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The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas.
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  • Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through Wikipedia:Perennial proposals.
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Mass create redirects of abbreviations

On Wikipedia I have often created redirects from abbreviations I observed in real life, often abbreviations of U.S. states I see in the media (example: Anywheresville, Tx.)

In Tokyo I noticed that the subway stations are all using the abbreviation "XXX Sta." or "XXX sta." on English signage. Creation of multiple redirects collectively takes a long time, and many editing hours would be saved if an editor writes a bot to do mass creation of redirects like these:

  • XXX Univ. (and variants like "Univ") for universities
  • XXX, U.S. or Canadian state abbreviation (like Houston, TX or Houston, Tx.) for U.S. and Canadian cities
  • XXX HS for senior high schools (Lamar HS)
  • XXX Sta. (and sta.) for railway stations, like Shinjuku Sta.)

WhisperToMe (talk) 00:53, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If memory serves (and it may not; I'm sick, and my brain melts at low temperatures), User:Headbomb did similar work with academic journal abbreviations, and therefore might be able to help you figure out whether it's a good idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Awesome! I would appreciate getting his advice WhisperToMe (talk) 02:17, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sounds like a useful proposal, but individual classes of redirects need to be carefully thought out first. For example, is there a danger that Foobar, NC, a redirect for the town of Foobar in North Carolina, might not be confused for a village of the same name in South Africa's Northern Cape province, or that Foo, CA might be ambiguous between places in California and in Canada. (I'm admitting these examples are contrived – inasmuch as I don't know if such abbreviations are commonly used in this way in Canada or South Africa, and the chances for such coincidences are generally low – but they're illustrative of the potential for ambiguities that need to be explored.)
    Also, it's a good idea to be parsimonious: for example, don't create both XXX Univ. and XXX Univ – for a variety of reasons (some of which are documented at WP:COSTLY), redirects incur a maintenance cost over the long term and it is best to only create as many redirects as are strictly necessary. – Uanfala (talk) 14:58, 10 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Uanfala: 1. The part about not wanting to get tied into ambiguous place names sense, and I imagine part of it comes down to using Regex skillfully and part adding a routine a bot that checks what the destination article would be before writing the redirect?
    • 2. As for the bit about creating redirects, I have created both "XXX Univ. and XXX Univ" because of issues with Wikimedia's searching capabilities. Perhaps if they improve it will become less necessary? Also my understanding is that bots make redirect maintenance (often) less necessary as, if the destination article changes location, bots will later retarget all the redirects. **WhisperToMe (talk) 14:44, 15 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Visual change the appearance of user pages compared to regular pages

Title. When you click to a user page it's still confusing to me, and I assume to regular users, to differentiate immediately between an official edited page and a user page. I think that something very simple like a slightly darker gray background to user pages would be worlds more helpful for every party. Pretty simple suggestion. Kugihot (talk) 19:39, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

At the very top left you should see in big bold letters the title of the page. If it just says some article topic, like Plato, then it's an article. I'm not sure what an "official edited page" is, but if it says "Wikipedia:" with the colon and something follows that - it's a wiki policy, guideline, essay, noticeboard etc.. Example: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard or Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), if it starts with "User:" , like [[User:Kugihot]] then it's a user page. Hope that helps. — Ched (talk) 20:10, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A slightly darker grey background might make user pages difficult to read. At the top of the user pages there is a note saying user pages are user pages. Vorbee (talk) 06:21, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Adding the following to your User:YourNameHere/common.css will change the background color of the left and bottom panes of user and user talk pages to the specified color:
[class*="page-User_"] { background-color: #BFFFFF; }
Unfortunately, it will also change the color of pages in article namespace that start with "User ", like User interface. (edited) —[AlanM1(talk)]— 16:21, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I missed the fact that there are classes for each namespace, named "ns-x", where x is the namespace number from WP:namespace. So, this is better/faster and eliminates the problem with mainspace pages starting with "User ":
.ns-2 { background-color: #BFFFFF; }
To affect multiple namespaces, use a comma-separated list:
.ns-4, .ns-5 { background-color: #E0FFE0; }
—[AlanM1(talk)]— 17:20, 10 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone who is interested in this idea: Please put mw:Talk pages project on your watchlist. One of the projects might be making "talk" pages (all of them, not just article talk pages) visual different from other pages, so that it's more obvious that you should treat those differently (e.g., sign your comments on a talk page, but don't sign in the middle of articles). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:11, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Why is Wikipedia non-profit?

