Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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How do you choose which articles to work on ?

Greetings! My question is the next. How do you choose the articles you want to work on ?

In my case, it's simple. I read articles on topics that interest me and I read the related articles (For example, internal links).

If I don't have time to work on it. I write a note on my user page to work on it later. Anatole-berthe (talk) 01:57, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that really depends on who you ask. Polygnotus (talk) 22:29, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Everybody's different. Some people are on a mission to document every professional cricket player, every TV station, every species of reptile, every politician in their home country, etc, etc. I like to explore the history of where I live and as often as not, my interest in a topic is sparked by going past some building or park and wondering if there's more there than meets the eye. And, just like Anatole-berthe, my user space is littered with stubs of future articles that never went anywhere. RoySmith (talk) 22:39, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Aye, I figure that everyone will have different motives. I've ceased article writing because this list of articles I have worked on is also a list of articles I need to maintain, and it's gotten too long. Every year I do maintain that list. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:51, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to everybody for yours answers ! Anatole-berthe (talk) 13:27, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a WikiSloth: I work on whatever catches my eye, most often merely to untangle awkward wording; though I pay more attention to areas where I think I know something, like heraldry and polytopes. —Tamfang (talk) 23:08, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What I like to do is to go to the list of all unreferenced pages (Category:Articles lacking sources), and I select a random page and add a reference to it. It's not that important but it passes the time. If you want anymore help--Usertalk:Timothy Venia Timothy Venia (talk) 18:45, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MOS article title discrepancy

I recently learned that Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Visual arts includes the article title guidance "If the title is not very specific, or refers to a common subject, add the surname of the artist in parentheses afterwards". I encountered this when Peeling Onions was moved to Peeling Onions (Lilly Martin Spencer) for this reason by User:SilverLocust. This seems to be contrary to the general rule of not using disambiguation unless necessary, and is also not in sync with other comparable guidelines like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (music) which follow the general rule. Is there a reason for this local consensus overriding the global one that I am missing? Fram (talk) 08:37, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, I moved it from Peeling Onions(Lilly Martin Spencer) to Peeling Onions (Lilly Martin Spencer) after another user had objected to renaming it just Peeling Onions. But as noted at WP:MISPLACED#Other exceptions, there are some naming conventions that call for unnecessary disambiguation. The other thing people usually point to when disagreeing with WP:MISPLACED is WP:ASTONISH. Also, MOS:ART isn't a local consensus. SilverLocust 💬 08:46, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, "local consensus" was not the right choice of words, I meant a more specific guideline overruling the general one and not being in sync with most other ones. Fram (talk) 09:08, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But anyway, the question is, is there a good reason why the band, movie, album, book, .... "Peeling Onions" would all be at the title "Peeling Onions", but for the painting we need to add the name of the artist? Fram (talk) 09:39, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If there were two or more notable paintings called “Pealing Onions”, disambiguating by artist would be helpful.

Otherwise, we don’t need to be so specific. We can disambiguate as “Pealing Onions (painting)” to distinguish it from the book, album, etc of the same title. Blueboar (talk) 13:57, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Talk:Peeling Onions (Lilly Martin Spencer)#Requested move 20 December 2024. GTrang (talk) 17:56, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion to rename many criticism/controversies articles to include both concepts in name

Ok. First, I am posting this here, because I can't figure out a better forum (this is a cross-WikiProject issue). Second, sure, criticism and controversies are separate concepts. But consider for example Criticism of Facebook, CNN controversies/Controversies of Nestlé and existence of categories like Category:Facebook criticisms and controversies. Having looked at several of articles on criticism/controversies about companies/organizations, I am really hard pressed to find difference between them, and we already have several categories grouping those concepts together (like the mentioned Facebook one). (Rarely, we have two articles about this: consider Criticism of Wikipedia vs List of Wikipedia controversies - but this is pretty exceptionaland perhaps a case of navel gazines asking for a merge).

