Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 June 2

2 June 2007

Wikipedia:Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense's father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate

Wikipedia:Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense's father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate (edit | [[Talk:Wikipedia:Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense's father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (restore|cache|AfD)

BJAODN sub-pages were deleted for GFDL violations. I believe that the pages did contain GFDL violations and such violations were a problem that needed to be fixed. Some have claimed that they would have fixed such problems given the chance. It is impossible to fix many of the older pages due to the loss of deleted revisions but for the newer ones it would be technically possible. This being the case I propose we should the most recent page and give those who say they can and will fix a week to do so. If they do not the page should be re-deleted and the matter settled. If they can fix it we can re-examine the fate of the other sub pages. A week to fix the problem is typical for NSD on images so it is seems a reasonable time to give here. Geni 23:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Restored for now so people can see for themselves what content was there. None of the articles in question were speediable. +sj +

Restore this and all other sub-pages since deletion was blatant vandalism. In any case, if a week is appropriate to fix one image, how can it also be appropriate for an article that has many different sub-parts? (I don't know how many sub-parts because some busybody of an Administrator deleted the lot.) Js farrar 23:35, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Well if I am correct, there were 64 BJAODN pages, each with about a hundred entries. If it takes a week to fix one entry, then it should take about... 123 years! —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 23:45, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I listed an entire page so just over a year if they could so one a week.Geni 23:59, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

• Decline. I'm actually fairly sympathetic to this in principle but, as I understand it, undeleting these pages would violate the GFDL. That's law. We can't violate copyright because we like it. Where does that stop? It certainly should not start with unencyclopedic stuff. I'm afraid the request, whilst understandable, but legally wholly illegitimate. No consensus here can make it otherwise. WP:IAR does not apply to the law.--Doc^g 23:48, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

We? who is we? if law is going to be discussed you must be careful of your terms. In any case DMCA safe harbour should apply for now.Geni 23:59, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

'We' is the community whom you are asking to concur with your nomination. I know nothing of the DCMA, so please help me. How does your request not violate the GFDL?--Doc^g 00:10, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Relisticaly the GFDL has to inforced through the DMCA. Things are unlikely to get that far ever but a week during which it is attempted to meet the requirements of the GFDL would be unlikely to be viewed as unreasonable by the courts.Geni 00:37, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Realistically, no one will sue us anyway. That's true of most cut-and-past moves indeed most copyright violations we delete. However, the question must be: "how do we keep within the licence?" and "How do we avoid violating someones's copyrights?" Not: "will we sued".--Doc^g 00:44, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh well in that case it could be fairly well argued that spending a week to cleanup would fall under fair use.Geni 00:54, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair use requires attribution, the point is we can't attribute this.--Doc^g 02:03, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

fair use does not always require attribution.Geni 02:34, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

'as I understand it, undeleting these pages would violate the GFDL - that's certainly the claim by the rogue admin who deleted them all. Such a claim is all the better for proof, and better still for evidence that deletion rather than fixing is a better plan. Js farrar 00:24, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Divorcing text from its contribution history violates the GFDL/ If that's what happened we don't need proof. --Doc^g 00:44, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Even so, what is the best solution? Fixing what can be, or deleting the whole lot on a pretext? Js farrar 01:17, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

To fix this you'd have to undelete it - you can't undelete it without violating the GFDL (and probably for quite some time). Violating the GFDL is not allowed. Sorry, there is no dilemma here. There is no choice to debate.--Doc^g 01:28, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• The only solution at this point is to create a new BJAODN from the ground up, if that's even worth it. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 23:49, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
• Speedy close, we just had a DRV on this, and we can't selectively apply or not apply the GFDL to pages unless we're talking about substituted templates (quite a few of which give the source pages within their code). --Coredesat 00:57, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Previous DRV was for more pages and was under different conditions.Geni 01:56, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Endorse deletion, then, for the second reason. We can't fail to apply the GFDL to something because people like it. --Coredesat 02:38, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

GFDL allows fair use.Geni 02:42, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• Check the fair use criteria Geni, this would violate principle 4, 5, 8, 9 and probably 10. No way.--Doc^g 03:22, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