why don't we run ads at the top or bottom of articles?--SharabSalam (talk) 09:18, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Two different questions. But the answer is: Because we decided it this way, for a variety of reason. With respect to the second question: Without ads we are not beholden to advertisers. And we do not piss off users. And we waste less bandwidth. And we make the site more performant. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:25, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I thought that if we run ads, Wikimedia wouldn't be non-profit. I think if we added ads at the bottom of the article it wouldn't piss off users. Editors can also earn part of the money Wikimedia gets from the ads. That would be very helpful to editors who are editing here for free. Yesterday I watched an interview with an editor here who had made 1/4 or 3/4 (I don't remember) of what is in Wikipedia and when the interviewer asked him how much money he earns from this, he said none!. Isn't that very disappointing?--SharabSalam (talk) 09:43, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Non-profits can earn money, they just cannot make a profit (at least not one that is distributed to its principals, or that goes beyond its non-profit purpose). Adding ads would sure piss me off (and I'm a user). I'm sure others would share that sentiment. I doubt that there is an editor who made 1/4 or 3/4 or indeed any reasonable fraction of what is in Wikipedia, although we do have some very prolific contributors. Many of us who donate time to the project do so because it is a non-profit. Why should I give my work to a commercial entity? Unless they pay my going rate, which would be very hard to recoup with ads...at least when applied to all editors. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:02, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Most likely, the OP refers to the editor who was reported to have touched one-third of the articles on en-wiki. Clearly the OP didn't retain much more than the headline. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:59, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
According to CBS, as long as I make an edit to every article, I am responsible for the entire Wikipedia. –xenotalk 06:55, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at that piece of journalism, the non-English Wikipedias have "millions of translated article", which would leave very few original ones. Maybe I should tell the people on de: ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:26, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It would cease to be a free encyclopedia if it were run for profit and running ads results in the inevitable influence of advertisers on content (and other) policies. Wikipedia has been strict about conflicts of interest since forever, so I am sure there would be consensus against this if it was proposed - perhaps it has been in the past, not sure. Quora is a website which thinks it's a "competitor" of Wikipedia but is run for profit and has most of its modus operandi dictated by its advertising partners. In any case, even if the WMF did make money from advertisements on Wikipedia I doubt they would share any of it with the editors. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 10:02, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's not disappointing at all. There are many other reasons to create works than the profit motive. SportingFlyer T·C 11:23, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Allowing advertising on Wikipedia has been debated in the past (see Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements). The community of editors has consistently and strongly opposed advertising on Wikipedia, and I doubt that will change any time in the foreseeable future. - Donald Albury 13:23, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Non-profit because it shields from liability .....all because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.--Moxy 🍁 03:42, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that this is a for-fun kind of thing, not a money-making scheme. Geographyinitiative (talk) 09:40, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It isn't the non-profit status of the Wikimedia Foundation that allows it to avail itself of section 230 (Internet service providers and Internet search engine companies, for example, benefit from its protections). It's the lack of editorial control on its part, thereby assuring that the "information content provider" (as described in section 230) remains the Wikipedia users. isaacl (talk) 18:38, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Advertising implies tracking. How else would the advertisers be sure their advert has been delivered as many times as they're paying for? That in turn means violating the privacy of your IP address and your off-wiki identity which you were guaranteed when you signed up - Wikipedia:Why create an account? -- Cabayi (talk) 10:25, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I would suggest that perhaps Wikipedia should in fact allow some advertising. we are one of the top websites worldwide after all. there's no reason it should be so hard for Wikipedia to obtain enough funding to operate smoothly.--Sm8900 (talk) 13:05, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The Bible should have advertisements. The Bible is one of the top books in the world. Why not add some advertisements in every copy? No reason not to. Buddhist monks should have ads on their foreheads. Encyclopaedia Britannica should have a page of ads every ten pages. Merriam Webster should have thirty pages of ads at the back. All that wasted ad space on the sides of the Kaaba! Gravestones too! (actually I have seen a discrete ad on a gravestone) Hell, add adverstisements on the dollar bills! That would be awesome. Jails should be sponsored. "Bud Light Correctional Help Center" Your name should be an advertisement man- go change it. If you don't change your name to Dick Microsoft, you have wasted an economic opportunity. That's my opinion~~haha Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:22, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Pepsi Cola Mars Organic Molecule Analyser Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:45, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Geographyinitiative, why are Pepsi sponsoring something already sponsored by Mars? Cabayi (talk) 14:18, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The sad thing is that we already accept advertising, we just don't charge for it. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:07, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Large chunks of Wikipedia are already advertising. We have some companies’ entire product lines covered. We have navigation templates for many product lines. For example, we have a better catalogue of Microsoft products than Microsoft.com. – Levivich 06:21, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Money is the root of all evil. End. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:52, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I would suggest the OP to look at the history of Enciclopedia Libre - when even the slightest hint of ads came, the userbase of ESwiki rebelled and made a fork. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:21, 15 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have a feeling that discussion on whether Wikipedia should allow adverts. is already covered at Wikipedia: Perennial_proposals. Vorbee (talk) 18:46, 16 October 2019 (UTC) It is - it covered at Section 1.4 of this. Vorbee (talk) 18:51, 16 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mobile version diffs