For those who care about category trees, few points:

we do not have Category:Controversies by company (subcat of Category:Controversies by organizations; only Category:Criticisms of companies (subcat of Category:Criticism of organizations - and yes, the plural vs singular is another, if minor, issue to fix).(Mentioned Wikipedia list of controversies is just in Category:Internet-related controversies) Creating them, of course, is not hard, and should be done, but that won't solve the problem of conceptually similar articles with different names (Criticism of Company A vs Controversies about Company B).
- We do, however, have Category:Corporate controversies...
according to our category structure, Category:Controversies is a subcategory of Category:Criticisms. Whether this is correct, I am not sure, trying to make a hierarchy for such content is challenging - here, I am just noting how they are related at present in our structure
- however note that the only entity I noticed that has both controversies and criticism categories has a reverse order here: Category:Donald Trump controversies is a subcategory of Category:Donald Trump controversies

Before you tell me to take this to (probably inactive anyway) WT:COMPANIES, let me point out similar issues with, for example, Category:Controversies by person vs Category:Criticism of individuals (hey, BLP-caring folks, have fun :P; and hey, US-politics-caring folks, did you know Trump is the only person to have both a criticism and a controversy category? Have more fun :P Anyway, Criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt or Criticism of Jesus are again hard to conceptually distinguish from Controversies related to Sheikh Hasina or Controversies surrounding Silvio Berlusconi. Oh, and if you think you can tell the difference between then, then try to tackle this weirdly named stuff arbitrarily spread between those categories: Commentary about Julian Assange, Donald Trump's comments on John McCain, Historical assessment of Klemens von Metternich, Reception and legacy of Muhammad Khatami, Commentary on Edward Snowden's disclosure and Jack Abramoff scandals (I think this is the only scandal-page in the biographies; BLP folks - you may want to rename this, together with its category... Update: I've started a RM for that one)

Then of course we have the rest of this can of worms - for example Scouting controversy and conflict (why conflict??).

To make it simple, we can probably retain only criticism for ideologies and concepts (Category:Criticisms by ideology; Category:Criticism of science).

And I am not feeling like tackling Category:Scandals by type into this (subcat to controversies by type).

But I'd like to suggest that we rename all articles and categories for criticism and controversies of organizations/companies to follow Category:Facebook criticisms and controversies and few others named in this fashion.

For people, I suggest "Criticism and controversies related to Person X" or just rename all controversies to criticisms (because Criticism and controversies related to Jesus, for example, sounds a bit weird). That said, again, conceptually, criticism of Jesus and Controversies surrounding Silvio Berlusconi are pretty much the same (Jesus is a controversial figure to some; Berlusconi has been criticized, and those pages cover all those aspects).

Really, almost all of those articles are pretty much conceptually identical, so even if you think you have a handle on how to draw the line between controversies of foo and criticism of foo, please note that enforcing this will be next to impossible. Rather than having multiple names and two category trees for conceptually identical articles, I think standardizing them to one is going to be best. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:34, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think a first step is to go through these controversy articles to make them more of a summary style rather than listing every single incident where the topic came under controversy. Criticism of Christianity is maybe halfway there but it still has too much dissecting to specific indicents.

A second step would be to strip legal aspects like lawsuits to separate articles, eg like Litigation involving Apple Inc. which generally stays more factual to actual things that happen in courts of law, rather than the commentary and criticism of from a range of sources. This might not be a possible step for several of these, but we should not try to mix criticism and ligitation. Masem (t) 03:59, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or how about we don't have either? I don't think that we should have stand alone criticism/controversies articles or sections (for aren't we advised to integrate such stand alone into the article? Aren't they simply relics of a less rigourous era doomed to be eventualy disassembled?) Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:46, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

+1. By their nature, these articles are either POV forks or so close to it that the end result is the same. Controversies and criticisms shouldn't be made standalone solely for being controversies or criticisms, whether it be as a separate article or a section within an article. They should be incorporated into the article like any other facts, and if they don't fit, then they're probably not due. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:19, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about that. For some large subjects, we can expect many subtopics/subarticles. If there's room in Wikipedia for a fairly niche article like History of religion in the Netherlands, then there's probably room in Wikipedia for a general article like Criticism of religion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:34, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, this wouldn't be the line of reasoning as regards more discretized controversies, e.g. Chinese Rites controversy. Remsense ‥ 论 02:39, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. A one-size-fits-all approach might not be appropriate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:04, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, Controversy does a good job at outlining its distinction as a state of prolonged public dispute—ergo, controversy is properly subcategorized under criticism, requiring additional narrative and intersocial characteristics. Remsense ‥ 论 02:12, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Per Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Naming, I'd rather look for names that avoid both "Criticisms of" and "Controversies of" when possible, especially when the subject is kind of narrow. Criticism of Walmart could be divided into a couple of less POV-ish-ly titled articles, like Labor relations at Walmart (currently a redirect). Other parts, like Criticism of Walmart#Midtown Walmart (500+ words on the construction of a single store) could either be blanked or merged to a more relevant article (e.g., Midtown Miami). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:41, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree; this likely should be done with many of these articles. I'm not sure that all of them should be liquidated, though I'm not immediately hitting upon a specific counterexample. Remsense ‥ 论 02:45, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Horse Eye's Back Some of them are certainly due (Criticism of capitalism or Criticism of Marxism, etc.), although I am sure we can find a few that wouldn't survive AfD. Criticisms of particular individuals is probably the most problematic aspect and we should really look at all articles there carefully, although for historical figures it is less of an issue (and if my post here results in clearing of some BLP-violating detritus, great). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:44, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I was talking in terms of individuals. My understanding is that criticism in the context of Criticism of capitalism or Criticism of Marxism is referring to scholarly criticism and not general negative feelings (we have separate pages after all for Anti-capitalism and Anti-communism). I would expect for example that an article "Criticism of Hegel" would note Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right but not that his mom thought he was a jerk. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 04:33, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We have these FAs on "controversies":

