Wikipedia talk:Historic debates

Precedents of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy case

Despite being incomparable in media attention, there were precedents in Wikipedia, whether to honour religious taboos or "secrets":

• Inclusion of the photograph at Bahá'u'lláh#Photograph
• Secrecy of Mormon temple rites at Endowment (Mormonism)
• and of course, in the wider sense of "religion", our famous series on Scientology teachings

Pjacobi 13:25, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Debates around individuals?

What about all the many debates that surrounded particular individuals, some of whom got involved personally to oppose Wikipedia for [ keeping | deleting | editing | refusing to change ] the article about [ them | their company | their organization | their project ], because they believe it to be [ libelous | slanderous | harrassment | an invasion of privacy | rude to call them 'non-notable' ]? *Dan T.* 12:54, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest that we avoid any such summaries. It would inevitably lead to conflict as people object to being so 'defamed'. If absolutely neccessary then the issues around the conflict surrounding the individual can be discussed without making it a seeming indictment of them personally. --CBDunkerson 00:45, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Is there any such particularly notable disputes? We are not trying to list every ArbCom case here, only those that received widespread attention among the community. If there is such an incident, I think we should include it in a neutral manner. Loom91 07:04, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that the whole situation that led up to Ed Poor being desysopped would probably count as particularly notable. If nothing else, it solidified the consensus that administrators shouldn't use their powers to fight disputes with other editors. It also showed that Wikipedia can be resilient and successfully and sanely recover from extended rogue admin actions. --FOo 08:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Please by all means add content that you feel worthy of inclusion. Loom91 10:59, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Larry Sanger should certainly be mentioned. --bainer (talk) 08:46, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

vague recollections

Two examples spring to mind, though I was a newbie at the time and would like an old hand to tell me if they were really as big as I thought they were when I was still blundering about.

• Wikipedia:Nofollow - to decide if we would allow our external links to count in Google rankings in February 2005. The vote was 86 to 39 to allow at a time when landslide RFAs maxed out at about 45 support votes. I remember thinking at the time that was by far the largest number of Wikipedians in one place I had seen.  ;)
• Post-2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, a link to the Donations for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake page was placed at the top of every page to encourage charitable giving and there was promptly an uproar. It was eventually removed, though quite a few users put a link on their user page and it became the precedent for adding charity links in MediaWiki:Sitenotice after Hurricane Katrina. I thought this was in Sitenotice as well, but can't find it in the history. Anyone have an idea of what other MediaWiki notice is on top that it could be in? - BanyanTree 03:40, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Oldest debates

Some of the original debates were WP:Not a dictionary, date format, Polish/German city names, first user ban, de-sysopping, Rmhermen 15:05, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

This has caused me to remember the pages Wikipedia:History of Wikipedian processes and people and meta:History of Wikipedia, probably redundant, which probably has a lot of the relevant background. - BanyanTree 17:59, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Rollback?

Anyone thought of adding the whole rollback topic? If it isnt historic im not sure what is. Tiptoety ^talk 06:44, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

How about BLPs? Singularity 07:42, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

No one is stopping you.... and it definitely, won't get done unless YOU do it.Inclusionist (talk) 05:41, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Added history

I am attempting to add some links to all of these debates. This page is fascinating, but I sense a lot of people come here and want to know more. Inclusionist (talk) 05:41, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Moved to talk/rewrote

I moved this wordy intro to talk:

Analysis reveals that this common nature of disputes is inherent in the very structure of Wikipedia. Disputes always occur when something is at stake, whether that be material or ideological. Since the only thing that Wikipedia provides is information, the only stake within Wikipedia is what and how information is presented. Being the largest encyclopedia in this age of information, this is by no means a small stake, as evidenced by various political figures attempting to manipulate Wikipedia's content to their benefit.

I rewrote:

Most major disputes involve at some level one side asserting that some content should stay in Wikipedia (or in some particular place in Wikipedia) while the other side holds that it should not. Because of the fundamental nature of this dispute there is a tendency to categorise participants in a dispute as either inclusionist or exclusionist, depending on their perceptions about how restrictive Wikipedia's inclusion criteria should be (or to be more precise, how liberal Wikipedia's deletion criteria should be, for there are no inclusion criteria). The merits of such a classification is debated.

to:

Most major disputes involve one side arguing that something should stay in Wikipedia (or in some particular place in Wikipedia) while the other side holds that it should not. There is a tendency to categorise participants in these disputes as either inclusionist or deletionist, depending on how restrictive they feel Wikipedia's inclusion criteria should be.

I rewrote:

This page is a list and short description of large-scale debates and disputes that have occurred in Wikipedia and have shaped its evolution from a geeky concept to the world's largest encyclopedia. The list is arranged in chronological order. Feel free to edit and update, but use the talk page rather than edit war in the event of a dispute (in other words, keep this page off this page ;).) Where possible, provide inline citations to evidence of the dispute, including but not limited to permalinks to talk pages/talk page archives, RfCs, RfARBs and archived mailing list posts. Just like articles, controversial or potentially inflammatory statements are liable to be removed without sourcing.

to:

This page is a short description of large-scale disputes that have occurred on Wikipedia and have shaped its evolution. The list is arranged in chronological order.

Provide inline citations to evidence of the dispute, including: permalinks to talk pages/talk page archives, RfCs, RfARBs and archived mailing list posts.

Reason:

The introduction reiterates wikipolicy which most seasoned editors who come here will know anyway.

A huge introduction just doesn't seem necessary for this article. I have streamlined and simplified several sentences, and I footnoted information which is not necessary for the article.

Like most editors, I came here to read the dirt and the controversy, not have a long introduction about topics that most veteran wikipedians already know about. Inclusionist (talk) 06:07, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

New possible addition

Although still in progress, it's looking like the straw poll about turning on flagged revisions at Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_revisions/Trial has received unpredecented attention from editors, with over 650 votes, more or less evenly split, and quite a bit of discussion and strong opinions. This will be one for the annals. Dcoetzee 01:26, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Yup, I was just thinking the same thing. - BanyanTree 22:41, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

WHAAAA??!!

Re:

In violation of the normal practice of allowing users to express support for other editor's statement without any response that might be perceived as harassing, some sections drew sections for opposers to heatedly state why they disagreed with the statement and its supporters.

And this stuff is full of stuff like this stuff. I'd edit it for grammar, style and comprehension, but I can't work it out. This isn't General Relativity, so why does it sound so incomprehensible? Myles325a (talk) 02:53, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

New Entry?

The debate on sports notability at (Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Sports notability) now runs to some 733,992 bytes or 118 pages if downloaded as a PDF(with various offshoots being moved to separate pages, so that actual full debate is probably even longer). This might be a candidate to include on this list. Tracland (talk) 08:33, 18 February 2022 (UTC)