Hi, so why isn't there a way to undo changes from the diffs in mobile version like the desktop version? I think if we add a button for undo next to thanks button it would be great. Most editors use mobiles while editing including me! I have to switch to desktop version if I need to revert.--SharabSalam (talk) 09:22, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@SharabSalam: reliable, consistent code just hasn't been developed yet - but you can try using or forking a userscript for this, such as meta:User:FR30799386/undo. — xaosflux Talk 15:46, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Xaosflux, I used that tool before, it was awesome. I stopped using it because the editor who made it got blocked (I think indefinitely) from English Wikipedia. I fear that they might use it to compromise editors accounts. I don't know how codes in Wikipedia work. Do you think it is safe?--SharabSalam (talk) 07:34, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@SharabSalam: I'd have to spend a little time reviewing it, but you can always fork it once you have a version that you think is safe (copy paste it to your own userspace) - you would not gain future "improvements" but you would not be subject to arbitrary changes. — xaosflux Talk 11:09, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Done! Thank you so much for your support.--SharabSalam (talk) 11:36, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@SharabSalam: You can undo/rollback changes on mobile if you enable mw:AMC mode on your device. – Ammarpad (talk) 06:38, 15 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Change in print stylesheet

When you print a page (or use the print stylesheet by any other means), the URL of external links are appended within parentheses after the link (as customary in print stylesheets). Since Wikipedia by nature has a lot of interwiki links, I would suggest that even those links have the URL appended. That would help tremendously in finding those link targets, because not every interwiki link's text is the same as its target.

Example:

The page Entity Framework has in its first paragraph an interwiki link to Visual Studio. When this section is printed, that link will only be underscored.

In the same History section, the second last paragraph, there is an external link to Entity Framework 6's Github repository. When this is printed, that link will be underscored with the URL appended, like this: 

   GitHub (https://github.com/aspnet/EntityFramework)

//End example.

I realise that one big downside with implementing interwiki links in the print stylesheet the way I proposed, is that some pages have a lot of interwiki links and those pages would get cluttered very quickly when printed. Could a compromise be that there is a toggle in user settings on whether or not you want interwiki URLs to be visible?

Oliver twistor (talk) 12:48, 15 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Idea development help needed: Preventing WP:PRIMARYTOPIC from being used as a shield to perpetuate androcentrism

Below is my draft proposal. I would appreciate as much feedback as possible:


WP:PRIMARYTOPIC should not be used as a shield to perpetuate androcentrism.

Okay, I may have lost a few of you there. First, let me explain what I mean by this, then I'll explain how I envisage this rule tweak being used in practice. Per the [Wikipedia article on the topic: ‘Androcentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing a masculine point of view at the centre of one’s world view, culture, and history, thereby marginalising femininity’. The essay, WP:WAW, sums it up as ‘language and images that make male the "Self" and female the “other”’. The essay goes on to advise: ‘Avoid labelling a woman as a female author or female politician, unless her gender is explicitly relevant to the article […] Linguists call [the practice] markedness. Treating a man who is a writer as a "writer" and a woman as a "woman writer" presents women as "marked", or the Other, requiring an adjective to differentiate them from the male default’.

