Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 102

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Video Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 102

Moving (wiki text of) discussions

Sometimes a discussion is moved from one desk to another desk, one which is deemed to be more appropriate to the topic of the question. If the displayed text is copied from one desk and pasted onto another desk, then the links are lost. (Piped links are especially problematic in this regard.) However, if the wiki text is copied from one desk and pasted onto another desk, then the links are maintained. I wish to encourage editors to copy the wikt text instead of the displayed text, and thus to preserve the links.
--Wavelength (talk) 17:32, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. You will note I followed the correct procedure when I moved "Why doesn't Wikipedia provide medical advice?" above form science to talk. ?????? (talk) 19:38, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Maps Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 102

Discussion on the Math desk about Fields Medal keeps on being removed

It's plainly disruptive to have to answer to someone by having to reload an old version of the page and edit that page. The OP's question was removed with the additional discussion yesterday presumably because the OP didn't ask a clear question. But if that discussion yields something productive, one shouldn't remove the entire thread. That happened yesterday but just now I had to restore the discussion again. I would have thought that if the discussion continues in a productive way, especially if more than one regular is involved in there and it's more than more than one editor who has reverted, especially if it is more than one regular editor (one even with a "rvv" edit summary), you need to stop removing that discussion unless there are actual complaints about that discussion being disruptive in some way (other than merely violating some interpretation of the rules, because we do have WP:IAR as official policy here). I see no trace of any discussion on this talk page here about such disruption. Count Iblis (talk) 13:10, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

The OP didn't ask about a medal, he asked the forum-like question, "What would you do with a million dollars." That was removed on the grounds that the ref desk doesn't allow forum questions. However, according to the discussion a section or two above here, that rule is apparently no longer operative. So apparently it IS valid to ask directly for personal opinions about things. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 13:16, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Right, so at most the OP's question should have been removed, not the entire thread. The OP's question can be judged to violate a well established guideline, but whole point of these guidelines is to prevent disruption to the users of the ref desk. So, if removing the entire thread is going to cause significant disruption to the users who are actually participating in the dicussion, while the OP's question is just sitting there without much problems, one should not remove the entire thread. Count Iblis (talk) 13:26, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

What's the purpose of the thread if the question is gone?

I understand that disappearing things is disruptive, but why not box the thread and be done with it? APL (talk) 14:43, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

What guideline does the question violate? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 15:24, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

If nothing else, the refdesk header says "We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.", which jives with the refdesk guidelines that say that we can't give opinions and should only answer such that "there should exist a reliable source (or sources) that would give the same answer."

In fairness, I can't find a rule that says such questions are prohibited, just that they shouldn't be answered. But what good is a question that can't be answered? APL (talk) 16:38, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Which is why it should simply have been deleted rather than answered. Trouble is, once somebody answers such a question, they get offended if their pearls of wisdom get flushed along with the original question. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:38, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Many times we've discussed why simply disappearing things is disruptive. Boxing/collapsing it would have been sufficient. APL (talk) 17:45, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

And then Medeis gets yelled at for daring to merely box something up. This all seems to be an endless loop. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:49, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Medeis sometimes boxes things that others believe should have been left unmolested. But that's not a "Loop". That's Medeis being more severe than others think is warranted. (As in this case.)

I'm curious, I certainly don't follow this page religiously, could you point to a case where Medeis boxes something and then gets berated for not just getting rid of it outright? I can't remember one. APL (talk) 17:56, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

As I recall, a month or two or three ago Medeis was yelled at simply for boxing things up. It should be in the archives somewhere. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:14, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If the people participating in the thread want to close it down, they can do that themselves. The only reason why you want an outsider to do that is to put a stop to some ongoing disruption that the participants in that threat are either unable or unwilling to do someting about.

It's similar to how we uphold the law. The police doesn't do unannounced house calls to check if everyone is behaving well. Its up to the people themselves to police themselves, make sure the kids don't do stupid things etc. etc. Only in emergency cases does the police intervene. Count Iblis (talk) 20:35, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Would that things were that simple here. It's evident that there is disagreement over what "the law" actually is here. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 21:03, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Again, I know Medeis has been criticized both for deleting things that others felt should have been merely boxed, and also for boxing things that others felt should have been left unmolested.

But that's not an "endless loop", that's Medeis being more aggressive about boxing and deleting than others want him to be. There's no paradox there.

It would only be a ridiculous "endless loop" if Medeis was told "Don't delete, box" and then later, for the same class of problem, was told "Don't box, delete."

APL (talk) 21:14, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

The "endless loop" is that someone boxes up or removes something, somebody else gripes about it, and the usual arguments ensue. The plain truth is that there is no consensus here about what constitutes an acceptable question. And given how this has gone on for at least the last three or four years, there's no consensus in sight. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:12, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

That' because of the disagreement about the law that you mention above, which in turn is caused by the discussions about the law not being driven by the actual problems that we experiences when answering questions. It's similar to why Communism failed. If some party boss is going say how someone should run a business based on Communist ideology then that's not going to work well in practice.

So, instead of judging what goes on here on the Ref Desk by looking at how well we stick to the rules, we should assume that there is a good reason why the status quo is what it is and then ask how we can make things even better. We should not a priori exclude that moving in a direction that looks contrary to the rules is worse. The measure of "better" or "worse" shoud be determined by how well we can help the people asking questions here. Count Iblis (talk) 23:26, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

...and so the endless loop continues. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 01:11, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

src: images.mentalfloss.com

Question removed from Misc. desk

I removed a question that seems to be rather obvious trolling. If you disagree, the edit is here for you to revert. Dismas|^(talk) 23:04, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I've put it back and answered it. I think that the content of the question alone is not enough to condemn it as trolling. (It's a popular idea, believe it or not!)

If there was something else that indicates this new user is trolling that I can't see, then feel free to rererevert. APL (talk) 23:22, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

It was exactly the same question that Technoquat asked a few days ago [1], though frankly I'd have thought it was obvious trolling anyway. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:00, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Good (re-)removal. It IS obvious trolling, and APL should have left it deleted. It sounds like classic "Light current" garbage. The question is metaphorically doing exactly what it's asking about... and APL fell right into it. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 01:10, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Aside from the fact that this happens to me occasionally (not a bookstore in my case, but a different retail shop), it's still pretty likely to be trolling. Mingmingla (talk) 01:50, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm curious as to how you're all making that determination?

There are honestly a lot of people who believe this is a real phenomena. It has also been mentioned numerous times in pop culture, which is all it takes some people to believe in something.

With all that in mind, how have you determined the intent of the question asker?

Are you all so uptight that you believe that nobody is ever curious about poop? APL (talk) 02:14, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

As I have already pointed out, the question was the same one that long-time reference-desk troll Technoquat asked a few days ago. There can be no reasonable doubt that it was him again... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:35, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, good thing we were all vigilant. We almost answered an entirely legitimate and interesting question for someone who didn't deserve our help. Close call everybody. APL (talk) 02:38, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Glad to be of service. P.S. None of us is perfectly vigilant. I've been trolled sometimes when I've assumed more good faith than was warranted. No harm in the long run. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 03:00, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

trolling removed

We are not an internet forum, questions like this do not belong on the ref desk. ?????? (talk) 02:24, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Maybe a bit harshly dealt with, but still an appropriate removal. Reference-wise, there are many articles on popular media answers to that question, but since he said what would you do with a million, that gets into chat-room mode. As for what I would do with a million, I would stash it in my Swiss bank account, to be saved for funding a World Series victory parade for the Chicago Cubs. I figure the accrued interest will be considerable by then <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 06:33, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

That user is on a highly dynamic Iraqi IP. Across his many addresses, he's asked numerous questions - some good, some bad, all in terrible English. I can't tell if he's a troll or just can't speak the language. If the latter, he may not even comprehend if told what he's doing wrong, if he could find the message at all. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:35, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure "trolling" is the right word in this case, since that word implies some maliciousness, but it is otherwise a good removal. Mingmingla (talk) 16:56, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

More likely ignorance/incompetence than deliberate maliciousness. If it's an IP-hopper then it's probably just a one-shot anyway. So, in any case, it's "See ya." <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 18:50, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

The guidelines used to say that this is not an internet forum, but that has been removed. Not that I think it would help in this case, but for future questions like this it would be helpful to have a guideline to point the OP to. Agree calling he OP a troll may be a bit harsh, but "forumer" doesn't sound very good either. ?????? (talk) 19:36, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Any answers the OP was asking for would violate the referencing rules, unless one or more of us can provide independent sources for our own viewpoints. As regards the IP, if he never does this again he can be safely described as a former forumer. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 19:51, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll support any efforts to re-insert the wording regarding Not a Forum. Mingmingla (talk) 00:12, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Can you find the diff for when it was removed? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 01:54, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

It was removed with the general overhaul of the guidelines, whenever that was, maybe a year back. ?????? (talk) 02:39, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Here's what the main ref desk page looked like, well over a year ago.[2] Can you find where the guidelines are? I'm not seeing it. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 12:25, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

That's not what it looked like a year ago: the changes to the transcluded headers aren't shown. It's a bit tucked away, the various transcluded links are listed under Wikipedia:Reference_desk/header. The word "forum", for example, was removed from Wikipedia:Reference desk/header/howtoask here not quite eight months ago, referring to discussions that now can be found in Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 97. ---Sluzzelin talk 12:44, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

What good are guidelines that can't be found from the main ref desk page? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 12:47, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

They can easily be found. Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines is a direct link from the header on each desk. The idea was to have less instructional clutter on the top of each desk. Referring to another place for more information is a common way of making things more visually comprehensible on Wikipedia and elsewhere. The exact thread referred to in the edit summary of the diff removing the word "forum" and other things is "New RefDesk header". ---Sluzzelin talk 12:56, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't see anything there that says anything about "not a forum", and I don't understand why the link to the guidelines is not on the main ref desk page. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 13:08, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I suggest you make a concrete proposal what to add where, as some of the pages are protected. If you want to change the guidelines, perhaps add something about not being a forum to the subsection "What the reference desk is not" ... , that page isn't protected. I'd leave a note here, since fewer people watch that page. ---Sluzzelin talk 14:51, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I suggest you tell us what the guideline used to say. And enough already with the links. QUOTE IT VERBATIM. Please. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 15:23, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

In the diff I gave above, the word "forum" was removed with the sentence "Do not start a debate; please seek an internet forum instead." In that diff it was removed from the header, not from the guidelines. I don't know whether the word "forum" used to appear in any other form in the headers, nor do I know whether it ever appeared in the guidelines. I won't be doing this research, however. I merely tried to explain what medeis might have been referring to, and then trying to clarify that the guidelines are still easy to find. Whether or not we add something like WP:NOTFORUM, at the desks or in our guidelines, isn't something I care about. ---Sluzzelin talk 16:11, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, maybe someone will turn up here who actually DOES care, and can explain whether we still have a rule against asking forum-like questions, or not. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 16:15, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

The top of every Refdesk says "We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate." I don't recall offhand whether we ever had the word "forum" in the boilerplate, but if we get rid of the requests for opinions, predictions, and debates, then I'm not sure what else qualifies as a forum-like question. Matt Deres (talk) 21:34, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

It used to say something like, your question may be better suited for an internet forum, or the like, and on the individual pages. The word forum was used. There is always WP:NOTAFORUM, although the emphasis is slightly different. ?????? (talk) 02:31, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I missed Sluzzelin quoting it above. "Do not start a debate; please seek an internet forum instead" is indeed the guideline (at the top of the page, or whatever you call it if not "guideline") I was thinking of that was removed last year. ?????? (talk) 00:40, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

src: www.tabletmag.com

Malware removed

I removed this q because it set my security system buzzing bigtime with warnings about Trojans and other malware. I couldn't get it to play the alleged Powerpoint file at all.

The user has been visiting the refdesks on and off since June and I'm not aware of any previous issues, so I'm AGF here. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:49, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to go near that item, but is the editor communicative? Maybe he should be warned that he might have major problems brewing on his PC and doesn't know about it. (AGF, likewise). <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 23:20, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I've left a message on his (until now red-linked) talk page. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:44, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I got your message. I ran a scan for threats with "Symantec Endpoint Protection" and no risks were found. My firewall is active and I didn't get any warning about the file - are you sure it's corrupt? What antivirus are you using? 84.109.248.221 (talk) 13:50, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

The Powerpoint file itself seems fine [3] [4] [5]. Perhaps it was an ad or something on the site although sendspace is I believe one of the better file sharing sites. As with many similar sites, most of the download links are ads to dubious stuff, the link you want to click on is 'Click here to start download from sendspace' which is roughly in the middle. If you clicked on anything else, it's no wonder you got complaints of malware and trojans. Nil Einne (talk) 15:27, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Nil Einne. I thought I did click the link you described, but maybe not. I've done it again, and it seems to be accessing it OK now, but I still can't play the PP file, so I'm still no better off.

All I can say is that if a supposedly safe and respected file sharing site comes with extremely UNsafe ads plastered all over it, which look for all the world to an IT dummy like valid links to the file you're after, then the entire site is unsafe. I feel quite justified in having removed the question. If someone else wishes to restore it, that's their call, but there should be some sort of prominent warning. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:17, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Disruptive edit warring

Medeis, please stop playing the moderator and please stop complaining about disruption when the only source of disruption are your constant removals. Please self-revert or I'll take this to AN/I. If you are complaining about disruption but the only possible disruption you are experiencing is that your reverts have been reverted (as you are not a Math desk regular), you are complaining about nothing more than your status as the self-appointed "boss" being undermined. I did not type that response to Widener for nothing. Count Iblis (talk) 03:16, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and if you just look at the Humanities Ref Desk (I don't visit there often) what I see are many, many forum like discussions in which Medeis has no problem participating in. Count Iblis (talk) 03:25, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

As I said earlier, around and around it goes. How about you provide some specific diffs to illustrate your complaints. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 03:32, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I put the thread back. By the principle of charity, I'd assume they were asking about the Millennium Prize Problems given that it is on the math desk and specifically mentions the prize amount; perhaps the asker does not speak english? Nonetheless, the question isn't causing a big disruption, the discussion that followed has useful info, and the regulars at the math desk didn't find it so disruptive a question so as not to contribute.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 03:35, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I was preparing it to move it my talk page to reduce the drama, there was an edit conflict, I've self-reverted to restore to your re-instatement. Count Iblis (talk) 03:43, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Count Iblis' personal manifesto saying he ignores all policies is on his talk page. There's a discussion above he choses to ignore by creating this new thread. He accuses me of something on the humanities desk, but provides not a single link to a conversation I have ever unhatted. If editors can't obey the policies the community sets, but declare themselves above them, there is always ANI. And, no, this does "no harm" is not a policy. See WP:NOTFORUM. ?????? (talk) 03:59, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Do you know how many goofy jokes I see in threads, side discussions, forum like questions, etc. on here? All of those don't get deleted. Rules are meant to deal with problems, not with everything that violates them. If you disagree, feel free to be consistent and close up half the desks on a routine basis. Finally, I take the question as about the Millenium problems, and math prizes in general- and, even if not, intent is irrelevant if there's nothing to contradict that and it is not disrupting anything elsewise.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:16, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

There are several issues. First, the question as asked is simply a request for personal opinion, entirely out of scope of the ref desk as actually written. That would justify removal or hatting, per the quidelines. Next is the insistence on restoring the thread because respondents thought their answers were so brilliant, and not hurting anything. That's not how this place works, and you will see the majority of people here whose comments are hatted submit to the wider judgment. You will notice I started a thread here when the question was removed, and the consensus was the closure was appropriate. I suppose hatting might have been better than deletion--a good faith response by those who opposed deletion of their own comments would have been restoral of the removed remark, followed by hatting or archiving. Likewise, the proper response from someone who thought the OP was asking about a prize would have been to ask the OP if he was talking about that prize, and refrain from commenting until he clarified himself. As for jokes, this was not a valid question properly answered, but an invalid question with nothing but opinions or jokes. In the normal course of things one wouldn't remove a valid question because someone answered it with a joke--and that's not what happened here. And if someone hats another person's joke within a thread as off topic, the normal response is to accept the hatting,not insist that and act as if the rules don't apply. ?????? (talk) 17:43, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Medeis, at first I didn't even see that that thread was about this particular issue, because the title "trolling removed" didn't seem related to refer to it (usually such threads here are about problems on the humanities desk), also the content of the discussion isn't based on any actual complaints from the people participating on the math desk, so a quick glance at that discussion doesn't give you away much clues that the discussion is in fact about that thread on the math desk. The link you gave was not made explicit (you have to move your mouse over "this" to see that "this" links to the thread in question), you would have to see BB's comment below where he refers to the OP's title, miss that one (easily done in a big thread, particularly if you are not dealing with the OP's original question rather with the Fields Medal), you wouldn't have a clue that this is in fact about that very thread on the Math desk.

This points to how irreleveant that entire discussion actually is, a consensus reach there isn't worth much more than the consensus reached in the Catholic Church that Galileo was wrong about heliocentrism. Count Iblis (talk) 13:46, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Since you claim not to believe in Wikipedia rules, should we assume this section you started is merely satirical, not to be regarded seriously? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 13:54, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. Ask why User:Likebox isn't at present editing Wikipedia, making great contributions to theoretical physics articles. Count Iblis (talk) 14:11, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

"Count Iblis rejects most of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. He just edits in any way he sees fit to improve Wikipedia. Whether such edits violate Wikipedia's policies is neither here nor there." I'm sure Medeis equally edits in a way that's intended to improve Wikipedia. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 14:13, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

WP:IAR is widely misunderstood. It doesn't mean that you can just pretend that all of the rules, guidelines and policies don't exist. It doesn't mean that you can break rules just because you don't happen to like them. It means that in some very special situations, if a rule is basically a good rule - but fails to apply properly to some specific situation, then you may choose to ignore it. However, when others come to defend the rule, you'd better be prepared to discuss why you feel that the rule is best ignored on this one particular occasion. So, for example:

1. We have a rule about British and American dialects of English - that an article that started life written in British English should probably stay that way. However, if in such an article, you need to quote what an American said on the subject of colour - you should probably ignore this rule and spell it "color". The rule isn't bad or iniquitous - it just fails to consider every possible situation that might arise - so, just this once, we'll ignore it - and be prepared to defend our position if challenged.
2. The Ref Desk has a "No Medical Advice" rule - but if you repeatedly ignore it without having a really good explanation for why it doesn't apply in each and every case where you ignored it - then you're going to get in deep trouble.

