Wikipedia:Patent nonsense
 | This page documents an English Wikipediacontent guideline. Editors should generally follow it, thoughexceptionsmay apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflectconsensus.When in doubt, discuss first onthis guideline's talk page. |
 | This page in a nutshell:Wikipedia writers and editors improve articles in the site, but sometimes, they contribute patent nonsense. There are various ways to deal with patent nonsense. |
Wikipedia writers and editors contribute a lot offeaturedandgood articles,but occasionally, they contribute somepatent nonsense.This falls into two categories:
- Total nonsense, e.g. text that purposefully has no relevant meaning at all (e.g.lorem ipsum) and random text (banging on the keyboard).
- Content that, while apparently intended to mean something, is so confusing that no reasonable person can be expected to make any sense of it, such as "The land attests that agriculture shafts the uncontrollably mild delicacy and wistfully inanimates the fresh spruce tango jumpsuit impressively in one month" (seeword salad). If the meaning cannot be identified, it is impossible to accurately copy-edit the text.
What is not patent nonsense
[edit]The following shouldnotbe speedily deletedas patent nonsense(though some might meetother speedy-deletion criteria). There are other ways to deal with these things: editing to fix the problem(s); possiblyrevertingortagging;or see thedeletion policy.
- Disinformation and factual errors,including citations to unreliable sources.
- Libelous,defamatory, or slanderous comments, no matter how silly.They should be removed immediately if not supported by a reliable source, and possiblyrevision deletedby anadministrator.In extreme cases, libellous edits may besuppressed,making that information hidden even to administrators. SeeWikipedia:Biographies of living persons.
- Poorly written content that could be improved,such as text containing many grammar errors. SeeWikipedia:Basic copyediting.
- Text without links.Consider tagging it with{{Underlinked}}.
- Text not written using theLatin Alpha betor otherwise not written in English,unless it is genuinely gibberish in whatever language it was written in. SeeWikipedia:Pages needing translation into English.
- Text poorly written in, or similarly translated to, English.For examples of this type, seeAll your base are belong to usorEngrish.
- Vandalism(i.e.,intentionallyharmful edits),including joke edits,hoaxes,(irrelevant) obscenities and other immature material, might (or might not) be patent nonsense, but it still needs to be removed. Other nonsense may be mistakes, badly formatted text, ortest edits,without malicious intent, andtact may be needed.
- Copyright violations,nonsense or not. These should be removed immediately (not merelymoved).
- Plagiarism.Instead, the plagiarized content should be properly attributed (or paraphrased) unless it is also a copyright violation.
Dealing with patent nonsense
[edit]There are various ways to deal with total nonsense—use your good judgment to decide which is most appropriate:
- Replace it witha well-written article.
- Moveit to the page'stalk page.
- Moveit to the user's talk page.
- Remove it from the article if there is any acceptable content left in the article after that. Often patent nonsense is easy toundo.
Do consider that it might have been a test edit, anddon't bite the newbiesby calling them vandals in this case, but instead warn them with a personal note or by using the uw-test series of warning templates (Template:Uw-test1). Where vandal intent is clearwarnusing the uw-vandalism series of warning templates, andreport them as vandalsif they continue.
However, if a user objects because they believe the content is not patent nonsense, discuss the issue and try to reach a consensus. In particular, if someone offers to rework the "nonsense" into worthwhile content, please allow them reasonable time to do so.
If a page contains nothing but patent nonsense:
- First, examine the page history to determine whether the patent nonsense present replaced other earlier content. If so, restore the page to the latest revision before the content was replaced by patent nonsense.Warnusers responsible for introducing patent nonsense as above.
- Otherwise, identify it forspeedy deletion under the G1 criterionby placing{{db-g1}}or{{db-nonsense}}at the top of the page.Warnand report as above.
See also
[edit]
Articles
[edit]- Colorless green ideas sleep furiously,a notable instance of grammatically correct nonsense
- Sokal affair,nonsense that made it intoSocial Text
- Word salad