Wikipedia article naming policy, however, can occasionally perpetuate (and entrench) such practices. A recent example comes courtesy of a requested page move, which I submitted, seeking to make the England national football team page a disambiguation page, with article currently given that title moved to ‘England men’s national football team’. Another editor, User:Jopal22, suggested “England football team (men’s senior)”. In truth, the new name of the article wouldn’t be of much incidence, so far as it didn’t show men as the ‘default’ gender, with women marginalised.

However, a common response arose. Wikipedia policy on the naming of articles, primarily WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, was used to justify the continued marginalisation of women. Though arguments were made (by myself and others) against the men’s team’s page being any more ‘primary’ than the women’s team, this argument was not persuasive, and no positive consensus was reached. If the wording of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC was amended, Wikipedia would recognise that there is no default gender, with WP:NOPRIMARY then applying. My suggestion is to amend the final paragraph of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC as follows:

In most cases, the topic that is primary with respect to usage is also primary with respect to long-term significance; in many other cases, only one sense of primacy is relevant. In a few cases, there is some conflict between a topic of primary usage (Apple Inc.) and one of primary long-term significance (Apple). In such a case, consensus may be useful in determining which topic, if any, is the primary topic. If a gender qualifier is required to disambiguate one topic from another, it must be mirrored in any corresponding articles (e.g. United States men's national soccer team and United States women's national soccer team, rather than United States national soccer team and United States women’s national soccer team).
— Proposed changes in bold.