SteveBaker (talk) 17:12, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I wonder what his defense would be for "Count Iblis does not recognize the validity of ArbCom rulings. He calls on all restricted editors to violate their restrictions..." Unless he's just being satirical and doesn't actually believe in that statement. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:31, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

It's fairly evident that Iblis is the actual disrupter here, and he might end up being the one schlepped to ANI, instead of him doing the schlepping to someone else. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 18:04, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia and this Ref Desk are not some online video game where the rules are the rules of the game. The whole point of the Ref Desk is to answer questions that people ask and you can then have follow up questions, discussions etc. Then to prvent problems or abuse (a student can post during an exam using his smart phone, you can have potentially dangerous medial advice etc. etc.), we must have rules to prevent such problems. But enforcing the rules in a way that undermines the whole point of the Ref Desk is precisely what IAR says we should not do.

If it feels like disruption that a rule isn't enforced while there was no reason to enforce the rule in the first place, then you have this video-game mindset where you get upset when a point you scored isn't awarded. This has nothing to do with what the Ref Desk is about. Count Iblis (talk) 18:58, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Not surprisingly, you're copping the same holier-than-thou attitude that your own user page espouses. Do yourself a favor, and box up this section before you get taken to the cleaners. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 19:07, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

You still haven't read this and considered why he isn't contributing to Wikipedia anymore. I was involved in the same case, unlike him I decided to stay, but of course, that does mean that you do that with a similar idea about ArbCom and the way Admins uphold the rules here. It's not any more "holier-than-thou" than a North Korean dissident who criticizes the regime is always correct about anything. He isn't, but that doesn't invalidate his criticism of the regime. Count Iblis (talk) 19:25, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I myself am under an ArbCom restriction, but unlike you, I consider it my duty as a wikipedia editor to obey that restriction. And comparing wikipedia to North Korea is a twist on Godwin's Law, or whatever it's called. How about you contribute something to wikipedia right now: Box up this useless session you created, and count your blessings that you weren't smacked down for it. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 19:33, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I did obey my restriction when it was in force and as you can see here, I'm busy editing Wikipedia but because I hardly speak that language, progress is a bit slow. Count Iblis (talk) 19:50, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Let me remind you all why we are here: we aren't (supposed to be) bureaucrats. We're building an encyclopedia. If some editors see this thread as a means to that end, then why is it essential that it be removed? Steven Baker brings up things like medical advice: how is that even remotely relevant? Baseball Bugs archives this discussion: why? What the hell is going on here, people? Have you lost your minds? S?awomir Bia?y (talk) 20:27, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Countlis, who openly admits to not believing in Wikipedia rules (except when it suits him), created this section in order to level an attack against another user without providing any information as to just what he thinks the problem is. If you actually think that kind of behavior helps to "build an encyclopedia", I don't know what to tell you. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:41, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

In short, this section is garbage and should be treated as such. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:49, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Do you really have nothing better to do than to flig this utterly irrelevant trifle? WP:NOTHERE much? S?awomir Bia?y (talk) 22:22, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

You're right that this section is an utterly irrelevant trifle. So go ahead and box it up. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:37, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Slawomir, you restored the nonsense at the math desk saying it wasn't harming anything. Now you want to say that this discussion, about a relevant issue, posted in the relevant venue, is harming wikipedia? ?????? (talk) 22:53, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

No, I restored it because the removal with no edit summary appeared to be vandalism. I haven't even commented on the content itself, since this entire discussion is an obvious pissing contest. S?awomir Bia?y (talk) 23:16, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Which you just had to get in on, of course. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 23:18, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, I'm here because the subject concerns me rather directly. But what I don't see is how all of the innuendo about Iblis is even remotely constructive. Editors here should agree to disagree and move on. There is nothing to see here! S?awomir Bia?y (talk) 23:51, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't know what "innuendo" you're talking about. Is this about that "what would you do with a million dollars?" nonsense - or is it something else? How's about providing a diff, while you're at it. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 23:57, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm referring here to your unacceptable ad hominems against Iblis in this very thread! I don't know what ax you have to grind with Iblis (and now me, apparently), but please find a more appropriate forum for it. S?awomir Bia?y (talk) 11:49, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

You mean, like, where I quote his own words? How horrible of me. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 13:26, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Any more red herrings out of this one, and we should open ourselves a cannery. Sheesh! S?awomir Bia?y (talk) 23:21, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Quoting to make your own propaganda about me, you are not reading my user page to try to understand the issues that I raise there as that doesn't seem to be somethjing you are interested in. I already asked you twice to read what User:Likebox wrote on his userpage as I was embroiled in the same issue, this led my to take that stance. Count Iblis (talk) 15:05, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Don't try to blame some other editor for what you freely wrote on your own page. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 18:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not blaming anyone, just saying that I was in the same boat as him. Given what happened (which is what you can read on that userpage) and what was later communicated to me privately by former Arbs), I don't take the rules and the way they are enforced here seriously. Count Iblis (talk) 19:55, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

The user you're talking about has not commented here at all, as far as I know. So what has that user's situation got to do with anything here? If you don't stand by the words on you user page, you should delete them. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 23:48, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

As a late viewer here, I have to say that I have no real idea of what the original problem was because there are no links to it. I sort of gather it was in the Maths desk and had something to do with the Millennium Prize, but apart from that, I'm totally in the dark and unable to contribute anything of value here. Sad really. Your loss. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:25, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

For sure. Yes, the question was that one that keeps popping up, somebody asking us what we would do with a million dollars - a question in total violation of the rule about how we don't answer questions asking for opinions. It's a question that cannot be answered with anything that meets Wikipedia guidelines. Hence, it needs to be zapped. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 23:43, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually it seems to me that this has been a problem for both threads and because of the post going back and forth there was always a good chance you'd miss it. I had to check CI's contribs yesterday to find what was being discussed [6]. And I'm still not really sure why we need 2 long threads on this talk page which basically concern the same thing. It seems to me this discussion could have continued under the existing thread or as a subthread of the existing thread which is only one thread above. Nil Einne (talk) 23:42, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, they could be combined. As I said earlier, it's the standard ref desk endless loop. Someone posts an inappropriate question, someone else zaps it, and then someone argues about it here. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 23:45, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

@ Jack, above, the question on the Math Desk had nothing to do with the millenium prize, the OP never said any such thing. The OP asked what "you" would do with a million dollars. The original deletion was noted in the thread above "trolling removed". Count Iblis was asked to join that existing discussion and take note of its existing consensus five hours before he started this new thread. Rather than retain the integrity of that thread with a consensus in favor of the deletion, which he denied existed, Iblis started this new thread with the title "disruptive edit warring by medeis".

There's a whole lot of bad faith going on here, ignoring discussions that have been brought to one's attention, denying plain facts about the rules and the actual existing consensus, attributing words to the OP he never said. All for what? ?????? (talk) 00:01, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I skimmed the "trolling removed" thread, and I read this one, but I had no sense they were related, so thanks for the clarification. Effective communication on this talk page seems to be taking a back seat to polemics and ego-posturing. Plus ça change etc. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:18, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes actually that's another problem. I came across this thread early on, misread it and thought it was referring to something in humanities but checking out CI's contrib history I got confused since there was nothing from CI there recently, in fact the most recent stuff related to the earlier maths thread. Then I reread and realised I had confused myself and CI was referring to something in the math desk so it must have been that, and in context it became clearer what CI was complaining about. However the message is fairly confusing, it's the sort of thing which would be fine on ??????'s talk page or perhaps even in reply to ?????? here but it's very confusing (not to mention silly) to start a new subthread let alone a new thread when you're really just addressing one person.Nil Einne (talk) 12:34, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I thought it was better to start this thread, because the disruption has little to do with the other thread; whether or not one can argue in the abstract that in principle the question asked by the OP should be deleted is irrelevant to the disruption caused by constantly deleting an ongoing conversation. Medeis had already escalated things by posting on my talk page and threatening to go to AN/I, posting on her talk page would not do any good. AN/I is not a good venue to discuss this.

A factor here is also that unlike in case of Wiki articles, we don't have a talk page coupled to each subject. What happened here would be similar to having just a few talk pages for all the Wiki articles we have that most editors of the articles then don't pay attention to. You could then get the crazy situation that the editors editing the Manning article would edit constructively together, reaching some good agreement on the naming issue. But on some obscure talk page that no one of these editors pays much attention to, Baseball Bugs and Medeis and a few others who are not engaged in editing that article would reach some "consensus" among themselves on the naming issues and Medeis would then implement that "consensus", which would of course be almost guaranteed to be perceived to be disruptive by the editors.

I think a long time ago, Jimbo did something like that. Based on complaints about Commons that he agreed with to some degree, he went over to Commons and started to delete files there. But that led to an angry backlash, Jimbo's actions were all undone. Count Iblis (talk) 14:53, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

The fact is you're complaining about the same thread and deletion which was already been discussed. If you don't want to talk in the abstract but want to talk about the disruption caused by deleting the thread, it makes even less sense to open a new thread when there is already a thread discussing the very deletion you are complaining about. In addition as has already been stated, if you want to involve the wider community in the discussion, it would help if people actually know what you are talking about, so a link to the thread being discussed, and an actual explaination, not simply telling ?????? to do something. If you're just going to tell ?????? to do stuff and leave the rest of the community scratching their heads over what the heck you are talking about, then yes, that's best left on ??????'s talk page as it doesn't concern the community (nor can they reasonably be expected to offer much help). I would note as I've also said before it doesn't really matter if you're a regular at the maths desk, as there's still a good chance a regular would have missed the thread that was being pingponged between deletion and undeletion. As it stands, I don't really agree with ??????'s actions, but I haven't bothered to voice it yet and I'm not likely to offer any further explaination because I've already wasted enough of my time being confused and working out what the heck was being discussed and pointing out the problems in the way the whole thing was approached, plus the way this whole thing was handled by you, particularly you insisting there was a good reason to open another thread just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. In fact, I now realised there are three threads on this talk page basically discussing the same thing, two of them (which are also the two I was already aware of and the later two) started by you which further reenforces my view. I had thought the earlier discussion was on a related issue but was about a different thread. Nil Einne (talk) 15:52, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I should have looked better at this talk page, but I didn't notice that the thread started by Medeis was in fact about the discussion on the math desk. That's why I started the second thread. The reason that I didn't see it is quite obvious, because "trolling removed" doesn't seem to be even remotely related to the discussion on the math desk, and if you miss BB's reply to Medeis where he cites the OP's question about the million dollars, you have no clue whatsoever that this is in fact about that same discussion (there was already a huge discssiopn at that point, so BB's first comment was burried in there).

Anyway, I do think that discussions here are not productive. It's best to dismiss any claim of "consensus" reached here as totally irrelevant and not even bother taking part in any discussions here. Count Iblis (talk) 19:55, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

No, there is consensus above to close the math desk nonsense. What exactly it benefits you to dismiss that truth I still can't understand. Can you explain why it is so necessary to you that the rules be undermined? Is making the ref desks a joke somehow in your interest? ?????? (talk) 03:50, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't look like consensus so much as confusion, 95% of the above is bickering and confusion over this being split between two threads. I don't see an issue with it being hatted, personally, since it is still easily accessed- although, I don't believe there was any strong reason to hat/remove it to begin with.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:39, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Medeis didn't hat it, she repeatedly deleted it in the midst of the regulars talking to each other, thereby disruptively interrupting that ongoing conversation. Whatever the problems with the OP's question, you can't just delete that thread, especially not if you already got the feedback from more than one participant in that discussion that they object to the deletion (which also implies that there was no consensus for deletion). There would be quite a few other ways to end the discussion at that venue in a less disruptive way like hatting, moving the discussion to user pages etc. etc. (I was in the process of moving this discussion to my talk page, but someone restored when I had copied it there; had it not been restored, I would have posted a notice in the talk page of the few people who were participating in that thread allowing the discussion to proceed)

Medeis seems to be hell bent on seeing this as a sort of video game where you score points for an action like hatting or deleting and then be able to defend whatever action you've taken in order to keep your points. Once an action is taken and it later transpires that there are some problems with this, she will tend to dismiss those problems and argue that the process leading to that decision was handled correctly. But this is exactly what WP:BURO says we should not do. Count Iblis (talk) 15:11, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Are you still going on about that "What would you do with a million dollars?" or is it something else? Because if it's the million dollars, that is an unacceptable question. It's directly asking for a personal, unciteable opinion, and that's against the guidelines. (Unless you're still standing by your statement that you don't believe in rules here.) <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 16:01, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm tallking about a discussion on the Fields Medal and a math desk regular asking me about my theoretical physics background being disruptively deleted. That the OP asked about what we would do with $ 1 million is neither here nor there. Correcting a problem by causing other more severe problems is stupid. Count Iblis (talk) 16:13, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

What does the OP's question have to do with this "Fields Medal" you keep bringing up? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 16:16, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

It can be argued to be related to it, but one can also argue that the question is inappropriate. Either way, Medeis was wrong to delete the whole thread because by the time she did that, the discssion on the Fields Medal had already started. At most the OP's question could have been deleted or hatted, or some toehr non-disruptive action could have been taken. Having gotten the feedback after her first deletion from one math desk regular (not me) that her action was diruptive, she continued, then she got independent feedback from another regular (me) that her action was disruptive, but she still continued and then she started to threaten me with referral to AN/I. She wanted to push through her original action to deal with the OP's question come what may, regardless of all the collateral damage. Count Iblis (talk) 16:25, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

There is no indication that any open-ended question about a million dollars has anything to do with a medal. If you're so determined to keep your pearls of wisdom visible, then your best bet is to invent a question about that medal and separate comments about it from the original question, and then delete the original question as it is inappropriate for the ref desk. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 16:29, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't have to do that (also I was asked questions that I answered), it was up to Medeis who made a big deal about a problem to go about solving that problem in an appropriate way. She was behaving like a waiter who is going to clean up your table while you are still eating, taking away your dish while you haven't even finished yet because of some problem with your original order. BB, "Waiter bring back my steak, I haven't finished yet!". Waiter, "Sorry, consensus reached in the kitchen is that your original order had some errors, it was inappropriate for us to have served you the dish you got. You have to order again". BB, "but there was no problem with my meal!", Waiter, "Sorry, we have to stick to our rules here.". Count Iblis (talk) 17:02, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Of course you don't have to do anything in particular - as your user page asserts, rules don't apply to you. By implication, rules only apply to others. Although I could give you the same lecture that others tend to give to me: "Either answer the OP's question, or don't comment." And since the OP's question is unanswerable according to the guidelines here, that should have been the end of it. If you want to start a discussion on some medal or another, that's a separate topic under a separate heading. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 18:31, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

In general, I would agree that the over-zealous police-man act from Medeis (And to a lesser extent Baseball Bugs) causes roughly as much disruption as it fixes, if not more, and I wish they would both take a more pragmatic, thoughtful approach.

However, this is about the million dollar question? Really? APL (talk) 22:07, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Apparently so. But this is why I almost never hat or delete things. They should be proposed here and discussed, and at least some of this usual endless-loop brouhaha could be avoided. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:31, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

That I completely agree with. APL (talk) 22:41, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why we can't just apply the standard procedure of "Bold-Revert-Discuss". Further commented on, at the bottom of the page in Jack's addendum. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 23:06, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

src: pbs.twimg.com

Question doesn't make sense

Someone hatted a question on RDS because the question didn't make sense. That's just silly. It's more appropriate to ask the OP what they are talking about. I removed the hat. 163.202.48.126 (talk) 07:27, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

This[7] is from the same guy who keeps asking, over and over, how the Big Bang could have occurred from "nothing". If you see any value in that question about TV screens or whatever, feel free to try to answer it. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 13:25, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

One can try to translate into Arabic and then back to English, tweaking the options for the translation of the words. Count Iblis (talk) 14:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Or one can box it up as being nonsense. If you've bothered to check, you've seen that the same subnet keeps asking basically the same question over and over... and it's already been answered. If you think keeping that nonsense visible is so important, maybe you could field all the questions coming from that subnet henceforth, and then maybe the light might start to come on. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 18:40, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I oppose blanking, deleting or hatting questions like this. This is a slippery slope.

Once we start to box/hide/delete questions that don't make sense, we're going to have people who simply do not understand a perfectly valid question getting rid of it. Many times, someone has come here and asked a seemingly nonsensical question only for a later respondent to point out that the words do actually mean something - maybe in a small field of knowledge or perhaps the words are a quotation that's meaningful or a misspelling that one of us will recognize. We're really not short of disk space or space on the page - so I think we should avoid deleting or otherwise hiding questions which seem at first glance to be nonsense.

But that's not the only problem in this particular case. We've always had periodic issues with some person who has a particular bee in their bonnet going on and on about the same topic. The one that irked me the most and got most coverage here was "Planet colors guy"...but there have been (and continue to be) many others. We have to be very careful about these kinds of people. They are often well-meaning and genuinely curious - if a bit odd. We're required to WP:AGF and assume that they are genuinely trying to understand something.

Another kinda-related thing is when one person asks many questions per day - even though they are all perfectly valid, this can get annoying too.

I would urge caution and politeness. If you can't understand a question and nobody else does within a day or so - then by all means post a simple one-line reply asking for clarification - and leave it at that. These people get bored and go away when nobody answers them. It's rather unfortunate that we can't help them - especially when the question is garbage because it was automatically translated into English. I really wish the other Wikipedia language sections would start up their own Reference Desks so this kind of thing would not be necessary...but we have no way to make that actually happen.