4)mirrors 5)meets requirements for wikipedia namespace 8)matter of opinion 9) historicaly we have only inforced that with respect to images 10)talks about images not text.Geni 08:44, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:BJAODN sub pages ware deleted by a cold-harted admin he shured disgust it on WT:BJAODN talk about what is disgust above.**My Cat inn @ (talk)** 01:52, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• No thanks. Violates GFDL, not a valid use of Fair Use, and not actually funny enough to justify the fight. Guy (Help!) 06:17, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Whether it's funny or not is in the eye of the beholder. The "fight", such as it is, is about Administrators abusing their powers to delete something because they've previously lost the argument when using their real reason. Js farrar 11:51, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

If it's "the administrators" you may as well give up now then, since only "the administrators" can undelete and since there is this great conspiracy to delete, they won't be doing that here now will they? --pgk 12:52, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll give you credit for misreading what I wrote, and hence give you a straight answer: I did not refer to "the Administrators" meaning "all Administrators", but instead to "Administrators", meaning "some Administrators". Not all Administrators are rogue - far from it. But that doesn't mean we don't need a check on those who do abuse their powers. Js farrar 17:30, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• Keep deleted. GFDL/Fair Use/Copyright arguments aside (and I do believe we need to take our own licensing seriously if we are to expect anyone else to), mostly not particularly funny or funny at the time, can't see this as being a good use of resources. --pgk 08:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Those who claim it can fix beg to differ.Geni 08:45, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I would hope so. Many people believe many things, doesn't alter my view. --pgk 09:17, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• Restore. Fair use. Wikipedia institution. Abeg92contribs 13:56, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
• Restore. They were all deleted out of process and unilaterally. If people believe more sourcing is necessary, then more sourcing can be added. The argument above to keep the pages deleted because they don't like BJAODN is clearly not the consensus view of Wikipedia. --71.163.192.140 15:12, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• comment Very well it appears people want to settle this rule lawyering. Well I can live with that. Section 4.B only requires that you credit five of the principal authors of the Document. Now I can't bring this particular subpage up on google but I have no reason to think it untypical and wikipedia:We are experiencing Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense. Please stand by. contains links to more than enough difs to meet that requitement.Geni 16:48, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

  I doubt anyone would/should want to go down that path, definition of "principal authors" is open to debate, as is if the diffs actually do point to the five principal authors (Your view maybe that it is "more than enough", I'm sure others will differ. --pgk 18:03, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

it doesn't say "the" any 5 will do.Geni 19:07, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Not sure that helps any, you still have to determine if they count as a principal author. --pgk 19:24, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• restore all this could havbe been done via an AfD or in a better way. As to the GFDL concerns, technically (and copyright is always a technical matter) the GFDL only requires that five prominent authors be credited, it dfoes not require the complete contribution hsitory -- and if it did, no non0wiki source could ever reuse our work anyway, which would violate the purpose of having a free content license in the first palce. This is an examplek of why the GFDL (which was designed for software manuals for open-source programs) is not really a perfect fit for wikipedia. We really ought to ask the FSF to create a new wiki-specific version of the GFDL, and since our license allows upgrading to new versions... Any way, restore for the time being, and delete only via a deletion discussiuon, not a speedy. DES ^(talk) 16:57, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

CC looked into wiki only it's a bad idea. The GSFDL may be of interest to you.Geni 17:06, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• restore all the deleted pages. If you want to claim a violation of the GFDL they you have to provide evidence. In this case, for each page you want to delete, you have to list the key authors who are not identifiable via the page history. --JWSchmidt 17:18, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• Restore. There's no good reason to be fighting to keep deleted something that could be salvageable even if one doesn't see the value in the contents themselves. As has been pointed out, the original deletion was done as a speedy and when speedies are disputed they should be given the full AfD treatment. Bryan Derksen 17:21, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• Restore all Each of thes pages should have its separate AfD treatment. Anything more than three years old would already have exceded prosecution limitations for copyright infringement. Some may also be subject to the doctrine of laches. Eclecticology 19:06, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• 'Restore all and give due process half a chance. older ≠ wiser 19:28, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• Keep deleted Read the GFDL license folks, it is the responsibility of the person using the information to provide evidence that it is in line with the license. I don't think it is appropriate for this to be done as a !vote when it is really a legal issue. We don't own Wikipedia's content, it belongs to the authors, and if they are not attributed we cannot use it. If consensus is to violate copyright law, that consensus should be both ignored and admonished. ^(H) 19:35, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• Keep it deleted. Honestly, Jeffrey was just doing what should've been done to it a long time ago. If people let go of their attachment to BJAODN and looked at the policy and legal issues surrounding it, they wouldn't see a single reason to keep it. Most of the people wanting to keep BJAODN are simply saying "I like it" and that the effort *should* be made to source it. In essence, you're suggesting we take on a monumental task just to keep a joke book in an encyclopedia. Does Brittanica have a joke page? How about World Book? Encarta? No? None of them? Why should we waste several months effort working on this when there are many other things that can be worked on? I pray the closing administrator remembers that Deletion Review is not a vote and carefully weighs the argument of "I like it" versus Copyright violations and libel. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 19:51, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

