
- List of mysterious people:
- Shops
- Institutions
- Prison History (sic)
Lists created by Jengod:
LITERATURE
e-texts
- a list of e-texts: http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/bl-cl-etexts.htm
- Robert Huntington Fletcher: A History of English Literature (1918): http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/rfletcher/bl-rfletcher-history-table.htm
- Edward Simonds: A Student's History of American Literature (1902): http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/esimonds/bl-esimonds-student-1-1.htm
- homepage: http://classiclit.about.com/
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Books
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia Book Club (see also Wikipedia:Book Club)
- Wikipedia:What I am reading at the moment
- User:Lar/Wikipedian_Bookshelf
- Like music? see the Soundtrack of Wikipedians
- Like films? see the Wikipedian Cinema
- Like books? see the Wikipedian Bookshelf
- Like comics? see the Wikipedian Comics
- Like games? see the Wikipedian Gamebox
- Like food? see the Wikipedian Kitchen
- Are you quotable? read the Wikipedian Notebook
- Like plays? see the Wikipedian Theatre
- Like TV? sign up to Cable Wikipedia
I have yet to understand what makes people believe that George W. Bush's 2007 State of the Union Address is so much more encyclopaedic than the List of literary works with eponymous heroines. (Cf. edit by User:172.142.218.161 on 24 January 2007, 17:51: "america is so far up it's [sic!] own arse that it thinks this is international news worthy of the front page on wikipedia. in fact it is an annual event of little global significance.")
- Novels mentioned in the "List of Quotations" in Cameron McCabe's The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor:
- James Barke: Major Operation
- Michael Copeland: Gulls Against the Sky
- James Curtis: The Gilt Kid
- Robert G. Dean: The Sutton Place Murders
- Leonora Eyles: Death of a Dog
- Elizabeth Garner: Duet in Discord
- William Gerhardi: Of Mortal Love
- Louis Goodrich: By Greta Bridge
- Cecil F. Gregg: Tragedy at Wembley
- Cecil C. Lowis: Prodigal Portion
- Lawrence W. Meynell: On the Night of the 18th
- L. O. Mosley: So I Killed Her
- Anthony A. Newnes: The Stuffed Men
- Kathleen Pawle: We in Captivity
- James Ronald: Murder in the Family
- William Saroyan: Inhale and Exhale
- Frank Tilsley: I'd Do It Again
- M. Russell Wakefield: Belt of Suspicion
- And a theoretical book:
The novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett:
- Dolores (1911; disowned by the author)
- **Pastors and Masters (1925)
- *Brothers and Sisters (1929)
- Men and Wives (1931)
- More Women Than Men (1933)
- *A House and Its Head (1935)
- *Daughters and Sons (1937)
- A Family and a Fortune (1939)
- *Parents and Children (1941)
- Elders and Betters (1944)
- *Manservant and Maidservant (1947, published in the U.S. as Bullivant and the Lambs)
- Two Worlds and Their Ways (1949)
- Darkness and Day (1951)
- **The Present and the Past (1953)
- Mother and Son (1955)
- *A Father and His Fate (1957)
- **A Heritage and Its History (1959)
- The Mighty and Their Fall (1961)
- *A God and His Gifts (1963)
- The Last and the First (published posthumously in 1971)
The Radical Novel Reconsidered (University of Illinois Press):
- Anzia Yezierska: Salome of the Tenements (1923)
- Grace Lumpkin: To Make My Bread (1932)
- Josephine Herbst: Pity Is Not Enough (1933)
- Jack Conroy: A World to Win (1935)
- Myra Page: Moscow Yankee (1935)
- Jack S. Balch: Lamps at High Noon (1941) (Federal Writers' Project)
- John Sanford: The People from Heaven (1943)
- Ira Wolfert: Tucker's People (1943)
- Alexander Saxton: The Great Midland (1948)
- Abraham Polonsky: The World Above (1951)
- Phillip Bonosky: Burning Valley (1953)
- Alfred Maund: The Big Boxcar (1957) (deep South, episodical)
Hard Case Crime ( http://www.hardcasecrime.com/ ):
- Richard Aleas: Little Girl Lost (10/04)
- Lawrence Block: The Girl with the Long Green Heart (11/05)
- Lawrence Block: Grifter's Game (9/04)
- Max Allan Collins: Two for the Money (11/04)
- David Dodge: Plunder of the Sun (5/05)
- Erle Stanley Gardner: Top of the Heap (10/04)
- Allan Guthrie: Kiss Her Goodbye (3/05)
- Donald Hamilton: Night Walker (1/06)
- Day Keene: Home Is the Sailor (3/05)
- Stephen King: The Colorado Kid (10/05)
- Wade Miller: Branded Woman (7/05)