SteveBaker (talk) 20:29, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• I agree one should ask for an unclear question to be explained. But at some point WP:COMPETENCE. ?????? (talk) 21:33, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

WP:COMPETENCE applies to editors - not to people asking questions on the Ref Desks. SteveBaker (talk) 02:30, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Sez who? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 03:24, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

The language of WP:COMPETENCE, mainly.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 03:50, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Anyone who edits wikipedia is an editor. Are you trying to set up sockpuppet or troll or single purpose account or some other group as a formally different class of editor, Phoenixia? ?????? (talk) 03:57, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

That rule seems to apply to editing the actual content of Wikipedia, I doubt it was intended to apply to people asking questions on the reference desk. You seem to favour a very narrow interpretation of rules and terms, especially when it supports you, I don't- there's nothing that gives your reading more weight, or if there is is, I haven't seen it.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:14, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

WP:COMPETENCE is listed as an essay and there does not appear to be mutual agreement to if it applies to questioners here, I fail to see how it is relevant at all.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:24, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

COMPETENCE is regularly applied to problems only caused on talk pages etc. By no means does it apply to articles only. I'm pretty sure it's likely been applied to problems only caused on more normal wikipedia pages like noticeboards and policy pages or guidelines but I can't recall any example off hand. COMPETENCE may be an essay, but the principle has lead to blocks and even I think bans, probably because the principles are supported by wider guidelines and policies. That said, I'm not suggesting we start to revert contribs from the specific editor. Nil Einne (talk) 09:14, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

The guiding principle here is WP:AGF. Until someone has actually been proven to be a sock or some other miscreant, we have to assume that they are genuinely asking a real question and that they care about the answer and that our duty is to help them however we can. There cannot be some standard of competence by which they are judged - mostly because we only hear a few sentences from them (insufficient to judge a person by) - and we recognize that people who don't have the common sense to type their question into Google before asking us may need more help with life than the typical big-brained computer-literate internet-savvy Wikipedia editor. Many of our questioners are not native English speakers - others are very naive about the subject that they're asking about - yet more are small children or people with very low IQ's.

We have to be VERY careful how we deal with the general public. We are a rare part of the public face of Wikipedia where people who are not in the business of writing an encyclopedia - but instead merely using it - come into one-on-one contact with actual for-real Wikipedians like us. For that reason, our standards of behavior here are very important. This is a serious responsibility. When dealing with the general public - we simply MUST be unfailingly polite. Never, ever, demeaning - forgiving of breaches of Wikipedia rules - not poking holes at their grammar, spelling, vocabulary or weird choice of question - not making fun of seemingly weird life-styles or incomprehensible problems.

That said, there are undoubtedly very annoying people out there - we must deal with them without breaching the unspoken code of politeness, etc. So, when a question is too unclear to provide an answer, let us ask for a clarification and provide no further input until/unless we get one. If it's a question about what dog poop tastes like - let individual Ref Desk staff choose to simply not answer - or to actually find a good answer - your choice. When behavior edges into the trollish - we don't feed the troll because it's widely known that this is the only thing that deters them. Overall, we need to be careful and handle the public with kid gloves. We can employ humor in our replies - but never at the expense of the questioner - and only rarely at the expense of other respondants. We need to be approachable, yet professional. We need to treat our OP's as friends and customers.

For all of those reasons, the more rigorous standards that Wikipedia editors are held to simply do not apply to our OP's. If Wikipedia rules don't say that, then this is one of those rare (but important) times to invoke WP:IAR - and to write our own RefDesk-specific community standards to explain why that is.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:51, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

When a user asks the same question over and over, despite it having been answered, that's trolling and is subject to deletion. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 16:31, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Kudos for seeing the bigger picture here, Steve. I pretty much agree with everything you said. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:45, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Have you read the so-called question in this particular case? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:06, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Me? Why, yes. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:08, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Kudos. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 23:01, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

The problem is your idea of the separation of the general public and encyclopaedia editors doesn't make much sense. Plenty of people who leave comments on talk page aren't really interested in building an encyclopaedia. They just want to note problems and are just as much or just as little 'wikipedians' as question askers. In fact, this comes to an extreme in BLP cases where a person may have little interest in actually building an encyclopaedia but understandably want problems relating to them corrected. While this may be part of building an encyclopaedia, they're just as much as a 'general public' as question askers, and have even more expectations to be treated fairly particularly when they have a legitimate point about the problems with their article. But this doesn't mean we don't hold them to any standards. Of course we do, we try to help them and treat them as fairly as possible. But ultimately if they can't behave reasonably with us for whatever reason, they will may find themselves blocked, whether. And it's entirely reasonably for us to expect the 'general public' to behave within certain standards on wikipedia no matter where they are. And if they fail to do so after repeated attempts to help them, it's entirely resonable for them to be blocked for it. Again as I said in my initial reply I'm not suggesting any specific action with this question asker, in fact I fully support leaving the question in place and asking for clarification. I'm simply pointing out your idea that we are some super special area of wikipedia where no standards apply or question askers (or answerers for that matter as not everyone answering a question has any real involvement in the rest of wikipedia nor any desire to have any) can get away with anything if they're not malicious because they're the 'general public' is flawed and has been rejected before. In fact continuing to express this belief is the sort of thing that contributes to stuff like that silly RFC a few months back. Note that this doesn't mean we don't WP:AGF. It's just that it's well accepted that just because someone is acting in good faith doesn't mean they can't be blocked if they seem unable to change and are causing genuine problems. The belief that someone acting in good faith can't be blocked for the problems they cause is a common misconception. We are less likely to block them and will generally be given more chance to improve but ultimately if you're causing problems on wikipedia, whatever area of wikipedia, then yes you can be blocked for it, at it's core that is what CIR is about. To give a good example, someone who keeps deleting an entire RD page when asking questions no matter how much people have tried to help them and provide advice is ultimately likely to be blocked for WP:COMPETENCE reasons if possible, even if we have no reason not to believe it isn't simple user error. And definitely even in the first case it isn't unreasonable for someone to simply revert even if they see that the person asked a question and could have copied it (which is not to say the question shouldn't be added back, but we don't expect people have to do so when correcting a good faith but serious problem). (Incidentally, since the encyclopaedia itself is much more public facing than the RD and when we defame someone in an article as sadly as happened before this is a much more serious thing then an OP being treated poorly which of course also has happened before.) Nil Einne (talk) 07:26, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Hatting/ Unhatting

I unhatted this question [8], which Medeis had hatted, saying "not a forum". We can certainly provide references that address the question, without engaging in any opinions etc. I have supplied a reference, and I am certain better references can be added if anyone cares to. I believe there is nothing wrong with this question, and post here as a courtesy to ??????. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:27, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

That's fine. The question lies in the header, and you have answered it. The essay soliciting personal opinions is unnecessary, and can stay hatted. ?????? (talk) 21:32, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

You could have waited, I don't know, maybe four whole minutes before just re-instating the hat. That might actually allow you to see how the community here sees the question, and whether it should be hatted. That would be a better way to build consensus. Whatever. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:38, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Medeis, pardon me for asking, but how does "Predict your co-workers' behaviour, and don't exceed it. Adjust your behaviour on the following day according to your observations on the first. Repeat" accord with "We don't give personal tips about our own knowledge of how to get get by and enjoy life"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:11, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to hat that thread, Jack, then get back to me. ?????? (talk) 03:42, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not into hatting except in clearly egregious cases of Ref Desk rule/guideline violation, which yours is not. But it seems to break your own rule, and that troubles me more. If one is going to assume the role of blackboard monitor, one needs to be squeaky clean in one's own behaviour, whether in regard to the generally agreed standards or to one's own publicly declared higher standards. Otherwise one would be invoking Muphry's law, and I rather doubt your surname is Muphry. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 13:30, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes - we can all find endless numbers of cases where Medis has done things like that - you can find one for almost every day that Medis has been answering questions here. It's fine - this is how the reference desk has always operated - and it works. We do need references for controversial claims and matters that are not obvious. The standard Wikipedia WP:V guideline is what we're aiming to follow...although we relax it by allowing (actually, even preferring) references from within Wikipedia rather than requiring strict adherence to WP:RS - and by allowing some degree of WP:SYNTH where facts from disparate sources are pulled together to make an answer. SteveBaker (talk) 02:26, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

The problem with some of this over-enthusiastic hatting is that "someone" has not noticed that Reliable Sources are not required for obvious facts. To quote from WP:V "Attribute all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable, published source". I don't have to find a source for "water is wet" or "the sky is blue". Similarly, when someone asks for some suggestions for what to do in a house without electricity at night, things like "listen to a wind-up radio" or "learn to play a musical instrument" do not need referencing because they are simply not likely to be challenged. It is obviously true that you can learn to play most musical instruments by flashlight...I don't need a reference to make that suggestion to our OP.

Those statements are also not matters of personal opinion. It isn't simply my opinion that you could do those things to amuse yourself - it's a fact.

Unnecessary hatting is evil - it in no way improves the reference desk.

SteveBaker (talk) 02:26, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Absolute bullshit. Of the last 30 hattings most will belong to other editors whom I shan't name since tehy've done nothing wrong. Try providing diffs for your accusations, rather than posting such lies. ?????? (talk) 03:48, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

There are certain editors here, a junior-high-school-like clique, who from time to time feel the need to find somebody to scapegoat, when their ownership of the ref desk is challenged. This is one of those times. And it's the usual double-standard. If someone in their clique did that hatting or deleting, you wouldn't hear a peep out of the others. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:11, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

No, using sarin gas on people is evil. Hatting is nothing. You can always look under the hat and see if there's a reasonable question there. (Of which "What would you do with a million dollars?" does NOT qualify.) <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 03:23, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

So, you're not actually going to answer any of the substantive points made in earlier posts? Instead merely attempt to deflect a serious and important discussion with failed attempts at humor. This is very typical of a Baseball Bugs reply but I had thought Medis could do better. So, again: Medis makes un-RS'ed replies all the time - yet randomly decides to hat responses that are not RS'ed - he claims (above) that hatting is both so crucially important that it should continue despite widespread disapproval - yet is effectively so trivial as to not matter if/when you get it wrong. WP:V makes it clear that for obvious facts, you don't need RS.

How about you guys get out of the clown suits and engage in some serious discussions of your behavior here? Both of you guys show up in far too many complaints here - just look back at the archives over the past few months. There is clearly little doubt amongst Ref Desk veterans that we'd be better off without either of you. You are both rude and unfeeling towards our questioners, dismissive of genuine requests for information and contribute more problems and internal dissent than actual answers to serious questions. You turn almost every reasonable request for information into a cause for jokes or the invocation of supposed rules and guidelines about questions that don't actually exist or shouldn't be applied here. Substantive questions about your behaviors are deflected with nonsense. I think I speak for almost all of us here who genuinely wish to provide a useful, high quality service to real people with real questions: You are useless to us. We don't want you here anymore. We'd like you both to quietly go away and do something else...please...before this gets any more ugly than it already is.

So go ahead - make more dumb jokes - deflect criticism with random BS about sarin gas and how hats don't kill...we can wait. SteveBaker (talk) 13:30, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

You call something so trivial as hatting "evil" and you've got the nerve to lecture us? Take off your own clown suit... and the several others you're probably wearing under it. Then go away from the ref desk for some appropriate time period until you've got your priorities realigned. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 15:28, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Per wiktionary: "Evil(computing, programming, slang) undesirable; harmful; bad practice." Now, how about you stop deflecting and discuss the issues. SteveBaker (talk) 19:30, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

BB's consensus building efforts in the Bradley/Chelsea Manning dispute :). Count Iblis (talk) 19:52, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I was on the right side of the rules in that case. Not that you care anything about rules. Although if you were to remove that offensive material from your user page, that would be a step in the right direction towards establishing your credibility. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:03, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Why don't you then participate in that case? I haven't seen any evidence or Workshop entries by you. I was far less involved in that case, but I still proposed a principle based on my ideas about IAR. Now that you've raised my comments on my userpage again, why not give your comments to my workshop entry? Count Iblis (talk) 21:07, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

(1) Because I was getting sick of that debate; and (2) I was told that mainstream media are now saying "Chelsea", which renders the entire issue moot. Although, if they took their lead from Wikipedia, then shame on Wikipedia. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:02, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

What rubbish! If the media took their lead from Wikipedia, then shame on the media for abrogating their jobs. If we follow what the mainstream media do, that is exactly what we're supposed to be doing. You'll object and say we used Chelsea first; all that means is that we are not tardy in following our own protocols and naming conventions, particularly about high-profile subjects. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:11, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

As I said, I'm sick to death of that topic. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:28, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Why try to hijack this back to point (1)? Your malaise was not so debilitating as to prevent you from making another point only 30 minutes ago. Have you had a relapse? I was responding to your point (2), obviously. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:43, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

My argument from the beginning (clear back to the late winter when the advocates were lobbying for "Breanna" Manning) was that the alleged name change was not properly sourced as Wikipedia rules require. Once it was properly sourced, there was no further reason to get into it. In fact, when someone asserted that mainstream sources were now saying "Chelsea", my first thought was, "Thank goddess, I can be done with this now." <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:55, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure you weren't the only one heaving sighs of relief. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:00, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I have a strong suspicion that almost no one really cares what wikipedia thinks about that or anything else. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:53, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

(1) Then why do you hang around here when there's so much other good that urgently needs doing in the world? (2) I disagree with your premise. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:55, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

My wife keeps telling me that Wikipedia is worthless. I keep looking for evidence that she's wrong. Some fact will turn up on TV or something, and I'll research it further - here, of course. Then I'll tell her what I found, and she'll say, "Wikipedia, right? [Insert razzberry here]" But I haven't given up hope yet. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 01:19, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Bugs, being on "the right side of the rules" is often a subjective call. Even in situations where the rules are hard and fast, reasonable people can legitimately, honestly disagree on how best to apply them, and which rules apply to which situations. Your own personal determination on that question is only one of many.

Furthermore, On Wikipedia it's explicitly permissible to violate the rules if there is consensus to do so. So therefore even your opinion that the rules should be followed at all in any given case is just one opinion of many.

Saying that you were "on the right side of the rules" does not carry the weight you think it does. It is not, as you seem to think, a fact that trumps all else and should shut down all debate. And that, fundamentally, is why you find this talk:refdesk experience so frustrating, and why others find you so frustrating.

APL (talk) 22:36, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I must admit that being right most of the time is a heavy burden. But I have big shoulders. :) <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:41, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

If this is likely to become another formal RFC/U, or a less formal procdedure with similar effects, I don't believe that we'd be justified in implementing sanctions against Medeis and/or Bugs (or any other regular - I'm sure we could all come up with very long lists ) merely for being annoying. The focus has to be on active _disruption_. I would therefore suggest two possible working rules:

1. Medeis is not to hat or delete anything. This may be draconian, but there are plenty more eyes on the desks that can spot anything for which deletion or hatting will be uncontroversial.
2. Nobody is to post joke replies until at least one substantive reply has been posted.

Of course, I expect to get it in the neck for this, but it's what we're here for. Tevildo (talk) 20:22, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

No, you can't play favorites. The only fair thing is to declare a moratorium on ALL hatting and/or deleting. Talk about it here first, and then let the regulars decide what to do, if anything. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:04, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

BS. It entirely reasonable and rather common for there to be sanctions against editors that the community has identified as having a particular bad habit but is otherwise a good editor.

(You recall a particular editor was banned from making spelling corrections of any kind.) APL (talk) 22:15, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Cuddlyable3, who used to rag editors mercilessly for spelling and usage mistakes, especially Jayron32. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:47, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I would be in favor of both the sanction against Medeis hatting things on the RefDesk, and a (stronger) prohibition against joke answers before a thread is resolved. APL (talk) 22:15, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

How would you "resolve" a thread that begins "What would you do with a million dollars?" <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:29, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Someone other than Medeis could hat it. If that hatting is contested and unhatted,It would not be worth wasting time over, so I would leave it unhatted. APL (talk) 22:36, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

(And to anticipate your next question. A Medical advice or BLP issue would be worth discussing, but after it was unhatted I would still not re-hat it until the discussion seemed to be approaching some sort of consensus. There are no police here.)APL (talk) 22:38, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm just curious what you think the right response is to a question asking editors for their personal opinions on something. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:44, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm happy to satisfy your curiosity!

If it seemed uncontroversially an opinion question and there weren't yet any serious replies, I'd probably hat it if I noticed it. But, And this is the important part, if someone contested it or reverted me, I'd just shrug my shoulders and move on with my life.

If something like that is contested, especially if it's not BLP or medical, it's far better to leave alone it for the people who do think it should be left alone. Even if I'm 100% sure that those people are wrong, nothing worthwhile can come from debate or revert-warring over it.

Basically, if in doubt, just leave it. It's not my job to enforce the rules on other people for the sake of enforcing the rules. If we leave a rule unenforced but no harm is done, then we haven't failed at anything, but if somebody provokes an argument or revert war that achieves nothing, then that is a failure. APL (talk) 00:28, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

@Steve, there's no substantive point to address. The claim that I am out of line hatting things according to the rules is pure nonsense. Anyone's s entitled, just as they are entitled to remove comments by wickwack and so forth. And, once again, there's another editor or editor here whose hatted far more things than I over this summer, whom no one is complaining about, and whom I am not going to mention, because they haven't done anything wrong. Even THIS HAT "What are you do if I give $ 1 Millon ?" is supported by a majority of editors who commented when I brought it up above under "trolling deleted". So get your diffs of who's hatted what this summer and post them, and, until then, bugger off with the unsupported accusations. ?????? (talk) 23:02, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Is anyone even still deleting wickwack's stuff? I mostly gave up because I seemed to be the only one doing it and I didn't want this to become a me versus them scenario and I've seen several responses since then and a look at the science desk history suggests no deletions relating to that in the past 6 days or so. Nil Einne (talk) 07:28, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Humor does help the ref desks. It makes it a better place to work and keeps editors interested in doing this job. So I wouldn't want to see them banned outright...we've discussed that before and there is wide consensus that they are a net gain - if kept in moderation. The idea of limiting joke responses is a reasonable one - and I would suggest:

1. No jokes allowed until we've provided at least one reasonable answer to the question.
2. No jokes at the OP's expense - ever. You mustn't ever demean the OP by mocking their spelling, grammar, etc.
3. Jokes must never look like real answers. They should always be in small font, preferably with a smiley emoticon or something - and it should always be clear (even to the humor impaired) that these are not providing true information that's relevant to the question at hand.
4. People who spend more time here making jokes than answering questions need to re-align their priorities. This is not a place for joking around. This is a place for providing quality research to answer questions. So if you're making more than one joke for (let's say) every five carefully thought out, useful, correct, on-topic answers - then you should find some other place to amuse yourself.
5. Humor may be embedded into a real answer providing it doesn't distort the facts being conveyed. (I'm personally fond of picking fairly silly examples to make a serious point. This keeps things light - but without littering the place with off-topic jokes.)