I didn't see any with "criticism" in the title. We have five FAs on "scandals":

At a glance, I don't think that a one-size-fits-all renaming to "Criticism and controversies related to _____" would be appropriate for any of these. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:28, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that such an approach tailored to natural persons would be appropriate. I also see a major difference between an event which has controversy, criticism, or scandal in its proper name and the use as a descriptive title. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:49, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How to handle plagiarism from Wikipedia?

Hey all, hope everyone here is doing well. Today I woke up to discover that a podcaster I follow had plagiarised part of an article I wrote, as well as parts of some other articles (some of which I had contributed to, others not). The podcaster did not cite their sources, nor did they make it clear that they were pulling whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, but they ran advertisements and plugged their patreon anyway. This is not the first time an article I wrote for Wikipedia has been plagiarised and profited off (earlier this year I noticed a youtuber had plagiarised an entire article I had written; I've also noticed journalists ripping off bits and pieces of other articles). Nor is this limited to articles, as I often see original maps people make for Wikimedia Commons reused without credit.

Obviously I'm not against people reusing and adapting the work we do here, as it's freely licensed under creative commons. But it bugs me that no attribution is provided, especially when it is required by the license; attribution is literally the least that is required. I would like attribution of Wikipedia to become more common and normalised, but I don't know how to push for people off-wiki to be more considerate of this. In my own case, the 'content creators' in question don't provide contact details, so I have no way of privately getting in touch with them. Cases in which I have been able to contact an organisation about their unattributed use of Wikipedia/Wikimedia content often get ignored, and the unattributed use continues. But I also have no interest in publicly naming and shaming these people, as I don't think it's constructive.

Does anyone here have advice for how to handle plagiarism from Wikipedia? Is there something we can do to push for more attribution? --Grnrchst (talk) 13:59, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly there are plenty of lazy sods who think that copying directly from Wikipedia is "research". This has happened with some of the articles that I have been involved with. It's rude, but hard to stop.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 14:13, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would start by writing to the podcaster and politely explaining to them that they are welcome to use the material but are required to provide attribution. They may simply be unaware of this and might be willing to comply if properly educated. Failing that, I assume the podcast was being streamed from some content delivery service like YouTube. You might have better luck writing to the service provider demanding that the offending material be taken down.

Realistically, crap like this happens all the time, and there's probably not a whole bunch we can do to prevent it. RoySmith (talk) 14:37, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To support RoySmith's point, for those who may not have seen it, here is a very long youtube video about youtube and plagiarism [1]. (Works just having it on as background audio.) CMD (talk) 14:59, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Funnily enough, plagiarism from Wikipedia comes up a couple times in that video. MJL also made a very good response video, which I think was a useful addition in the conversation of crediting Wikipedians. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:10, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'll give that a listen. CMD (talk) 15:18, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Aye, I figured it be an uphill battle trying to accomplish even minor changes on this front. As I can't find a way to contact the creator directly, sending an email to the hosting company may be the best I can do, but even then I doubt it'll lead to anything. Thanks for the advice, anyhow. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:12, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it's a copyright violation (e.g., exact wording), rather than plagiarism (stealing the ideas but using their own words), then you could look into a DMCA takedown notice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:25, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: It was more-or-less word for word, with a couple tweaks here and there. I don't want the episode pulled, I really just want Wikipedia cited, but I can't figure out any way to get in direct contact with any of the people involved. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:16, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible that the way to get in touch with them is a DMCA takedown notice. Having your platform take down the whole episode tends to attract attention. You could make it easy on them by suggesting a way to fix the problem (maybe they could add something like "This episode quotes Wikipedia in several places" to the end of the notes on the podcast?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:33, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm curious as to what the plagiarized article in question is. Often there is no majority authorship of an article (in terms of bytes added), which might complicate DMCA claims. Jay Cubby 18:35, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone who contributed enough content to be copyrighted can issue a DMCA notice. The glaring problem with this approach is that the DMCA only applies if the copy is published in the United States. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:51, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What about servers or companies based in the States (perhaps I've misremembered what little I know of copyright law)? Jay Cubby 18:56, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@JayCubby: It's an article I wrote 99.9% of, minus minor copyedits by other users. I'm cautious about revealing which one as I think it would make it easy to figure out the podcast in question, and I'd still prefer to handle this privately rather than go full hbomberguy. Also, having now gone through more of the episode, it's not just that one article that got text lifted from it; text was also copied in whole or in part, without attribution, from other Wikipedia articles I have contributed to (but didn't author) and an article on another website that publishes under a CC BY-NC-ND license. I don't know how I would handle notifying the other parties that got plagiarised either. I haven't combed through the entire episode yet, but already a sizeable portion consists of unattributed text, either identical to the source or with minor alterations. --Grnrchst (talk) 19:29, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One man deserves the credit, one man deserves the blame...