This small change would help us take a big step towards preventing the marginalisation, the marking, and the othering of women on Wikipedia. We must recognise the harm that Wikipedia does, not only by failing to challenge androcentrism, but by actively perpetuating it. Note: User:LtPowers raised this eight years ago, but I’m not sure it’s been raised since. See here for the discussion that generated at the time. Domeditrix (talk) 20:48, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't a terrible idea in a vacuum, but I don't think it has any chance of going anywhere in the context of Wikipedia. The general principle is that except in extreme cases, Wikipedia follows general practice; it doesn't try to set it. Moreover, when you frame this in terms of "marginalizing women" and start using dog whistles like "marked" and "othering", I think you're setting yourself up to fail. This sort of approach will undoubtedly alienate a lot of people. And in any case, I think the ultimate problem is with PRIMARYTOPIC. It's vague, and people can often insert their own biases when invoking it. But trying to carve out an exception (even a noble one) for one case is potentially going to lead to many more exceptions being (or at least attempting to be) carved out. And I think that's going to make a lot of people squeamish as well. But that's just me, and others might disagree. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 21:12, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have a few things to say around this, so will respond a bit more later. But on the whole this is an issue that keeps coming up and it does need clearer guidance in wikipedia across articles. At the moment we are slowly getting messy wikipedia pages like Template:England national football team, where the topic title links to the mens team, but the contents are a mixture of mens/womens/other. But one thing I would say is if it wasn't painful to discuss it in talk pages, I don't think the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC does stop us using the names “England football team (men’s senior)” and “England football team (women’s senior)” as I suggested. The PRIMARYTOPIC is build on what you'd get back when you search for a subject, including wikipedia page views...but the answer to that also depends on when you search. The popularity of these articles is cyclical and if you look at https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&start=2019-03-26&end=2019-10-16&pages=England_national_football_team%7CEngland_women%27s_national_football_team you will see that undeniably (and this will be in the media too), that the PRIMARYTOPIC could be applied to the womens team for a period, as it was way more popular during the womens world cup. So the argument that there is a clear PRIMARYTOPIC is false. Therefore is might be better if we look to change wikipedia policy to change PRIMARYTOPIC to have the caveat that it must be consistently primary to not need clarification. Also be careful not to come across as WP:RGW in your reasoning for wanting to changes, as there will be big push back on that Jopal22 (talk) 21:57, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think there are a lot of interesting ideas here. In particular, one way to circumvent this could be to incorporate language from Wikipedia:Writing about women#Male is not the default. There is policy for this elsewhere, it just isn't articulated explicitly in PRIMARYTOPIC. SiliconRed (talk) 22:42, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Just noting, that Wikipedia:Writing about women#Male is not the default is not wikipedia policy, it is a WP:ESSAY. i.e. Essays have no official status, and do not speak for the Wikipedia community as they may be created and edited without overall community oversight. Following the instructions or advice given in an essay is optional. Jopal22 (talk) 07:28, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm against Domeditrix's version of this, primarily on the grounds of Wikipedia not being designed to try to drive change. It would probably be positive if the media did this (and then us), but I don't want us to have to spend huge amounts of time considering and then defending various attempts to push the public into certain behaviour as if we do this a strong case can be made for other changes being needed. Nosebagbear (talk)
I do, however, think there might be something for Jopal22's idea that PRIMARYTOPIC should include the caveat "consistently primary to not need clarification". I'm not sure where we'd draw the line on consistently (if one group is the primary topic 358 days a year, that would probably be sufficient), but I don't believe it's so damned to vagueness to be ruled out on those grounds. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:35, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
A few things I would challenge
  • Just because something has a female identify does not mean the mirror is "mens". For instance The Open Championship, World Snooker Championship and PDC World Darts Championship have female versions, but the "mirror" version is non gendered and can include women. For instance I wouldn't want Reanne Evans to be changed from This made her the first woman ever to win a World Championship match to This made her the first woman ever to win a Men's World Championship match as if she is competing somewhere she doesn't belong. So I would caveat "mirror" to being backed up by the governing body.
  • With things like Manchester United Football Club and Manchester United Women Football Club this are is still messy. The Football Club includes both mens and womens teams so there should theoretically an article called Manchester United Football Club with Manchester United (men's team) and Manchester United (women's team) subarticles like American college sports (e.g. Kansas Jayhawks). But this is where I back up the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Nearly everyone looking at Manchester United Football Club would expect to see it dominated by the mens team/history (womens team has only been around a couple of year). Also given growth of womens football is relatively new, the goal post are moving about how they frame things e.g. changing it from framing as Manchester United Women Football Club to Manchester United Football Club Women. Therefore I think it would be overkill and far too soon to look at altering football club articles. (especially as Man U refer to them as the "First Team" and "Women's team - wikipedia follows the conventions used by the media and governing bodies and does not try push a progressive viewpoint without this)
  • Where it should be quite clear is things like 2020 ICC T20 World Cup being renamed as 2020 ICC Men's T20 World Cup (just look at the logo in the same page!)
Therefore I would look for two changes to primary topic. a) If there is cyclicality for primary topic then we should treat as no primary and disambiguate. b) If the official name or governing body references gender to disambiguate it competitions, then wikipedia should too.
Jopal22 (talk) 14:54, 19 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I most often get the conclusion or argument in many such male gender tournament or team cases that, it is in-consistent with the other articles , which often create chaos. Today all federation and council of sports are bringing disambiguation in their tournaments. As suggested above by Jopal22, Wikipedia policies should be reformed accordingly, as in recent cases it can be seen that the article name of the tournament is inconsistent with the logo of the tournamnet itself rather than all other previous editions of tournament. And most important point which should be addressed, wikipedia always believe in providing citations and sources, so when all citations show gender disambiguation, why the articles are ambiguous in nature. I think its high time that this things should be addressed. And more than that such a change is not new, many more articles are being created disambiguously like that of Men's Hockey World Cup, 2019 FIVB Volleyball Men's Nations League, 2020 Men's World Ice Hockey Championships, NCAA Division I men's swimming and diving championships and almost all article related to athletics. My simple logic and idea is- If any board, council, federation and authority addressing name of their tournament, competition, meets and even team in a disambiguous way, distinguishing "Men's" from "Women's" and all sources indicating the same, then Wikipedia should also be created with the same official name.Dey subrata (talk) 19:29, 19 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Dey subrata: - I guess your fun next task with "If any board, council, federation and authority addressing name of their tournament, competition, meets and even team in a disambiguous way, distinguishing "Men's" from "Women's" and all sources indicating the same" is where the official name gets changed but the sources stick with common usage and don't usually/ever call it by the changed name Nosebagbear (talk) 22:59, 20 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is, incidentally, the issue with the England national football team article. The English Football Association website references the "Men's Senior" and "Women's Senior" teams. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:COMMONNAME have been used to prevent any name change to the article of the men's team reflecting this. Domeditrix (talk) 23:13, 20 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Domeditrix: and @Nosebagbear: See if we think every board or federation will do same at a time, it will never happen, so is with the source. There are 100s of games and sports and 1000s of tournaments. It will never happen instantaneously. So our move here will be to change things step by step. Like for example now ICC (cricket council) started to distinguish Men's tournament from Women's tournament, they start it from 2020 ICC Men's T20 World Cup and 2020 ICC Women's T20 World Cup bringing disambiguation. The most interesting thing with it is all major or popular website of cricket are also disambiguously displaying names of tournament and Men's record and Women's record separately. Even ICC too have shown record separately now. Some sports already did are "Hockey" and "Athletics". So I think we need to take one sports at a time and change wikipedia articles accordingly. Otherwise if we wait for all sports to bring disambiguation, it will never gonna happen. Dey subrata (talk) 23:55, 20 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I never said, or even implied, that'd I'd advise shifting sports wholesale or not at all. Nor did I say that all or nearly all sources on a tournament (et al) would need to change to match the official name before altering the wikipedia article would be warranted. However, for any given sport/tournament/etc, the recent sources would need to be at least someway using the new name. Once it's into "no-consensus territory", then obviously we'd opt for the official name. That doesn't however help in use cases where the sources are always not using it. I supported the consistently as a possible alternative, with the caveat that consistently doesn't mean 100% and further discussion would be needed on that aspect. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:44, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think the proposal as written isn't too helpful. There are reasons why things are listed as "women's" without the opposite. There is a WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS argument here. The snooker one above is a good one, as is any sport where the rules don't specifically say it's a men's game, but most of the players are men. Other sports do have "men's and women's". For instance, the 2010 WPA Men's World Nine-ball Championship was the only event to be known as the men's event (as opposed to the female event of the same name, but later dropped the name as it stopped women from wanting to play in the qualifiers.


