Wikipedia talk:Complete bollocks

message: Having a policy or project by this effronterous name seems to be incompatible with WP:AGF (one of the most important parts of which, I thought, was acting as though you were assuming good faith even when someone obviously is making deliberate trouble.) Is this really sufficiently different from patent nonsense to warrant a separate project? Robin Johnson 16:54, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it is. This is a step up from patent nonsense. It's difficult to assume good faith when faced with articles of the calibre described as complete bollocks. Stifle 16:41, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It just seems a bit uncivil to me. I'd be happy telling someone they weren't using a neutral POV, or that what they were writing was unverifiable, but I wouldn't be happy telling them they were talking complete bollocks. Even if they were. Oh well. Robin Johnson 17:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What a good page.  "effronterous" is also a word(?) that deserves to enter the language, assuming it hasn't otherwise, yet.  Midgley 23:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: By a lucky coincidence, I was recently editing details of the court case surrounding Never Mind The Bollocks, wherein the magistrates found the word "bollocks" in a title to be not "effronterous" after all... :-) --DaveG12345 14:33, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not the word bollocks that I mind, it's telling people that they are talking bollocks. I see the difference between "You are talking bollocks" and "This article is bollocks", but I'm still not convinved the latter is quite civil. Robin Johnson 16:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incompatible with AGF? 

message: I like that.Bjones 00:10, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heh 

message: why doesn't WP:CB redirect here? That would make my day. Melchoir 09:00, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  I approve. In fact, 

message: Nuff said. 83.208.165.249 (talk) 19:45, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Best page I've read on wikipedia so far 

message: Yep. - David Gerard 12:19, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Good one

message: I'm amazed that this needs to be stated, like most of the guidelines it seems to just be common sense (including *groan* Wikipedia:Common sense) but at least it's amusing. Leithp 21:21, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: More approval

message: All right, in the light of the MfD it seems I (and the anonymous nominator) was the only one getting bristled by this. I've been bold and put a "not to be taken too seriously" notice at the top - that'd probably have been enough to stop me getting angry, so maybe it'll help some other people smile. I toned it down from "intended as humour" to "not to be taken too seriously" because I can see that this semi-policy is not entirely a joke. Hope this is okay. Robin Johnson 10:05, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the humour tag works well for me and I'd have added the joke image if you hadn't got there first. Just zis Guy you know? 23:36, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not to be taken too seriously 

message: The article states that the term is used to indicate an incorrect and unverifiable item. There is no significant difference between this and Wikipedia:Verifiability. The main difference is that this ttitle refers to an informal british term, while Wikipedia:Verifiability uses formal, clear language. The other difference is that Wikipedia:Verifiability is offical policy, while this article has a warning that it is a joke. It should be redirected to Wikipedia:Verifiability. 72.139.119.165 21:19, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: First, there are no significant differences in the topic, not the article. Informal terms do not belong on Wikipedia (unless they are in some way important) and all discusions in VfDs should use formal policy. In case a discussion uses the term, the redirect would indicate that it is related to WP:V. Also, only two users reverted the edit by the IP number, and one of them simply stated that other users should get 24 hours to comment on the change. Polonium 22:50, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The tme to raise thes was at MfD.  The article survived MfD with a strong consus to keep (much stronger than at most AfDs).  You can take it to WP:DRV I guess , or nominate again some time, but in the mean time it seems that the community wants to be able to call some things complete bollocks. Just zis Guy you know? 23:35, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm with Zis Guy and BL - if I'd seen this changed to a redirect I would definitely have rolled it back - this page has a distinct use. Informal terms have great use within wikipedia space - though they should not be used in article space. But as BL says, this isn't in article space. And as Zis Guy points out, the mfd was overwhelmingly in favour of keeping this page. Grutness...wha? 00:05, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I happen to agree with your viewpoint - I think this article is at best in-joke-cruft and at worst harmful and upsetting - but I also have to agree with Guy/BL/Grut - where were you in the MfD? We very recently had a consensus to keep the article, so single-handedly redirecting it was the Wrong Thing. Robin Johnson 15:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirect 

message: If you search for the phrase "emerging theory" or search for the phrase "widely disputed" every so often you should be able to catch newly-created pages that may fail verifiability criteria. Use these links wisely to find articles that may not meet Wikipedia's standards and then follow the usual procedures for reporting them (user warning templates, npov/fact templates, AfD, whatever seems applicable in each case). If these phrases tend to fairly reliably flag articles as needing attention of one kind or another then by all means let's give them this attention!
(It should be noted that at this moment both searches seem to mainly turn up legitimate articles. Clearly, blindly nominating articles for deletion solely because they contain either phrase would be a Bad Idea. But keeping an eye on articles that pop up with these, and maybe other phrases, may not be a bad idea.) --69.196.212.30 23:37, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Finding possibly bogus articles 

