Forum:Source namespace

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Should we put these in their own seperate namespace, as they don't really belong in main, aren't funny, and seem out of place in project. Ty^{Bother me} 00:43, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

What would need to be done to move the Annotated Bible? I mean, you would have to modify {{bible}}, and the code for producing the text may also be attached. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 00:50, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The Bible already lives in project space, but yes you would need to change the references, unless you like leaving a ton of redirects around. Then again the Bible template isn't used that much.Ty^{Bother me} 00:53, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I looked, and fixing the template would be trivial. But I'm not sure how the <bible/> tag works, and if it could cope with redirects. I points this out because the bible page is part of that category. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 00:57, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that the RWAB stay in project space, and I don't know how the bible tag works either. Ty^{Bother me} 00:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Anyway, I vote yes. How would the space be organised? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 01:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Given the small size, and with the assumption that the RWAB stays were it is: a cat for chickenhawks, maybe one or two others. Ty^{Bother me} 01:01, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Given a page like Dana Ullman/On Wikipedia, would we put it at Source:Dana Ullman/On Wikipedia or some kind of non-subpage title? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 01:16, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The latter. Ty^{Bother me} 01:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

What about the chickenhawks thing, where there are presently multiple pages under a hub? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 01:20, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

A category perhaps? Ty^{Bother me} 01:22, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Where would that leave Chickenhawk/NHG itself, and any other introduction to multiple pages? As the category header? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 01:36, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

[[Source:New Hampshire Gazette/etc]] I'm also a solid yes if we end up voting. Blue (is useful) 01:45, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

So we'll have a mix of subpages (for several-of-a-kind things) and normal pages. OK. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 01:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Alright. Ty^{Bother me} 01:52, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, as it is for all other namespaces. ^_^ Blue (pester) 02:08, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

And now, how do you intend to get this '4th person'? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 02:24, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand. Why are these articles being selected out? I'm not a fan of another namespace if it's not going to have any significant content. Move Andy & Colmes to CP; definitely leave Lenski affair (or, at the least put it in CP); I'd delete the Scienceblogs things--that was an experiment of Susan's that she herself didn't maintain; delete the Chickenhawk stuff--WTF is that?; shrugs about the rest. sterile^talk 03:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with Sterile. Sam ^Tally-ho! 03:09, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Basically, we have a small handful of things that aren't articles - at least, not of the kind you should edid - but are more like reference material. Take the Lenski correspondence. We want to host it here, presumably, so that we can transclude it into the Lenski article. But it doesn't go anywhere - there are no subpages in the mainspace, and there's currently nowhere else to put it. Thus, Sourcespace.

As another example, consider Kent Hovind's doctoral dissertation. That's an article, but we also have a copy of the actual text. Ditto for the Wedge Document. With the source namespace, we can have an analysis article on the subject, but then be able to link you to the source. (Edit: in a way that clearly deliniates between the two, and doesn't involve thinking up another name)

It's no emergency, obviously, but it could be helpful. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 03:17, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

(EC) Okay, Sterile. The pages were selected for the reason Peter explained to you. Mass deletions and haphazard pagemoves into the wrong namespaces isn't a solution, it's sweeping the issue under the rug. Keep in mind that we can't do nothing, because the vast majority of the pages have invalid titles and will have to be moved somewhere or deleted.

I propose, to address your complaint that the namespace wouldn't hold enough content (a criticism with which I agree), that instead of "source" the namespace be called "reference." The reference namespace would not only contain material like Kent Hovind's doctoral dissertation and the big list of Citizendium sysops, but articles whose only bearing on our mission is to provide reference material for more on-mission concepts. A fair amount of our scientific "outline" and history-type articles fall into this category, for example. Blue (pester) 03:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Delete 'em. Why do we need Ken Hovind's thesis? And lists of sysops from other wikis is really creepy. sterile^talk 04:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

And make Lenski correspondence a subpage of Lenski affair. And Wedge document a sub-page of Wedge strategy. If people want the dissertation, make it a sub-page of Kent Hovind. Some of 'em are already sub-pages. Leave them there. sterile^talk 04:27, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