II still haven't seen a compelling argument that the articles for national sides need changing above the Primary topic. Real life has a way of disambiguating these topics, we should follow suit (regardless of how sexist it is). If it changes (and it most likely will) then we should too, but not until then.Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 19:41, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Use of IUCN range maps

I am writing an online book about birds of Sierra Leone (which will be free) and would like to use the IUCN range maps. IUCN so far has refused to give me permission. Accounts in Wikipedia for many species, however, include the IUCN map. For example the map for African Darter appears to be identical to the IUCN map except for the color. For many other species, neither Wikipedia nor Wiki Commons-Images has a range map. My questions are:

1. Has the specific issue of using IUCN maps in Wikipedia been discussed (I could not find a discussion)? If so where? 2. If not, would it make sense to discuss the issue (hopefully involving IUCN). Topics for possible consideration include: a. Could Wikipedia approach the IUCN asking for help in resolving the issue. The current state in which some maps are reproduced exactly (except for color) seems a little silly. b. If IUCN will not let Wikipedia use its maps, then what is the best way for users like me to make maps based on IUCN.

Thank you.

Jon Bart — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathanbart (talk • contribs) 07:32, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • The IUCN Terms of Use are pretty clear: [1] If you are certain the African Darter map is the same as the IUCN map except for the colour, it needs to be deleted as a copyright violation as it would be considered a derivative work by the copyright owner. I assume you've emailed them and have not received a response? SportingFlyer T·C 10:28, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comment. IUCN responded to my request to use the range maps saying I could not but that there might be a product sometime next year that would meet my needs. I replied making some of the points in my initial post and they did not respond. I'll call the person at IUCN but wanted first to learn whether the topic had already been discussed. As to your comment about the Darter, I agree. I'm just saying it is an unfortunate situation: (a) Wikipedia has lots (probably hundreds) of pages that violate copyright law, (b) the only way to avoid breaking the copyright law is to modify the maps but as far as I know no guidelines exist on how much modification is enough, (c) why would we want to modify the maps anyway?, and (d) IUCN is an NGO getting money to carry out charitable work; does it really make sense for it to spend a lot of that donor money and then not let anyone use the results? I just thought Wikipedia might be in a better position to raise these issues than I acting as an individual. - Jon Bart — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathanbart (talk • contribs) 22:51, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • The short answer is, we unfortunately won't be able to host any maps which are dependent on the IUCN data, even if they're self-created. They will not be willing to change their license to make it compatible with ours (it's not impossible, but it's very unlikely especially given their response to you.) I would concur Wikipedia might be in a better position, but that doesn't mean the answer will change (there's probably very practical reasons why they haven't released it publicly, especially given the number of potential copyright holders in the information.) SportingFlyer T·C 07:41, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for these comments, especially informing me about the agreement signed back in 2010 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:IUCN_Red_List). I have not been able to find the agreement but assume it provides the authority for producing and licensing the distribution maps. I'm going to call the GIS person from the IUCN who wrote me, refer to this agreement, and seek his advice on how to proceed. Jon Bart — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathanbart (talk • contribs) 05:32, 24 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pinging me. The agreement with IUCN was that Commons could create maps based on their spatial data [2], not use their maps directly, citing the IUCN red list and their contributors as the authors of the data underlying the maps. So, you can download the shape file and use it in any GIS to produce a map of the distribution range, acknowledging the fact that you used the data they compiled, and upload it to commons with a free license. The negotiations with them were tedious because of the many contributors to the data, and I think that it would have been better to have a more dynamic solution than having static maps, but that was what I could manage at the time. The GIS person that I dealt with has since left IUCN, so I don't think I can do much about this anymore. If it helps I can probably fetch the email conversation I had with them. GoEThe (talk) 09:29, 24 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Vital articles, level 6 proposal