- Peter Pavia: Dutch Uncle (7/05)
- Max Phillips: Fade to Blonde (9/04)
- Domenic Stansberry: The Confession (11/04)
- Donald E. Westlake: 361 (5/05)
- Charles Williams: A Touch of Death
Femmes Fatales: Women Write Pulp — The Feminist Press at CUNY ( http://www.feministpress.org/ ):
- Faith Baldwin: Skyscraper (11/03)
- Vera Caspary: Laura (10/05)
- Vera Caspary: Bedelia (11/05)
- Dorothy B. Hughes: In a Lonely Place (11/03)
- Dorothy B. Hughes: The Blackbirder (6/04)
- Gypsy Rose Lee: The G-String Murders (6/05)
- Evelyn Piper: Bunny Lake Is Missing (10/04) (Merriam Modell / Marryam Modell writing as Evelyn Piper)
- Olive Higgins Prouty: Now, Voyager (10/04)
- Valerie Taylor: The Girls in 3-B (11/03)
- Terreska Torres: Women's Barracks (5/05)
321 - South African Fiction (Mengel):
- J. M. Coetzee: Disgrace
- Zakes Mda: Ways of Dying
- Nadine Gordimer: The Pickup
- Achmat Dangor: Bitter Fruit
- Zoe Wicomb: David's Story
(cf. User:Clemmy/321)
Wikipedia is a game. It is an entertainment, played in moves, according to rules, towards a goal.
- "Each move must increase an entry's accuracy, transparency, selective completeness and weighted balance, using vision and appropriate wit."
- "Avoid unnecessary interference."
- "Leave your personal agenda on the porch."
So simple. The rest is mostly technique, minimal decorum and detail.
I recommend being very careful when using User:MER-C/Burnination and User:MER-C/Spam. In fact, it seems wise not to use the former at all until some very serious problems with it are rectified. The former gives no indication of whether the user is actually contributing to the encyclopaedia and includes on the list pages such as User:Phaedriel/Soundtrack of Wikipedians (Phaedriel (talk · contribs) is an administrator and has 1754 contributions to article space), User:Rich Farmbrough/Talk Archive 6 (an archive of the talk page of Rich Farmbrough (talk · contribs), also an administrator and with 39708 contributions to article space), User:Alison (Alison (talk · contribs) is an administrator with 5269 contributions to article space), and User:KF/For future reference (KF (talk · contribs) is an administrator and has 12233 contributions to article space). The latter includes pages such as User:AlexNewArtBot/COISearchResult/archive1. Uncle G 11:36, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
''<small>This article is no more than a [[Wikipedia:Perfect stub article|stub]]. You might want to [[Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub|work on it]].</small>''
<small>''This text has been adapted from the [[1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica]].''</small>
On categories:
Consensus is a favorite word on Wikipedia, pulled out on all occasions whether on AfD, policy decisions, or simple article content matters. Going by the dictionary definition of "consensus" (e.g. on Wiktionary) or our own encyclopaedia article on consensus, can we really claim that decision-making on Wikipedia is by consensus?
Historically many decisions seemed to mostly go by majority (of small group of debate/vote participants) or large majority for change. Now, partly on the basis of "voting is evil", there seems to be more and more decisions made after "debate", where realistically, the action taken afterwards (or during) is either arbitrary, majority wish (going by comment counting/argument weighting rather than vote counting), or simply rule by the strong-minded who just do what they wish when they've at least some people to back them up (indeed perhaps not even that). I would suggest few decisions are made from truly forming consensus between debate participants, let alone considering the wider community.
Really - is there any hope of having a fixed method of decision-making on Wikipedia, rather than a shambolic pretence of achieving consensus that just allows groups to make decisions in different circumstances according to different methods as it suits them?
Zoney (e-mail, June 27, 2007)
- No. Adrian (Adrian Lamo)
- Yes, there is hope; if we can put our individual egos and emotions aside - and start using our heads in a responsible way. Marc Riddell
- Wikipedia:Votes for deletion
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Lists
- Wikipedia:Canvassing (I would never have guessed that such a policy actually existed; how should anyone know?)