  You have also been speedily deleting a lot of material that is no candidate for speedy deletion and should at best go through AfD and in some cases has clearly been supported by recent AfD discussions. Please don't do that. Community fora for discussing deletion exist for a reason. +sj + 08:21, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

  • You can bet that respectable publishers like Britannica have plenty of jokey material around the office. Every good workplace does, as it's a sign that people are enjoying their work. The difference is that they don't publish it. (Except when they do, of course.) We don't publish it as part of our encyclopedia either; it's all in back-of-house space. Regarding your notions of what people should be doing, see Raul's third law. Personally, I would rather not spend a lot of time and money building something that can dig out the credits from our dumps, but this sorely tempts me. So if wasted time is your primary concern, request restoration. William Pietri 00:13, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
  • We also know that most of the people that want to endorse the deletion are simply saying "it's not funny", and just using copyright as a pretext. Why should time be spent on it? Because people want to spend time on it. If you're going to say "this is not to be a fun place to be", you will be responsible for driving contributors away. Is this what you really want? Js farrar 01:00, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes, because if that's what they're here for, they need to leave because making a joke section is not what Wikipedia is about. In case people forget, we're here to build an encyclopedia. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 01:38, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
      • We're here to build an encyclopaedia - True, but spectacularly missing the point. We are volunteers here - this means we need incentives to continue to be here. For some people, having a back-of-house humour section helps them to enjoy building the encyclopaedia - if they cease to enjoy the process of building the encyclopaedia, they'll leave. And where does that leave the process of building the encyclopaedia? Worse off, that's where. Js farrar 14:18, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Endorse deletion We have an obligation to credit our contributors per the GFDL and these BJAODN pages don't. That's a problem, and as demon points out, fixing it is not a realistic solution. Eluchil404 21:57, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• actualy there tend to be enough links to diffs to pass the atribution requirement.Geni 22:20, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• Restore all. As far as I know, all of the material was given to us under license. Ergo, this is not a copyright violation; it's a contract violation. Further, it's not a violation of the spirit, just the letter. Contracts are primarily tools for holding agreeing parties to account, not religious documents. If nobody has complained about this, then there is no urgent cause for action. We should restore the pages and have a civilized, low-drama discussion about it, rather than the current polarizing mess. William Pietri 00:00, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

  Well put. +sj + 08:21, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Not to be annoying, but if these BJAODN pages are a copyvio, why isn't User talk:Jeffrey O. Gustafson/Archive0? And the zillions of other archives no one is speedy deleting. --W.marsh 01:44, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
  • The edit history is in the talk page of which the archive is a part of. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 02:03, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Nearly all of the BJAODN entries link to or at least mention the article the text is from. The difference here seems to be a convenient technicality at best... does the GFDL actually say it's okay to copy and paste in one case and it's not okay in the other? --W.marsh 02:16, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
      • It does not. +sj + 08:21, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion. Serious problems with GFDL for the content of these pages make it incompatible with the goal of the project - "building a free content encycopledia". I am not convinced the copyright problems could be remedied. Even if they could, it would involve a vast amount of time that would be better spent writing actual encyclopedic content and in maintaining that encyclopedia. WjBscribe 18:51, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Could you address the points made by others regarding this? Namely that it appears to be a contract violation, not a copyright violation, that we may have sufficient atrribution by linking to other pages, and that there is no reason to believe any contributor feels harmed by any possible violations that might exist? Thanks, William Pietri 23:24, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
• Undelete the attribution is there, it's in deleted articles and deleted edits. Besides these archives are funny and they remind us the contributors are only human. -N 20:16, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

