At the talk page of Wikipedia:No original research, a debate is taking place over the extent to which editors can make and record deductions whilst maintaining a neutral point of view. A "simple syllogism exception" was proposed, although a number of editors feared that the average Wikipedian would not be aware of the definition of the word syllogism, or be able to infer the meaning from the context in which it was used. A change using a simple example, namely that if A is in district B, and district B is in province C, then we could state that A is in province C was reverted for fear that the use of the word "simple" would cause disputes.
Several contributors shared their thoughts with the Signpost about the many changes to our Sock puppetry policy page in October. FT2 describes it as a heavily used page whose wording had become "diffuse and patchy"; he sees this month's efforts as mainly tightening and improving clarity, more directness about the possible serious consequences of being caught operating sock-puppets, and improved guidance in areas such as sock handling. Amorymeltzer notes the new clearer wording on legitimate uses of multiple accounts, stricter standards for admins, and focus on WP:Assume Good Faith as a governing principle. SmokeyJoe believes the tough language, including the "threat to block and publicly link abusive sock accounts", is helpful, and thinks that the past month's changes have made the page more stable.
Bwilkins points to the "chill" caused by the discovery earlier this month that an administrator was a sock of an admin blocked in 2008 (previous stories) as an impetus for increased activity on this page; he now routinely asks a question related to other accounts in individual requests for adminship. WereSpielChequers observes high levels of community disapproval over the kind of sock-puppetry that recently took place and over contentious uses of "clean start", but believes that the community has not yet reached agreement about who to disclose alternate accounts to, whether tougher rules should apply to admins, whether changes are needed to WP:CLEANSTART, and whether the page should be renamed to reflect the change in our jargon from sockpuppet meaning alternate account, to sockpuppet meaning alternate account used abusively.
Avi has consolidated the sockpuppet and sockpuppeteer templates. The new version of {{Sockpuppeteer}} is backwards compatible while {{sockpuppet}} requires re-mapping of existing parameters. The mapping, which will cover almost all instances can be found at WT:SPI#Single sockpuppet template. More input is requested at to whether to initiate a bot-driven replacement and re-mapping of the templates, since this would break most instances while the process is in progress. An alternative mapping is also under discussion at WT:SPI, concerning {{Sockpuppetry}}.
An election to appoint the three non-arbitrator members of the Audit Subcommittee, using SecurePoll, has now started. You may:
The election closes at 23:59 (UTC) on 8 November 2009.
Thirty-two Requests for comment have been made in the week of 25 October to 2 November:
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