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[edit] Misanthropy

Could someone take a look at Misanthropy? I tried fixing up the article a few times but my modifications were removed. Especially irksome is the "Use in media" section. Pollinosisss (talk) 17:36, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I have reverted the article to an earlier, cleaner version. I will leave a note or two for the various IPs; if this mucking up continues, perhaps some page protection might be in order. Please keep your eye on the page, and I will do my best to assist. Drmies (talk) 17:49, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Your expertise and devotion to misanthropy are impressive. ChildofMidnight (talk) 21:04, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] IPs vandal

Can you take look on International club competition records and Football records in Spain‎.--KSA^connect 10:42, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

You can report active IP vandals at WP:AIV. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 10:54, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Vandal KSA13

I give you the same suggestion, and I ask measures for vandal KSA: this user continues to save his unreferenced version and, more important, he refuses to speak in Wikipedia:WikiProject Football talkpage.--79.54.157.81 (talk) 10:56, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, guys, you need to talk the issue out on the talk pages of "WikiProject Football", "International club competition records" or "Football records in Spain". If you still cannot reach an understanding on the matter, you may wish to seek help from "Wikipedia:Editor assistance", "Wikipedia:Third opinion" and/or "Wikipedia:Requests for comment". See "Wikipedia:Arbitration" for more information. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:45, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Hey

I posted the merge tag at List of wars 1945-1989. I want this article to merge with List of wars 1900-1944 along with the addition of 1990-1999 conflicts so it can be List of wars 1900-1999 just like List of wars 1800-1899. Please spread the word. B-Machine (talk) 21:38, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] George W Bush is a Dill Pickle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Indianabrick

Kind of funny but I thought somebody might want to fix this one.

67.106.3.130 (talk) 18:32, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

MfD, anyone? User seems to be inactive. Also, not sure this belongs here... Fvasconcellos (t·c) 19:04, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

User's inactive, and I agree it's probably not appropriate. I'm not sure 100% on policy, seems to me that the page could just be blanked.--Cube lurker (talk) 19:13, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

This is me looking at it way too seriously, but I say it can't be removed and our hands are tied in terms of doing anything but just leave it there. It's not an article in LBP format and can't be blanked for that. It just happenes to be an odd, odd user page put into an article format. A very obvious practical joke and its only real humor from the in-article image, BUT... short of correcting the unformatted open html text at the top and maybe removing the image caption... I don't think we can touch it. It begs the question of what actual level of premeditation caused this, or if it's accidentally the most random thing ever. Really, I will dispute any blankings or deletions without debate! This is just too silly. ♪ daTheisen (talk) 03:45, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Anyone can blank anything, I just did, and it didn't take any special privs to do it. If the user wants it back, he can revert it, and if someone else feels strongly about that, they can MfD it. Good enough? Jclemens (talk) 04:04, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Are editors allowed to make edits to others' user pages if the contents of those pages are not in breach of any policy? I feel such edits can only be made if it can be shown that the user pages violate some policy (in this case, possibly WP:BLP). — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

There are actually extremely specific guidelines about blanking. See WP:BLANK. Just because you can't doesn't mean you should. No one asked the article be trimmed, they said "fix" which can mean any number of things. ♪ daTheisen (talk) 01:27, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Out of boredom, I cleaned up the didn't-quite-format text so and did enough that it meets basic article standards. Combine that with it being in userspace with no BLP or promotional material and there and it shouldn't need to be touched again. I'll keep it on watch in case anything odd happens or the author returns. Just because someone's inactive it's cause to blank their things (even if in some way it does make sense). Cheers~ ♪ daTheisen (talk) 06:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Language

Should articles include coverage of linguistic and lexicographical significance? User:Wolfkeeper is removing content (some of it that clearly needed trimming) that addresses how subjects are used in language (see slam dunk and doughnut) based on the idea that policy that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. I think this information and content establishing cultural relevance should be included when properly sourced and significant.ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Provided that the article is not merely a dictionary definition but contains other information pertinent to the subject of the article (see "Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary"), I see nothing wrong with there being text in the article that deals with the linguistic and/or lexicographical significance of a term. For instance, information about the etymology of a term can sometimes be quite enlightening and shed light on its meaning. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:02, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

From how I read WP:DICT and sub-category here[1], I don't know why you would cut out content. Encyclopedia articles should begin with a good definition and description of one topic... but the article should provide other types of information about that topic as well. That seems to be rather precise wording to keep such things. ... Oh dear. I see articles up for deletion on this? This is no good. ♪ daTheisen (talk) 07:58, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

The information is completely off-topic. There's an entire f****** articles on those two other uses of the word 'doughnut' elsewhere Donut (driving), torus. This topic is about bread products, not everything that uses the word donut. We don't have an article called 'back' that contains information on the 19 different meanings of the word 'back', we have up to 19 different articles; and each article is independent and covers one topic. That's how encyclopedias work! Right? One article = one topic. If it's not on-topic- it doesn't go in. If we don't do this, eventually you get the information copied all over the wikipedia, and will have varying degrees of sources, correctness etc. etc. It doesn't work. Don't go there. The policy says you don't get to do that.- Wolfkeeper 01:56, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

The article Earth is about the planet, not soil. etc. etc. etc.- Wolfkeeper 01:56, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Wolfkeeper here. We have a hatnut at the top of doughnut; we don't need to repeat its content in separate sections of the article and for good measure in a see-also section at the end. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:19, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I totally agree that this information should be included under the conditions you mention: properly sourced and significant. A good test for significance could be whether any source on the topic (not the word) contains such information.

By the way, I feel generally that etymological information is stressed too much in Wikipedia. I don't mind even an entire section on etymology, but an article shouldn't start like this:

Etymology (pronounced /etɪˈmɒlədʒi/, from Greek ἐτυμολογία (etumologia) < ἔτυμον (etumon), “‘true sense’” + -λογία (-logia), “‘study of’”, from λόγος (logos), "speech, oration, discourse, word") is the study of the history of words and how their form and meaning have changed over time.

Such awkward constructions make Wikipedia look like a paper dictionary and very hard to read. I was pleasantly surprised when I just saw that etymology does not suffer from this disease. At homeopathy the etymology kept being re-added into the first sentence until someone put an etymology box in the top right corner. Hans Adler 08:04, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

There's even a fairly strong argument that we shouldn't do per article etymology at all. The articles are about the topic, not about words used to describe the topic. And in many cases the article name is arbitrarily chosen; should we then have multiple etymologies? It's really clumsy. Meanwhile, the Wiktionary actually has the etymologies, and doesn't have this problem at all, since the Wiktionary is about the words, not the topic.- Wolfkeeper 00:44, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I've also found that a lot of the etymologies in the wikipedia appear to be wrong; Wiktionaries make more sense and are referenced.- Wolfkeeper 00:46, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that having the etymologies set out as shown in Hans Adler's example is not a good idea as it makes the lead section difficult to read. But I feel that a properly referenced etymology in a section of the article can be informative in some cases, for instance, when a particular term may be unfamiliar to many readers or where the etymology sheds light on the history of the term and its current meaning. It may be that some etymologies that are currently in Wikipedia are wrong. That is, however, not an argument for doing away with them altogether. They should simply be corrected and sourced. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 04:05, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

As I said, in cases where the etymology is typically discussed in sources that discuss the topic, it's clear that we should discuss it as well. That's certainly true for homeopathy. For doughnut that's certainly not true, so the case is a bit more complicated. Hans Adler 09:56, 10 November 2009 (UTC)