message: And the spoken page is great too :) —porges(talk) 22:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm going to guess that whoever made the spoken version probably had a lot of fun doing it. :D Kudos to him for not cracking up while reading it! --Ciaran H 09:35, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you Porge and Ciaran H - I only just found your comments.  I prepared and read the spoken article for Wikiproject Spoken Wikipedia (WP:WSW) - What you are hearing there is the 11th revision of the spoken article, cause the first 10 times I read it I nearly wet myself laughing and screwed the recordings up!  Still, I am glad you enjoy the work.  Why not consider coming along and joining the project? We need more voices and more artists to do these spoken works!  Just go to Spoken Wiki and read up on us!  Thor Malmjursson 10:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thanks, whoever did this 

message: "This strongly implies that they must also be true."
:True/False should not be reflected in the article, leaving the reader to decide for themselves.  Flying_Spaghetti_Monster, with a touch more WP:NPOV, is a good example.   I do like the idea, though.  BTW, what is a bollock?  GChriss 04:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ohh, that is British. GChriss 04:32, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bollock Secretlondon 14:03, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia deciding Fact vs. Fiction 

message: "Proud Tanuki carries flask of sake and outsize testicles".
One of the funniest individual sentences i've ever read. Whoever's responsible should be very proud. -W guice 12:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  picture caption 

message: I find that there are some pseudo-academic subjects, like the instruction of schoolteachers or business managers, that need to inflate their vocabulary and operate at inappropriate levels of abstraction to maintain the pretense that they are in fact academic disciplines.  This is probably a US-specific problem: don't really know if Cambridge or the Sorbonne offer courses in Salesmanship or have a programme leading to the Master of Business Administration degree, but I sort of doubt that these things loom large in their offerings.  
I take a hard line on these articles for both intelligibility and notability: piffling in an inappropriately abstract way about "process" and "systems" in these homely but quite concrete subjects is a dead giveaway, as are elaborate rings of rhetorical tautology.  The defining line here is that when you strip away the abstractions and put it all in plain English, you find that you could have thunk it all up yourself, and the only contribution that isn't baldly obvious is the obscuring blizzard of abstract words.  In the USA, there are academic journals that publish papers on this rubbish.  Worse, there are people who make money selling seminars and books about this stuff.  Much of it is borderline spam, hyping various business consultants.  The problem is that it can be made to look referenced and "verifiable," so it falls through the cracks of standard policies.  - Smerdis of Tlön 15:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd be all for some sort of proposal for a plain English policy on Wikipedia (although it'd be more credible if plain English were a better article itself.) Robin Johnson (talk) 15:19, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've considered some additions to the Plain English article, but most of what I would have added is already present at legalese or Plain English Movement.  I may nevertheless try to draft something along these lines. - Smerdis of Tlön 18:42, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: FWIW, I have started an essay on the subject at Wikipedia:Plain English.  You are invited to take a look. - Smerdis of Tlön 18:52, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another encouraging word 

message: Kudos to whoever added the poem here. That is a classic. Carcharoth 16:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't get it. :( Vitriol 15:51, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nice poem! 

message: I wonder why WP:BALLS shortcuts to this article -- I would think it should shortcut to something like WP:BB. I'd support changing it to that effect, hopefully without my suffering blunt force trauma to that general vicinity. -Etafly 21:20, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Bollocks" is a British English term for balls... I don't know if you already knew that or if this clarifies things for you. Anyway... that's probably the reason for the link. That Ole' Cheesy Dude (Talk to the hand!) 20:55, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP:BALLS? 

message: The second sentence of this essay is in direct contradiction to the the wikipedia's policy on verifiability.  This essay states:
:
:"The policies of Wikipedia state that articles must be verifiable and stated from a neutral point of view. This strongly implies that they must also be true."
The first sentence of WP:VER states that the wikipedia aims for "verifiability, not truth."
If we work on topics long enough there may be times when our personal conclusions of what is "true" may be at odds with what the references state.  In those cases we have to go with what the references state -- not what we believe is true.  WP:OR and WP:NPOV cause us to discount what we personally believe to be true.
I question whether essays should depend on what we personally believe to be true.  Geo Swan (talk) 02:09, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  This essay contradicts [[WP:VER]] 

message: Why does this article not have a "humour" template on it? Elements of it are quite obviously meant as funny. The reason for deletion (of the template) was that the information should be taken seriously. I sincerely doubt that just because an article has a humour template placed on it that the message won't be taken in. I move that the template be restored. That Ole' Cheesy Dude (Talk to the hand!) 02:38, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Humorous content 

message: For those of us with autism (no joke) could there please be some objective, absolute note about the whole poem and especially the commentary after being a joke example for the article?Sinsearach (talk) 19:18, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Poem and its commentary, Joking, yes?