  Attribution cannot be in deleted edits because most people cannot see deleted content. That's basically saying its attributable because some people (admins) could work out who made the edits. We need to publically attribute our context to comply with the license by which these contributions are maade. Also, for material to be compatible with GFDL it does not just need to be free to host, it needs to be free for downstream users to use. In other words someone who visited BJAODN and thought - mmm this is interesting I think I'll use a copy on my website would also need to provide attribution. But that person will have no idea who created the material. WjBscribe 03:17, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Undelete personally I think these articles worthless, and so I argued originally. But I think their unilateral removal on claimed copyvio is absurd and WP:POINT. The interpretation of what is exactly required by GFDL has to be evaluated item by item, and anything less accurate is a classic case of baby/bathwater.

Our WP requirements for fair use are deliberately stringent, in order to ensure maximum compatibility with on an international basis. Fair use has only to meet 3-criterion test--and , unlike WP criteria, its balancing test--the failure to meet one criterion does not defeat fair use. But before we consider whether they are justified by fair use we should see if they are justified by GFDL. GFDL requires that we keep attribution 5 layers back. A good faith effort to fulfill it to the best of our technical capabilities might well be legally sufficient. But whose copyright are we violating? not our own, but the people who individually contributed the BJs. Probably most of them would be willing to put the material in the PD entirely. Before we remove copyright material, we give the owners the opportunity to donate it.

Everything above is debatable, and some of the issuesd may go beyond settled law. But what is really the point is that no one user has the right to enforce his own personal interpretation of GFDL in this context upon the community. No one user has the right to enforce his own ideas of anything on the community. We have a very few narrow exceptions--in cases of imminent harm, of real exposure to libel, or if an apparently valid claim is made by a copyright holder, then the material can be removed by a single user--or even if something is a blatant & obvious major violation. But nothing about this is the least obvious.

Except that I assume it was done on the best of motives, I would have called the deletion in this case vandalism--removing content from WP on the basis of person whim./ The appropriate thing to do with such deletion is to revert it. If any material is deletable, let's delete it, one item at a time. If a book in a library violates copyright, the thing to do is remove it, not close down the library. DGG 02:20, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Restore. The idea that BJAODN articles should be deleted on GFDL grounds is ridiculous. We quote, cut and paste materials from sources and across Wikipedia articles all the time without elaborate editor tracking. People who really want to follow sources back to their original authors can do so, thanks to the database of edits which preserves them even for deleted headwords. We have long ago chosen to err on the side of simple and implicit attribution save when doing an explicit transwiki of an article -- this includes splitting one article into two, merging a section into a larger article, moving a section from one article to another, copying material from a section or article into another, translating material from an article into one in another language, making a 'simplified language' version of an article, including material on a Category page about articles within that category, or drafting articles under one title and then merging them with existing articles or headwords... and many other cases besides. There may be reasons to delete BJAODN or other aggregate articles; this is not one of them, and it is being used by some as a technicality to make an end-run around a more relevant discussion. +sj + 04:36, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Restore all. I am absolutely flabbergasted as to why the responsible editor refused WP:CON in a circumstance as far-reaching and inflammatory as this. While I personally understand (though disagree) with the general purpose behind it, in the minds of many others less familiar with the GDFL I'm sure this will either be classified as blinder-wearing bureaucratic process-wonkery of the worst sort, or (equally as likely), deceitful back-door dealings in an attempt to avoid involving the unwashed masses in what was sure to be a massively unpopular move. While I personally dispute the GDFL rationale given, that isn't even the biggest issue here. No editor, least of all an admin, should ever fear WP:CON, even in what you believe is an open-and-shut case. Bullzeye^{Complaint Dept./Contribs)} 10:25, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• What about the authors of the text? How do you justify not giving the attribution as the license they release it under requires? What you are suggesting is illegal and immoral. Respecting copyright law is not "blinder-wearing bureaucratic process-wonkery" of any sort, but a legal requirement. ^(H) 17:28, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• it's rather difficult to give attribution when the pages have been deleted out-of-process. Really, people. It ought to be blatantly obvious by now that the whole copyright thing is a smokescreen for the real reason people want it deleted. -- Js farrar 17:36, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse Deletion-GDFL is GDFL. We must have attribution, and there is no legal way around it. We can't have people going around and copying BJAODN because they think it is under the GDFL because the rest of Wikipedia is. I would be fine if we started a whole new page(s) that was probably attributed from the start, and stayed like that. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 11:16, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse. Copyright is non negotiable. --kingboyk 13:02, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with that statement. However, perhaps you missed above where I suggest that there is no copyright issue? The material was given to us under license. A license that we may or may not be following perfectly, but a license nonetheless. William Pietri 13:47, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse and speedy close because GFDL trumps consensus, and suggest dragging all those people who wheel war over this to the ArbCom to seriously reconsider whether they're mature enough to be admins. >Radiant< 14:26, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion All you bad jokers need to stop joking around now. — Moe ε 15:12, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Suggest early close, no amount of consensus will trump the fact that it violates our own license, not only is it illegal, it is hypocritical. We demand that people who use Wikipedia content give attributions to its authors, so we cannot do differently. This is not a matter for voting. ^(H) 17:27, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • s/fact/opinion, H. And, in any case, if there is a contract violation, only those parts that violate the contract should be deleted, and then only after a reasonable time is given to fix the violation. Js farrar 17:38, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• How many years is reasonable? It was in violation for years, nobody fixed it. Besides, we are not talking about deleting it, we are talking about restoring copyright violations. We don't restore a copyright violation now and repair it later. ^(H) 17:42, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• For years? News to me. You're right - we're not talking about deleting it; we're talking about reverting the disgraceful out-of-process deletion that should never have occurred in the first place. If there are contract violations, we can fix them, and delete those parts we can't fix, and only those parts - deleting the whole lot should never, ever, ever have been an option. If someone added copyright material to George W. Bush, would you advocate deleting the whole article, or just the copyright material? And bear in mind the difference between a copyright violation and a contract violation, the former being more serious than the latter. Js farrar 18:18, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