Jay Cubby 00:42, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

kenneth liu Actor

Why isn’t there any information on this actor kenneth liu 2600:480A:5C77:2700:359F:7092:84EB:47F5 (talk) 03:26, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think this is the person with the next Wikidata file ? https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q130840132

Maybe this person isn't notable enough for Wikipedia. See "Wikipedia:Notability" and "Wikipedia:Notability_(people)".

Together , we could try to determinate if he does correspond to criterias about notability. I need answers to search data about him that can show if he's notable enough for Wikipedia.

1.This individual is deceased or alive ? Do you know an approximative year about his birth or / and death ?

2.Citizenship of this actor.

3.Kenneth LIU is his real name or a pseudonym ?

4.In which movies or / and plays he did acted ? Anatole-berthe (talk) 04:01, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Syrian flag

Just a heads-up: for obvious reasons, the default Syrian flag is now the flag of the interim revolutionary government. If you want the Assad-era flag, you will want {{flag|Syria|1980}}, not just {{flag|Syria}}. You can explictly get the revolutionary flag (with precaution against it being changed if the national flag changes again) by using {{flag|Syria|revolution}}.

For the bulk of places where the Syrian flag is used, this is correct, and it spares us an insane number of edits. However, unfortunately, a lot of articles about the recent war used/use {{flag|Syria}} for the Assad side, and now show the wrong flag. These would probably be the highest priority to change.

Similar issues might arise with (for example) participation in international competitions and conferences, granting of awards, etc., but those seem to me to be much less potentially misleading than ones related to the revolution itself. I see things that long predate 1980 that were just using {{flag|Syria}}, so it is not as if there has been great discipline around this in the past.

(If someone needs my attention to a response here, please ping me. I do not maintain a watchlist on en-wiki.) - Jmabel | Talk 23:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel I think you're right about this issue but I have few ideas for its resolution.

A possibility is to give an unique name to each flags.

For example we erase {{flag|Syria}} that gave the next result :

Syria.

We keep {{flag|Syria|1980}} that gave the next result

Syria

The same for {{flag|Syria|revolution}} that gave the next result

Syria.

We can do the same for others flags. For example instead of {{flag|United States}} that gave the next result

United States.

We keep {{flag|United States|1960}}

United States that gave the flag of nowadays with 50 stars.

To get the previous flag {{flag|United States|1959}} =

United States.

I discover a thing. If you write {{flag|Country of your choice|Year}} you get the flag of this country in force during the year selectionned for some countries.

It doesn't functionning for all countries. Anatole-berthe (talk) 00:27, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly don't oppose someone taking on a major, multi-person-month approach to the entire {{flags}} template, but I would not want to see us delay the solution to this immediate issue and have it wait for a massive, broad project. - Jmabel | Talk 00:31, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think a project like this would need 10 people or more. What do you think about the number ? Anatole-berthe (talk) 00:56, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indigenous territory

Are there Indigenous territory in Ecuador, Suriname? What about Honduras, Guatemala, and Salvador? Kaiyr (talk) 05:20, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure what specifically is being asked, but I'm fairly sure you didn't mean to ask it at the village pump? Remsense ‥ 论 05:26, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This might be a question for the Wikipedia:Reference desk. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:27, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suggested Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities on their talkpage. CMD (talk) 07:43, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]