By my count over the past 30 days, BBB makes 2 jokes for every serious answer and 4 jokes for every actually useful, correct, on-topic, researched answer...and that's the root of the problem here. SteveBaker (talk) 14:54, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

By my count, you haven't said anything useful here yet. But keep trying. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:45, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Even if you're right - we're not talking about Talk: page edits - we're talking about answers on the main RD pages. I don't think you're in a strong position to accuse me of failing to provide good answers there...I'm not unhappy with my reputation for quality answers on WP:RD/S and WP:RD/M. SteveBaker (talk) 02:19, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

You DO give good answers, from what I've seen. Where you fail is when you start making personal attacks about clown suits and such. That sort of drivel lowers your stature significantly. You're a smart guy, and should do better than that. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:31, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Quasi 3-Revert Rule

How about a prohibition on any one editor hatting a thread or part thereof any more than X times a month? But no limit to discussions back here. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:49, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

What if it's well off the map, like "What's causing this horrible pain in my lower right abdomen?" or someone like LC asking questions about screwing dogs or about "Uranus"? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:53, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

(e/c, ironically) We could laterally set X equal to 6, and call it the "De Bono Rule", in honour of Edward de Bono and his Six Thinking Hats. After all, thinking is something we should all be doing here, rather than being the first to react so quickly that one's knees disintegrate from all the ferocious jerking to which they're subjected. (If you think I'm talking about you, you're probably right.) Also, I like the idea of "de bono" as the wellspring of good things. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:57, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

That's good. I got nothin'. :) <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:59, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

In reference to my mini-discussion with APL farther up the page, maybe we're overlooking the obvious: Bold-Revert-Discuss. Someone hats or deletes something, it either stands or gets reverted. Then the reversion stands until or if it gets discussed here. That seems simple enough. The main thing is to not argue the issue too much in front of the OP. If the OP comes here to add to the discussion, that's another matter. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 23:04, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

The ref-desks seem to have adopted a similar policy of Bold-Revert-NameCall

It's not really a 'discussion' anymore if people are being called "troll sympathizers" or whatnot. APL (talk) 00:38, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

• Would you provide the diff here of the reason for suggesting this rule forbidding application of the rules, Jack? Are you suggesting you think hatting "What are you do if I give $ 1 Millon?" was so egregious we need a draconian new rules structure? ?????? (talk) 23:07, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

There is no diff I could provide. I'm not suggesting we forbid application of the rules, not remotely. Simply a refinement.

Just as one editor may do 4 million reverts in a single day as long as they're all to different edits and it isn't otherwise disruptive or vandalistic, but may not do more than 3 reverts to the one edit, I'm suggesting the above as something worth thinking about. We've had numerous palavers here about the frequency and appropriateness of hatting and deletion, and for better or worse one editor's name gets mentioned more than any other. I'm not sure what that means about that editor, if anything. But it does seem to be sub-optimal, if the attitudes of the rest of the community are anything to go by. And in a collaborative environment like this, the attitudes of the rest of the community are always important.

So, if one editor feels disposed to hat or delete stuff noticeably more often than most, such a rule might help to either cause them to rethink, or maybe bring it here for discussion first.

Naturally, each individual hatting or deletion must still be in accordance with our protocols. Maybe it's time we codified just exactly what our hatting and deletion protocols are, so that we're all on the same page. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:25, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

As a mathematics refdesk regular, I can say that threads that stray outside the bounds of the guidelines there are not normally a problem. (I would say that, almost unequivocally, unless some busybody with nothing better to do makes it a problem--in which case it should be clear to all concerned who the disruptive party is.) Obvious trolling is obvious to basically everyone, so hatting/deletion isn't a problem. When there is a concrete, policy-based reason (e.g., no medical advice), then it should be similarly acceptable to remove a thread. But when it is potentially controversial among refdesk regulars whether a thread is within the guidelines or not, it's better neither to to delete nor hat. If it the would-be hatter feels that some crypto-trolling is going on, then an amusing DFTT image might even clueify some of the contributors. Also, please remember that this talk page is not very widely watched. If you feel that you must delete or hat a thread that might be controversial, then it should be standard operating procedure to template everyone involved in the discussion, informing them of the discussion that should take place here.

User:Baseball Bugs has whined many times even in my brief acquaintance with this talk page that it is too much involved with such discussions. Well boo-hoo: If that's true, then the obvious solution is that each reference desk should have its own discussion page. (Imagine that!) If this were the case, then most likely participants would already be watchlisting the page, and the load would be lighter for stalwart and exhausted defenders of the wiki like Baseball Bugs. S?awomir Bia?y (talk) 00:25, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

That's been discussed here before. The consensus was hattings can be signed on the spot and deletions should be mentioned on the talk page, which is exactly what happened in this case. It was decided it was not necessary (it was not decided it was necessary) to notify people individually by template. OP's are supposed to be watching for answers in any case. ?????? (talk) 02:05, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, no one (yourself included) has meaningfully commented at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Mathematics since its creation in 2005. At present, the only individuals authorized to do so are administrators. Although if this is "the consensus", then I suppose only administrators should delete discussions without prior discussion. That seems reasonable to me. S?awomir Bia?y (talk) 00:36, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

That talk page (and presumably the others) have been redirects to this page from the get-go. The reason that one was protected (along with the others, maybe) in 2008 was due to some idiot messing with it. That doesn't necessarily preclude the idea of having separate talk pages. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 00:51, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad you agree. Then you should be leading the charge to have separate discussion pages. You evidently feel yourself overwhelmed with too many complaints here, as you yourself have expressed on a number of occasions here (you yourself used the phrase "endless loop" thrice in as many days). Clearly there should be a single discussion page about overall policy issues and separate pages for various and sundry individual edits to refdesk pages. I don't see why the reference desk talk page should have some kind of special status vis-a-vis the rest of the encyclopedia. Several examples: even individual deletion discussions have their own talk pages (not terribly often, but every so-often, used); or when someone makes potentially controversial edits to a mathematics article like Hilbert space, they usually discuss the edit at Talk:Hilbert space, and don't immediately run screaming to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics or to ArbCom/AN/User talk:Jimbo Wales/etc, unless there's some serious shit going on. The nature of Wikipedia is to have rather diffuse discussions among local editors. No wonder you seem to feel overwhelmed if every minor complaint about each and every reference desk comes to the same discussion page. S?awomir Bia?y (talk) 01:30, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not overwhelmed by anything, and I'm not married to either way of doing the talk page(s). If you definitely think there should be individual talk pages, then go ahead and formally propose it. However, it might behoove you to first find out why they were set up as redirects in the first place. I don't know why, that was before my time here. It could be there was no particular reason. The ref desk started as a spinoff from the help desk, and then gradually evolved into multiple desks, and maybe they didn't think it necessary to have multiple talk pages. And if so, maybe there now is a need for it. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:24, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I wonder how often the math desk gets questions like, "I think I've ruptured my hypotenuse - what should I do?" <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 00:35, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Don't worry. You can replace it with the root of the sum of the squares of the other two sides. APL (talk) 00:41, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

So there's no rule against mathical advice? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 01:04, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs: Your every response to me on this discussion page has been pure snark, as have most of your responses to others. There is no attempt at any reasonable discussion. As far as I can tell, this is trolling. I don't know whether you have other (productive) Wikipedia editing interests other than trolling here, but if you do not, then I suggest that you remove yourself from this project. You do not seem to be here for the improvement of Wikipedia. S?awomir Bia?y (talk) 00:56, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

You're 180 degrees wrong. But whatever. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:27, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I like your initial proposal, and I also like Bugs' suggestion at 23:04 above. I will follow both as general guidelines, and hope that other regulars will too. SemanticMantis (talk) 01:58, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

My own proposal: violations that require immediate attention (BLP, Medical, Legal) are dealt with on sight, then discussed here. Violations of rules that are not egregious (requests for opinion, forum, etc.) can be discussed here first, and unless a consensus to not hat is reached within a specified time frame, the person raising the issue deals with the matter. Questions of the second type are not damaging enough that they can't be dealt with after a delay, and if we can't reach some agreement on the matter (perhaps even just a vote of who's about) in a timely fashion, there's no reason to imagine there would be legitimate agreement after the fact either.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 09:02, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Good luck on the BLP thing. Some of the most inflamed arguments on Wikipedia have been about BLP issues - often seemingly trivial stuff like when and where someone was born. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 09:06, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Phoenixia. I like the idea of treating the two classes of questions differently. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 09:16, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

You are apparently unaware that there is often severe disagreement about what constitutes medical advice, for example. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 12:07, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

It's really good to hear you acknowledging that, Bugs. Normally what we get is one editor or group of editors implacably insisting a certain question/answer is MA and another group vehemently denying it's any such thing, with no common ground where both sides recognise there is more than one valid perspective. While there's life, there's hope. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 12:20, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

BB - what (I think) Phoenixia is saying is that if you think a question is MA then treat it as such. If you think a question is a request for opinion / forum / nonsense / etc then first come here before hatting. If there is no consensus to hat such questions then they should remain on the desks. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 13:05, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that is what I'd like to see; that way severe issues get handled without delay (so we can over-debate after the fact), whereas small matters get debated to death before something is done. However, while I would like to say "no hat without consensus for minor infractions", I would expect that "you can hat unless consensus is against it, for minor issues" would get more takers (playing border cases cautiously can't hurt, even if you throw out some things that could've stayed.) BB: there is nothing in what I'm proposing that assumes we would all be in agreement, indeed, that's the whole point, really. The idea is to get your "endless loop" out of the way before 50 reverts over one line questions (poorly worded at that!) cause a much more massive disruption than the original issue- honestly, both sides in the "what you with millions?" issue have caused more disruption than that small question ever could (myself included for doing a revert).Phoenixia1177 (talk) 14:22, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

The brouhaha over "What would you do with a million dollars?" comes down to the question of whether we really have rules or not. That question was nonsense, totally a violation of the alleged rules, yet there are editors here defending it. So it's hard to know what to think anymore. The safest thing is to delete nothing and hat nothing. Period. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:50, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

That's under your interpretation of the rules, how they apply, and when they ought to be applied. It only boils down that way, that simply, if we take for granted that your perspective is correct- not all of us do that, and why should we? Honestly, though, I don't see how your response correlates with what I said; and your "delete nothing and hat nothing" conclusion seems a little dramatic. Each of us has our own view of things, each of us thinks those views coincide with the rules and the philosophy of this place- thus, each of us just reasserting their notions leads to more of the same, what we seem to lack is a method of reaching resolution. It would be wonderful if we could set up some framework to deal with contentious situations among ourselves, so that even if we all still disagree, we can reach a conclusion in a reliable manner with minimal disruption to the desk (from reverting and bickering) in the mean time. Given the nature of the ref desk and that most of the framework of Wikipedia is geared towards article space issues, perhaps we could hammer out our own modification of that framework that would work a bit better for us.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 21:16, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

There is allegedly a rule against responding to questions that ask for personal opinions of the editors. If that question isn't an example of such, I don't know what is. This much I do know: I've never seen anyone get yelled at for refraining from deleting or hatting something. Hence, that's the safest route: Let someone else do that and then take the grief from the clique. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 21:21, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll be perfectly honest, I really don't know who is involved in what with whom, or why. Personally, as soon as I saw that question, I thought "person with bad English heard about the Clay Prizes- maybe the Poincaire conjecture and Perelman." I can't imagine any other reason to post that on the mathematics desk- if it was trolling, it was the worst attempt I've ever seen at it and I can't imagine someone just randomly asking that without some inclination of something related to mathematics. But that question aside, and my own proposal (or any proposal) aside: what do you think about all of us trying to reach some peaceable agreement on how we will handle future disputes? This gigantic wall of debate doesn't seem to be helping anything, and seems to be common, it would be nice if we could find a way to minimize it.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 21:38, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

What did the OP say after someone asked what they were referring to? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:29, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

The ref desk operated successfully for many years before the idea of hatting anything was even considered. Deletion was similarly extremely rare - and generally only happened after at least some discussion. I don't think the reference desks back then were any worse than they are now. I'm not claiming that they were without problems - but I don't see that any of this current wave of hats and deletions has gained us a single thing.

Therefore, IMHO, the hat-limit should be zero...no hatting or deletion or removal or editing of material without at least a minimal discussion here - except in cases of demonstrable emergency when doing the least possible to avert that should be the guiding principle.

If editors spent half the time they do worrying about deleting and hatting (and arguing about those things) on researching the answers to peoples questions, then that would be by far the biggest improvement we could offer to our users. SteveBaker (talk) 14:36, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I mostly agree. (Next topic: WP:INDENT awareness week ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 14:48, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I really agree though. IMO for a very long time when I've been here there have been a lot of deletions which were never discussed, and these were not always that rare and were generally not contentious, when they were of clear cut trolls (particularly well known persistent ones). I only happened to notice some of them when looking at the contrib history, there must be plenty I never knew about. (Let's not forget LC and the later reformed AL trolls were fairly early on.) I myself do so occasionally, usually without any discussion or complaints.

We are possibly at a lull although I'm not sure. There was that Argentinian person although I haven't seem them in a few weeks and I also heard TQ was around the RD. As I've hinted at, one of the issues, and perhaps why it isn't obvious to some, is because if you aren't checking out the RD enough of perhaps not at the right times, a lot of this stuff goes unnoticed precisely because it's noncontentious and undiscussed, as it should be. Even if we are at a lull, fingers crossed it will last for ever however if we ever have significant problems again, we'll have a clear cut problem with a policy where non emergency deletions need some discussion. (I presume most people accept of the points of deleting trollish comments, as Steve Baker acknowledged above, is that giving them attention generally just feeds them.)

You could try to argue deleting troll questions is an emergency but that seems to be stretching it to me. (As I mentioned above, I've given up on deleting Wickwack responses and I'm not sure anyone else is either. But although they don't really appear to be a troll, the topic ban itself made clear their responses could be deleted without discussion, and a topic ban made little sense if it wasn't going to be enforced that way. There have been other people who weren't clear cut trolls but earned themselves defacto bans. More widely, deletion of defacto banned or block evading editor's contributions without discussion whether they're trolls or not, is accepted by wider wikipedia policy.)

We also have medical advice and the occasional legal advice cases, we've been arguing over these for ever, how to handle them and over specific cases. You could probably say they qualify as an emergency since one of the purposes is to avoid bad potentially harmful advice. Either way current policy is that in clearcut cases just replace the question with a suitable explaination probably using the template and perhaps note it here. Sometimes we get long arguments as we always have, sometimes it's just accepted with no comment. Personally I'm fine when there is no comment and even if we could somehow magically disappear the emergency element, I would regard the need for discussion in clear cut cases as suboptimal. I would note even with such replacement deletions, people sometimes still try to respond if they've seen the question, such responses are and should be deleted (and I saw a few examples recently).

Hatting is a somewhat more recent development, yet it's perhaps helpful to differentiate between two broad categories (there's obviously some degree of overlap).

Whole questions may be hatted, we tried doing this with medical advice stuff once but the problems with such an approach became clear. But in cases of a troll where people have responded, hatting is one acceptable response. Usually if it's a clearcut troll, particularly a sockpuppet, a hat limits future time wasted by other contributors, hopefully doesn't give the troll too much oxygen yet it also limits the frequent arguments and complaints from editors about their well meaning responses being deleted. It's not a perfect solution, but it seems the most resonable one in some cases.

The other common use of a hat is when certain responses only are hatted, usually if they are going too offtopic. (In some cases this may be done voluntarily due to complaints.) While this can similarly be contentious (although I would say much less so), if done sparringly it seems to me it likely helps.

This isn't to say I think there's nothing wrong now. As with others I have to say a big part of the problem seems to be ??????. They're hatting and deleting stuff which few agree with for reasons we haven't generally done so in the past, or at least not to the extent they are doing. And as me and others have said here and elsewhere, their behaviour is far from perfect which means few have sympathy for them. I admit for a short while I wondered if they were helping and the RD was improving because of it, but it quickly became clear to me this was not the case, their actions were causing more disruption. And from some of their comments, I'm not sure we can even trust them with sockpuppets and similar stuff where it is generally acceptable, they've identified some bizzare connections which in some cases most people have seen as clearly wrong based on behaviour. (And at times, their understanding of what socking is and how it's handled has seemed wrong.) So I'm fine with a drastic, even complete limit on ?????? hatting and deleting stuff.

And to reduce future problems, as with Jack, I agree some degree of codification may helpful of when to hat or delete (although as I've stated, I think it's clear such guidelines should not limit them to emergency cases without discussion). Personally I would prefer if we didn't have to do so since it may become too prescriptive and lead to needless arguments over stuff which we have been doing without controversy for a long time just because it wasn't noted in the guidelines but if needs much....

P.S. Looking at this page, I see at least one more case where a deletion was noted here #Deletion from RD/E but not discussed before. And this wasn't really an emergency and doesn't fall in to any of the broad categories I outlined. But it seems uncontentious which is probably the reason why there was no followup.