except if you don't follow the GFDL the work is not under a free licsence thus the use is a copyvio.Geni 23:57, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The basic question that none of the pro-deletion users has answered is: even if there is a problem with some of it, why has all of it been deleted? Since that question remains unanswered, I am forced to conclude that it must be the obvious reason. If there has been a technical failure to follow the GFDL, that should be rectified - and not by deleting the whole damn thing, including many parts that demonstrably follow the GFDL. Js farrar 02:57, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

• Let's bear this in mind: if this remains deleted because a part of the material is a copyright violation, then anyone can cause damage to the encyclopaedia by adding copyright material to an article, then deleting that article as a copyvio. And there will be nothing anyone can do about it - precedent will have been set that an article which contains copyvio cannot be restored and cleaned up, because the act of restoring the article in order to clean it up is in itself illegal. This strikes me as both preposterous and potentially very damaging. Js farrar 03:15, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

  That's incorrect for two reasons: (1) we could just delete the revision(s) containing the copyright violation rather than the whole article and (2) as long as its reverted, the version of the article on the page would not be a copyright violation. The problem with BJAODN is that it contains no revisions that aren't a copyvio. WjBscribe 04:36, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Donald Neilson (closed)

Recreation as a stub Is not enough access to the original history would greatly aid in the creation the article so I say could we have original article resotred and then updated to this stub version so the history can be accessed? I also disagree that the person who deleted the article closed the deletion review.--Lucy-marie 11:13, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• It's at http://skcentral.com/readarticle.php?article_id=604 - verbatim, I think. Guy (Help!) 23:12, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Mimi Imfurst

Mimi Imfurst (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (restore|cache|AfD)

Article was suggested for deletion by others who dont have any knowlege on the professional drag queen industry. The longstanding staples of nightlife- contribute to the cultural diversity of New York City. Is notability relative?

The page is still there. There is no deletion to review. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 07:44, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Not true. The article has been recreated and tagged for speedy deletion because it has already gone through AfD. The author of the new version keeps asserting notability with no evidence and is arguing against speedy deletion, thus I suggested he come here. Corvus cornix 07:51, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

• If assessing this article requires specialist knowledge of the professional drag queen industry, that is an indication that there are insufficient independent sources from which we can draw an article. An article worked up in userspace with sources might elp, but looking at it, I don't think it will help much, I'm afraid. Guy (Help!) 08:00, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
• The only sources listed in the article appear to be websites belonging to the subject of the article. Without much better sources, the article fails the most elementary test of notability. -- Donald Albury 01:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)