But we don't have subpages - that's part of the problem. And why is Wedge strategy/Text better than Text:Wedge strategy? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 04:32, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd rather not have a namespace with a sprinkling of articles, and it makes more sense for these types of documents to be associated with an article about them, rather than just "free" with no context whatsoever. Actually, the dissertation probably is copyrighted and ought to be deleted for that reason. We did have subpages for Answers Research Journal for each volume, although that was sorta re-done after awhile. sterile^talk 04:34, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not trying to be difficult, but I just don't think it's worth it to have another namespace. If you guys want to do it and the wikifolk agree, then so be it. sterile^talk 04:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not that we don't have subpages of mainspace articles, it's that we can't. MediaWiki's title rules disallow it, unfortunately. Blue (is useful) 05:08, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

It can be activated, I think, and I think fairly easily. sterile^talk 05:16, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

But we'd then have to deal with 9/11 not working as a title without character finagling. Activating mainspace subpages would be more trouble than it's worth, IMO. Blue (is useful) 05:20, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Gee, maybe move to September 11. A new namespace takes work, too, you know. sterile^talk 05:46, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not just the one page, obviously. Mainspace subpages are an inelegant, haphazard solution that would give us technical problems for the foreseeable future. A new namespace like the one I refer to after the edit break might be a few days of adjustment work, but would be a positive solution that wouldn't disadvantage us in any way (more than we are right now, anyway). Blue (pester) 05:54, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I would actually move Annotated Bible and its subpages into Main. sterile^talk 04:41, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

As identified above, before we could move it at all we should work out what that would break. Personally I think it's fine where it is. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 04:46, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

(EC)So your objections are the small number of things that (at least for now) would go into the space, and the dissasociation between source and article? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 04:44, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Yep. sterile^talk 04:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The other option is to have, well, a category of original material. Most of these are not as off-mission as they are being made out to be, and a category makes them find-able. I still think we could axe some of these with no problem. sterile^talk 14:17, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Section break π

If we expand the scope of the new namespace to include more general reference material like our science "outline" articles, as I mentioned above, the small size becomes less of an issue. Blue (is useful) 05:22, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

But that makes what goes in there significantly more fuzzy - it would become an offmissionspace, and people would argue over what goes in there. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 05:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

We already have arguments over what goes in mainspace, what goes in funspace, what should be deleted for being off mission, what shouldn't, etc. Blue (is useful) 05:56, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

You know, we could fill the namespace with stuff from EvoWiki... Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 07:12, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Original material

From what I'm seeing, the question that needs to be answered before we can decide on whether or not to make a new namespace is: Do we want to host source material here at all?

That's a little strong - we'd be unlikely to ditch the aforementioned Lenski stuff, for example. But we could make a policy to simply link to things like the text of the Wedge Document, Hovind's Dissertation etc, rather than having the text on-site. That has the advantage of solving this problem completely, and avoiding potential copyright issues. But there are advantages to hosting this stuff aswell, not least the existence of a stable link. And if we do make this namespace we could actively seek out material we would like to have, say from the NCSE.

So, which end of the continuum do we wish to be? Or has this alredy been discussed? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 06:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Subpages

The reason subpages in the mainspace were deactivated is because they're more difficult to maintain as far as categories and DPL is concerned when trying to generate lists and categories, it's not entirely about naming rules like "9/11", it gets messy trying to follow the breadcrumbs back to the main page. Adding a new namespace isn't as much of a problem, and something for large batches of source and reference material would be a better level of organisation than activating subpages and dealing with the problems they present. An extra namespace means DPL can differentiate them more effectively. ^{d hominem} 11:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Great points. It's nearing time to synthesize this into a succinct proposal for the rest of the wikifolk to chew on. Blue (pester) 19:53, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

A proposal

Having given it a little thought, here's a proposal: The namespace is called Reference:, and is designed to include background and source material that is related to the mission, but may not be directly part of it. This will boil down to including:

1. Said source material, including things like the stuff in the category already found. But this should also include unannotated versions of things like the 15 Questions and the Dembski papers. The reason for the inclusion of these is that we would include on this reference page the license (Fair use, public domain etc) that we have these things. Also, if a person wishes to make a new side-by-side of a full text they would first place it and format it in the reference namespace, again including justification of why they have it. Again, having this namespace would also make it easier for us to get even more of these things.
2. Quotes. Considering how much people like to put quotes in articles we could make a whole namespace full of quotes alone. I'm talking Behe on common descent, what Darwin actually said in On the Origin of Species on this or that topic, the complete list of 2012 presidential election gaffes, and so on. This blends in with the above, actually. You can only have so many quotes in an articles, but being able to give a link to a compendium of guaranteed mission related quotes maintained by us can only be a plus, no?
3. Finally, some of this "more general reference material" that Blue is talking about. I'm not overly keen on moving existing articles into refspace for this, but there is a lot of relevant stuff that can be imported from the Encyclopædia of Mullosks Evowiki. I'm talking the Flagella article here, along with many, many others that are important background info to main, mission articles, but include facts that we really shouldn't be cluttering those articles up with. Why here and not elseware? If we link a person to wikipedia, say, they will have to wade through a load of irrelevant information, and we won't get the reader back as easily. And we have outline articles as it is.