I am relatively new to Wikipedia as an editor, so please feel free to redirect me if this is the wrong place to start.

I am a regular consumer of the Vital Articles project and have been following the development of both the level 4 and level 5. I realize it is premature to start a level 6, as level 5 is only at 33,666 articles of the proposed 50,000, however, I would like to propose to the community that they consider starting level 6, mainly to help with some of what I observe in the talk page discussion. (I'm also aware I might be missing entirely a discussion forum where more in-depth collaboration is happening, so if what I'm proposing is already in the works, please let me know; and, if someone can point me to those places, I would be a happy fly on the wall there.)

At level 5, what I notice is that major topics are developing into vast categories. For example, at level 5, mathematics has 1100 (targeted) articles, literature 1000, and language 590. However, these areas easily have well over 1000 important topics. Consider, for example, the more than 7,000 languages known of around the world. As someone who enjoys consuming knowledge in the encyclopedic format Wikipedia offers, I like knowing after level 5, for example, what next order of topics would be important.

My proposal has a more practical motivation, however. Having a level 6 right now, rather than when level 5 is complete, would allow authors/editors a larger dumping ground to lay out many of the proposed articles that might make it into level 5 but are still being debated. Having a preliminary level 6 would allow Wikipedians to make some estimates on how many possible articles might be in a given category at level 6 (for example, the language category might have a target of 2,000 articles at level 6). Additionally, this might inspire some Wikipedians to develop many less-visited articles that are brought to light by this method of prioritizing further topics.

Using the same scaling factor as from level 4 to 5 (being 10,000 articles, to 50,000 articles) one could envision a level 6 focusing on the most important 250,000 articles on Wikipedia. This then could be tackled and refined once level 5 is finished. But having it laid in place would allow the authors/editors of level 5 to lay down many of the competing candidates for level 5 in the level 6 area, then work backwards by refining that through ongoing discussion. It would also allow contributors to suggest topics that might go in level 5 or level 6, giving them more option than simply being allowed, or rejected (and then forgotten about).

Because it is impractical to start dumping 250,000 articles in this possible level 6, I'd propose that if this idea were started, it would be limited to categories, i.e. the language, mathematics, and literature example I gave. One would not need to worry about whether the estimated total is too accurate. It is enough to say, for instance, that we could imagine if language has a target of 590 articles in level 5, then a level 6 target could be 2,000. It might be practical to make sub-categories for each of these level 6 topics, rather than just a level 6 (i.e. "Vital Articles level 6 (language)", "Vital Articles Level 6 (mathematics)"), so that each major category in level 5 could be developed separately as level 6, while level 5 is being put together. This is just a thought.

I appreciate any help / input you might give on this matter. Meanwhile, I will continue to read my way through the vital articles. It is a great endeavor and a good system to organize information, and my hope is over time this approach will allow Wikipedia to curate and refine articles through a method of rigor, in order of priority using the vital articles priority as a guide. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnrobinrt (talk • contribs) 05:43, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Already at the level 5, many of the topics are not very vital, and I suspect that many topics yet to be written should be at this level. Projects probably need to explore possible topics that could be written even at the level 5. A deeper level certainly would not be vital, as it would be beyond most encyclopedias. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:22, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Like Graeme, I find most of the vital-5s not at all vital, and so I'd be firmly against yet another layer Nosebagbear (talk) 09:12, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'd already support deleting level 5 with how broad it is. I do not want another level, as I believe that would be waaaaaay too broad. InvalidOS (talk) 15:17, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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