Nil Einne (talk) 16:23, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

This is just my personal opinion, but I think there's a risk that we're approaching the problem in the wrong way. The issue that has caused this discussion is _Medeis'_ over-enthusiastic hatting. Rather than try and formulate a set of universally-applicable rules that will allow "reasonable" hatting and deletions but which Medeis' behaviour will fall outside, I still think it would be better if some sort of (semi-)official restriction were to be placed on Medeis specifically, as s/he appears to be the primary cause of the problem. Tevildo (talk) 21:01, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

No, the primary problem is a clique of editors defending garbage questions like "What would you do with a million dollars?" <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 21:13, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Yet we put up with, nay embrace, Miss Bono's unreferenceable "what's the best way to apologize" and other garbage? 81.156.21.167 (talk) 21:59, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

That was a marginal question to be sure. But even that question was something I felt able to answer intelligently based largely on information from the encyclopedia...Medis didn't like my answer - but failed to explain why or to back that up with even the flimsiest counter-evidence. SteveBaker (talk) 00:34, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

What user ID do you normally edit under? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:26, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I do have an account, but I very rarely contribute. I have been an avid RD watcher for several years though. 81.156.21.167 (talk) 22:37, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

BBB: "clique of editors defending garbage questions...". No such clique exists. The issue is that sometimes a question that may after some deliberation be judged better to not be answered can, by the time the deliberations on this talk page have been concluded, have led to a thread in which a legitimate discussion takes place. The people involved in that discussion may not be aware of anything that happens on this talk page. In such a case, it is not correct to simply delete that entire thread while that legitimate discussion takes places. Any claim of "consensus" is nonsensical if during the deliberations here none of the participants in the thread have weighed in. Count Iblis (talk) 23:37, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

There are no bad questions - only bad answers. (Well, mostly!)

I'm not defending bad questions - I'm denying that any one of us is in a position to judge what is a bad question by ourselves. Unilateral action of any kind is therefore unwarranted UNLESS some serious breach of legal principles is taking place - in which case "act first - discuss later" is a reasonable proposition. The example below is typical of something people think is "bad" but is (in principle) completely answerable. SteveBaker (talk) 00:34, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

The next time some idiot asks about "Uranus", feel free to dive right in. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 01:21, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I would choose not to answer such a question - but I wouldn't delete or hat it. SteveBaker (talk) 01:30, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

You wouldn't need to, since such a question typically came from a particular banned user and was thus subject to deletion on sight. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 01:36, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I have no problem with unconditionally deleting questions asked by proven, banned/blocked accounts. That's Wikipedia-wide administrative action - it's not even a matter for the Reference Desk to be concerned with. I'd be just as happy to delete an edit to List of railway stations in Japan: K-L. I wouldn't advocate ignoring a Wikipedia administrative decision. But if you can't prove that someone is a sock of a banned user - then WP:AGF applies - and you can't duck that responsibility just because you have some vague idea that someone might maybe be a sock. SteveBaker (talk) 02:16, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Your lack of experience in such matters is your own problem, not ours. There's no administrative action required with a banned user. Any editor is free to delete anything the banned user posts, anywhere regardless of what its alleged quality might be. Reporting the sock to an admin can be useful too, but often that only has the effect of encouraging the sock to continue. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:27, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

You misunderstand. I'm not saying that deleting posts from blocked/banned users has to be done by an administrator. I'm saying that it is an "administrative action" - a routine part of operations that does not require debate. Sure, it's something which anyone can and indeed, should, do. BUT I'm not saying that anyone can take the decision that someone should be blocked or banned. That is a decision that obviously requires an admin. The tricky grey area is when we don't know for sure that someone is a sock of a banned/blocked user - but merely suspect it (either from username, from IP address range or from the nature and wording of the question). WP:AGF says that we have to err on the side of caution. False positives are very damaging. If an innocent new user comes along to ask a question - and we nuke them to oblivion without warning, they aren't likely to come back - and Wikipedia's reputation for being an unfriendly place goes up another notch. We lose a "customer" forever - and that person will probably never edit the encyclopedia again - and we just did a horrible disservice to the community here. If we occasionally answer a question from a sock of a banned user, it's hardly a serious matter. Furthermore, we have the luxury of time and space here on the talk page to discuss it rather than acting on a hair-trigger. In clear-cut cases, sure - delete on sight. In somewhat dubious cases, refrain from answering the OP's question, discuss it here and delete if there is a 'rough consensus' that you're right. SteveBaker (talk) 14:09, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

A test

OK folks, concrete example on RD/E. diff. Request for opinion/speculation, non-referenceable, and - contains a rude word. Shall we discuss it here before taking action? Tevildo (talk) 23:38, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Great example Tevildo! This demonstrates precisely why we shouldn't delete/hat questions that we don't like.

Yes - we can do a great job of answering this question.

Wikipedia is not censored for bad language - so "shit" is OK. I've used it many times here - no problem. In British english, being "shit" at something means that you're really pretty bad at it. I don't think it's understood in the UK as an expletive - it's migrated into mainstream language. I'm sure fellow Brit's will back me up on this one.

The question is very easily answered - with references. We can look up average scores of people in various sports and compare them to the scores that the OP posts and tell him/her whether they are reasonable for a typical person. I don't know whether we can find a nice gaussian distribution of scores to discover what percentile this person is at - but if we can then we can certainly say whether he's about average, poor or very poor indeed. All that's missing is a numerical definition of what "shit at X" means - but I think if we could tell the OP that (for example) he/she is better than 20% of other people at bowling, running or whatever - then we'd have provided a very complete answer...and we would expect to find some references to back it up.

This is a classic example of a question that can be perfectly answered, with references - despite the less than beautiful nature of the question. It also demonstrates that it's all too easy to judge bad language by limited local knowledge without a world-wide knowledge of how these words are used.

SteveBaker (talk) 00:22, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Oooor one could just answer "Yes" and mark it resolved. Or more seriously simply leave it alone. I don't think that person has a real interest in having statistics thrown at them, or to know exactly in which tier they stand. The best, non-trolling scenario is that they're just looking to commiserate; chances are any time answering seriously would be a waste of perfectly good time, and should only be done by someone who has an interest in the actual answer (in which case knock yourself out). Effovex (talk) 01:13, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, great example. Here's some more fun reading about that user: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Dannyboy1209/Archive <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 01:15, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

In the terms it was stated here - it is a good example. We're discussing the question - not the person who asked it. If someone is blocked from editing - then, sure, delete anything they post without discussion. That's an administrative action that has nothing to do with the quality or nature of the question. SteveBaker (talk) 01:28, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

The question as stated actually is unanswerable, vulgarity or not, because there's no comparison scale. He might not make the PBA tour, but in a local bowling league his score might be good enough.

Another wonderful example question might be the editor who created an account for the specific purpose of going to the Science desk and asking about torturing flies. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 01:34, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

...and that one was answerable (and answered - with references) too. You're right that we don't have an absolute scale for measuring sports ability - but that's also not a reason for deleting/hatting the question. We could say "you'd be better than 20% of the general population - but worse than 99% of PBA tour players"...or whatever it is. I know you're utterly useless at answering questions usefully - your record and your reputation stands for itself - but don't put everyone else down. It's very easy for an unskilled responder to hat/delete - that requires zero skill. Finding good ways to answer difficult question is a hard-learned skill - and not everyone has it. SteveBaker (talk) 02:11, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Finding ways to stop acting like a jerk is a hard-learned skill too. Get back to us when you've learned it. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:19, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Q.E.D. SteveBaker (talk) 13:57, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Wow, you're back already. Which means we can expect a greater level of maturity from you, from now on, Ja? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 15:28, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

(cough) Do the lakes and rivers in your neck of the woods tend to freeze over in the winter, BB, and are they safe for skating? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:56, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Ja, shoor, yoo betcha! Which reminds me of this one: Ole goes into a hardware store and is looking at thermos bottles. He says to the clerk, "By golly, I understan' dat it keeps da hot t'ings hot and da cold t'ings cold; what I don't understan' is: How do it know? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 00:32, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Q.E.D. again. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:46, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

You've got the edge. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:09, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

This isn't a prominent site compared to e.g. stackexchange or Yahoo Answers, yet we have quite a few trolls. Why is our [serious posters]/[trolls] ratio so extremely low compared to Yahoo Answers and for that matter almost any other website where people can ask questions? Presumably we're doing something that all these other sites are not doing. And that may well have something to do with hatting/deleting and the endless discussions about that. So, you may have people watching this talk page who post questions to provoke disputes here. This is quite similar to how pupils pester teachers who impose rules that they cannot uphold well. When I was in high school, we had great fun doing this :) .Count Iblis (talk) 02:01, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Do you have evidence that our serious:troll ratio is that different from those services? You may well be right - but I'm just curious to know how we know that. SteveBaker (talk) 02:11, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

One thing about Yahoo Answers. Two things, actually. One is that question posed here have also often turned up on Yahoo Answers. The other thing is that obscure facts will typically be stated without the hint of a citation. So if the only place the answer is to be found is on Yahoo Answers, one can say, "This is all we could find - take it with a grain of salt." <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:22, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I think there is a misconception that all silly or unusual questions are automatically trolling. The Reference Desk is (or at least was) a place where you could ask anything, however strange and obscure, and get knowledgeable, detailed and well thought-out responses. That is pretty unique, I can't really think of anywhere else that has Wikipedias standards of verifiability and accuracy applied so vigorously to random user submitted questions, and especially questions which at first glance might seem nonsensical. Responders seemed to have a sense of pride in producing long, interesting academic-level answers in response to even the most benign question. That imo is what made this place so special, that such interesting responses could come from anything, and every question was treated with the same high standards. I think that in turn created an element of people wanting to test just how silly and obscure a question they could ask which still generates a good answer. I don't think that is necessarily trolling, it is more a curiosity of how knowledgeable Ref Deskers are. 82.44.76.14 (talk) 14:00, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. And if you decide that a question is just too silly or obscure - then just don't answer it. That's your personal decision - you don't have to impose it on everyone else. If each of us operates in that manner, then a consensus to not answer a question will automatically result in it not being answered...and if enough people think they really can answer it, then it'll be answered. If some miscreant is abusing the ref desks to a degree that violates community standards - then standard Wikipedia rules such as WP:DISRUPT should result in one of several admin who contribute here regularly taking appropriate action against that person. What we don't want is "admin-lite" where people who are not Wikipedia administrators set themselves up as judge, jury and executioner and start removing or hiding things based solely on their personal opinion of whether a question can be answered or not - or on the basis of some other imagined criteria. SteveBaker (talk) 14:42, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I see that Shadowjams has now (correctly, in my view) removed that question - twice, as the troll edit-warred to try and get it back in. So, are you going to schlep Shadowjams here too? Or is he OK doing that, because his name isn't Baseball Bugs or Medeis?<-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 15:36, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes (to the first question), I restored the question. In accord with other users above, there is no strong reason to remove the question.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 17:50, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I have given the OP a good faith answer, then re-close the discussion per Shadowjams. Hopefully this will satisfy everyone. ?????? (talk) 02:02, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

src: www.tabletmag.com

Hatting candidate

The above discussion didn't seem too painful - it would appear that consensus is to keep the "Am I shit at sports?" question, even if it's unlikely to be answered. How about this from RD/S? A lot closer to the line, IMO, but I think another discussion might be useful. Tevildo (talk) 11:34, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

What do you think might make it an inappropriate question? It looks to me like a reader might have gotten curious based on the previous related question. It could conceivably answered with refs, it's just a hypothetical questions about the effects of a substance on an animal. I actually seem to recall hearing similar urban legends. E.g. the classic "I heard that if you heat a pot of water and frog slowly enough, the frog will boil before it tries to escape." That example is a question we can absolutely answer/debunk with good refs, and is basically similar to this question. I see no problem with the posted question. I vote do nothing, and let others answer if they wish. SemanticMantis (talk) 13:18, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't doubt for one moment that we could provide a good answer here. We know that frogs have glandular skin with all sorts of specialized secretions that are vital to the frog - it's not at all unreasonable that the acidity of the coke would do something bad here. Frog skin is also semi-permeable - meaning that things can pass through it MUCH more easily than (for example) human skin. So your instincts on this (that coke is kinda harmless when poured onto human skin) are totally misleading when it comes to frog skin. The point is that there is a very definite possibility of a reasonable answer here. Why would you not think so? Again, I cannot speak to whether the OP is a banned/blocked user and that the question might have to be deleted on sight for that reason...but in the absence of such information, we are required to WP:AGF - and if possible, come up with a good answer for the question.

I know that some people here rankle at such bizarre questions - we think "Why on earth could anyone possibly need to know this?" - and the immediate thought it that this must be some kind of evil-doer. But you never know that for sure without outside information (such as an administrative decision against the OP or his/her socks). We have often gotten very strange questions - done our best to answer them and then had a reply like: "Thanks for your answers - and by the way, I asked the question because I'm writing a book about the childhood of a crazed psychopathic teenager who claimed to have done this."...or something like that. The point is that it's none of our damned business why the question is being asked. That's not what a reference desk does. Part of the charm of this place is our ability to come up with quality answers to seemingly impossible questions.

Yes, we probably can answer this one - but the bigger point is that nobody here can say with absolute certainty that no answer is possible - and therefore nobody here has the authority to hat/delete it on that basis.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:42, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

(Followup: I have now provided an answer to this question. I'm quite happy with it. It doesn't completely answer the OP - but there is enough in our Frog article to suggest a way forward. As usual, I expect other Ref Desk experts to come in and expand (or contradict) what's already been said - but this shows signs of being a very promising, useful and interesting question. SteveBaker (talk) 13:51, 14 September 2013 (UTC))

I'd like a citation for the notion that a true librarian wouldn't challenge someone who asked how to torture animals. Also, note that, as with the fly question, it's a single-purpose account. I'm waiting for the next SPA to come along and ask how to commit murder and get away with it. Which you will cheerfully answer, as it's none of our business to question the motives of an SPA. (It's only our business to rag on longer-term accounts who don't hide behind IP's and SPA's). <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 14:49, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Poor Bugs. How cruelly we mistreat you. --Steve Summit (talk) 15:27, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I am never mistreated here. I merely point out the double-standard when it rears its head, and those guilty of it, The Clique, don't like being called for it. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 15:33, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Simply because I don't know, who is "the clique"? Most of the people here have been regulars a lot longer than I have, being fairly new, it makes it hard to follow when I have no idea who is being referenced-- This is what I picture (though, that would be kind of cool :-) )Phoenixia1177 (talk) 17:58, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Since the time I've been here, there has been a certain "old guard", if you don't like the term "clique", who feel the need to scapegoat other editors from time to time. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:19, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't mocking the term "clique", I simply have a goofy sense of humour and found the CSM funny to link too. Sometimes I get the impression that there's a whole bunch of culture(?) that exists here that I'm unaware of- I really was just curious who the clique was. (I can't tell if I've been coming off as mocking, or not through this- if so, it's not what I was going for, and I apologize if that's how it came off :-) )Phoenixia1177 (talk) 20:42, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

New trolling technique discovered...

So is the new trolling fashion "create a new account and ask a random question about dipping a random animal in a random liquid" or is it just me? --Jayron32 15:17, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Maybe. If you don't want to AGF, don't answer it. You can even skip reading based on the header. I'm pretty sure I've seen you give similar advice before :) The only way such questions are disruptive is if we let them be. I suggest we just let these questions drift on by, like so many others down the stream. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:39, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

If you don't like the question - don't answer it. I'm pretty much done with this particular series of weirdness. SteveBaker (talk) 17:47, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Unless such questions continue, I'd guess that the earlier question made the second op recall their frog experience. However, I do think it would be worth looking into if such questions continue (I have no method of doing such "looking into", but I'm sure many others here do.)Phoenixia1177 (talk) 17:55, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree - two kinda distantly related weird questions doeth not make a trollfest. If more appear, judge each by it's merits and choose not to answer them when your personal tolerance level is exceeded. When nobody answers, we will have (effectively) come to consensus not to feed the troll...if it is indeed a troll. SteveBaker (talk) 18:04, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree 100% with that approach- honestly, I think the most effective troll-be-gone is simply ignoring it- if it is a troll, hatting/deleting isn't going to drive them off, but give them enjoyment. However, I do think if any such question includes mention/suggestion of actually carrying out such experiments on real animals, then someone should step in.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 18:22, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

• I am curious how many of our regulars who recognize this obvious bee ess for what it is but argue AGF and it does no harm actually have there own sockpuppets to perpetrate it. ?????? (talk) 18:25, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Yep, everyone who doesn't agree with you is probably "really" up to no good!Phoenixia1177 (talk) 18:43, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

There's an axiom, I forget what it's called, "something-razor", that basically says, "Don't always attribute to malevolence what can be explained by incompetence." <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:18, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Hanlon's razor --Jayron32 20:33, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd prefer not to pretend people are stupider than they are. The real question is cui bono? When we have half the ref desk actives insisting that the rules don't apply to them, what is the next step? Would shutting the desks down through ANI benefit them more than simply answering legitimate questions and closing illegitimate ones? What's the desired end here? ?????? (talk) 02:06, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Still on with the threats to shut the ref desks down via ANI, Medeis? Still? How does that demonstrate an abiding concern for the ref desks? You talk about those who say the rules don't apply to them, but you now seem to be saying "Do it my way or else". What planet do you actually come from? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:12, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

My concern is for the project. Taking the undermining of the project to ANI for observation would hardly be a threat to harm it. You mistake the fun a few trolls have here for its wellbeing. (In any case, an ANI report might simply result in an opinion that the rules should indeed be enforced. Does that prospect trouble you?) ?????? (talk) 02:22, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Aren't we traversing very old ground here? Hasn't it been established that ANI has no power over the Ref desks and no interest in getting involved in any case? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:31, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I think there have been occasional blocks for extremely bad behavior, LC being one example; but in general, not much happens on ANI regarding ref desks. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:40, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Medeis, can we have your word that this is not a false flag operation? Count Iblis (talk) 02:47, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Folks, please don't feed the trolls. Whether there is strong evidence of trolling, or you just somewhat suspect a troll question, the solution is the same: do not answer it! If nobody repsonds to a troll post, the troll gets no joy, and goes somewhere else. Now, think about it: Feeding a troll is answering his trollish question. It's also posting and having a debate here on the Talk Page, because with one mouse click, he can see all this. That's how I found it - I clicked on the Talk tab out of curiosity. By your debate here, you are all (and me too) are feeding the troll - he's maybe puit up a troll question, and now he can watch the entertainemnt for the next few days.

So, stop it Medeis. Stop it everybody. Just ignore the troll posts. If some other mong answers it, don't fret over it. They've made their judgement call. Keep refraining from posting.