- Wikipedia:Proposed deletion (!!!) (added December 11, 2006)
- Category:Proposed deletion
- Wikipedia:Deletion reform (started August 1, 2005)
- Special:Log/delete (used to be Wikipedia:Deletion log)
- Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Precedents
- Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/schools
- Wikipedia:Deletion review (used to be Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion)
- Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles (!!!)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion
from User talk:Calliopejen1:
Your post is idiotic. If you had BOTHERED to check your facts you'd know that the image is the coat of arms of an American cleric who calls himself "Pope Pius XIII" and is named that way because at the time the article on him was in under that name, as it was deemed a breach of NPOV to presume that he wasn't pope even when he clearly isn't. All you had to do is look at the page Pope Pius XIII to see a link to the guy in question, or look at the Pope Pius XII page to see that it is clearly not his coat of arms. It is these sort of antics, coupled with the lunatic bots, that have driven the most experienced contributors off this site in frustration. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 05:58, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Jen, apologies for my post. I'm afraid the issue of images os a very touchy topic with me, and with a lot of other ex-posters who were driven off this site by it. We were here back in 2003 and 2004 and upholded fully legal images using the commands used at the time. Wikipedia a long time later changed the commands, and longterm contributors like myself then found our talk pages jammed with accusatory posts from new users and bots accusing us all of improperly uploading images using wrong commands. When various longterm users pointed out that they had not improperly uploaded anything and that it was Wikipedia who had changed commands, not they, they were verbially abused and many of their images mass deleted. After finding over one weekend my page jammed with 37 posts accusing me of incorrectly uploading stuff I had enough and after given three years to this site, and writing tens of thousands of articles, I just gave up. Every one of the most proliferic contributors here at the time was driven away by the frankly gestapo-like antics of the new photo-police, all of whom are self-appointed and hardly any of whom have the slightest idea what the actual law is, as opposed to what they think it is. (To give an idea of the sheer ludicrousness, one of those proliferic contributors driven away was an internationally renowned judge who is one of the world's leading experts on copyright law! He was hounded off the site by the photo-police, with constant abuse when he politely pointed out what a particular legal ruling actually meant. He should know what it meant. He wrote the damn thing!!!)I've been gone a year and only come back if I have to check something, and almost invariably find my page bombarded with yet more ludicrous posts about images. One idiot jammed by page and the page of two others with demands that we replace certain images with different ones. No matter how we pointed out to him that that was not possible as the images themselves were of something where there is only one source (the Vatican. On the issue in question the only photographer allowed to take the photographs are the Vatican photographer. There are no non-Vatican pictures of the objects in question.) and that that source supplies the images to everyone for any use as media images, the idiot would still keep demanding that alternative images be found.
So apologies if I reacted badly to the post. I accept that you are genuine and made a mistake. Unfortunately my experience re-images is that there are very few on this site who admit to making a mistake. The sheer obnoxiousness of how longterm proliferic contributors found themselves being treated has lead to a general policy now among us all that every time when any of us drop back for a moment and find yet more ludicrous image posts there we all either (a) blank the image, or (b) post a "go fuck yourself" response. Sorry if it seems crude but there are at this stage hundreds of us who were driven away from this site by how we were treated. A lot of us feel very bitter at how we were treated. I am sorry that you, as a genuine poster, ended up experiencing the wrath. You may now have some idea the reasons behind it. Practically everyone who was here when I posted have left in frustation, with many many feeling bitter at their treatment. Take care. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 02:55, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Sick of edit conflicts? Just add the following code at the top of the article you want to work on:
{{inuse}}
This will add the following text:
This article is actively undergoing a major edit.
As a courtesy, please do not edit this article while this message is displayed. The person who added this notice will be listed in its edit history should you wish to contact him or her.
__NOTOC__ suppresses the Table of Contents (for example if it would be inserted too far down in an article).
from User talk:Angr:
Please forgive me, as I am VERY new to wikipedia. What suitable pics am I allowed to use for the type of pages I am editing. Notably, news reporters?