Now, I think it's clear that this overcomes Sterile's first objection, namely the amount of stuff. We're nolonger talking half a dozen pages now - the namespace wont be wasted. As for the disassociation, we can create systems like the {{fun}} template that link backwards and forwards between pure source and analysis. "We have a whole page of Mitt Romney making a fool of himself," "See the full list of quotes from Darwin on speciation," and all that. As for the unasked "why bother?", I do think that this will have more advantages than the trouble it will cause. I don't think a category will work very well, and it would be best if they were not hidden in weird places, but were instead organised in one namespace. See also ADK's thing about dpl above. So, will that satisfy everyone most people? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 19:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Where have you been the last four years? +π Blue (pester) 21:19, 17 January 2012 (UTC)\

PeterL did not exist four years ago. PeterL is an artificially aged, genetically engineered being, created to be the perfect wiki editor. Soon, there will be hundreds of him, pouring across our wikis, being sensible all over the place. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 21:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

You just wait until me and my socks propose "Annotationspace" next January, and we'll see who's 'reasonable' then. :P Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 22:27, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

(EC) I have no objections to your proposal, aside from some fretting over the further proliferation of templates. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 21:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

What's with the dislike of templates, anyway? They're hardly nuclear weapons... Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 21:31, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The massive sidebar templates already make it difficult to arrange images effectively. Another template highlighting associated ref/source pages will make it harder still. But I'm not going to fight your, or any other, proposals just over that. Image aesthetics are another subject for another time. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 21:37, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, we don't have to end up with a box-like template. Blue (is useful) 22:06, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

(EC)They can always be based on {{hatnote}}. Also possibly cluttering would be a template at the top, showing source and liscencing - if we did that it should really be collapsible down to the one line. Or at the bottom, possibly. Having browsed through the site a bit yesterday, I'm more worried about looking like Citizendium than the image placement problem... Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 22:10, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I made some examples of articles as they would be in referencespace. We would need to avoid making a full encyclopaedia out back, however. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 03:16, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

So... is anyone there? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 19:33, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

It may be time to transpose this to the saloon bar and ask for approbation or suggestion there. Blue (pester) 19:50, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll make a topic. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 20:21, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not trying to make you do all the heavy lifting, but of course it is much appreciated. Blue (pester) 21:04, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

It's a little TL;DR, but whatever... Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 21:44, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, I follow a lot of stuff but not having unlimited time I don't always comment when others are doing good preparatory stuff. I think the Source namespace is a good idea as there are some articles written by Glenn Morton which are referenced on TalkOrigins (and here, I think) refuting flood geology but have recently disappeared because of a lack of hosting space. I have corresponded with Morton about this and he'd like to keep them up but cant't be bothered with the evolution/creationism debate any more because of the 'stupid bigotry'. A RW source namespace might be a suitable place to keep it. The only issue I really see is with copyright as this wouldn't fall under RW's standard copyright conditions. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 22:27, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

At the bottom of every page is "Unless explicitly noted otherwise, all content licensed as indicated by RationalWiki:Copyrights." We just need to point out the copyright "explicitly", {{EssaynonCC}} style. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 22:33, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I am well aware of that as I wrote it. We just need to emphasise that Source namespace is not a freely editable area. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 00:09, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Editnotices, maybe? A restriction on editing for non-autoconfirmed members? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 00:10, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I think a template would suffice, something like "{{Source}}"...

This is a primary source document. Please refrain from editing it. See also: the list of articles referencing this page.

Or something. Blue (pester) 00:36, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

You'll find that the link in that doesn't work unless the page is in mainspace. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 00:39, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. And we could put something like that in an editnotice too, maybe, though I'm not sure if that would work for an entire namespace. Blue (pester) 00:40, 19 January 2012 (UTC)