121.221.93.204 (talk) 15:49, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

src: pbs.twimg.com

Why was my question twice removed?

I asked a simple question about my sports skills and it was removed without reason. Why? drt2012 (talk) 17:24, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

This explains it: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Dannyboy1209/Archive - but I note that on your Talk: page there is an indication that the ban has been lifted. Can whoever did the deletion explain their reasoning? SteveBaker (talk) 17:43, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I restored the question- if there is a reason to remove it from the desk entirely, it should be placed here, the question isn't disruptive itself, it should be able to remain until then. --unless there is a ban on this user that prevents them from posting questions, in which case someone can remove it again; nonetheless, they should mention it here, or at least in the edit summary.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 17:53, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I've invited Shadowjams to come here and defend his deletion, if he feels like doing so. I think it's fair to say that Shadowjams does not suffer fools gladly (and I include me in that category, sometimes). <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:16, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you:-) I don't know why I didn't think of doing that- I will next time. To be perfectly honest, while I restored it, I don't have much to say about it- but the issue was already being discussed, and if we're going to give discussing things before acting a go, the question should have been left to stand for a time, or permanently, per the result of that discussion. That's not to say that Shadowjams was even aware of said discussion, I have no idea, but that's not really part of the point. At any rate, thanks again for notifying him.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 20:50, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Your politeness here has been very encouraging. :) <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:56, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Let me see, this is the now hatted discussion:

"Am I actually shit at sports?

The highest bowling scores I can obtain are about 100-110 (ten pin)

I am too scared of falling when ice skating

I take 30-40 seconds to swim 50m when athletes can do it in about 20-30 seconds

I don't even own any trophies

Please help drt2012 (talk) 23:28, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

You seem to do ok. at swimming. What about athletics? Can you post your best performances for the 100 meters sprint, Cooper test etc.? How many push ups can you do in one row? Count Iblis (talk) 18:02, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

What is a sport anyway? Isn't there something you can do that counts as a sport that you can be good at? --TammyMoet (talk) 19:50, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Is trolling a sport? Is there some reason a person would seek "help" from random strangers on the internet who can't actually help him? Seek a professional, we don't give medical advice. ?????? (talk) 22:27, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

There is a chance the OP is a troll. There is no doubt that you are being a troll with that response. Please just ignore the question if you don't want to pretend to be helpful. --Onorem (talk) 22:35, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

User:Dannyboy1209 like all of us here has a talk page and has email enabled, so you can address the OP directly with your concerns. If there were anything unusual about asking random strangers on the internet, the site http://ask.fm/ would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. Count Iblis (talk) 22:40, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

What? The OP asked if he was shit, and I have said yes, he is indeed shit. Do you have a problem with that? If so, there's a discussion about this at talk. ?????? (talk) 00:55, 15 September 2013 (UTC)"

It occurs to me that the answer to the OP's question here is, "Because you added it twice." As regards owning trophies, your typical sporting goods store might have them for sale. Get one and have it engraved "World's Best 100-average Bowler". <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 23:34, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I think Medeis' behavior is a problem here, it's disrespectful toward the OP. Even if one can argue that the OP is not asking questions in good faith (based on previous behavior, checkuser or whatever), other visitors to the Ref Desk won't know this, they will just see the disrespectful replies. Count Iblis (talk) 02:42, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

That's a very good point. There are at least three classes of people who will each react differently to the question and to Medeis' reply: (a) the OP, (b) the regular ref desk responders and (c) the general public who happen to just be reading that question and our replies.

In the case of an actual troll, the troll clearly understands the remark - and so might many of the ref desk regulars if we happen to recognize that this is a troll. But for the general public, their take-away is that someone came here, asked a slightly quirky question and was lambasted for doing it for no clearly discernable reason. Even if this is one of a long series of trollish questions from the same person - a casual reader may only happen to read the most recent of them and see only Medeis being rude to a respectable individual who asked a seemingly reasonable question.

Clearly that's completely unacceptable from the perspective of the Ref Desk's reputation and that of Wikipedia in general.

So even when we recognize a troll - we have to be very clear in our responses and avoid "clever" replies or in-jokes that only the ref-desk regulars (and perhaps the OP) will understand. That means that we have to maintain politeness to the OP at all times - no matter whether they are demonstrably evil or trollish or sock-puppets or even outright banned from the site (although the latter should result in their posts being deleted on sight - so the matter should not arise).

Hence, it's obvious that Medeis has hit another foul ball here.

Just how long are we going to tolerate this kind of ill-behavior from our own editors?

SteveBaker (talk) 15:19, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia has compromised its rules, and hence its "reputation", a number of times, and often with the full approval of its public face, J. Wales. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 15:54, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Is there not in fact an actual policy, WP:IAR that suggests that the "rules" and "regulations" you refer to are not quite set in stone. Or maybe you are just making sweeping generalisations about thinks you do not like on Wikipeida? Horatio Snickers (talk) 22:44, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, the most glaring example I can think of has to do with the rule "Do not disrupt Wikipedia to prove a point." Maybe you've forgotten about the day a year or two back when Wikipedia was shut down for a day, by Wales himself, as a protest against some internet bill in Congress. He disrupted Wikipedia 100 percent... to prove a point. So there ya are. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 23:11, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Wales may have been leading the charge, but it was put to community discussion. More than 1,800 users participated in the chat-fest. The resulting vote was overwhelmingly in favour of a shut-down. Like you, I voted against it, but when there's a very clear consensus, the only option we have here is to accept it and move on, otherwise we're operating outside the rules of the organisation. To bring it up now, over 18 months later, reveals an inability to accept consensus, in which case what are you doing here? And to mischaracterise it as an action that Wales took of his own volition without regard to the views of anyone else, is an outright lie. Are these your credentials for being historically the most outspoken editor on the Ref Desk talk page, where the integrity of other editors is brought into question? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:01, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Bugs, are you honestly arguing that because Jimbo Wales doesn't live up to whatever standard you've imagined for him, that gives Ref Desk regulars free license to act like assholes? APL (talk) 04:51, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

One thing Wales probably doesn't do is lower himself to your level of junior-high-school vulgarity. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 13:21, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. Just the other day he called me a "great shambling goof" during what I believed was supposed to be a civil discussion. Horatio Snickers (talk) 16:39, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

That's too funny to be considered uncivil. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:14, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Good ole Bugs, you can always count on him to find a way to change the subject whenever he's being criticized. APL (talk) 16:41, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Vulgarities are not criticism, they're merely reflections of the character of the one saying them. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:14, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Which won't work here, which is probably why we haven't seen him there :) . Count Iblis (talk) 16:54, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm told that the mainstream sources are now saying "Chelsea". Given that we now have proper sourcing, I no longer oppose the renaming of the article in question. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:14, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Right, but what is also important is how you communicate to get your point accross :) .Count Iblis (talk) 17:58, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Maybe I should lower myself to talking like APL. Would that be an improvement? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 18:37, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

If you also improved your attitude towards collaboration and the opinions of others, but added the occasional curse word it would be a significant net improvement. APL (talk) 22:01, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I have no problem collaborating with reasonable editors. But those who are trying to push a personal agenda are going to hear about it... in G-rated language. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:29, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

And if that gets on your nerves, you could say you find it... grating Effovex (talk) 03:51, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Or that it reminds me somehow of Tony the Tiger. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 05:38, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

src: i.imgur.com

Reverted Medeis's incorrect relocation of a question.

As usual, Medeis has overstepped the mark in self-appointed "curator" of the Ref Desks.

The question about whether a reference about Mycoremediation of Sarin should be included into our Sarin article is not a duplicate - or particularly related - to the question of whether you could use that technique to make a sarin-proof gas mask.

Hence, I have un-consolidated it and restored it to it's former location. This entailed also removing Medeis' comments about the removal since they no longer make sense.

Consolidating questions should only happen when they are literally the same exact question. Two unrelated questions about a topic that happens to be in the news right now shouldn't be consolidated - ESPECIALLY because they are separated by a couple of days in time.

Our OP's are not sophisticated in the ways of the Ref Desk and moving stuff around like that has to be done with extreme care.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:25, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Maybe Medeis should start calling you "Bakr". <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:21, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

(Fixed!) I don't know where I got that mental kink of missing out the 'e' - I know it should be there! Sorry! StevBakr (talk) 17:54, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Note that Medeis was bocked yesterday for 24 hours, so she might not reply today here. Count Iblis (talk) 17:32, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Removed response to difficult to understand question

I removed this jokish response [9] as unhelpful, WP:BITEY and frankly just silly. Normally I wouldn't note it here but considering the high level of tension about removing stuff at the moment, I'm doing so to try and reduce drama. I've also informed Myles325a so they can respond when they're 'back live' if they desire edit: but it seems to me they have enough experience that they should know not to do this. Nil Einne (talk) 05:42, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with your removal - I was about to remove it myself but you beat me to it. Total nonsense post. If Myles325a is trying to make some point here beyond mocking the OP, it is so obscure that it eludes me. Gandalf61 (talk) 05:49, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

src: assets.libsyn.com

Medical diagnosis from Medeis

In his zeal to locate medical questions, Medeis has actually overstepped the very reference desk guidelines on medical advice.

This edit and the one it refers to answers an entirely non-medical question by guessing that the question-asker's curiosity might be caused by a medical problem and he has instructed the question-asker to consult a doctor.

If you suggest, unprompted, that a poster may have a medical problem and should see a doctor, that is medical advice.

Even when someone asks an actual medical question we're usually careful to suggest that they should see a professional if they're concerned, so that we avoid the implication that we've considered their symptoms and decided that they should go to a doctor.

I should have gone without saying that if someone comes here asking what a particular facial expression is called, we should not tell them that asking the question indicates that they need to see a doctor. APL (talk) 04:37, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Advising someone to see a doctor does not constitute medical advice. I'm not so sure that medical advice is needed in this case, i.e. that Medeis might be reading too much into the question. But the right doctor might be able to assess whether the guy is suffering delusions of some kind. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 13:24, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Bugs: it's not medical advice. However, I will agree that the presumption that any trip to the doctor was necessary seems a bit much given the topic of the question. Mingmingla (talk) 16:35, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's medical advice, though I do think it seems somewhat uncivil depending on how you read it- perhaps I am reading it wrong, however.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 03:32, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

If the subject were hockey, that remark might safely be called "chippy". <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 03:37, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I had to look up "chippy", now I'm happy I learned a new word. Not being a sports watcher I will annoy my friends who are by using it in weird situations:-) (I'm bad with tone in real life let alone online: this is meant to sound friendly and light, not the sarcastic read one could give it) :-).Phoenixia1177 (talk) 05:18, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Be careful, or I'll have to contact my lawyers: Hungadunga, Hungadunga, Hungadunga and McCormick. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 06:21, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I actually had similar concerns to APL, I simply didn't bring it because I couldn't be bothered particularly since over half the threads on this page probably concern ?????? in some way. That and the fact the suggestion was so silly it clearly wasn't ever likely to be taken seriously. Nil Einne (talk) 12:38, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Removed vandalism

Hey all. I just removed this contribution by 90.244.241.109 from WP:RDM#Waitress with a wistle?. Worded differently, it might be viewed by the very patient as a reasonable request for help in locating online image resources, but as it was presented ("skoolgirls with big tits") it seems to be clear trolling / vandalism to me.

Were I to remove unequivocal vandalism (such as graffiti), I would not feel the need to open a section here. Is that proper? Alternately, should I have troubled everyone here with this report? Thanks for the guidance. -- ToE 13:12, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, it seemed like a reasonable question to ask, but I didn't notice that caption, and given that, there's a good chance it was a joke post. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 13:31, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I see. It had nothing to do with the whistle question, it was just stuck in there. Yes, it's garbage posted by a drive-by. You were right to throw it in the trash. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 14:00, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I do think it's important to mention such deletions here. There have been times in the past when people have removed posts that seemed to them to be completely nonsensical - but which were, in fact, important answers. That seems unlikely in this case (to say the least!) - but then the posts that have been incorrectly deleted in the past seemed nonsensical to the people who deleted them. So a quick note is all that's really needed, just so more eyes can be brought to the problem just in case an error was made. SteveBaker (talk) 13:37, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

No need to post here. While SteveBaker is correct that sometimes there are genuine, useful answers that can appear nonsensical or irrelevant (particularly to individuals less familiar with a given topic area) there are also some posts that are unambiguous nonsense, vandalism, and/or trolling. Just because there exist cases where it is difficult to distinguish between a 'real' answer and trolling doesn't mean that there don't exist cases where the distinction is quite clear. This is one of those clear cases. While it doesn't do any great harm to post a note here, you don't need to waste your time (or anyone else's) on it.

Honestly, Steve, it's a borderline-illiterate request for pictures of 14-year-old uniformed school girls with large breasts. That's not anywhere near a gray area that could possible require further discussion; we're just feeding the troll. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

To minimize the feeding of the troll, a terse report "I have deleted this as vandalism", without the detailed explanation, would have been quite sufficient. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 14:02, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Ten, I'd normally agree with you, but I think I see where Steve is coming from: Recent removals based on perceived trolling, clear-cut in the eyes of the remover, but not met with anything resembling consensus when discussed on this page. The experience of off-the-wall yet good-faith removals leads me to recommend erring on the side of caution, and leaving a note here, while a while ago I probably would have agreed that it's not necessary in clear-cut cases. The too high number of false positives leads me to believe that leaving a note is safer. The downside are time-wasting discussions, the advantage is that we may save legitimate questions from the shredder and make our guests (and volunteers) happy rather than feeling marginalized. ---Sluzzelin talk 16:27, 19 September 2013 (UTC

Actually there's a bigger downside. I saw the post myself and nearly removed it, but someone beat me to it. I had absolutely no intention of noting it here and intended to say so in the edit summary. I'm fine with noting less obvious cases like I did above, but If people are going to expect me to note even such obvious nonsense here, frankly, I'm not going to remove anything whether random crap from someone most likely using an Argentian IP but who claims to live in some random tiny Pacific Island and talks about their their country or whatever or requests for pictures of school girls with big tits like this or hostile responses from semi-regulars like the one I noted above. If the community feels it's necessary to impose dumb restrictions just because one or two contributors are too willing to delete stuff so be it. While I could be wrong, I suspect I'm not the only one who just isn't going to remove stuff if there are such nonsense and unnecessary restrictions put in place on all editors and even in clear cut cases against all logical sense and common practice on all areas of wikipedia including ones which get far more public attention largely because of the actions of a small number of named editors who would either would be willing to change their behaviour after discussion or could have been sanctioned. Personally I feel passerby are far more likely to be put off the reference desk because they see juvenile requests for pictures of big tits or overly hostile response from regulars or for that matter because they've are a semiregular who wasted their time for the 6 instance in a row on some well known troll they're just poor at recognising then being put off on the off chance I may delete their question or answer which according to the community consensus shouldn't have been deleted (which IIRC I've never done particularly in cases when I didn't note it). But if it's really going to be the end of the world if that ever happens, so be it, let's just keep nonsense until someone willing to waste their time on dumb bureaucracy comes along. Of course the funny thing is the people willing to do that will probably be the ones also way to willing to delete stuff and them now being the only ones deleting anything will mean sanctioning them will be out of the question. (Or we could just sanction them meaning no one will delete stuff and go down the 4chan route, that is until the rest of a community realises the RD is has now become what some people have been saying it was all along, an uncontrolled mess, and end it.) P.S. I would note SteveBaker's premise here is flawed anyway. The question wasn't nonsensical. As the OP/deleter said, the meaning of the question was clear. It's just that the question whether serious or trolling is not the sort of stuff we are going to help with and that should be deleted no matter whether it annoys the poster of the question. Nil Einne (talk) 19:24, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

My general recommendation is that it is safer to leave a note. I wouldn't anticipate any problems if someone had removed this post without leaving a note. I don't anticipate any problems if you, Nil Einne, remove a post in general without leaving a note, because experience has shown that you are good at assessing which removals would be sanctioned by consensus and which wouldn't. Unfortunately, experience has shown that not everyone who removes posts here is good at gauging what is consensually removable. To those as well as to those with little experience here I keep recommending to err on the side of caution and leave a note here. Just my advice. You won't see me complaining either way. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:03, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Removed trolling

I removed this piece of trolling. Of course it's a request for medical advice (of a kind) as well, but in this case I think deletion is preferable to hatting. --Viennese Waltz 14:35, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Good removal if trolling. If legitimate, the guy needs to see a doctor ASAP. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 16:09, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any evidence it's trolling. And what does VW mean by "medical advice (of a kind)"? The penis is still a part of the human body, last time I checked, and this is medical advice, without qualification. I'd have thought the appropriate response was to recommend he see a doctor, and then maybe hat it, but just removing it outright, without any feedback to the OP at all, looks like hard-line overkill to me. Where's the AGF here?

Ironically, this sort of response would never qualify for the PENISS Prize. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:46, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Should we hat/delete the trans naming question?

I just wrote a comment on it supporting the question because I thought the underlying question was answerable with references, then saw that this edit went through at the same time: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AReference_desk%2FScience&diff=573355816&oldid=573353362

Although I still feel the question is valid, User:Tariqabjotu has a good point. I didn't realize how the thread was being used when I defended the question. I would not be opposed to someone closing it. Katie R (talk) 17:20, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

The OP is asking whether bigotry is caused by a brain deficiency. That's really an unanswerable question. It's possible some bigots have a brain deficiency, and it's also possible that some non-bigots have a brain deficiency. Bigotry doesn't arise from brain deficiency, it arises from upbringing. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:34, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

In short, sure, box it up. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:35, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Right, I originally read it more as asking about scientific research into bigotry, with potentially offensive speculation in the question. In the past we've had questions with bad/offensive assumptions in them, and answered them with references while politely explaining to the OP what was wrong with their original speculation. The problem I see here is that it feels like the OP asked the question specifically to link to people with the implication that they have brain problems. I'd rather let someone else box it up after seeing if other people agree that this is what is going on, since I'm having trouble assuming good faith right now. Katie R (talk) 17:44, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Either way, it's a valid question - although I certainly wouldn't answer it. We don't have rules against bigots asking bigotted questions - so no matter whether you feel that this is an effort at bigotry or not - there are simply no grounds for wrapping it up. "I don't like this question" is not a reason. The defence against this kind of thing is to refuse to respond to it. I wish more people had taken that decision in this case - but it's their call. I would say that there is demonstrably no consensus to refuse to answer this question - because plenty of people are answering it. Those people clearly don't seem to think it should be hidden (why take the time to type an answer that nobody will read?) - so there is no consensus to hat it either. All that leaves is some Wikipedia rule to require such questions to be deleted on sight (I'm not aware of any such rule). So it stays. SteveBaker (talk) 18:01, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

To ask "Do such people have brain pattern differences?" is as off-the-wall as asking whether one race is smarter than another. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 13:26, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if that's exactly true: if people who are racist can be shown to think differently, then they might also process information differently, physically, in a characteristic way. I'm not an expert in the subject, but I know studies have been done that show those who are more inclined to be racist are more inclined towards other things (example: when shown a near square, but not exactly square, quadrilateral, people more inclined to racist attitudes are more likely to recall it, later, as being an exact square.) I'm not saying that I agree that there are differences (I have no idea), nor can I give anything that looks like an answer- but I don't think the question, on its own, is faulty. --off topic a bit: I don't think asking if one race is smarter than the other, purely as a question without a concealed argument, is faulty; provided you aren't assuming there is a difference- what makes the question illegitimate is that it is well known that there is no difference and that the idea was used to promote prejudiced agendas in the past. The current question, while of somewhat like flavour, does not share that taint, thus, I see no legitimate reason to remove it.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 03:29, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

It strikes me as a slippery slope. Consider the fact that homosexuality used to be regarded as a mental illness. In more recent times, the argument is being made that sexual orientation is a function of DNA. The arguments about bigotry and orientation are parallel, albeit from opposite ends of the political spectrum: "There's something wrong with you, and its cause is organic." That argument denies the effects of upbringing and other environmental influences. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 15:42, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Something is wrong with my internet, I wrote a big response to this, but then lost it (twice!). So I'll be short, apologize for tone defects. I took it as "Does their thinking cause physically observable differences" not as "Do physically observable differences cause their thinking", but I have weird philosophical tastes. At any rate, it was more a "If you eat a bunch of chicken wings and drink lots of beer, will you get out of shape?" type of interps. Personally, I find what you are describing distressing also; I have Asperger's and do not in any sense consider that an excuse to be rude, accidentally offend, or overlook someone's feelings- when it happens, I take responsibility, just as if I were clumsy and bumped into people. Thus, people blaming their disagreeable states on organic flaws kind of pisses me off. Any rate, rant aside: if that's what they meant, I think that's a bunch of garbage; however, I still don't think that should give grounds to remove it. Again, apologize for the fast typed bad grammar response; stupid internet!Phoenixia1177 (talk) 18:14, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

When I type anything here, I always do a "sweep" with the mouse and ctrl-C. That way if something wacks out, I've hopefully still got it. If I've lost the internet connection somehow, or if Wikipedia is down (which happens sometimes), I save it temporarily in a notepad document. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 21:53, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to start doing that, this isn't the first time this has happened to me; it was extremely frustrating when we switched internet providers at my hotel, for a few days we kept having goofy glitches that fouled everything up- I still think that the system was messing with me, it would be up all day, then go down at 3:30 am right as I was submitting something online. Again, thanks for the good advice:-) Also, thanks for the Animal Crackers reference below ( :-) ), I missed that until now for some reason, I have no idea why.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 22:03, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Worse comes to worst, write it first in notepad, save it, and then copy-and-paste into a Wikipedia edit. That used to happen to me some years ago, and I got in the habit of it except if it was a really short response that I could recreate without much trouble. Thank you for noticing the Marx reference. Unfortunately, I see that I left out a Hungadunga. In fact, I left out the main one! <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 22:17, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

FWIW I also feel the question is best left be. I had some concerns when first reading it but it seems to me the OP has a real question and is not trying to make a WP:POINTnor are they WP:FORUMSHOPping or WP:CANVASSing or otherwise trying to use the RD to resolve wikipedia disputes which obviously should be resolved elsewhere. The fact that it arises from current topical issues isn't exactly uncommon or surprising and while the topical issue being a point of contention on wikipedia is perhaps a little less common it's still something that happens. I mean we have the somewhat related question from Wnt on kickbacks in exchange for referring people for surgery. Everyone including the question asker should take care avoid spilling a dispute from elsewhere into the RD and also avoid saying things which may cause needless offence but that's about it. Nil Einne (talk) 12:29, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

The return of Timothyhere

Looks like User:Timothyhere is back with his obsession on Pacific Islands and why they support the US/Israel contra Arab causes. See: User:Kiplimo Kenya Special:Contributions/Kiplimo_Kenya

• Wikipedia:Help desk ? (->?Palau supports the U.S. on Syria strikes: new section) diff
• Another try to get the Pacific island nations to the main page haha. I love those countries.
• And the usual Ref Desk why do such people like such people questions. diff and concern with capital crimes diff. ?????? (talk) 04:27, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

You might want to take this directly to one or more of the admins who are most familiar with the Timothyhere case. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 15:39, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

The problem is I don't keep track of these things anywhere. Mentioning it here now is preventative, hopefully. ?????? (talk) 17:18, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't either, so you're right, the best we can do is to raise awareness. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 16:07, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Is IP 120.145.70.130 Wickwack again?

We seem to have an obstinate and clueless IP responding to 'Reference desk/Science#the effect of a working propeller on a plane'. [10] I note that, like the topic-banned WickWack (see [11] for recent comments), the IP geolocates to Western Australia. Is it reasonable to assume the IP is him? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:19, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

You're right that that's almost definitely WickWack, they've been regularly responding on the science desk for the past few week. I think no one deleted their comments after I stopped (as I mentioned a week or two ago because I seemed to be the only one doing so and I didn't want to turn it in to a me vs them thing). Their responses have been similar to those before they were banned, sometimes helpful but also fairly argumentative usually without refs when they don't agree, although AFAIK they at least seem to have given up on pretending to be other people to support their argument. However they're still topic banned so you should feel free to delete their comments at will although I decided to avoid the above discussions so have no idea if you're expected to discuss each deletion first or something despite the wording of the topic ban. Nil Einne (talk) 13:04, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Neither of you have any idea what you are talking about, neither about propellor forces nor about who I am and dynamic IP addressing. I am the person who used IP address 120.145.70.130 to post responses, but I am NOT Wickwack. All that the IP address, which is allocated from a pool when users boot up their PC's, shows is that I use Telstra as my internet service providor (ISP) - along with about half of Australia, which has approx 24 million people. Here I am using an IP which some Gelocate services think is Melbourne Australia. I don't live within 1000 km of Melbourne 144.134.197.2 (talk) 02:57, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

And here I am again a couple of minutes later using an IP Address which GeoIP thinks is Perth, Western Australia. I don't live there either. 121.215.68.99 (talk) 03:05, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

And here I am again using yet another IP address obtained by powering down my PC and powering it up again - apparently I left "Perth" in that time. 58.164.228.65 (talk) 03:10, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump made two claims:_

• Propellor blades downgoing on the outside (ie towards wing tips) makes both engines in a twin engine plane "critical", that is both provide equal performance when the other engine is not operating - inferring that if both props have blades upgoing on the outside then that allows one engine to be critcal. That's clearly nonsense as in both cases the aircraft is symmetrical in regard to the two engine shudown cases.
• P-Factor is only about a lateral shift in propellor centre of thrust. The shift in centre of thrust comes about when the prop rotation plane is not orthogonal to the airstream. It is obvious that the prop rotation plane angle can depart from 90 degrees to airstream either from 90 degrees in the vertical plane or from the horizontal plane. Thus the propellor centre of thrust can move sideways or up and down, or some combination of both. No reference needs to be cited, as it is as obvious as 1 + 2 = 3.

58.164.228.65 (talk) 03:27, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

And here I am again apparently back in Melbourne (IP Locator), or is it Canberra (WhoIs), or is it Ayres Rock as given by GeoIP, 2000 km from Perth. -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.54.115.88 (talk)

User:Fête is back

The IP asking questions on the entertainment desk about whether Chinese pop songs are in tune, is User:Fête. See question of 21 September 2013 and question of 22 September 2013. Previous discussions about this now permablocked user: Archive 95, Archive 100. For confirmation from Fête himself, see this little conversation on my talk page. He has a highly dynamic IP address in the 198.105 range. Collapsed below I've collected a list of the contributions from 90 IP-addresses that clearly are associated with the same user (compare with Special:Contributions/Fête). As would be expected with dynamic IP contribution lists, some of the edits do not appear to have be written by Fête, but the majority do.

The majority of the edits are questions on the talk pages of several editors. Often the same questions have been asked to different editors, mainly about Quebecois pronunciation and Chinese pop songs. Some of these editors have had saintly patience. More worryingly, he has made many edits in article space, the majority modifying IPA pronunciations of words in French, Vietnamese, Chinese and other languages. Quite a few of these edits are the current versions of the articles. I'm not IPA savvy enough to judge whether these edits are improvements or not, but I've seen no obvious vandalism. It would be nice if someone with the necessary linguistic knowledge could take a look at some of the contributions, and see if there is a need for further action (if any action other than reverting bad edits is possible with such a dynamic IP address). --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:40, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

If you can link to a few of the French IPA cases I can verify them. (I don't intend to search all those IP contributions--admins should have a means of doing that.) I assume that it is safer simply to have him blocked and to revert him if he has changed, rather than added IPA listings. ?????? (talk) 04:07, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I included an American one as well. As of writing, only the edit on Belgian French is current.

General American: [12]

Belgian French (current): [13]

French phonology: [14]

Quebec French phonology: [15]

Quebec French phonology: [16]

--NorwegianBlue ^talk 21:07, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I assumed these were going to be transcriptions of standard french words, not discussions of allophones in various dialects. I can't see anything obviously problematic on the face of it, but I am no specialist. ?????? (talk) 21:46, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks anyway! --NorwegianBlue ^talk 09:44, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

User ObaidNgers

I think this is the third, or fourth, time this user has posted the same flawed proof looking for opinions on it. He's already gotten several responses; I don't know what the best response is, nor do I know if it is in good faith, so I figured I'd note it here and see what others thought.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 03:57, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

User_talk:ObaidNgers was contacted (Phoenix should have done that). OsmanRF34 (talk) 23:59, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Should I have done that? I thought it sufficed when I mentioned it in one of the threads already.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 03:53, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Nope, Phoenixia1177. Unless you use the full-name of him. OsmanRF34 (talk) 21:12, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I'll remember that for next time:-)Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:19, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Failed to Parse and the Mathematics Desk

Every so often I will see "Failed to parse (unknown error): \int_0^\infty \frac{f(x)}{F(x)}\ dx\ =\ \int_0^\infty \frac{x!}{x^x}\ dx", or some such, in place of certain formulas. Oddly, it does not appear for every formula nor is it all the time, it seems to vary daily, or sometimes change from when I login/out. I've only noticed it on the math desk, not on the science, but might be my own bias. I don't know if this occurs for everyone at the same time, or at all.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:00, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I notice this from time to time on Computing, though I don't know what causes it. Probably the browser failing with LaTeX. --.Yellow1996.^(?M?ED¡) 16:22, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I've found that including extra spaces between the commands and brackets often helps. Count Iblis (talk) 17:43, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Medical advice request deleted

I've deleted this request for medical advice. The OP has been notified. Tevildo (talk) 23:21, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I assume you meant to point to this. I suspect he's reading too much into it. He could probably get the same temporary soothing from chicken soup. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 00:19, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Not medical advice, I was just curious how it works (or indeed if there's anything going on here beyond the placebo effect). 24.23.196.85 (talk) 01:39, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Re-ask your question objectively without reference to your own symptoms--or better yet, use google and save the trouble. ?????? (talk) 02:14, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

His neighbors balls?

Although the OP assures us he is not asking a medical question, asking us to identify a genetic anomaly is the definition of diagnosis. I have thus removed this question. Whether the OP should be reported to someone at wikimedia for implying he examined his minor neighbors' testicles as a teen is a separate question. ?????? (talk) 02:35, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

It's actually the OP who's making the diagnosis. What basis does he have for assuming there is any sort of genetic abnormality? That's why I said, "Define short". Those who mature earlier tend to be shorter than those who mature later. As regards "examining" the guy's genitals, keep in mind that in junior high gym class locker rooms, it's pretty easy to tell who has hit maturity and who hasn't, without doing any actual "examination". Though I don't rule out that it could just be a trolling question. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:43, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

And in fact he said, "As I understand it...", which doesn't imply he did any examining himself, it sounds like someone told him... like his friend in that family, maybe. I still don't rule out trolling, though. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:49, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I've restored the question and responded with a link to our Precocious puberty article. I don't see the question as asking for a specific diagnosis, just for more information on the topic. Deor (talk) 02:58, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Both this and the prior question could have been worded to avoided asking for a diagnosis or treatment advice--but it's not our responsibility to reword a tro...I mean an OP's questions for them. If you look at the OP's edit history he's not an ingenue. And he describes himself as having been a teen who knew his neighbor's 6-8 y/o balls have descended, not as a classmate. The as I understand it was in the prior sentence, not the one on balls descending. (How many 8 y/o's have told you their balls have descended?) For consistency's sake we have to remove this question, regardless of the relevance value of your inquiry, if we are going to remove the one on raisins. ?????? (talk) 03:04, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

That sentence was a follow-on to the "as I understand it", as it's covering the same territory. And it might surprise you to learn that early-teens boys do have puberty-related discussions. I don't see anything in the OP's comments that suggest "examination". I still don't rule out the possibility of trolling. And the raisin thing was probably overkill. I still say he should try chicken soup and see if that's likewise soothing. (Billions of mothers through the ages can't be wrong.) <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 03:13, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing#Copyright issue for a book - Info removed

I have removed the URL to a job search website and the OPs E-mail address from their question. Diff here. I know the E-mail removal is basically standard practice to prevent spamming. I removed the URL as I thought they may be trying to boost their site visits with SEO. Advised them we don't answer by E-mail.

• Any objections?
• Is there a template to cover these situations? --220 of ^Borg 00:40, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Good start. I took it a step further and zapped the whole thing as an obvious spamming attempt. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 02:21, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Yeah I agree with the removal. I wasn't quite sure what he was getting at when I first saw the question; but now looking back, it does look pretty spammy. --.Yellow1996.^(?M?ED¡) 03:17, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Okay Bugs! (On your way to earning another Gold Star) Now, if only someone can help me with my Ghost Recon: Future Soldier install issues!
(basically: It-Don't-Work!) See WP:RD/C#Updating Ghost Recon Future Soldier PC --220 of ^Borg 05:32, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

National leader "we all can dream" "suicide" "terrorist attack" "medical accident" removed

I have removed ", whether by a medical accident, a terrorist attack, or (we all can dream) suicide" & the three5 responses directly related to that phrase, that may be easily misconstrued against a national political leader due in part to BLP, CIVIL & SOAPBOX concerns among others & is unnecessary to the overall question (leading to unallowed "skew" "chatroom" & "heated debate") under terms of:Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Guidelines#When_removing_or_redacting_a_posting See "However, we take special care to treat potentially offensive subjects with sensitivity, diligence, and rigor. Further, we never set out deliberately to offend, and we endeavor to quickly remove needlessly offensive material in questions or responses." & "we should in all cases strive to exceed the minimum standard of civility" among others @ Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines. Multi-day efforts at a reasonable OP driven resolution to this matter (and his GF & sincere yet incomplete responses) here, here, here, here and here. I wish this editor the best of luck and hope to work together in the future and regret this necessary action. ^{Market St.?} _{? Diamond Way} 16:49, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of question regarding Islamophobia, per WP:NOTFORUM

I have deleted a question relating to Islamophobia, on the basis that the person asking the question was fully aware of the answer, and was self-evidently abusing the reference desk as a forum. See here [19] for my deletion, and [20] for the evidence that the IP was already aware of the answer. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:31, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

As I read it the IP was using the ref desk to confirm the findings they reported on the NPOVN, which is a valid use, and arguably the raison d'etre, of the reference desks. (I may yet be proved wrong, but better to start with assuming good faith). Abecedare (talk) 17:45, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Note that on NPOVN the IP noted that Islamophobia was not listed in DSM -IV (which is accessible on Google Books), and then asked here if had been listed DSM -5. If I were researching the topic, and didn't have access to the latest update of DSM, this would be the approach I would have taken/recommended. Abecedare (talk) 17:49, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Agre with the deletion. This is basically rhetorical provocation. ?????? (talk) 17:52, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

As was your comment on political correctness. Or are you exempt from WP:NOTFORUM? AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:16, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Seems like a reasonable deletion. Did someone ask this or a similar question, maybe a few months back? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 03:06, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I see, it got reverted back in by the OP, shortly after you deleted it. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 03:16, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

• The question that has been asked (which I did not delete, by the way) is basically, "Islamophobes are crazy, so why doesn't the book of crazy people list them?" That's kind of problematic, but if we're going to keep it we shouldn't censor it. ?????? (talk) 03:36, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Reference Desk inquiries

Shouldn't the Editors responding to users' inquiries have a general knowledge about the subject being asked about or, at least an idea where to find the answer to the users' questions?
Looking over the Humanities RD, it seems like there is a small group of Editors who respond to many questions by offering their opinion instead of an informative response. Then debates break out between Editors with different opinions on a subject (or, sometimes on a completely unrelated subject), it becomes a gabfest and the OP is completely left out.
I just think that RDs have a potential to become message boards where Editors chat or bicker and its original purpose, to help readers with the research question, becomes secondary.
I see a fair amount of POV-pushing, especially regarding politics and, you know, that's what blogs are for. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:52, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

When that happens you can "hat" the discussion with a message that this is not a chat forum. Add:

{{hat|your reason for closing the discussion}} at the top of the thread and {{hab}} at the bottom of the thread, after your signed statement.

Just make sure you don't add the "nowiki" tags I used to make this visible to you.

?????? (talk) 19:00, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

When questions ask for opinions, it's best to choke them off from the beginning, and that will cut down on the likewise-opinionated responses. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:21, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Conversely, when questions ask for references, whether explicitly or by default (because it's implicit in someone coming to a reference desk that they'll be after a reference, unless they indicate otherwise), and all they get is opinions, as is so often the case, "it's best to choke them (the opinions) off from the beginning". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:22, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

In my view, the best remedy for opinionitis is to provide referenced or at the very least educated and fair replies (which can also be based on a volunteer's informed opinion, as long as presented fairly, but clearly this isn't what Liz is talking about), and to ignore the rest. I'm not a fan of hatting, but could live with it when done pragmatically, which isn't what I've been seeing for quite a whiel now. I ignore the clutter. Directly addressing the kind of opinions Liz is talking about usually just amounts to continuing the distraction. ---Sluzzelin talk 21:33, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, ??????, <-Baseball Bugs and Sluzzelin. I'll try "hatting" if the whole conversation is going awry but I'm also talking about Editors answering from personal experience or whatever happens to pops into their head that, kinda, sort of, is related to the question from the OP.

I would think that if a volunteer a) doesn't know the answer or b) doesn't know how to help the OP find the answer, then one should refrain from replying. No answer is better than an inaccurate or irrelevant reply. Editors don't have to find something to say about every question that is posted to a reference desk.

I think the solution is that more Editors should participate at the Reference Desks, then there would be a larger pool of expertise to draw on. Also, if a volunteer sees a question and knows an Editor who is knowledgeable about the subject, they could post a note on their Talk Page pointing them to the question to see if they could provide an appropriate answer.

So, when a question like "Why do women participate in pornography?" is asked, the responses aren't guesses but replies that come from someone with a background in women's studies or sociology. Or, the answer can simply be that some questions can't be factually answered on Wikipedia. IMHO. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:10, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

P.S. This is what I'm talking about (from Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Guidelines):

"We expect responses that not only answer the question, but are also factually correct, and to refrain from responding with answers that are based on guesswork. Ideally, answers should refer (link) to relevant Wikipedia articles, or otherwise cite reliable sources."

I don't hang out a lot at the Reference Desks but I hope there is less guesswork than I've been seeing recently. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:16, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Liz, I've been asking for less guesswork for almost 10 years. Seems that some people's innate desire to help others (a very good thing per se, let me hasten to add) often takes precedence over our rules here. There's another factor at work: some people's ego-based need to be first in with the answer - or rather, an answer - as often as possible. Quality often suffers dreadfully at the hands of this monster. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:14, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

My own experience suggests that the problem is quite terrible, but I don't think there is one main cause. My own solution to stop any inherent crackpot tendency has always been to just minimise my off-topic or speculative stuff, not to eliminate it entirely. I don't think it is realistic or desirable to go all the way and apply these principles strongly; neither do I see any reason to trace a particular cause, except a general verbosity and egotism that itself has many causes, and takes many forms. If anyone wishes to stamp things out, please be my guest and become a mad hatter with anything that gets out of control. There is no hope of much more, because admins show excessive tolerance, and will not be likely to block or otherwise discipline any of the idiots who write complete nonsense in response to almost every question. I would only request that people trying to fix things by hatting use a bit of commonsense and realise that some questions are inherently unlikely to have referenced answers. In such case, a bit of freer discussion is better than nothing. Questions like "what were the motives of..." and "why do so many people..." will often not have referenced answers, but someone might have some anecdotal evidence which would be useful. IBE (talk) 15:53, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

One type of answer I wouldn't like to quash is "I think the answer is X, but I'm late for work and don't have time to research it further. Hopefully somebody else can check my answer, or I can later.". StuRat (talk) 17:21, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

People should definitely not rush in and give new questions an immediate answer with opinion or speculation. But some of the unreferenced back and forth can stimulate interest, remind another editor of a relevant point, and so on. My policy is not to give my immediate answer if it is not referenced or based on links, but to wait till the following day. At that point it may be answered, or still standing there unaddressed. At that point it is reasonable to say "that vaguely reminds me of such and such...." (Stu's point above is correct.) You should basically be willing and able to give links and references, and should otherwise explicitly say "I am speculating based on educated guesses here". An example of that was my wrong answer on the size of baseball fields. As for "why do "group" do "such" questions, they are almost always problematic, if not baldly inappropriate. ?????? (talk) 17:25, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with "why do groups do such" questions (as in "why do women enter pornography" or "how to combat prostitution"). Even though there may be no single accepted answer to such question, they are often subjects of academic studies and surveys, which as a reference desk we should point to. The problem arises when responders treat the refdesk as a bar-room discussion, mistakenly believe that they are being asked for their personal opinion, presume that they'll be able to come up with a heuristic explanation after giving the question all of two minutes of thought, and post their uninformed speculation instead of searching for sources. Abecedare (talk) 17:42, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

We have our work cut out for us

See here. Count Iblis (talk) 21:11, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Trolling by User:Herzlicheboy

It's been obvious for a while now this user is a troll. Now he's asking if his story about feces in interesting. That sounds like one of our longterm sock-puppets, although I don't remember whom. He's been hatted by JackofOz and rehatted by myself when he reopened his nonsense. If there are any admins, he could use blocking. ?????? (talk) 21:40, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I am not a troll. Herzlicheboy (talk) 21:50, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

... but that question on the reference desk, and this edit on an article talk page were pure trolling. Please stop. Abecedare (talk) 21:54, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Troll or not, the question is asking for personal opinion, and should be removed. OsmanRF34 (talk) 21:56, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Ok, yes I agree that the story about the bathroom was more of a prank, I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to "troll" with the comment about Sean young though, she is hot. Herzlicheboy (talk) 22:04, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

You don't seem to be taking the whole thing seriously. OsmanRF34 (talk) 22:09, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

For the aforementioned and other edits, Herzlicheboy has been warned that a block will be implmented if they continue in this vein. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 22:11, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

With the best will in the world, it can be safely said that the user has either failed to acquaint himself with the rules for talk pages (which are about ways to improve the article, not idle and vacuous chatter about the subject), or is aware of them but chose to defy them. Incompetence or malice are the only possibilities. He's been around long enough to know the rules, so the inevitable conclusion is that he's trolling. Add that to the latest idiotic question on the ref desk, and a pattern starts to emerge. The block warning is timely. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:19, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

• I have deleted this outright. There seems to be no redeeming quality or support, and Sussexonian's complaint that hatting draws attention makes sense. ?????? (talk) 18:48, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I support the deletion. And I agree with Sussexonian. Let's rethink this whole hatting/deletion policy, in a calm and measured way, and then apply it consistently. It seems we all have different ideas about the matter, and we all need to agree on some basic ground rules. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:19, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think hatting is ever a problem. The comments are all still there, and the hat can be reversed if it is opposed. The only real problem is deletion, which often means people do not realize the comment existed unless they scrutinize edit histories--that's why we insist a deletion at least be list explicitly on the talk page. (In this specific case the poster himself has chosen not to pretend he wasn't trolling.) ?????? (talk) 20:48, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Sussexonian's point is that hatting often effectively highlights that which we're trying to downplay. You said you agree with Sussexonian, but now you're saying hatting is never a problem. Can you clarify your position, pelase? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:04, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I didn't say it's always "right". I said it's not a problem since it neither erases the comments nor its own history in the way outright deletion is hard to detect. ?????? (talk) 22:15, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I think he/she is saying it is indeed a problem, because it has precisely the opposite effect to what was intended. And on reflection I agree with him/her. I don't always read all of a longish thread that has already achieved significant length before I happen upon it, but my eye is always attracted to any internal hattings, and I admit sheepishly that I pretty much always take a peek (sheepish, because I've hatted a few things in my time). I'm sure I'm not alone here. If we want to acc-ent-u-ate the positive and downplay the negative, hatting is not the way to go. Removal or total indifference would be better options for the front page, while we can always discuss stuff back here. Hatting is good where a respondent provides a long list of stuff or a long aside or anecdote that isn't strictly (or at all) on topic, and doesn't want to impair the immediate visual impact of the thread. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:11, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I understood S's point, which is why in his case I did remove the post entirely. I think the aposematic pink of a hat may attract attention, but it still conveys the message of the community saying this is something to avoid in the future. ?????? (talk) 16:27, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

The question really comes to down to how much garbage we want in the archives. Hatting retains it, deleting prevents it. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:14, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of INCIVIL, SOAPBOX and editing abuse

Subject was deemed hatted by a senior editor & user twice undid, then changed the question a few times not by adding further details/queries below but the actual question itself. Then is boasting how "worthless" wikipedia is, and that he has the answer anyway, not looking forward to the day we all post how we had a question and got the exact answer on these desks. Difs here, here, Especially here, Especially here, here, Especially Here (Gaslighting), here. ^{Market St.?} _{? Diamond Way} 04:58, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I've removed the two 'hat's that the user used to 'hide' criticisms of his question. But seriously, is anyone surprised, when Medeis is now training up an apprentice hatter, that a passing user wants to play the game too? There is more disruption to the desks caused by the few regulars who constantly try to stop a discussion, than is caused by the appearance of unsuitable questions from time to time. A month or two there was (twice) a blissful week when no 'hatting' took place and the world didn't collapse. Also, the template used most often by Medeis has the effect of saying "Look here, there's something REALLY interesting behind this screen we don't want you kids to see" and we know what that leads to. Please let's stop it. Sussexonian (talk) 06:59, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Do I take it that means you're not interested in becoming one of my minions? ?????? (talk) 17:26, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Can I ask a favor of you? Medeis & hatting are not the OP topic. You have valid concerns & I see how the last few weeks, hatting & another editor somehow relate but you can see how your reply could be the opposite of solving things ("training"? "apprentice"? are we testing 'affiliations/behavior'?).

OP's diffs' timestamps speak for themselves & I only deleted it after numerous OP instances of 'Commenting on the contributors' & edit tricks (potential bait/switch partly do to the original 3rd party hat).

I appreciate your overall goal Sussexonian & don't take any of this as an accusation, my intent is just not to be misunderstood in my concerns. Responding to a "ghost question" can be unnerving & then the type of comments of OP etc. My chief concern of OPs original question being 'noted' I'm willing to WP:DROP this thread, to keep focus we can transfer your hat concerns to a new one if you wish. ^{Market St.?} _{? Diamond Way} 12:21, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

The IP/OP in question is obviously trolling, and I've HATted the whole thing. Although the OP will probably revert it. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 13:53, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

• As a matter of record, the OP's question, after a long soapboxing introduction, asked: My question is, is there anything that people can do to help these girls get better jobs and stay away from prostitution, which is not only self-debasing but also dangerous (STDs, unwanted pregnancies, starvation due to low wages, rape, abuse)? Market Diamond responded to this (I won't say I approved of the answer) and then the OP changed t when he realized he was caught out asking for advice over what he sees as not only as a moral but a medical and legal problem.
• The consensus is this question should be closed given the above comments and closures on the page by other editors. I am going to close it, and the editor is reminded of WP:3RR. ?????? (talk) 16:03, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I see no consensus here -- Sussexionian and I support answering the question, you two are against it. If we work with someone asking a question to turn an unfocused comment into an interesting question, that is not a bad thing. Learning to ask the right questions is half of science (I think some people would say more). Wnt (talk) 18:32, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

There are three editors here (please read the thread) who support hatting and another two at least on the thread itself who have closed it, MarnetteD and GiantSnowmen. That's five in favor of the rules, versus you who oppose all ref desk rules, and the OT. ?????? (talk) 18:37, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Medeis, please use neutral wording. This is not a disagreement between those who are in favor of the rules and therefore support hatting/removing the prostitution question, and those who oppose all ref desk rules. If this is turning into a !vote, you can count me among those who oppose removal of the question. Granted, it was strongly colored by the OP's views about prostitution, but the core of the question as it stood before being removed was, "what have societies done in the past to combat prostitution?". I see no problem with that question, and think it would be more productive if respondents with relevant knowledge would answer the question, assume good faith, and ignore the parts of the original post which were statements of the questioner's personal views and not really part of the question. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:16, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Seriously? Go ahead and pointily restore the discussion against a consensus that exists without me then. Wnt's the one writing essays to override the ref desk rules, not me. ?????? (talk) 22:21, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

It would be pointless if I were to restore the question, as I have nothing to contribute in answering it. I tried to urge you to be a little more cautious when commenting the actions of editors with whom you disagree, and not assume that they hold opinions that have not been stated in this thread. Saying that somebody who has contributed here oppose all ref desk rules is a divisive exaggeration. If an editor has suggested elsewhere that the rules be changed, that is beside the point, as far as this discussion goes, IMHO. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:56, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

I have no strong opinions on the prostitute thread, and it's simpler now that it has gone. The original question had an excessively long preamble and the question was indistinct; but the OP then clarified the question, making it a request for fact rather than opinion ("what have societies done to achieve this aim?") and was slated for doing so. Most of the time we encourage querents to clarify their requests, but when an IP address comes along the rules seem to change and Assume Good Faith is forgotten. I will deal with the hat template issue separately, which was my intention anyway. Sussexonian (talk) 19:29, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

The good thing about this is he can come back and post a simple request for references if that's what he is really at. ?????? (talk) 20:06, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

This looks to me like one of those questions where if you don't like it, you should ignore it. You don't like that the questioner laced his factual question with some opinion? So did some of the answerers. You don't like that the questioner twitted us in a followup for being useless? Stop the useless hatting and bickering. Don't get all defensive and try to quash his criticism; that just proves we're a bunch of officious would-be autocrats who can't admit that our hold on power is so fragile that we can't tolerate dissent. --Steve Summit (talk)

Those that "don't like it" did "ignore it" Steve Summit, the diffs show that.

You realize that any diff on its own is not the full picture of IP/OPs acts, the changing of question, the IP/OP hatting GF responses while tossing out ad hominems to us all.

If you had read the diffs & the rest of this thread you would realize:

The only "useless hatting and bickering" was repeatedly committed by IP/OP.

The only "get all defensive and try to quash his criticism" was repeatedly committed by IP/OP.

The only "officious would-be autocrats" with a "hold on power...so fragile that we can't tolerate dissent" was repeatedly done by IP/OP, the diffs show it all.

If IP/OP doesn't follow RefDesk Guidelines, WP CIVIL etc. that would make IP/OP the "officious" "autocrat" with a "hold on power so fragile that [IP/OP] can't (didn't) tolerate dissent", "defensive" & "quashing criticism" that you criticize. I agree with your general conclusions but the editor who the diffs show has disagreed isn't participating here. ^{Market St.?} _{? Diamond Way} 13:24, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Not to be over blunt, but while the op was kind of an asshole about things, I don't see anything that needs hatting.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 05:32, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

One problem that can arise is when the OP cops the attitude that he is owed an answer, as if he were paying the responders for their efforts. This where reality differs from "The Wikipedia reference desk works like a library reference desk..." First, a real librarian probably gets paid. And if a questioner acts like a jerk, the real librarian would either show them the direction to the exit door or call Security. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:15, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't disagree with the sentiment. But while acting like a jerk might mean you dont deserve an answer and no one should bother with them, that doesnt mean we should box it off. Personally, if I had a perfect answer for that question, Id probably not get involved, but I dont think theyve violated any rules- it's like having bad hygene, people avoid you, but you cant get arrested for it.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 19:17, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Phoenixia1177, the IP/OP hatted, more than once, meaning that the IP/OP actually pro-actively hatted responses which I don't see anyone on this thread approving of so it puzzles me what diffs we all are pondering. All been said above, including read...the...diffs. Your overall viewpoint I generally agree with but this IP/OP's actions (hatting etc.) don't. ^{Market St.?} _{? Diamond Way} 20:55, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

In this diff,[21] the IP/OP claims to be the user Sneazy (talk · contribs). If true, that could explain a few things. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 21:35, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware that the op acted like an ass, but that doesn't mean their question should be hatted/removed. Their question isn't the problem, they are- someone could mention to them that that's not how they should conduct themselves, but their question, as current, shouldn't be touched as a result of their behaviour. If they continue being uncivil, I suppose you could look into getting them banned (I don't see the point), but the issue is with the op, not an otherwise decent question.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 05:37, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

There is nothing preventing you from suggesting a ban or going to ANI so that we may focus on the question & not the constant disruption of OP/IP, in fact you may have supporters on that. ^{Market St.?} _{? Diamond Way} 17:05, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Checkusers won't do anything about IP's. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 23:46, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

What? I didn't say I wanted to report them, I said I don't see the point. Don't rephrase this as my issue, the op was a jerk, the question was fine, it's a minor issue and can best be settled by not bothering with it if you are offended. If it is a major thing for you, then you can take the necessary steps for whatever you think should be done.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:24, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Then your point of ignoring or reporting is totally lost on me, & may I suggest that you Phoenixia1177 have from the start "rephras[ed] this as [other editors] issue"--which is fine, constructive advice is welcomed but just be able to accept your own advice. As I said above, you seem not to be aware of all of what happened on this one tho your comments are good advice in a general sense. ^{Market St.?} _{? Diamond Way} 05:53, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

How did I rephrase this as other peoples issues? I made my position clear, "The op acted poorly, the question was fine", that doesn't entail I think they should be banned, and I never said I thought that- I said if you think that, then you should pursue it. To rephrase it as someone else's issue implies I think there is an issue that merits reporting, I clearly don't think that, so it is not, and never was, my issue. As for accepting my own advice, my advice was to ignore it, seeing as I did ignore it, I did accept my own advice- again, I never suggested that you should try to get them banned, I said that if it is important to you, then you should do it; that's not the same, I don't think it's that big of a deal. Finally, I am aware of what happened, but seeing as the issue was with one single question and committed by the person asking it, I don't think it requires any major response- if this user continues doing this, on a regular basis, or escalates to something worse, then sure, maybe something should be done, but at the moment, it's just a jerk with a decent question.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 06:05, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

No, if the OP is the editor Sneazy, then he should edit under his user ID, and avoid the appearance of trolling. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:13, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I was just talking about his attitude, if he is registered, then he should use his name- a pattern of this would be indicative of something problematic.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 18:37, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

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