Thank you
Gareth Jordan
- Hi, pictures of living people need to be freely licensed, which means they have to be either licensed as free content or in the public domain. There are a few ways of getting freely licensed images of living people. (1) You can go someplace where the person is going to be appearing and photograph them yourself. Then you can license the photograph freely by putting one of the tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#For image creators on it. (2) You can go to http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/, tick the boxes saying "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed photos", "Find content to use commercially", and "Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon", and then search for the name. (3) For politicians and some celebrities (but probably not BBC reporters) you can see if they've ever been photographed by a White House photographer or at a performance for the U.S. military, because photographs made by employees of the U.S. Federal Government are all in the public domain. (4) You can contact the person (or, more likely, their agent or publicity representative) and request an image to be licensed under the GFDL. Some samples of how to write the letter are at WP:ERP. In this case it's important to remember (1) Not to ask permission to use the image on Wikipedia--that's not free enough for us! They have to agree to the terms of the GFDL, and say so explicitly in their answer, and (2) they have to send their permission not only to you but also to [email protected]. If you have more questions, you can ask at WP:MCQ or Wikipedia talk:Copyrights/Can I use.... —Angr 16:18, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
- Fair use rationale states that image is used as the primary means of visual identification of the article topic. However, this is not the case as the film poster is already used for this purpose. The image therefore fails WP:NFCC#8 Papa November (talk) 17:29, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
- All the reader can take from this is that the picture was a western with Grace Kelley in it; I don't see any significant benefit to the reader. So I agree this fails NFCC #8. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:07, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
- I suppose the reader can gather that particular piece of information from the text of the article. However, what Kelly and Jurado looked like in the movie, what clothes they wore, even the setting in the background are more easily rendered by means of an image. It wouldn't be Wikipedia, would it, if someone hadn't put up a perfectly legitimate image (even reviewed) for deletion and someone else immediately supported that request with an attempt at an argument. <KF> 22:41, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
- I don't see any reason to think that what they looked like (beyond looking like the particular actors and actresses) and what clothes they wore are significant in any way. Have their appearances been specifically commented on by reliable sources? As far as anyone can tell from the image they looked exactly like characters in any other western. The same goes for the background. That's why text suffices in this particular situation. The only reason for an image would be if there was something that made their appearance particularly noteworthy. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:47, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
- OK guys, this is getting a bit too passionate so let's get back to the point! Carl, my problem with the image is the poor justification for its use, not its content per se. KF, if you want the image to be kept, then why not update the image description page to show the real intended purpose for its use? Surely you must agree that it can't be the "primary means of visual identification" for the whole film if it only illustrates two of the characters? I've moved the existing FUR into a template - the purpose and replaceability fields need significant improvement though. Papa November (talk) 09:12, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
- The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the file's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
To User:Arniep on a Lauren Bacall image (Image:L_Bacall.jpg):
Hi, and thanks for your message. If someone keeps changing the content of the various templates over and over again all those people (like yourself) who check whether all images are okay copyright-wise will never be satisfied. When templates were introduced contributors were encouraged to add "fair use" if no other rationale applied. I did so on numerous occasions, only to read "Do not use this template" suddenly one day. Okay, I thought, edited numerous images and obediently replaced their tags with "promophoto". Now you come along and explain to me that this isn't okay either.
Sorry, but I'm not going to waste my time by playing that silly game again. It's perfectly clear that the Bacall image is an old autograph, and as I downloaded it from somewhere on the net ages ago (before templates were even introduced in Wikipedia) I have no record from where I could look up its "source".
If it contributes to your peace of mind and/or happiness, please delete it.
All the best, <KF> 23:16, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
A troll penis story (from User:Dekisugi):
On Espresso Addict's "Farewell Lament", 28 January 2007:
Hi, I've read your "wikipedian farewell lament" and, judging from your user contributions, believe you will read this sooner or later although you say you might not. I'd rather comment here than there.
I wish I didn't, but I wholeheartedly agree with what you are saying. While up to, say, a year or two ago, I had the impression that I was taking part in the building of an encyclopaedia—and not just any encyclopaedia; rather, it would be the most easily accessible, freest, most comprehensive and most up-to-date in the world—, these days my activity here focuses on avoiding yet greater damage being done to those parts of the encyclopaedia which are already good (and have been for some time). However, the moment you start trying to do that you get caught up in unbelievably silly "debates" with people who insist that what they are saying is the truth—always. On my talk page I've been harassed by canned messages about images I uploaded in 2002 or 2003 in danger of being deleted because, it seems, they do not have the proper "tags" (which were only modified, or even created, a few months ago); articles are randomly ("speedy"-)deleted by people who have little idea of what they are doing but who always back up their "arguments" with references to some official "Wikipedia policy" or other (the most recent example can be found here); and on the talk pages articles are classified as "stubs" with the explicit wish that they be expanded although the subject has already been exhausted.
Well, I could go on forever, but I won't. As you say, the only thing left to do is to remove oneself from the frontline: Ars longa, vita brevis. It's just no fun anymore. It seems I'm too much of an addict to let go completely though.
All the best, <KF> 11:40, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
On Teamwrite:
Hi, please write a short text on what kind of web site Teamwrite is. An external link is not enough for a Wikipedia article, not even for a stub. All the best, <KF> 00:25, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
THANK YOU :)
You are my new God User:KF. I have been waiting so long for someone to tell me what "TeamWrite is". You wrote it perfectly. I checked out your details page, you are a very wise man. I like that you stated it perfectly with only two words:)
p.s. If you do find a place to download reality, please link me up. ;)
Wikipedia: The "Random article" function
(see User:Rmhermen, February 12, 2005)
<KF> 22:08, September 8, 2005 (UTC)
<KF> 17:56, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
<KF> 00:05, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
<KF> 00:05, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
<KF> 21:38, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
from Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits (as of November 1, 2007):
KF's favourite rock classics
The runners-up:
<KF> 20:00, 13 December 2005 (UTC) (See User talk:Rentastrawberry.)
All genres:
The runners-up:
<KF> 21:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC)