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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Forums

Its difficult to continue discussions on wikipedia and some dedicated forums that kept a list of links ("subscriptions") where I had posted would be valuable and stop me from having to look for the page I'd posted on (usally a few clicks in itself), scroll down the TOC for the thread I posted on and then, scroll down to see the most recent comments. I keep leaving messages and forgetting where I left them and I leave so many messages in so many different places, it's difficult to continue discussions. I may very well not make it back here to read people's negative responses and argue my point... --Username132 (talk) 17:51, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion this is but one of many problems that would be solved by modifying the software to organize talk pages as message boards. Our culture is already so strongly against editing or deleting the comments of others that it makes little sense to give us the flexibility to do so, and we spend altogether too much time dealing with manual archiving and formatting our responses with appropriate indentation and so on. Wiki just doesn't make sense for discussion pages like this. Deco 21:07, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I have to agree, but it's going to be low-priority. It's just too much work for something that works now (albeit imperfectly). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
The advantage of the current system is that it does make that you have to learn wiki markup. Garion96 (talk) 22:36, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
It's a lot of work yes, but it's one-time work by a few people that produces an ongoing benefit for many people. As for wiki markup, there's no reason it can't be used within messages. I'm considering implementing a prototype of this sometime on my own Wikimedia server - maybe they'll take a patch from me. As for vandalism, I think letting admins delete messages is probably sufficient - it doesn't really matter how long it sits around on talk pages, they're not the "product". Deco 00:25, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I find that discussions on Wikipedia are very difficult to follow and too long. I think there should be some sort of threading system. Or we could have a Wikipedia forum hosted on Google Groups (I wrote the Google Groups article - please give feedback at Wikipedia:Article Feedback Desk). I will be happy to own/manage the group. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:54, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
The devs have rejected usage of a forum as too unsecure for our purposes. (Although maybe this was just specifically meant for phpBB.) Anyway, the current system works fine IMO. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Shouldn't this be among the perennial proposals anyway? Johnleemk | Talk 16:12, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
It seems silly to assert that a discussion board is insecure (although phpBB might be) - it's just a different interface that provides useful functions for organizing and navigating discussions among people, which is what we do on talk pages and discussion pages. The current system is workable, but has an array of disadvantages:
  • It's difficult for new users to use. How many times have you seen an anonymous user post something at the top of a talk page, or misformat a reply, or screw up merging an edit conflict, or forget to sign their post using the magic tildes?
  • It's annoying to painstakingly correctly format replies, especially with nontrivial formatting, or when the replies get deeply nested and the indenting has to be "reset". In large threads it's soon impossible to tell who is reply to who.
  • Pages become very large very quickly and have to be manually archived, requiring constant attention, otherwise they become too slow to edit. A forum interface would allow deeply nested replies to be hidden and only recent posts to be displayed.
  • A forum would be user configurable so a person could choose whether to view recent or old posts at the top, how many recent posts to display, how deeply nested replies to view. It would allow them to watch threads of interesting to them (rather than just entire pages), highlight their own posts, get e-mail notifications of updates, and so on.
  • A forum would not have edit conflicts. The concurrent replies would just be simultaneously attached to the thread.
  • Discussion pages are ugly, which makes them even less pleasant and more difficult to read.
In short, yes, it is broken. Yes, we should fix it. I barely even use forums but the advantages are painstakingly obvious here. Deco 21:04, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
As a frequent user of forums and someone who programmed a barebones forum myself, I disagree - for our purposes on Wikipedia, talk pages work better because they are organic. And as I alluded above, this is indeed a perennial proposal. Johnleemk | Talk 10:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
An idea isn't bad, just because its been suggested before. The current system of talk pages is a total mess. It's rediculously wasteful to have to watch a talk page with lots of unrelated edits, so that one can see the single reply to a message of interest. Plus, the current system, just can't scale properly. When lots of people are editing at the same time, you get those stupid "edit conflicts", which is silly. I'm not editing another person's text, so I shouldn't get an edit conflict. Also, we have absurd expectations of newbies, to be able to understand how things work. --Rob 10:53, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
I understand if you take that perspective, but really, while we may edit our own posts, or occasionally reformat threads, most of the time we treat it like a message board anyway - flexibility you don't use isn't useful. But the proof is in the pudding - eventually I'll get a prototype of this going and see how that works. Deco 12:06, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

How long until we can vote on it? I really think more people would welcome the change than oppose it. The discussion functions are the worst thing on wikipedia (or maybe co-worst with the slow page-loading that sometimes occurs). --Username132 (talk) 14:49, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think a mere vote is adequate for such a disruptive and difficult software change. It needs to be first established as effective in at least one case study external to English Wikipedia. Deco 08:08, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
When do you estimate your prototype to be ready? --Username132 (talk) 11:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm afraid it'll probably be a while. I'm just one person and got lots of other things to do. Deco 23:26, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd suggest you post at Mediazilla:1234 to note that you're taking up the bug, if you plan to seriously work on this (even if it's a long timeframe). I doubt the devs are going to suddenly take this up, but it's good to keep people informed to minimize the risk of duplication of effort. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:54, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the link and the suggestion. Deco 23:57, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

User:Conrad Devonshire/Better means of identifying when an article receives or loses featured status

This is a proposal for the purpose of making it easier to identify the edit revision in an article's edit history at which point it has received/lost its featured status.--Conrad Devonshire Talk 04:28, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


For Warhammer 40,000...

Everybody probably still remembers me as the kid who screwed up on the Imperial Guard article, but I just thought it'd be neat if somebody ran an article on the big Dark Crusade campaign that started recently, like what it's about and a basic storyline... any volunteers? Sqrlaway 11:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

We didn't know you were a kid then. Was that screw-up what started the infamous headlong retreat in disarray and chaos of the Imperial Guard at the Battle of Waterloo, lighting a panic running through the French lines ("The Guard retreats. Save yourself if you can!"), thereby leading to the total French defeat? Anyway, that is history, and we're willing to forget it. Hopefully you've grown up since. --LambiamTalk 13:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


Proposal: Articles with featured article status are automatically semi-protected

As Wikipedia moves towards being a more and more finished encyclopedia in many of its articles; it would be useful not to waste as much energy fighting off vandals. i recommend Articles with featured article status are automatically semi-protected. 4.250.132.134 15:44, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

User:Raul654/protection. Johnleemk | Talk 16:24, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Also, featured articles are not strictly the ones on the Main Page, so this is even less desirable in that respect.--Sean Black 17:23, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Static version and Wikipedia:Stable versions, two similar but much broader proposals. Vandalism is a pain but usually quickly reverted - more problematic is well-meaning but misguided edits which degrade an article's quality over time. Worldtraveller 01:31, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Who says Wikipedia is moving towards "being a more and more finished encyclopedia"? Reminds me of the 19th century patent office official who proposed closing the patent office since everything possibly invented had already been. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:40, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
If we semi-protect our best (and most popular) articles (and the ones newbies are most likely to see), we may as well semi-protect the whole encyclopedia. Not necessarily a bad idea... Captainj 17:33, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Only semi-protect those articles linked to from the Main Page. Pcu123456789 01:34, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Automatic, personalized RfA alerts

There has been debate about a system of alerts for WP:RfA nominations. User:ShortJason is seeking collaborators for his new RfA publicity campaign. Demand is being weighed for an alternative proposal for a personalized opt-in alerts system: to express an interest in this, sign up here. The obvious extension of this system would be to be alerted of any WP:RfCs or even WP:RFARs. The system would be relatively easy to implement, if there is sufficient demand to justify it, although assistance from Wikipedians with bots would be appreciated. TheGrappler 05:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


A system of continuous approval for sysops, volunteers and users alike.

Since I have not been editing on the Wikipedia for very long and I have plenty of work I can do to keep me busy I have included myself in the following proposal as a user. I have three ideas: 1.) that a ballot for electing a system operator be broken down into many attributes so that each attribute can be voted on individually in the same manner as a jury ballot is designed to cover each and every legal issue in a case, 2.) the status of system operators, volunteers and ordinary users be subject to a running ballot similar to the feedback score eBay uses to continuously rate each seller, and 3.) that monetary fines be established and agreed upon for any misdeeds or misbehaviors in the exercise of one's duties similar to the method used by sports clubs to regulate the behavior of their members. i make these proposals in good faith and for the betterment of the Wikipedia and of all Wikipedians. ...IMHO (Talk) 18:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Monetary fines only work if we are paid as well. I await your first payment. --Golbez 18:21, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Fines would not be collected by deduction from your paycheck but rather from your reputability bond. ...IMHO (Talk) 20:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
What is this reputability bond? --Golbez 22:32, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
A reputability bond is simply what it sound like. You (or a bonding company) put up a financial guarantee (the bond) that your work will live up to your reputation. You may for instance be reputed or said to be the finest craftsman in the field of yacht repair but do the work while intoxicate. An alternative is the performance bond wherein you guarantee that regardless of your reputation or credentials the job you do will meet or surpass expectations without complaint. ...IMHO (Talk) 23:15, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
We punish bad volunteers by banning them. Is that not enough? — Saxifrage ✎ 06:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
No. We should burn them at the stake. --LambiamTalk 13:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Risk of financial loss works everywhere else including current Socialist countries. ...IMHO (Talk) 15:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
But what of financial gain? From what you say, it sounds like I can lose money by clicking the wrong thing, but no matter what, my coffers never grow. Sorry, but no thanks. I'm poor. --Golbez 00:35, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
You already benefit financially by not having to pay a subscription fee to view articles or to interact with other authors, editors and contributors. If you are in need of money the information you gain here at no cost should help you gain financially elsewhere. If you need more money then you might learn here about the futures market and as a result be able to make a financial contribution to the Wikipedia. You do not need to be a sysop to edit or to make article contributions but as a sysop you need to be responsible. The risk of financial loss keeps this in focus. Extending the idea to users might also encourage them to discuss their contributions in talk pages first before editing an article and would most likely terminate vandalism. Its not the amount of the fine that counts but rather its effect on your psyche. You are not the only one who is turned off about the prospect of being fined for doing something they should not do but the law no longer allows real spankings. ...IMHO (Talk) 22:55, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

This isn't altogether dissimilar from the German Wikipedia's "Web of Trust" system - see below. TheGrappler 16:33, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Original research

In many cases an article may start off as including no original research or being based on original research but after a few edits in response to editorial suggestions or requests for clarity or expressions of confusion on specific points there may simply be no way to accidentally or intentional avoid inclusion of original research in an article in order to make the clarification or to eliminate confusion by anyone who lacks the ability to not engage in original thinking.

The problem of upholding the "no original research" policy here in the Wikipedia is very much like a similar problem in the Wiktionary of "no neologisms". The way the Wiktionary handles neologisms (or protologisms) the Wiktionary name for neologisms) is to allow them but require that they be posted on a special page called the Wiktionary:List of protologisms.

If there is no legal reason why original research can not be published in the Wikipedia so long as it is designated as such in the Wikipedia article title or by placement in a special section then I think original research should be allowed just as neologisms (or protologisms) are given a place in the Wikitionary. ...IMHO (Talk) 07:53, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Of course there's no "legal reason" not to publish original thought -- what does that have to do anything? There's no "legal reason" to maintain a neutral point of view either. Why would we want to do this? What purpose does it serve? It seems to me like you're saying we should include this just because we can, which is rather silly.--Sean Black 08:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Doing it just because it can be done would be silly but that is not the reason. It’s just that the Wiktionary method of dealing with new or just unpublished ideas serves as good example of how a problem that involves publication of unpublished work might be solved. To answer the other part of your question I have recently had the unfortunate experience of having to takedown an article because as it turns out there were no notable publication references anywhere to be found (although it was published on a home page and subjected to public scrutiny back in 1996) and has sufficient unique features to prevent it from being classified as something which has already been published in a notable publication. Why would you object? ...IMHO (Talk) 08:39, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Because we want to be a reputable encyclopedia, not just a place for people to host their essays. Wiktionary's rules are their own. --Golbez 18:25, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
So you feel that if a Wikipedia article has been previously published elsewhere in a notable reference and subjecting it to constant edits by anyone and everyone is what guarantees the reputability of the Wikipedia but that publishing a previously unpublished article and subjecting it to the same scrutiny would undermine Wikipedia reputability. …umm. ...IMHO (Talk) 20:08, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Most people trust material from reliable sources more than crap spewed from the mind of a random internet user. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
My point exactly! Who do you think edits those pages? Certainly not the original author of the previously published elsewhere publication. The point is that by opening any article up to editing by any random Internet user that you inherently open it up to "...crap spewed from the(ier] mind..." What I mean is that the only way to assure your steak is eatable is to not let the dog lick it between the grill and the table. ...IMHO (Talk) 21:45, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I apologize; my response was purely on the notion of storing original research a la neologisms, not to your specific example. However, being put on a website is not usually sufficient; being published in a peer journal is. --Golbez 22:24, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately in many cases peer review can be and is insufficient due to preconceptions that may cloud the vision of peers versus giving them special insight. History is litterd with such examples although many times the expert knowledge that most peers have can help. Jealousy can be a real problem in terms of constructive peer review. ...IMHO (Talk) 22:59, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

You're possibly looking for Wikinfo, an offshoot of Wikipedia designed to allow original research and non-NPOV articles. These ideas are antithetical to Wikipedia's principles. — Saxifrage ✎ 06:45, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Since PCE3/IMHO wants to start afresh I won't mention his motivations for initiating this discussion, but I'll talk about my feelings on original research. There are two sides to OR: on one hand, it's a means of excluding hoaxes and trolling, material that everyone knows to be false but your average troll is fully prepared to defend to the death using irreputable web sources of their own creation (I don't include your own works in this category). On the other hand, it's another aspect of the general requirement of notability: it's not useful to write about things that only affect very small numbers of people, partly because it's less likely a reader could derive benefit from them, and partly because often personal inventions are flawed in irreparable ways, and we lack the necessary expertise and motivation to be an effective first line of defense against these.
Journals are successful in publishing largely accurate material both because they are paid to do so (the publication's reputation depends on it) and because they've constructed a community of relevant experts around the journal who perform review before and after publication. How long do you think it would have taken a Wikipedian to notice and repair the flaw in Wiles' elaborate proof of Fermat's Last Theorem? Considering only a handful of people in the world understand it at all, I don't see that happening. I'm not saying there couldn't be a wiki-based site for publication of original works - I think this is a great idea - but Wikipedia is not that site. Our goal of documenting well-known and generally accepted topics is already far too ambitious a goal, no matter how high our article count becomes. Deco 12:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The very reason the article on Optimal Classification is no longer available is because there was an admitted need for clarification and in the course of providing such clarification I over stepped my bounds according to WP:NOR policy and used my own original research to provide the clarification. The same is true for the Harvard Chart Method of Logical Equation Reduction. I traveled in 1991 up to Boston to both Harvard and MIT to search for a reference for the method and believe me when I say I found none. The version I posted was referenced in William L. Hunter's book "Digital/Logic Electronics Handbook" but I had since modified the method to handle multiple states. Consequently it had to come down as well in accordance with WP:NOR. So the point I am trying to make is that because the modification allowed me to explore and helped lead me to the understanding that God by definition is the only entity who can reduce an infinite number of equations having an infinite number of variables with an infinite number of states to minimum form instantaneously which was my real reason and intended purpose for doing the modification in the first place so that I could explore this point of view (although I assume it can be explored mathematically as well). But since I am unable to publish the modification in the Wikipedia in reference to explaining how I came to a logical definition of God it must go without clarification. Its just that the irony is a bit overwhelming in that such policy would force me to go somewhere else in order to be able to include an original clarification without a violation of the rules that is why I made this suggestion regarding a place or at least an exception in the Wikipedia for orignal research. Its not a problem for me because peer review and publication are no substitute for logic but rather my dismay that my fellow Wikipedians will in the present be deprived and may expire long before such ideas find themselves published here for no other reason than the WP:NOR.. ...IMHO (Talk) 16:22, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

If the point is to make your original research accessible, there is also arXiv, at least for the areas of physics, mathematics, computer science and biology. Unlike Wikipedia, not everyone can drop in and start to improve/vandalize your contributions, which is an obvious disadvantage/advantage. Another argument against allowing original research here is that (next to trolls) this would also attract crackpots and their theories. I've wondered though whether it might not be useful to have something like the antithesis of "Featured article", a status to be decided upon by community process less deadly than deletion, but indicating that the article is not up to the requirements of encyclopedicity. The criterion would be something like: Although not conforming to the policy pillars (in particular lacking citation of sources) or lacking verifiable indication of notability, and therefore deletable, this is deemed sufficiently potentially useful to let it stay alive. We have various cleanup tags now, but anyone can slap these on an article or remove them; there is no structured debate. --LambiamTalk 13:31, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Well the antithesis idea sounds good as well as structured and moderated debates but I still don't know how you would be able to exclude original research and conduct a worthwhile debate. Perhaps on the other hand I'm thinking of a siminar rather than a forum for debate. ...IMHO (Talk) 16:30, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Addendum: Sounds like there needs to be if there is not already a Wikiuniversity project in the works. ...IMHO (Talk) 10:07, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Montenegro independence - Wiki maps

Montenegro recent independence would require world maps to be updated and Wikipedia is no differenent. Now is this going underway or should it? Also how many maps exist the need to be updated? - Tutmosis 21:05, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Quite a few I'm sure. We also have 133 lists of countries that over time will need to be updated. - SimonP 00:07, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

If the world-map-markup-language idea proposed below would help you guys with this, feel free to make suggestions.


Signature Policy + Software Change Proposal Resulting from RfC/Tony Sidaway 3

Hello everyone over here at the proposal village pump. I thought I would request a few of you to give your input on a potential compromise (as well as help teach me how to formalize such) that I came up with over at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tony Sidaway 3#Second outside view by Charlie Huggard. Thanks in advance and many regards. Charlie( t | e ) 05:52, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I've put an initial formalization of this at WP:SIGTYPE so people can discuss, dissect, and edit it. Regards Charlie( t | e ) 07:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Toolbar

Hello,

My name is Lalith Polepeddi and I am from Denver, Colorado. I use Wikipedia often and I am very thankful for its services and availability.

I was thinking that if you were to develop a Wikipedia search toolbar (similar to Google's search toolbar), it would make it easier for users to access the information and perhaps even expand Wikipedia's articles. I wanted to share this thought with you and see what you think.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your comments

Lalith

There is a Wikipedia toolbar available for the Firefox browser, but if you use IE, you can use the Google search toolbar and just include "site:en.wikipedia.org" to your searches. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:48, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
It's also possible to add an address search keyword for Wikipedia under IE. I can't remember how, but I once posted about it on VP. I think that Lalith is suggesting something more complex and featureful though than just a simple search function. Deco 04:21, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Different language versions

Like the American and English versions of English also for other languages have different versions. These differences are not enough to create a new wikipedia language, but some times they are annoying or just to big to ignore. One possible solution for this would by to create sub version of the language, and new tags that would allow the writers to specified differences for the different versions, like this:

  • {en-EN:aluminium|en-~US:aluminum} ou {en-EN:routeing|en-US:routing}

or

  • {pt-PT:connosco|pt-BR:conosco} ou {pt-PT:mil milhões|pt-BR:bilhões}

This would allow each community to changes the pages for their specific rules, but still maintaining and unified language version.


List of controversial issues

I wish to propose that the List of controversial issues has a category for "scientific controversies". There are good examples of article in Wikipedia which could justify inclusion in this category, including that on parapsychology. ACEO 08:17, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and add one, if you think it fits. That's the wiki way. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:15, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Insert box below edit panel should force IPA supporting font

IN my IE6, the insert box below the edit panel shows a lot of squares, where I suspect the IPA phonetic symbols to be located. Could someone force a font that supports those symbols? In regular articles that can be achieved by enclosing the text in the IPA template. −Woodstone 21:47, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes the IPA characters are there, but IE isn't selecting a Unicode font. One workaround for this would be to use Firefox - My IE uses Copperplate Gothic for the monobook skin body text, which must be a bug somewhere. Common.css defines the IPA fonts:
 .IPA {
        font-family: Chrysanthi Unicode, Doulos SIL, Gentium, GentiumAlt, Code2000, TITUS
 Cyberbit Basic, DejaVu Sans, Bitstream Vera Sans, Bitstream Cyberbit, Arial Unicode MS, 
 Lucida Sans Unicode, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro, Matrix Unicode;
        font-family /**/:inherit;
 }
Having experimented a little, if you go to "User:Username/monobook.css" and add
.plainlinks {
        font-family: Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro, Matrix Unicode;
        font-family /**/:inherit;
}
you should be able to see the IPA characters in the insert box. More generally, you could apply it to the 'body' class. Experts may have a better ideas. --Cedderstk 00:05, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

See MediaWiki talk:Edittools#{{unicode}}. A request has already been made and will probably be implemented as soon as an admin gets around to it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:09, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Searching

Whenever I go to search for something in which I am unsure of the spelling I just about never end up in the right place. Is there any way to make it so that if you search for something with no respective page because of a spelling error that there could be a list of "Did you mean..." sort of things. I think that this would help unexperienced searchers also. Thanks Brendan 21:46, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

The search engine built into MediaWiki has the ability to suggest alternative spellings, but this feature is turned off on Wikipedia because it takes too much of our scarce server resources. You can get similar functionality by using Google to search Wikipedia by adding "site:en.wikipedia.org" to your search query there.-gadfium 23:30, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
It's also worth noting that we do try to have redirects from the more difficult-to-spell article names. If you do get to a page eventually after having initially not found it due to an incorrect spelling, it's worth considering adding a redirect from that incorrect spelling so that it doesn't happen again. Grutness...wha? 05:43, 5 June 2006 (UTC)


Idea for POV, Cleanup, etc. Tags

Here's a suggestion for a new and/or additional way to cite POV, Cleanup, and other issues. Have a small tag after the infringing statement similar to the [citation needed] tag. That way the editors/readers know not only that there is an issue, but know where the issue is so as to better address it. This, of course, would be used in conjunction with the large tags already in use at the top of articles/sections. 66.229.182.113 08:21, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Usually POV and cleanup require rewrites of entire paragraphs or sections, so anything less than paragraph-specific tags would probably be unhelpful. You could go ahead and make such flags if you want, though: register an account, create Template:NPOV needed or something, and start using it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:25, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Good point. 66.229.182.113 10:36, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

IP warning/welcome proposal

I am impressed with Wikipedia's methods of welcoming newcomers and warning vandals. I was warmly greeted when I first started editing as a registered user. However, I have spotted potential problems with these methods, when used to deal with IP editors.

The main issue is that IP editors are unlikely to see or read the welcomes or warnings.

As a registered user, seeing "You have new messages (last change)" makes sense. The messages are sent to my account - more specifically, my talk page. But it does not make sense for IP editors.

If you did not have an account (you were an IP editor), you would probably be surprised to see "You have new messages (last change)". An IP editor's reaction would be "I don't have an account with this website. How could I be receiving messages? Is something wrong with Wikipedia?" They are unlikely to click and read the message. In addition, they would have to scroll to the end to read the welcome/warning (if the talk page is long). Therefore, they would not receive our well-meaning welcomes and warnings.

My suggestion would be to display the welcome or warning directly, instead of making the IP editor click on "You have new messages (last change)". An IP editor, after making an edit, would find it more logical to see the welcome or warning there.

Hopefully this suggestion would make Wikipedia more friendly to IP editors. I think it is important that we encourage them to create accounts. This is because of another issue - shared IPs where an IP editor will receive welcomes or warnings meant for another IP editor using the same IP. However, it would still be logical to welcome the user, and the warning would also inform the IP editor what's wrong on Wikipedia.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:11, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't see why the hell anyone wouldn't click on something that said they had a message. I'd also like to add that Wikipedia is faaaaar too lenient on vandalism. Whether they see the warnings or not, IP (or registered) users shouldn't be allowed to vandalize 10 times before they get suggested for a temporary ban; just perma-ban the bastards after 5 vandalisms -- it's not like that they a) give a crap about losing a chance to help the site or b) don't have a cycling IP address anyway. 66.229.182.113 08:21, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
No IP address is ever banned indefinitely, except open proxies and other anonymous (non-ISP-granted) addresses. This is for very good reason, having stood the test of time: if we banned every vandal address indefinitely, we'd shut out thousands upon thousands of legitimate contributors, especially until Mediazilla:550 is fixed.

As for being lenient generally, realize that many people who "vandalize" Wikipedia often don't realize how wikis work. They think "Wait a minute; if anyone can edit, then why can't people just add in random stuff?" and, being hands-on types, give it a try. Once they've been clearly told that what they're doing is unacceptable, they get brief blocks to show them that there are consequences. And finally, they get blocked for up to a week or a month when it seems they're incorrigible. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to mention that Mediazilla:550 is severely restricting my ability to contribute to Wikipedia. I find myself unable to edit a quarter of the time. My IP - 202.156.6.54 - is shared by practically the whole of Singapore - about 4 million people. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:10, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
That's crap and you know it. I've seen plenty of users with 6+ warnings and not a sign of any intention to truly block them. It's a policy that clearly needs to be addressed. 66.229.182.113 10:34, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
They were warned, blocked, then, when the block expired, they vandalised again, were warned again and eventually were blocked again. That's my hypothesis. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:10, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Exactly as I said, there is never any intention to "truly" block any IP address other than an open proxy. IP addresses are often shared. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:50, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree with others - if a site tells me I have a message, I'm inclined to believe it. The false assumptions that a site can only give messages to registered users may be something you believe, but I doubt the population at large shares it. Deco 17:41, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Editing tags

Hi, not to be rude to the person who originally designed them, but I think the tags over the editing box are really quite ugly. Also not very discriptive, when they should be to screamingly obvious to highlight how helpful they really are. After activly editing for over 6 months now, I have only just taken it apon myself to check out what they all actually do. Some of them are agreeably useless (to me), but things like signing and redirect are just amazing! The amount of times I have searched for a redirect page just to copy and paste the template to create various new redirect pages is rediculas, and could have been helped only if the tags were sufficiently idiot-proof, and designed to fit in with this age of pretty shiny buttons (rather than fit in with the age of windows 95). I think age they are on every edit page, and are visable to every editor, effort should be made to make them as perfect as possible. Just like the amount of time that clearly went on our wonderful Main Page --mastodon 23:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it can be really hard to convey in an easy to understand manner what the buttons do, using only a simple image. I think most of are servicable, with the exception of the media file link button (what on earth is THAT?) and the redirect button. However, a redirect page is a pretty hard concept to convey in a single image.--digital_me(t/c) 04:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Could you please be a bit more specific? Which symbols could be more descriptive and how? The signature one is a picture of a signature, which I think is intuitive, although it could perhaps be placed furthest to the right as it is the last thing used when editing. '#R' is esoteric until you have created a redirect, and it then becomes recognisable; it could resemble [1] but readers don't encounter that symbol often either. As for the general design, it reminds me of Netscape 6/7 chrome skin, and not Windows 95. The buttons stand out from the background of the monobook skin, which makes them more functional than aesthetic. --Cedderstk 09:31, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking perhaps having simply a discriptive word on each button with an "Insert..." written above their containing line. As for how they stand out against the skin, I hadn't thought of that, you make a good point. Although, I'm sure there are other ways of increasing their contrast, such as is present in Windows XP, when your attention is needed on a button, a complimentary colour is used (in the blue luna interface, this corrisponds to orange). Perhaps a shiny dark button with a discriptive word would be appropriate? mastodon 12:11, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

How to get shared IP blocked revoked fast?

I have just been blocked for 30 minutes, again!!!!

No I did not vandalise any page, I did not revert 4 times, actually I did nothing, I just happen to share the same IP as probably 500.000 other ISP users. Now I have a suggestion, when this happens again, and it will happen again until the fix to wikipedia code is done so that logged in users can edit while their IP is blocked is implemented I would like to suggest that there is one more page that all blocked users can write to. This would be something like Wikipedia:AdminHelp or something which would be linked from the block page, here all users can always write, it would not need to be a page that is reverted because of vandalism, but a page where I can write and state that e.g. the block of IP User: 202.156.6.54 affects half of Singapores users, maybe 4 link spams is not a good enough reason to block all of those users. This then hopefully would be a page that some admins would check and be able to correct hasty blocks that other admins had done. Is it possible to create a page like that with the current wikipedia code? Today I can not even edit the blocked IP user page, since it is not mine, even though I share the IP (I guess I could if I logged out ...), I can update my user page but which admin would see that? Stefan 14:29, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I am also a StarHub user, and I keep getting blocked because of this as well. This is discouraging me from editing Wikipedia. Please allow registered users to log in from banned IPs. Or better still, remove any kind of IP editing. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:50, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
You can just add {{unblock}} to your talk page, which is always editable unless it's protected. Creating a separate page all blocked IPs can edit would be pointless because of all the frivolous edits legitimately blocked users would make. Johnleemk | Talk 16:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Read what I wrote again! This would be a page where you do not need to revert, it is a page where I have a chance to communicate with a admin when I'm beeing blocked, see it as a temporary scratch pad, not a normal wikipedia page. I can edit my talk page, but not the blocked talk page. If I put the tag on my user page, the admin does not even know which IP I come from and what to unblock, but I will try next time. This is a issue of IP blocks overriding logged in user block and shared IPs. Stefan 01:04, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
http://whatismyip.com - use that. Paste your IP on your talk page. And explain how it would be a page where you do not need to revert? If any blocked user can edit it, there will be a need to revert. If you've found a way to screen out vandals and legitimately blocked editors, I'd like to hear it. Johnleemk | Talk 10:19, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Obviously I can not describe what I mean. I want ONE scratepad page, like sandbox where I can communicate with a admin even when I am beeing blocked! Since admins should be able to read a history page they should be able to see my message even if the page have been vandalised. This is just to vent your frustration of blocks of shared IPs that many real wikipedia users suffers from, like AOL. Stefan 02:23, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
How is this something that cannot be served by existing user talk pages? You can still stick {{unblock}} on your talk page. (Not the IP's, though.) Johnleemk | Talk 11:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Of course it can, but last I was blocked it took 2-3 hours before I got any response to my {{unblock}} on my user page. This page would hopefully be on many admins watchlist and therefore be a faster way to be noticed. Nevermind, you do not understand the frustration of having a user account and beeing blocked for no reson except sharing a IP, the blocking system is made to protect wikipedia, it is not designed for the cases where we actually block good editors and there does not seam to be any will in the community to help this situation, it is strange to me that we can not give revert buttons to very experienced users with e.g. 1000+ good edits, we are very strick in giving out admin privilidges, but it is very easy for admins to block without good reson and it is VERY hard to be unblocked, to me a block is much more serious than a revert. I have now reviewed the blocking policy and it does not say anything, it states that you can block when someone vandalises, but nothing about that you must warn first (recomends yes, but not must), nothing about that you should be carefull to block shared IPs, it even states that one admins should NOT unblock a block from another admin without talking to the first admin about it! So the blocking policy is broken often! Why not try to do something about it? Why not make it easier for me to report what I think is a wrong block. Stefan 09:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
You mean a list of "Wikipedias requesting to be unblocked", similar to a "Wikipedians looking for help" list? (Banned from using helpme tag by Commander Keane). Good idea. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 09:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, something like that! Stefan 00:22, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
and once youre unblocked you might like to add some comments at Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal. BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 19:23, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I did, long time ago, and as I said that proposal is beeing worked on as far as I know, but my proposal could be implemented NOW. Stefan 01:04, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Database of User Tables

I would like to propose a Database of User Tables similar to the Database of User Images be created such that table contents would follow the common format of placing the name of the table in the upper leftmost cell, the names of the characteristics (independent variables) in the first row beginning with the second column, the names of the elements (dependent variables) listed in the first column beginning with the second row and cells that make up the body of the table containing the state of the characteristic for each element. A variety of file extension formats might be used with either a CSV (comma delimited) or an XLS (Excel Spreadsheet) format predominating.


product/ingredients condo 1 condo 2 veg 1 veg 2 veg 3 veg 4 season cheeze meat bottom top
Mcgrill mayo none 2 prem tomato none none none none grill heel sesimi
filet tartar none none none none none salt .5 amer fish heel plain
crispy mayo none 2 prem tomato none none none none crisp heel sesimi
spicy mayo none shred none none none none none spice heel sesimi
mac club sauce none shred 2 pik none none none none little pad club sesimi
mac heel sauce none shred none none none none amer little pad heel heel
hamburger mustard catsup dried 1 pik none none salt none little pad heel plain
double ham mustard catsup dried 1 pik none none salt none 2 little heel plain
cheseburger mustard catsup dried 1 pik none none salt amer little pad heel plain
double chz mustard catsup dried 1 pik none none salt 2 amer 2 little heel plain
bigx mayo catsup 2 prem tomato ring 3 pik salt 2 amer big pad heel sesimi
quarter mustard catsup ring 2 pik none none salt 2 amer big pad heel sesimi
double qrt mustard catsup ring 2 pik none none salt 2 amer 2 big heel sesimi
steak mayo none none none none none pepper swiss steak club split top
parm none none none none none none none parm crisp heel sesimi

Comments

If you're talking about creating reusable tables that can be used in several articles, you could just create the table using wiki syntax and place it in a template, then transclude it wherever you want. The disadvantage of a CSV format is that it leaves no room for formatting, although really the formatting should be able to be divided from the data in the table somehow. Deco 17:16, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Templates are great for displaying tables once they have been processed according to a user's needs. My proposal, however, is not to provide the processed data for display in Wiki table format but rather the raw data in its CSV or XLS file format such that a user can do whatever processing he needs by using any number of methods available as built-in functions which Excel or other programs can provide in preparation for creation of his Wiki formatted table of the preocessed data to be displayed. ...IMHO (Talk) 17:39, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I see. One solution would be to additionally upload and link the CSV files, but the software on En is configured to only permit media extensions (.jpg, .ogg, etc.) on uploaded files. You can include the CSV in the wiki source in HTML comments, but telling readers to edit the article and look around for it is no good. Both these solutions have the problem of redundant representations. I'm afraid I don't have a really good answer, short of a software change - you can suggest software changes at MediaWiki bugzilla. Deco 20:03, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


Renaming "stubs" to "Ready references".

Moved to Template talk:Stub.

Disgusting images

hey there, I just want to say that there is a line between censorship so kids can't see "dirty images" and somthing being completly disgusting, maybe some of you guys don't care about seeing pictures in articles such as penis, clitoris, vulva and other articles like that, but most of those pictures are taken at home of some fat guy's dick, that's just messed up. The article Masturbation is nice because it uses drawings to illustrate the topic, no real images (thank god), and remmember, there are kids using wikipedia these days, thank you. --mo-- (Talk | #info | ) 06:08, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

See the relavant policy at Wikipedia is not censored Raul654 06:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC).
I know it's not censored, that's why i said "there is a line between censorship so kids can't see "dirty images" and somthing being completly disgusting" --mo-- (Talk | #info | ) 07:12, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
You seem to saying that sterile photographs of gentilia, similiar to the kind one might find in a medical journal, are "disgusting". I assure you that this is a minority view, and that even those who wish to apply some sort of system to make potentially disturbing images optional would most likely disagree. In any case, until you clarify what exactly you're proposing, what kind of standard would exist etc. this will not be supported or implemented (largely because there's nothing to support or implement).--Sean Black 07:27, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
I seriously doubt that is a minority view among users of all ages and all countries, as opposed to the right-on young Westerners who are massively over-represented on Wikipedia. 62.31.55.223 02:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Really? I can't imagine that finding relatively sterile images of normal human body parts "disgusting" is anything but a minority view. In any case, I was speaking about Wikipedia editors, rather than the world at large, so I can be relatively certain that it is not a majority viewpoint.--Sean Black 05:59, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
You think those images are disgusting? They're far less disgusting than a lot of those on articles linking from here! Grutness...wha? 08:53, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
We had some discussion here recently about forming a Wikipedia Junior that was suitable for children to browse. Some opposed the idea, others were enthusiastic. The SOS Children's Charity actually did some work along this line, publishing a free version on CD with carefully selected Wikipedia content. The free version can be found at http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/education-cd.htm --Dave 21:40, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry that images of the human body disgust you. Maybe you should consider configuring your browser so as not to be forced to view images. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:14, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
If one goes to those articles, one should expect to see those pictures. Ardric47 05:04, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Seems to me that when one human being finds images of another (or part of another) "disgusting" that says far more about their state of mind than wikipedia, western culture or anything else. Graham 05:55, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Indeed. Articles on human body parts should be illustrated with images of human body parts. There are instances on Wikipedia where an inappropriate images are pushed into articles where it is tasteless or unhelpful (e.g. this happened on Nicole Kidman), and I think that can be opposed. But this is not one of those instances. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:38, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Using Special:Random/Image goes to a random image, which could potentially be disgusting. I think that on these pages, users should have to click on a warning link (maybe javascript) before the disgusting image is shown. Kids using wikipedia therefore will be protected from unintentionally seeing disgusting images, but there is no "censorship" since the content is still available. Pcu123456789 21:52, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
I like this, will put it forth in the Random Articles suggestion down there Guitar George 14:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't know why wikipedia can't just adopt the PICS meta tag capability for individual pages and images. Perhaps implemented through a template? Alternatively, since Wikipedia is uncensored, every page and image should be given an adult content meta-tag so the parent filters can block it. — RJH (talk) 20:09, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
this is indeed a very good idea Guitar George 14:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
That is censorship, pure and simple. It isn't directly censoring the images, but it helps others to censor the images, which still amounts to censorship, and Wikipedia is not censored.--digital_me(t/c) 16:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
But on the other hand, Wikipedia does want people to be able to find what they want without having to be distracted by things they don't want. While yes, content labeling would make it easy for people to restrict others' viewing of Wikipedia, it would also allow viewers to filter out things that they themselves don't want to see. For people who would like to use Wikipedia at work, or around family, or in another setting where "dirty" images have to be avoided, a profile setting that would filter out undesired images would significantly increase the utility of Wikipedia as an information source.

Questions of other means of censorship could be largely avoided by not using a system like PICS, which includes info in the called page itself; attempted automatic filters other than the MediaWiki software itself would thus have to go to the appropriate Image: page and parse the idiosyncratic plaintext image labeling before deciding whether to display the image, an unlikely feat for anyone to bother with for a single site. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:37, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

After looking at the three articles listed by the original complaintant and seeing nothing that even remotely looks disgusting, it leads me to wonder what was used as a basis.
-- Lady Aleena talk/contribs 07:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


I would like to see more examples of these allegedly disgusting pics before I make up my mind. Please post more links. :-) Captainj 23:21, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Suggested changes to Wikipedia Footnotes/Cite.php

Your input here — I think this is the right place to post this :) - FrancisTyers · 10:48, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


edit-locking system please

There are so many articles created in this website that are being edited many times in a single day by different users. Articles dealing with religions are the best examples. I propose that Wikipedia should have an edit-locking system. Most of the edits being done in these articles are obviously due to religious partiality of the users. These create articles that are filled with “not so important” facts or opinions. These facts, I guess, are generally added by different users to indirectly criticize the subject of the article. Thus, Wikipedia must have a system wherein an article, after a review done by a person or a committee assigned by Wikipedia and after that person or committee labeled the article as bias-free, cannot be edited by any user.

This is another one of those "ummm, no" proposals. Besides the fact that Wikipedia is built on the freedom to edit and this value is cherished by its contributors, it would hardly be beneficial to the article to block out both positive and negative changes indefinitely, resulting in an article with all the failings of a Brittanica article in its inability to rapidly adapt to new information and to receive fixes to factual errors post-publication. Deco 10:57, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree that this might diminish wikipedia's adaptability to change, but he has a point in that this trashing/cleaning up of articles can make editors lose a lot of energy. An alternate system could be implemented in which after about 5 edits (?) within an hour, the article would be locked for 1 day (?). That's just an idea, the numbers aren't too proper I believe, but that could be an alternative to permanently shutting down the article. Guitar George 11:48, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
What if the last of the 5 edits is the worst of them? There would have to be an override system, from which many good editors would have to be excluded or nothing would have changed (but then if the override option wasn't widely available, many appropriate overrides wouldn't happen). This proposal is a non-starter. Piccadilly 18:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Random Article Filter

I think that something that would add a lot of value to wikipedia would be to have a stub filter in the Random article navigation option. That way, you wouldn't have to fall on a two-liner on some random person in Wisconsin or something while navigating. You should be able to filter off stubs, or select only random articles who are FAs.

What do you think? Guitar George 14:25, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

"Using Special:Random/Image goes to a random image, which could potentially be disgusting. I think that on these pages, users should have to click on a warning link (maybe javascript) before the disgusting image is shown. Kids using wikipedia therefore will be protected from unintentionally seeing disgusting images, but there is no "censorship" since the content is still available. Pcu123456789 21:52, 23 May 2006 (UTC)"

My ideas are the following:

  • Filters for stubs (or selection of different levels of articles, such as FA or A-Class)
  • Filters for offensive content
  • Filters for area (random article in Mathematics, for example)

That might complicate things a little, but it is useful.
Might be added as something like the advanced search options in search engines. Guitar George 14:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

This has been a perennial proposal for years, ever since someone first said "stubs are bad". I really don't think it's going to happen. As for images, I doubt many people use Random Image, and it still requires classification of potentially offensive images versus non offensive which could be divisive. Deco 17:44, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Why do you think it isn't going to happen? No one willing to code it? I mean, at least the article rating thing can't be so bad since most are already "rated" Guitar George 11:59, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
They are? Who's doing all this rating that I've seen no evidence of? User:Zoe|(talk) 16:39, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Partly because no one's interested in developing it, partly because the requirements are so poorly defined that it's not clear how to go about it. No one really agrees on how the ideal random article mechanism would work, and uniformly random seems like a decent compromise. Deco 19:51, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Open to see discussion

After trawling through a few articles today i thought that a lot of these may benefit from a purely aesthetic perspective if the See Also, External Links and Reference sections were made collapsable. I proprose this as not only would it my mind make pages seem more aesthetically pleasing but it would make a page look more manageable and less dense to a new reader.

Yakuzai 22:25, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

That's interesting...this could be up for discussion if it is technically possible. --Osbus 01:58, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
The technology's certainly there, see Template:Zelda series for instance. It can be set to be closed by default with a little tweaking. It's also fully compatible with non-Monobook skins, as they merely don't have the hide link and always see the sections expanded. GarrettTalk 07:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
COLLAPSIBLE IS GREAT -- see template:cold War. Pcu123456789 01:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I made user:pcu123456789/templates/hidebox based on cold War. Pcu123456789 01:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


Have gone ahead and altered 3 articles and gave them a collapsable external links and see also section those articles are Enceladus World War 1 and Antarctic Krill. It would be good however to know how to make those templates default to hide instead of show and also make the background colour different for the External section as compared with See Also. I think it would be good to do this for reference sections at some point as well and maybe have a little icon in each template to represent the external link, See Also and Reference sections....that could be cool. Anyways if anybody thinks this is a good idea give some feedback and maybe we could make this a general feature of all featured articles in the future. Oh by the thanks for the link to the collapsable template by the way was very useful. Yakuzai 14:26, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone carefully checked it against WAI guidelines? (I guess you know about this: WP:HIDE) And what about printing? —Gennaro Prota•Talk 15:32, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with collapsable sections and I believe the style employed above is very ugly.
I suggest this not be implemented until there is an overwhelming consensus about that, as it is a very big style change to Wikipedia articles. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree. Big change that needs more discussion. Take to WP:CENT? Carcharoth 07:30, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Do not like. - FrancisTyers · 13:35, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Reference tagging that marks the SPAN of text supported by the reference

I wish I had paid more attention when the current reference tagging system was being developed.

One problem with the present system is that the tag is attached to a single point in the text, and it is therefore not clear what portion of the text is being supported. This gets worse if the text that's being tagged gets edited over time.

For example, consider:

Jack London desperately wanted to attend the University of California and, in 1896 after a summer of intense cramming, did so; but financial circumstances forced him to leave in 1897 and so he never graduated. Kingman says that "there is no record that Jack ever wrote for student publications" there.[7]

Does footnote 7 support four facts (wanted to attend; did so 1896 after cramming; left in 1897; didn't write for student publications) or only one? You can't tell at a glance whether the whole paragraph is supported, or only the last sentence.

Worse, if it were the source for all four facts and if someone decided that the fact that he didn't write for student publications was uninteresting, it is quite possible that they might delete the reference along with the text, thus removing the support for the other three facts.

I wish that the ref mechanism involved not only a pair of tags containing the reference, but a pair of tags delineating the entire range of text that it is supporting.

This could have other potential benefits, as well. Currently, if an article actually comes close to meeting the requirements of WP:V and WP:CITE, it is likely to have so many footnotes as to interfere somewhat with readability. I'd like to see a choice of presentations for references. I think what I'd really like to see is one in which all the referenced material is given a slightly different text color than the rest of the article; perhaps a true black for referenced material and a slightly light, slightly tinted color (dark brown, perhaps) for unreferenced material. And a more subtle mechanism than superscripts for pointing to the note. For example, instead of putting the note numbers in the text itself, put them in the right margin. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:41, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

You can put whatever information you want in the footnote. If you want to specify that these three external links supoort this whole paragraph, you can say so. Likewise, if you wish to say that this page in this book says "..." quoting a pragraph, then you can say that. the solution is both more footnotes with sources and more information inside each footnote. I love footnotes. WAS 4.250 15:40, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I've noticed similar problems to dpbsmith when adding footnotes. If it comes immediately after a quotation then it is clear; otherwise, I tend to use them next to statements readers might doubt even if they apply the further text in the same paragraph. It's true that footnotes needn't be just references, but sometimes mixing references and commments looks ugly. How would a variant on the system look? Perhaps something like
<ref name="Werther" reference="Hoffmeister, Gerhart. 
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5596 
"Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther)"]. 
''The Literary Encyclopedia''. 17-Jun-2004. 
The Literary Dictionary Company. Retrieved 17-Mar-2006">
Like some modern bestsellers, the book spawned a [[spin-off]] 
industry, with items like Werther eau de cologne and porcelain 
puppets depicting the main characters.</ref>

This would have little difference on the page output at the moment. Alternatively, notes could be left for future editors as HTML comments (also ugly). --Cedderstk 14:34, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

There is a discussion of suggested improvements here. - FrancisTyers · 13:40, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

<last name>, <first name> redirects for biographical articles

Since Wikipedia does not list biographical articles by last names (as most traditional encyclopedias do), new users might have trouble finding such articles. So I suggest that we create <last name>, <first name> redirects for biographical articles. For example, the redirect Friedman, Harvey should be created for the Harvey Friedman article. Of course, this tedious task can be given to bots. Any thoughts? --Ixfd64 21:50, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Is the issue you want to address errant links, or users entering "friedman, harvey" into the search box and hitting either "go" or "search"? If the latter, I'm not sure any change is necessary. I just tried it, and "go" doesn't go to the article but does end up doing a search and Harvey Friedman was listed as the first match. If you're creating a link, I'd think you'd notice pretty fast that the "last, first" form doesn't work but "first last" does. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:12, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
To me this looks like a solution in search of a problem. Why is this needed? --Golbez 01:14, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


Alternate current "skin" requested (serif font)

I find a serif font much more readable (not disabled, just normal older vision) and I am using an alternate presentation for my preference, but this lacks the current layout. The problem is that the current default skin (sans serif) has no equivalent alternative with serif fonts. Only text body need be serif - section titles san-serif are not a problem. So this is a request for a display preference that is always up-to date graphically but has this text preference. Thanks, - Leonard G. 17:25, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I tried to change the fonts using css, but for some reason it's not working. All other font atributes work, but not the actual font itself (for example, I had no trouble changing everything to bold, italics, changing the size or color, etc.). Maybe someone else knows how to do this? Smiles4you914 18:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, try copying the css from User:Tillwe/monobook.css. That should do the trick. —Mets501talk 18:56, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
It should, but for me that moved the sidebar to the bottom of the page, and something similar happened with m:Gallery of user styles#Ultrawaffle. The simplest thing would be to add
 body {
   font: x-small serif;
 }
to Special:Mypage/monobook.css, which I've tested. Specifying a particular font name with font-family works for me after refreshing. I don't know where proposals for skin changes go, maybe m:Skin projects. --Cedderstk 19:42, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
That works! Thanks, Leonard G. 04:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

translation

It would be very helpful, if the English article were TRANSLATED into German > When I click on "German", I get a completely different sub-subject, > instead of a translation. > > For instance: MAKAH: The English talks about the archeological finds and > whaling. The German talks about whaling in a sentence or two and then talks > about two legends of the Makah Indians.

The different language Wikipedia articles are independent, so sometimes articles in different languages might be a translation but quite often they are not. The interlanguage links simply indicate that an article on the same topic exists in the other language Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination for more information. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:34, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
If you know both languages, a good idea is to translate any content found in one but not the other yourself. Deco 07:09, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


Main Page Search Focus

I know this sounds like a minor thing, but when I get on the Main Page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page), I notice that there is a search text box on the left hand side. This is the only text box on the entire page, and a fairly important one, too (seeing as it links to all the articles one may want to visit).

However, when the page loads, I have to click on the text box to get a curser to appear.

I think it would be of interest to consider making the search text box the default focus for the curser, to save even that little bit of time for frequent visitors to the site.

205.188.116.69 19:22, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Main Page FAQ#Why doesn't the cursor appear in the search box, like with Google? —Mets501talk 19:47, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. But I'm still wondering about the username edit box, in the login form. —Gennaro Prota•Talk 18:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Stylesheet change for diffs

See MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css#diff style suggestions. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:24, 11 June 2006 (UTC)


Group project

Why not make a group and make a project something higher than web(Live projects) --tejas 05:57, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Using Google Maps

How about embedding Google Maps into Wikipedia pages? For example on place maps like this map of bolivia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivia

And why exactly would we need a Google Map for Bolivia in an encyclapedia, Wikipedia and Google Maps are both great services but so is Dry Cleaning and Car Washing, and you don't see anyone offering both. Deathawk 00:30, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I have a related suggestion: incorporate some form of map-colouring/labeling markup directly into Wikipedia. The mechanism could work much like SVG except it would be for specifying colours/labels for countries or continents. For example, right now in the adoption by same-sex couples article we have the problem that someone from way back created PNG maps and uploaded them, but we want to update them. If the original creator of those images disappears, nobody wants to recreate them from scratch. The AIDS pandemic potentially has the same problem, as do many others. This would make the look & feel of maps consistent across all of Wikipedia. Maybe the Google Maps API would help with this, or maybe something else? -- Andrew Delong 21:46, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia does need a map system. There are articles in Wikipedia that are tied to a geographical location. Until we have one, there should be a uniform template used for location, so that at some future time, everything with a good location can be tied to the mapping system. --John Nagle 21:53, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
The "creator leaves" problem is solved excellently by SVG. Certainly, though, the consistency issue would be a good one to solve. Regardless, Google Maps is unacceptable unless they're willing to release them freely. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:58, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Hmm yeah maybe we should forget google maps integration; google maps might be a convenient way for users to specify what region of the globe they want in their snapshot though (i.e. The Wikimaps design page can parse googlemaps URLs for zoom/latlong and other info). Anyway, Wikimaps would also solve the problem if---hypothetical example here---Iraq were split up into three countries (Shiastan, Sunnistan, and Kurdi...stan). Every map in Wikipedia would to be updated automatically.
The answer is clear: a software extension that uses a free map rendering utility and a database of map data to produces maps on the fly given their location, zoom level, and stuff you want on them. In fact, if someone could come up with the rendering utility and database, writing an extension would be almost trivial. Deco 07:29, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

i have mixed opinions either way, but there is a site called wikimapia [[2]] that is relevant. I think its more about putting info for places on a map, rather than maps for info about places. Kaldosh 08:59, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

we have {{coor}}, which is good enough to use Wikipedia in conjunction with any map service. What we cannot do so far is encode vectorized mapping information, such as the course of a river, but only point data. We could build a 'vector' template on top of the point templates, simply connecting points, and it would then be up to external applications to display this properly. dab (ᛏ) 18:01, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I propose renaming Featured pictures (WP:FP etc.) and related pages to Featured media (WP:FM etc.) and allowing for the nomination of other media types, such as sound files, video files, or maybe even PDF. I've developed a set of expanded criteria, although I didn't change much. Since Wikipedia aims to construct an encyclopedia, I think the first two criteria are the most important for featured content.

A few potential objections to this idea:

  1. Portals, lists, and articles are featured through different processes. Why should different media types be featured through the same process?
  2. Renaming a number of pages and updating a number of others to reflect the change requires a fair amount of work. Is it really worth the trouble?
  3. Change is inherently bad.

In response to the potential objections above, I think renaming is a good idea for the following reasons.

  1. WP:FSC, an experimental initiative intended to feature sound files, died a quick death (not having nominated a single file) because there aren’t very many sound files (see Wikipedia talk:Featured sound candidates#Not yet).While there aren’t enough sounds for a separate WP:FSC, there might be enough for a few featured sounds via an existing process. And changing to WP:FMC would guarantee that a well-established and frequently-visited apparatus is in place once there are enough sound files to warrant featured sounds. If sounds and other media become prevalent enough at a later date, they can be divorced from WP:FM then.
  2. That maps, diagrams, animations, and other images are eligible for featured picture status is a recurrent cause of confusion, has been questioned at least (one, two, three, four) five times, and has established a weak (but existent) bias against non-pictures. I think eliminating the doubt is worth the trouble of renaming.
  3. Whether change is bad or not, the current process of nominating and promoting pictures will remain unchanged and uninterrupted. This is just an expansion -- except for some sound or video nominations, at this point very little actually changes except the name. In my opinion, the "amount of change to benefit" ratio is very good.

And, finally, WP:FM would be flexible and could easily be expanded for any future media types. Thoughts? -- bcasterline • talk 22:06, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

This is a horrible idea. If you want featured types of other media, set up a page for it, go out and find/generate some. Renaming the featured pictures is pointless. Raul654 22:11, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. But why are multiple processes better than one? -- bcasterline • talk 22:16, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
Criteria for pictures and soundfiles are likely to be very different, and so will be the people interested in the process. Kusma (討論) 22:21, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think the criteria would differ substantially (see what I have here). I agree the people might be different, but they can choose which nominations to discuss based on their interest (as they must at WP:PR, for example). -- bcasterline • talk 22:27, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree, would people disagree with moving WP:PPR to WP:MPR (media peer review)? I think not. People self select so having a review page for all media would be a logical analogue to WP:PR (where people are free to request peer review for lists, even though it isn't WP:LPR). BrokenSegue 01:48, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I think moving all forms of media under one umbrella page would be a reasonable way to expand our featured categories into different formats. At the moment we don't have a high enough volume for a Featured Video, Featured Sound or any other media type (Are there any others?) page, yet we have lots of good sound and video files that deserve recognition. I remember when I bought an old copy of Encarta that they had a tool to browse the media on the CD (which included videos, sound and pictures). Why didn't they separate them out into pictures, videos and movies [this annoyed me at the time, because I was looking for a video]? Because all of that media serves the same purpose in the encyclopedia, to explain things in ways that words can't and to make the articles more interesting and relevant. This system also helps to alleviate the criticism of some users that too many "diagrams" are being promoted (at one point a "featured diagrams" was proposed, which would unnecessarily fragment the process). I also agree that a unified criteria for promotion could be created. For example, all media must be of high physical quality (with the exception of historical works) which everyone would interpret as "devoid of static, artifacts or other physical/technical blemishes and of a high bitrate and resolution". Anyways, even if all of the types are unified on one page, why must the criterion be the same? It's just more convenient to group them together and to put them all under one category. If we had featured sound, video and pictures running at full speed overhead would quite great. we would inevitably have, FPC, FPV and FPS boxes updated daily and demotion procedures for each...it just gets too complicated. BrokenSegue 01:48, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like a great idea to me. Raul, why do you feel so strongly against it? It would save endless debates on whether maps & diagrams should be included (endless because fresh voters at FPC tend to raise the same objections) and give the scope for other media to be featured. Currently, there isn't a way to get sounds featured because the page just wouldn't have enough traffic to establish consensus, and movies are acceptable only when converted to .gif format which makes for a huge non-optional download for someone viewing the article they are in (example: Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was promoted after being converted from a movie to a shorter, less informative gif). The criteria would not be very different &mdash; the most important remain (1) candidates must be a valuable contribution to the encyclopedia, and (2) they should represent Wikipedia's best content. The procedure does not depend on specialists for each media type: IMO the impact of any media on the general reader is at least as important as the impression it makes on specialists ~ Veledan • Talk 17:08, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

"featured media" is nonsense, because it is not the medium that is featured. "featured files" maybe. Text is also a medium, btw. dab (ᛏ) 17:56, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Connection Column

I have an idea that could make wikipedia a much better source for information.

Have a column for the connection between articles!

It could just be a list of things, for example the connection between a computer and a calculater would be binary code, and sometimes a lcd screen, our:


The connection between a human and a squid

1. kingdom – Animal kingdom 2. distinct head 3. lims do not grow back 4. heart 5. can be the same size as humans

and ofcourse the list could go on and on.

What do you guys thing?


Wikipedia:Categories? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:28, 15 June 2006 (UTC)


One huge advantage of the interwiki system is that we can find the corresponding articles in other languages quickly.
I accidentally discovered (when I mixed up some of the scripts I wrote:)) that WP interwiki links can be just as good or even better than a dictionary.
Some examples. Compare:

  • Quantity: wikt:Earth vs its WP article. The WP article has 86 interwiki links to other languages whereas Wiktionary lists only 6 translations.
  • Quality: The "professional wrestling" entry at the (professional and reliable) dictionary of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences[3] is empty, whereas the WP article has an interwiki link to hu:Pankráció, which is an accurate translation. "Wrestling" (simply) would be "birkózás"[4] and thus using this dictionary "professional wrestling" would be translated as "profi birkózás", which is nonsense. So in this case, WP is more accurate than a professional dictionary.

I think this situation could and should be exploited: perhaps an automated bot could update wiktionary entries with translations from WP interwiki links through some sort of transwiki process? I think it would work very well and would make wiktionary far better than what it is today. The only possible problem is adding entries like "John Forbes Nash in other languages" to Wiktionary - but that could be solved by telling the bot not to create new entries in Wiktionary.
What do you think? --Zoz (t) 18:24, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea - you could write a bot that looks at a Wiktionary word listed in English Wikipedia, retrieves the titles of each interwiki Wikipedia version, and pastes them to the Wiktionary word's talk page with links. Interested contributors could then check and use them. Deco 02:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Categorize requests for expert opinions requests

I am referring to Template:Expert and the related category Category:Pages needing expert attention. Right now there are way too many articles in that category and it is unrealistic for expect an expert in some specific area to figure out which pages (s)he could be of use to - this would involve reading the whole list. I suggest they be split up into some categories. There is no need to go into as much detail as the Stub Types do, but I think something like: "Mathematician", "Computer Scientist", "Botanist", "Engineer", etc. would be a lot of help.--Konstable 02:26, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Definitely. Perhaps just a few categories, so it doens't get too complicated. Some basic categories like mathematician, scientist, historian, etc. would really be nice. —Mets501 (talk) 03:32, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Agreed, very sensible - but I wouldn't use "Mathematician", "Computer Scientist" as separate things - "Mathematics" and "Computer Science" should encompass both people in the field and the field itself. I think. --JennyRad 14:01, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Of course, I was just using those as an example. I think maybe I will start a Wikiproject for this. First the categories can be decided, and then all the existing ones can be sorted.--Konstable 00:30, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Good plan (though obviously any "decided" categories would probably be subject to change again once we started the categorisation - but that pretty much goes without saying). If you start such a Project, can you let me know so I can sign up and join in? Cheers. --JennyRad 18:10, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I have created a New WikiProject for this: Wikipedia:WikiProject Expert Request Sorting your help and feedback will be appreciated.--Konstable 00:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

List items

From Mediawiki talk:Monobook.css

The list items of unordered and ordered lists do not align properly.

Example:

  • This is a level 1 unordered list item
    • This is a level 2 unordered list item
      • This is a level 3 unordered list item
        • This is a level 4 unordered list item
  1. This is a level 1 ordered list item (note this lines up with a level 2 unordered list item)
    1. This is a level 2 ordered list item (note this lines up with a level 4 unordered list item)
      1. This is a level 3 ordered list item (note this probably lines up with a level 6 unordered list item)
        1. This is a level 4 ordered list item (note this probably lines up with a level 8 unordered list item)

The indention of them is quite different. Could this be modified so that the levels of both unordered and ordered lists are the same at each level?
-- Lady Aleena talk/contribs 10:01, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

After some experimenting, this can be easily fixed by adding ul {margin-left: 3.2em;} to Mediawiki:common.css (or Mediawiki:monobook.css). Perhaps some admin can fix this? —Mets501 (talk) 03:54, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Or actually, maybe a compromise between the bulleted and numbered list idents can be reached by setting ul {margin-left: 2.4em;} and ol {margin-left: 2.4em;} in Mediawiki:common.css (or Mediawiki:monobook.css). —Mets501 (talk) 03:57, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Compare:

  • This is a level 1 unordered list item
    • This is a level 2 unordered list item
      • This is a level 3 unordered list item
        • This is a level 4 unordered list item
  1. This is a level 1 ordered list item (note this lines up with a level 2 unordered list item)
    1. This is a level 2 ordered list item (note this lines up with a level 4 unordered list item)
      1. This is a level 3 ordered list item (note this probably lines up with a level 6 unordered list item)
        1. This is a level 4 ordered list item (note this probably lines up with a level 8 unordered list item)
  • This is a level 1 unordered list item
    • This is a level 2 unordered list item
      • This is a level 3 unordered list item
        • This is a level 4 unordered list item
  1. This is a level 1 ordered list item
    1. This is a level 2 ordered list item
      1. This is a level 3 ordered list item
        1. This is a level 4 ordered list item

The latter uses "margin-left: 1.5em". I like, personally. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:41, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I personally think that when you have a numbered list (ol) you should indent the numbers a bit from the rest of the text so that they stand out. That's why I suggested a compromise with both at a 2.4em indent. —Mets501 (talk) 13:47, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't matter to me what the number is, what matters is that the ordered and unordered list levels match up.
&#151;Lady Aleena talk/contribs 00:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Improving Featured Picture captions on the Main Page

The mainpage captions for our daily featured pictured are generally in a sorry state, and often have little to nothing to do with the actual image. Please see Wikipedia talk:Featured picture candidates#Mainpage caption as part of candidate nomination for a proposal to reform this process.--Pharos 19:39, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


Sharing the images

It would be interesting to see if people would donate storage space on their servers for Wiki images. Naturally the admin users of Wikipedia would have the external server FTP password. The idea would allow for a huge amount of image data to be stored across the world - making webmasters and site owners part of the Wiki project. I would wish to offer several hundred GBs towards this. Post here and I will get back to you.

Disk space is not a problem for Wikipedia. Coping with all the page requests is, especially given that our hardware budget is tiny compared to any other top 20 website, but we seem to be coping with that pretty well recently.-gadfium 00:59, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
The only reason we even bother uploading images in the first place, rather than just referencing external images, is so that they can be stored in a central place and accessed in a consistent way. Without this, the images would be constantly vanishing as servers go up and down, and trying to get an image updated after a change could be really annoying. A good shared image serving protocol could deal with these issues elegantly, but an ad hoc approach would be a cure worse than the disease. Deco 02:24, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
If you would like to donate servers to the Wikimedia Foundation, by all means, you're welcome to. Contact any Board member to get info on how to get it to them. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:54, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Temporary pages

Often, I've noticed that when users create a temporary page for rewriting an article, they'll place at Foo/Temp, which is not actually a subpage of Foo, and can be found by Special:Random. The alternatives are either moving it to Talk:Foo/Temp, which means that there is no space to discuss the expansion of the article, or moving to user space, which can make it hard to find. I suggest a page such as Wikipedia:Temp which centralises all these pages; placing a template on the talk page would automatically produce a link to Wikipedia:Temp/PAGENAME, like so: Wikipedia:Temp/Village pump (proposals)/Archive R. This would allow a 'workshop' space, with a talk page, located in a logical place, and the template would also be a clear alert to other editors as to where to collaborate on the rewrite, rather than one user performing a large clean up on the article, only to have the temp version pasted over. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 18:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I just mentioned the same thing to someone. Perhaps a Category:Temp or Category:Temp articles could also work, and then just delete the articles after an X number of months of no edits on them. See here for a list of a bunch of them. User:Bluemoose/old temp pages Garion96 (talk) 02:45, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism prevention

For anon users (and possibly for users that have a block history and/or vandalism warnings) on commonly vandalized pages, I think it would help to have a message appear above the edit textarea on the Edit page, reading something like this:

Note: Please contribute wholesomely to Wikipedia. Your edits will be quickly reverted if they appear to be vandalism. Historically, 29% of the edits to this article have been marked as vandalism and reverted. If you wish to make a test edit, please use the sandbox.

If this method prevents even 5% of vandalism without discouraging any newcomers from wholesome editing, I think it would be worth it. I would say that any page where over 25% of edits are eventually reverted, this message should be displayed.   JEK   22:24, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think having a percentage of vandalistic edits is useful, or feasible to implement. -- Centrx 23:40, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
In agreement with Centrx ... unless there were a consistent practice for tagging vandalism edits accurately, this isn't feasible as it would be pretty far from an accurate number. Also, if in fact something like this does go into practice, there should be some time-delimited factoring going on so that an old prolific vandal doesn't reflect badly on a new productive editor - it could be quite discouraging for that new editor (or group of editors) to constantly rub up against this reminder, even though they've been editing in good faith for a long time. I think the current practice of encouraging folks to create accounts is sufficient ... then following up by not biting the newbies and helping them out when possible. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:07, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay, skip the whole percentage thing then, and just make it so that users can add a special template to the page that only displays when in editing mode. For example, adding something like {{commonvandal}} to a page would not change the article at all, but when the article or a section of it was edited, the template message would be displayed above the editing area. I really think this would help to cut down on the "just being a jackass" type of editing, for example when people go to vandalize the article of a rival sports team.   JEK   16:02, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Notifying editors of thing that is put up for deletion

Sorry if this has been brought up before, but I bring it up because I've been burned yet again. Why can't past editors of something that is put up for deletion be notified when this happens? Certainly, these editors would have something to say with regards to whether something should be deleted or not, right? —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 20:21, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Note: I certainly have put up articles or whatever for deletion without notifying all their past editors. However, what I am talking about is that there needs to be some sort of automatic notification set up. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 20:23, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
If done, this has to be automatic. AfD has too many manual steps now. --John Nagle 20:47, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
I totally agree. The last thing I want to happen is for the manual steps to be expanded. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 21:00, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
This is one use of your Watchlist. I have a couple of thousand pages on my watchlist (I don't know if that is big or small, actually) and I'm pretty sure I'd see if a page I'm watching were to come up for deletion within the deletion timeframe ... unless it were speedied and deleted in less than 24 hours. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 21:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Ummm, no. I don't have the time in my life to monitor *all* articles I've ever edited. I only monitor a small subset thereof, you know, to keep myself sane. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 22:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't monitor all the articles I've edited either, only about 10% of them ... and I only actively monitor about 10% of those. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Wow, you guys are committed. I only watch maybe 0.1% of all articles I've ever edited. Whenever I go on "random page" editing campaigns or campaigns for disambiguation or correction of common mistakes in many articles, I watch nothing. I only watch articles that I'm deeply interested in or where I left comments or fear bad changes. Generally, the kind of articles that upset me. :-) Deco 04:48, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
First off, I don't consider a minor edit an edit that's worthy of being counted, and >75% of my edits are minor edits; I should have qualified my '10%' statement with that. Second, why are you so worried about things being deleted without your knowing it if you don't bother to monitor for vandalism, that being far far more common than deletion? User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 22:56, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Uh, what? I didn't say anything about deletion. Or vandalism. I only read the very last part of this conversation, I'm not trying to make a point. Deco 02:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Ummm, we do have lives outside of the Wikipedia. We cannot monitor *every* article we think is important to monitor. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 16:38, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Automatic notification might be done by bot. You could ask at Wikipedia:Bot requests. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'll look into that. Thanks. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 16:38, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Good articles to become a real step in articles progression

I, and probably a few who are working on the GA project, would like to see Good article become part of wikipedia in the same way as Featured articles. In that way be able to assure that these GA articles are of a certain status which is somewhat lower than that of an FA, creating thus a step progression in the perfection of an article with FA status being the last step. The main reason for this proposal is that frustrated FA nominators who see their article get failed on FA tend to abandon their project and in that view, sending it to GA would allow them to already gain some importance and some stability.

Associated to that idea it would be nice to have a template like the FA template that puts a star in the right hand corner who would place the + sign of a good article making it a nice way for users/readers to see the status of the articles their reading. Hope you guys consider this as a policy that will make WP become a better place. Lincher 21:44, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I fully support a little icon in the corner of good articles and an improved awarement/status of good articles. However, I disagree that FA status is the last step to the perfection of an article. Even once the articles reach FA status, they are not perfect, and future editing of featured articles should not be cut down because they are already "perfected". —Mets501talk 02:55, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
The general consensus seems against adding a GA icon at the top right hand corner. However, I do support making Good Articles an integral part of Wikipedia and ideas that will help raise awareness of the project. Please read my suggestions at Wikipedia_talk:Good_articles/Nominations#Good_Article_Drive_and_other_suggestions. I have just sent two articles - Yahoo! and NeoPets - for peer review. Please go to WP:PR and leave your comments. If the peer review is successful, I think the articles can be nominated for Good Article. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:15, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I didn't mean to say that there are perfect articles neither that the FA status grants them perfection but it is as of now the last step in the progression of the articles (I have not seen any of these FA articles go back to PR for example. Raising awareness to these assessed GA articles was my sole point in adding a template and bringing the GA into the logical progression of articles. Lincher 14:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

As has been pointed out numerous times (see this talk archive), a GA icon at the top right of the article is utterly useless to readers and of doubtful value for editors. Why would an encyclopedia need to tell its reader that the article he is currently reading "may not be as thorough and detailed as our featured articles, but should not omit any major facets of the topic"? 82.170.1.248 16:35, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

There are five uses I mainly see for a GA star or status.
  • It tells readers that the article has been reviewed or at least been read through and it complies with the GA criterias (which is an easier version to achieve of the FA criterias).
  • It serves as a grading tool for the articles telling the readers that an article has gotten this status and is on his way to get better.
  • It lets people know that if they didn't achieve FA status this time at least they are at GA status and they can still work on the article (because GA normally comments the articles they review).
  • If the article doesn't get the FA status often the major editor will depart from working on the article and thus this article will stay in oblivion and never be 'completed' or ameliorated.
  • It also rates the articles that will be placed on the CDs and on the static versions.
Please take a look at Wikipedia talk:Good article establishment where the idea of placing a star like the FAs would be a step below the FA. Lincher 22:44, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I totally support this. It is helpful to both the reader (as per Lincher's comments above), and the authors who have an extra initiative to try to improve their article. Featured atices are very demanding and very few articles can ever get there - having a second step just means more feedback and encouragement for the writers.--Konstable 23:18, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Neologisms as a Speedy Deletion Category

There's currently a proposal going on about this here. Wikipedia:Neologisms as a Speedy Deletion Category. I don't think it's been mentioned here at the pump yet and we could do with some more opinions on it. Ydam 17:27, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

This should be mentioned on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion if it hasn't. Deco 19:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)


A new language should be added, Romanized Persian

Hi, I was wondering if you guys could insert a new language in wikipedia. The language is Romanized Persian. This would be a great idea because there are millions of iranians outside of Iran who grew up in a foregin country with no possibilities of learning how to read Persian. Romanized persian is great, because then all the iranians from all over the world could read and understand the persian language, not only the migrated Iranians.

For more information, visit: UniPers and Romanization. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sorriz (talk • contribs)

Sounds good to me. Is this for people who have learned or are learning spoken Persian, but not the Perso-Arabic script? Assuming it is straightforward to transliterate between Farsi and pseudo-Roman characters, maybe it would be possible to just have a Romanized skin on top of the Farsi Wikipedia? You might also want to mention this on m:Proposals for new projects. --Cedderstk 11:41, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the Wikipedia vilage pump is not for new language proposals. m:Proposals for new projects will give you an opportunity to propose the new language, and then it will be voted upon there. —Mets501 (talk) 11:54, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
See also the Chinese Wikipedia.--Pharos 03:44, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

WikiLang Cloud?

I'd suggested a WikiLang Cloud similar to a tag cloud to display the other language wikis. And there were two implementations one each by User:R. Koot and User:Pharos. Have a look at them at User:R. Koot/Languages and User:Pharos/Sandbox. This cloud makes even the smaller wikis noticeable and the alphabetical arrangement makes them searchable. Can we replace the current lists with this? -- Sundar \talk \contribs 06:48, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I personally like the current layout better, because the fact of the matter is that more people want to see the languages with more articles than want to see the languages with less articles, so having them together would defy that purpose, even if they were "separated" by the size of the language name. —Mets501talk 19:50, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but the purpose of the box is in many ways to attract people to the small languages whose speakers may not even think that an encyclopedia in their native tongue is possible.--Pharos 04:52, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Trivia

  • Blah blah blah
  • Blah blah blah
  • Blah blah blah
  • Blah blah blah
  • Blah blah blah

We see this in a lot of pages around wikipedia. Lists that have got out of control and continue growing making the main article smaller than this list (e.g. the O.C.). The following could be quite a challenge, but I know verrry little HTML.:

Proposal:
Why don't we make a template that would hide the trivia unless the user clicks show. An easy way applying it to an article is to make it possible by adding {{start trivia}} in the begining and {{end trivia}} in the end of the list. Anyone who can write such template for Wikipedia, I think he would highly improve the quality of many many articles. --Alexignatiou 14:35, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Why not spin off the trivia into its own article? User:Zoe|(talk) 15:30, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Why don't we delete it in the first place. See WP:NOT. Plus it does not meet the criterias for neither GAs or FAs. Lincher 19:10, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't trivia sections be trimmed down by consensus on an article-per-article basis? In a lot of areas, the trivia is the most important part, such as certain movies with lots of homages and references. I find some trivia sections to be as obnoxious as you, for sure, but an outright ban or hiding of them isn't the answer, especially with the obvious evidence that people are looking for it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Can we please refrain from rehashing this discussion for the zillionth time? See Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles and please direct all further conversation to Wikipedia talk:Avoid trivia sections in articles. Deco 19:50, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


Ratings For Movies

I am merely passing along an idea that came to my head when reading the articles for movies on wikipedia. Why not add a raitng system, where signed in users could rate once on a movie and the average vote for the movie woulf be visible in the table at the right for the movie?--DoomsElf 20:22, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that should be part of an encyclopedia, that's something for imdb and not for wikipedia imho. Erwin85 20:25, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
WP:NOT IMDB. --Golbez 20:28, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia's goal is not to be a primary source on anything whatsoever. If you would suggest that movie articles should mention aggregate user ratings from sites such as IMDB in infoboxes, that's a different question. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:24, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Just about each country has their own ratings board. Want to list all of the ratings for every country on every movie? User:Zoe|(talk) 16:18, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps adding the ratings from various sites such as IMDB would be good and maybe even from prominent critics. It's just an idea --DoomsElf 02:54, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia & Google partnership.

Wikipedia and Google are very similar. A partnership would make sense.

Google's mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". Wikipedia's mission is probably something similar, only worded differently. Wikipedia's information is contributed directly by users, while Google's information is also contributed, albeit indirectly, by users and webmasters. Google and Wikipedia could easily co-operate to form the largest information database in the world.

After Wikipedia and Google sign their partnership, there are some ways of implementing it.

  • Google AdSense on Wikipedia pages.

Wikipedia pages could have Google AdSense ads on the left side. For certain groups of users, these ads could be optional.

How does it benefit Wikipedia?
Wikipedia will be able to earn more money from the ads, instead of relying on donations. Wikipedia can use this money to upgrade their servers and for more useful things. Users who wish to help contribute money to Wikipedia but lack cash to donate can do so with the ads.
Google AdSense delivers targeted ads. This will help users find what they are looking for. If I go to the Free web hosting service article, for example, the ads would introduce me to some free web hosting services. Someone may go to the webmail article, for example, to find a webmail provider.
How does it benefit Google?
Google's market share in the advertising industry will grow, and they will make more money.
  • Google Wikipedia Search

Google offers all kinds of searches, such as Google Blog Search for blogs. Google could offer a Wikipedia Search allowing Google users to search Wikipedia. This could extend to Wikipedia's search engine.

How does it benefit Wikipedia?
Wikipedia can use Google as a launchpad. Google will "refer" many users to Wikipedia, and hopefully we will gain more contributors.
It will be easier to search for information on Wikipedia. Wikipedia's search engine has some flaws.
How does it benefit Google?
If Google Search powers Wikipedia's search, they will gain market share in the search market.
Wikipedia contains a lot of information Google can organize and make universally accessible and useful.
  • Official Google Group for Wikipedia

I have proposed this before, and if Wikipedia and Google form a partnership, this will make even more sense. We will set up a Wikipedia forum on Google Groups, owned by...guess who - hildanknight@gmail.com, writer of the Google Groups article!

How does it benefit Wikipedia?
We currently have talk pages on Wikipedia. However, the system of talk pages has several major flaws. For example, discussion pages get very long because the discussions are not threaded - I don't like to scroll so much. The interface is decidedly user-unfriendly and difficult to navigate - I often screw up with my formatting. Finally, other users can edit my comments. For example, someone could change my comment to "Jimbo Wales is an idiotic mother f***ing b******", while leaving the Hildanknight signature in place, and an admin might block me, thinking I wrote the comment. (DISCLAIMER: This is not my opinion of Mr. Wales. I think he's cool.)
Creating a Google Group about Wikipedia would enable us to have threaded conversations about Wikipedia, circumventing limitations in the MediaWiki software. We can also discuss Wikipedia topics which would be difficult to discuss on Wikipedia itself - such as discussions about Wikipedia in general (we tend to discuss specific issues in talk pages) and suggestions for Wikipedia, as well as off-topic discussion and social interaction among the Wikipedia community (which hopefully will not become over-extensive).
We can use external communities about Wikipedia as launchpads to attract users of other sites to join us. For example, in Google Groups, you can join and start groups about your interests. We could join RuneScape World (a Google group about RuneScape [5]) and ask them to help us with the RuneScape article.
External communities will help Wikipedians expand their horizons and knowledge. They can then contribute this knowledge to Wikipedia.
How does it benefit Google?
While Wikipedia can use Google Groups as a launchpad, Google Groups can also use Wikipedia as a launchpad. We have about 1 million accounts on Wikipedia. If several thousand join the Wikipedia Google Group, and expand their horizons into other groups, the Google Groups userbase will expand.

As you can see, Wikipedia has a lot to gain from a partnership with Google. As Wikipedia expands to become one of the highest-trafficked sites on the Net, we should realize that we cannot stand alone while other companies and organizations unite and help each other. Google also has a lot to gain, and they will probably be interested in the amount of information Wikipedia has to offer. I do not think these suggestions will be difficult to implement. Your feedback is most appreciated.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

All I'm gonna say is, ummm, no. This proposal combines at least three radical ideas that most people reject. It has about as much chance of passing as a monkey does of getting Hamlet right on his first try. Deco 08:05, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. This is a non-starter as an idea. Google is a commercial entity. Wikipedia is a non-profit. Google's motivation is profit. Wikipedia's is public service. These are fundamentally incompatible. Now if Google wants to donate computers or money, fine. But it must be CHARITY, a DONATION, with no strings attached. No AdSense words on Wiki pages. No mandatory Gmail or Groups accounts, etc. etc. I can't even begin to describe what a morass this idea would create. --Valwen 07:06, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikimedia's goals are likely best served by remaining free of outside corporate influence & advertising. I'd rather they solicit me personally for money, and I think a lot of others feel the same way. If Google wants to implement something that serves out "Google Encyclopedia" pages using cached versions of our GFDL content, though, all the more power to them! Warrens 08:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I picked Google for two reasons:
  • They are anti-corporate. That's why they are my favourite company.
  • Their mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". Wikipedia and Google would thus strike a chord.
Targeted ads are better than the ads in, say, Yahoo! Mail. I mentioned an example of going to the webmail article to find a webmail provider. And they are surely better than all the spam links commonly added to articles. Wikipedia can earn more money, like the Mozilla Corporation. However, I understand Wikipedians' objections to advertising. Advertising raises NPOV issues. Wikipedia also might not wish to be involved in corporate affairs.
The suggestion of Google Wikipedia Search, I think, will not attract as much criticism as the other two. They have more information to "organize and make universally accessible and useful", and we will also get more users from Google. We currently have a partnership with Answers.com - we could do something similar with Google, where relevant search results from Wikipedia appear in a seperate section. What objections are there? Once again, I have noticed flaws in Wikipedia's search engine, and I think it should be powered by Google.
The suggestion of a Wikipedia forum on Google Groups is primarily intended to address various flaws in the current Wikipedia talk page system (mentioned earlier). I would be happy to know other ways for Wikipedia to fix the flaws. Remember, Google does not gain any money from our forum on Google Groups - Wikipedia and Google Groups only stand to gain users. As the owner of an active and successful Google group for teen chat, and a manager in two other large groups (and other groups), I will be happy to manage the Wikipedia Google Group, unless Mr Wales wishes to step in.
In short, I have found various flaws in parts of Wikipedia - such as the search engine and talk pages - and I am suggesting how a partnership with Google could help alleviate these flaws. If there are better methods to deal with these flaws, I would be glad to hear them. And these are only three possible implementations of the proposed Wikipedia-Google partnership. I am sure there are many more ways to implement such a partnership, and again, I would be glad to hear them. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:27, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Absolute total nonstarter for all the reasons mentioned above. Being indentified with a big business would be a disaster for a project that needs to be seen as impartial. The financial position seems to be fine (at least fine enough for the quarterly fundraiser to be two months late) and there is no reason to suppose Wikipedia can't rely on donations forever like any other charity. Anyway, google isn't "anti-corporate", that's just a pose that is rapidly losing its credibility. They sold out to the Chinese dictatorship, or have you forgotten about that already? How long would it be before they insisted that Wikipedia did the same if it became dependent on them? Osomec 15:07, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Google have already issued a press release explaining this. There was a time when people could access Google.com from China. However, the Chinese government were already censoring searches on Google.com (from China-based IPs) and Google.com was becoming slow and unreliable in China. They decided that rather than alienating their Chinese users, they decided to make Google.cn with censored searches, to at least provide a search engine of reasonable quality to help open up the Internet in China. In the long run, it will benefit China, because some "inappropriate" pages might escape the censorship. Let's not forget that AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, Lycos and others also censor search results - and Google at least informs the user that searches are censored. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
The did it for the money like every other company that collaborates with the Chinese regime; all the rest is just spin. I haven't forgotten about the others, but they don't claim to do no evil. Wikipedia however has the honour of being the most popular global website to be banned in China. Osomec 15:53, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia and Google are dissimilar, as one is primarily a content provider, and the other is primarily an index to content. Google/Lycos/Altavista etc. already help Wikipedia as much as they can by providing better sorted, faster and less CPU-intensive (if somewhat out-of-date) searches to content, using site:en.wikipedia.org or one of the Firefox plugins [6]. Wikipedia already helps Google/Lycos/Altavista etc. by 'making the Internet not suck' as Jimbo puts it and encouraging searching. However, one of the main reasons Wikipedia does not suck is the freedom from advertising - IMHO the Web when it first started was a useful academic resource, and only began to suck with the growth of advertising and wasted searching time. Google Groups, despite an irritating attempt to brand it, is merely a poor way of accessing Usenet and a useful archive of it. --Cedderstk 23:52, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I think advertising sucks too, but I like targeted advertising - it "gives me what I want". For example, if I went to the Web browser article, the ads might show http://getfirefox.com and http://opera.com. Some may go to the Free web hosting service article because they are looking for a free web host. However, if you don't want ads, fine. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm sure you probably know of Google's special searches. For example, search Google for AAPL and it brings up Google Finance. Sometimes Google News articles will appear at the top of searches. A Google Wikipedia search would be somewhere along these lines. If Google implements Wikipedia search, when someone Googles for Microsoft, for example, our featured article would appear as a special result. "Wikipedia has an article on Microsoft." This would introduce a lot of viewers to Wikipedia. There are two infinite things: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Think AOL. Not everyone knows site:en.wikipedia.org. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
There are several flaws in the OP's logic. FIrst of all, wikipedia is a content provider, Google is expressly not. Google is also for profit, wikipedia is not. By the same token, I think ads on wikipedia would be disasterous. Google also does provide a search for wikipedia, just as they do for every domain they index. In the search add "site:en.wikipedia.org" before your search terms, and it'll search just on the wikipedia domain. Lastly Google groups is nothing special - it's actually just a mirror of usenet. If we wanted to create a wikipedia discussion group, we could without any assistance from google. --Bachrach44 01:24, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Many people think that Google Groups is just a mirror of Usenet. This is WRONG. The first version was a mirror of Usenet. However, we can now create and manage our own groups. Please read the Google Groups article by Hildanknight. I'm sure Wikipedia can make their own discussion group - by all means! However, Google Groups is easier to use, rather than spending months programming a discussion forum into MediaWiki. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
You are correct in that Google Groups is not a mirror of Usenet. It is a misleading combination of an archive of Usenet and its own "Google Groups". Please read the Google Groups article and also the Usenet article, in particular Usenet#Google_Groups: One of many concerns that have been expressed about the Google interface is that novices may have difficulty realising that they are participating in a Usenet newsgroup rather than in a web forum hosted by Google. Carcharoth 07:36, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
No. We already have a mailing list and IRC channel for discussing Wikipedia outside of Wikipedia. Talk pages are threaded when people thread them, as has been done in this very thread above. Furthermore, someone screwing up the wikimarkup in Talk pages is getting necessary experience for learning how not to screw up the markup, and therefore be able to not screw up the markup when they're editing articles. Google is not anti-corporate, they are corporate. They just have a different philosophy than most corporations. That doesn't make them compatible with Wikipedia. Lastly, ads would not only halt donations, but would also drive away a substantial fraction of current editors. Losing experienced users in a big flood is the first stage in the theoretical process that most people have theorised Wikipedia could die. — Saxifrage ✎ 06:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Do not want (in the strongest possible terms). - FrancisTyers · 13:38, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


Partnerships with a similar organization don't always make sense. You want to partner with an organisation that is strong in your weaknesses. I dont think a full partnership is a good idea, but just puting an optional ads might be. As long as it was off by default, and you had to actually go looking for it in preferences to find the option to turn it on, I dont think it would annoy people too much, since the only people that would get them would be people that wanted them. Although, if people decided to turn on ads instead of donating, if they otherwise would have, then it may be a bad idea. I believe there is a Firefox extension to make google search wikipedia, or at least you can add site:wikipedia.org to the search terms. Google may be anti-corporate, but they are Google Incorporated. Theres no way google would place a wikipedia article at the top of their results(unless it was a sponsored result), but if the article is good and relevant then it would. If it was in a separate search, where you specifically make it search wikipedia (which does seem feasible) then it wouldnt introduce any new people, because those people would have to already have known about it to select to use it. Kaldosh 08:55, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Span.texhtml

Please see my proposal here. —Mets501 (talk) 22:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposed future event template

I've proposed a future event template to cover future events that are mandated by law, but which might not actually take place. See Wikipedia talk:Current and future event templates. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:06, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Change in MediaWiki:Licenses

Since apparently no one looks at MediaWiki talk:Licenses anymore, I'll whine here. MediaWiki talk:Licenses#Changing NoRightsReserved. --Rory096 18:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


Reorder Charcters

See my proposition at MediaWiki_talk:Edittools#Reorder_Characters. Thanks, Mwhorn 01:23, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Article searching

When one searches for an article, and makes some sort of grammatical error it just comes up with a screen saying: Thread not found.

i think it would be excellent if Wikipedia had a function like google were it offers alternates for your search, ones similiar to yours.

For instance. If I search for 'Special air serv' it will find nothing, but it would be good if it suggested that you try something like 'Special Air Service'.

See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(perennial_proposals)#Better_search_feature.-gadfium 21:13, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Muslims in Phillipines

I was surprised wiki search had no returns on the above subject.

new user permission: editprotected

I'm proposing a new permission setting that allows users to edit any fully protected page, even if they are not administrators.

Reasonable requirements would include:

  • no history of vandalism
  • no history of edit wars
  • good standing

Any bureaucrat would be able to grant this permission.

However, the downside is that if a blocked user with this permission were to abuse their talk page, then protecting the page will not help at all.

Any thoughts? --Ixfd64 23:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Possibly, but with much stricter requirements. Many pages are protected not for vandalism, but because if they were edited in the wrong way, it could screw up so much. Perhaps no history of vandalism, no history of edit wars, 500 wikipedia-space edits, and 2000 total edits, but now we're getting closer to the requirements for adminship.... —Mets501 (talk) 23:12, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, though users like me will never go for adminship because it is too much of a demanding job and would maybe like to modify these vandal-free articles w/o being an admin. Lincher 01:22, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Being an admin is not, nor should be a demanding job. We have hundreds of admins who haven't logged in in months. It's just a user with access to some extra software functions, it's not supposed to be a big deal.Deco 01:28, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
How about de-admining them then? And at the same time de-admining those who do thing it's a big deal - there are quite a few of them too.Honbicot 03:02, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Note that some pages are protected for legal reasons, such as the disclaimer and GFDL. In my opinion, not even admins should be permitted to edit these. We don't currently have a protection level for this. Deco 01:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, we have WP:OA, where editing the article can result in indefinite blocking and de-adminship without warning. I think WP:GFDL and disclaimer are two pages — and the only two pages — for which OA protection might be justified for more than a few weeks. Seahen 10:59, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposing abolition of strict time rule for 'did you know'

Hi,

everyday some very interesting "Did you know" facts are on the main page of Wikipedia. But there is a strict rule saying that the facts cannot come from articles older than four days.

I personally think this is an unnecessary extremely strict condition.

There are several interesting facts like "Egypt and Syria used to be one country" or "Inner Mongolia is actually in China" or "King Leopold 2 , the private owner of Congo , never visited the country", that could be added there, but all of them are not from articles that young.

I do understand that you wanna advertisements for new articles, but still...the toll is too high I think.

Evilbu 20:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The purpose of the "did you know" section is to exhibit new articles. The format is largely irrelevant, and some people find it misleading or strange that the "new articles" section is written in this odd "factoid" format. Deco 20:58, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
I think DYK needs to be kept under review and may require major reform at some point as new articles are inevitably about less and less substantial topics. Honbicot 03:01, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree that we should focus on new articles, but I think an article up to 14 days old is still new. Seahen 10:41, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't just accept articles that have been created but recently expanded stubs also. There's no reason for the topics to get more marginal until we have a full article on them all. And have you any idea what kind of backlog there would be if it allowed any factoid? --Cherry blossom tree 18:19, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Unilaterally splitting an article

Three days ago, I posted {{splitsection}} on Pac-Man#Atari 2600. I still have not received a single response, let alone enough to establish a consensus. If I wait, the split may never happen, even if it is the most popular and logical course of action. Since Pac-Man is such an important article (400 inbound links, PageRank 6), this is a problem. In circumstances like this, is it okay to split a section off an article unilaterally? I think rules are needed about this sort of thing — not just splits, but everything that can be done and undone by regular users — to say that the action can go ahead if there are no votes after X days. Seahen 18:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Basically, yes. If you ask for comment, and no-one says anything for a week or so, that's plenty of evidence that no-one's going to object if you do it. If someone does object, stop, of course, and discuss it, but waiting a week is plenty to make a trial of it. See Wikipedia:Revert, discuss cycle (I think that's the name) for details. We probably ought to make this more well-known. JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:18, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
It sounds good to me. What do you suggest for X? Kdammers 10:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, I think it should be less than a week for high-profile articles (where there should be plenty of users watching the article, and a lack of comment indicates a lack of opinion). If it takes a week just to get one comment, it could take months to get a quorum of opinions. I intend to make the split this afternoon (that's four days) if there's still no comment. Seahen 10:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Word 'Filter'

This is apparently technically simple, but has met resistance in the past; hopefully putting this new angle on it will help. I'm sorry it's come out very long, but hopefully I've covered most of the bases.

I propose an automatic response on posts from unregistered users that contain common vandal words (fuck, penis, etc) - registered users would still be able to edit articles with no effect, but attempted vandalism by IP or new users would result in some kind of warning, automatic message to talk page.

Issues I'm trying to get around:

  • Shouldn't prevent the edit in the first place, as it is Against The Spirit of Wikipedia. (ie, has to be a secondary action to the post, not preventing the post from happening)
  • Registered users should be unaffected (technically very simple)
  • There are currently systems in place that catch a lot of them, but I use no tools and still come across some to remove by hand, proving that the bots in place by no means catch them all. A bot HAS to err on the side of caution so as not to revert valid edits
  • Articles that are missed by current bots are not flagged in any way and rely on being caught by the RC patrol

Proposal:

  • When a registered user posts, nothing different. Registered users are more likely to be making valid posts, and this type of vandalism seems close to nonexistent from registered users.
  • When an IP or new-user posts an edit that contains something matching a filter elsewhere (could be a page so things could be added, could be an internal list... only really worth discussing this detail if the rest of the proposal can be shaped into an acceptable form) ((Edit: if the diff contains a word on the list that isn't already on the article page, would probably work better --Firien)), one or more of the following happens:
  • The article also has a category added to it or its talk page, flagging it for review. This would be a handy tool for the RC patrol, and would also be a Place To Help.
  • The talk page of the poster has a template added sending a message to that poster that contains some medium that both thanks valid posters for their contributions and also warns vandals that their edit has been noted and will be checked.
  • Tthe edit link is pasted onto a page elsewhere rather than putting a template or category on the page. This is also feasible with an RC bot, but will probably be simpler with mediawiki source. This does not alert the poster but still flags the edit for review.
  • The automation of this proposal - tieing it in with the software - reduces the chance of missing an article. By doing it serverside, traffic is reduced compared to botting; for mediawiki releases, the filter list can be empty, leaving it as an option for the owner of any specific wiki

Pros:

  • Is better than searching for each individual word
  • Is a useful duty that new admins can help with and (afaict) should tie in well with the admin tools to be able to block problem users.
  • Does not need to err on the side of caution because it does not make any visible changes to the article, unless a category is added
  • Should flag far more vandal edits than valid ones
  • Yet another way to help, and brings similar problems together in the same way as stubs are together, projects are together
  • Hopefully fits the Spirit Of Wikipedia better than previous suggestions on word filters

Cons

  • Will still flag valid edits
  • Notifying valid editors that their edits are being taken notice of may scare them off; hopefully the wording of any notification could take care of this?
  • Vandals may realise to remove categories, unflagging a page
  • Possible difficulty with filter on talk pages; perhaps on talk pages anything goes so the filter would be unneeded here?
  • ?

Suggested Filter:

  • swear words
  • certain slang eg GNAA, niggaz, etc
  • multiple consecutive punctuation

Basically, this is looking to be a list of things often used in vandal edits but rarely or never in valid edits. It is clear that the items in this proposed filter would very likely be subject to argument, nitpicking, etc. Hopefully it can be considered as a whole; the aim of this is to have the filter, and the precise items to have in can be argued on later.

--Firien § 13:17, 20 June 2006 (UTC) PS I won't post this to bugzilla until a consensus is reached on whether it should be included or not. --Firien §

Have you seen User:Lupin/Anti-vandal tool, which filters any edits which match any of the words on this list? --Cherry blossom tree 15:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
I hadn't come across it - looks good though, and should probably be used as the basis for comparison for this proposal. Great word list too; the major difference between the two (and to the other RC tools) is that the tools rely on someone being there at the same time. That system does work very well, for the most part, and all credit to the other anti-vandals for being there to catch the vast majority. This proposes to catch those who slip through the net.
Admittedly I'm beginning to have trouble reconciling the new backlog of paperwork this would create elsewhere; either removing categories when confirming an edit is valid, or cleaning a page elsewhere in the way that old vfd pages (for example) have to be cleaned up after. It's a balance between letting the few slip through the net but not having extra pages to look through to counter those ones that do slip through, versus hopefully keeping more pages clean but then having more time spent away from direct RC patrol. It depends on the balance of how much time this might cost to follow vs how many edits do slip past and taint articles, which I can only guess at. --Firien § 16:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that could be taken a step further. Each time an edit was made, it would be rated for its likelihood of being vandalism, based on the following criteria:
  • Words, as you mentioned.
  • The removal of large amounts of text from the article.
  • Specific characteristics of newly added text, such as:
    • being at the top or bottom of the article.
    • being in ALL CAPITALS.
    • repeating the same short phrase several times, e.g. [7]
    • consisting of a single sentence or bullet point.
  • External links to sites associated with spam. (This could eventually replace the spam blacklist.)
  • Using a recently blocked account or IP address.
  • An edit is much less likely to be vandalism if it is from an established account. ("Established" would mean a certain age and a certain edit count.)
  • Obscure articles (those which are rarely viewed and have few inbound links) are rarely vandalized once they've existed for a few days.
Then, MediaWiki would rate the edit for likelihood of being vandalism. The rating would be displayed on Special:Recentchanges, where it could be used as a filter criterion, and on watchlists. Also, if the likelihood was very high, it might display a warning and require the editor to click "Save page" again in order to do so; vandals who ignored these warnings could be blocked sooner. Seahen 18:37, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there any pressing reason to implement this software-side when Javascript and external applications do such a good job already? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Widespread client-side wiki parsing

There are many people that read Wikipedia pages quite a bit. I know I request at least 50 pages from en.wikipedia.org every day.

If all of the people that do this frequently used their computers to do the parsing (using Special:Export and, perhaps, a Firefox or IE plugin), couldn't it decrease a lot of the CPU usage on WikiMedia servers? This would be a bit like "donating" but in very small increments by a very large group of people, hopefully Wikipedia's most frequent users. The goal would be that new users would be less likely to experience (discouragingly) slow page loads, especially the ones using dial-up.

I am a programmer but unfortunately my wiki expertise is very limited. If there is already a program that does this and if it already has widespread use, let me know. If you know of any reasons this couldn't work, I would also like to know. --Stellis 07:48, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:POPUPS and so on from there. It's been done, it's being worked on, it's impossible to do perfectly for various subtle reasons. JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Possible, technically, but the developers' time would be better devoted to rewriting the current parser. Your proposal would require that either volunteers install PHP and hack their browser, or install PHP and use a specialized application for browsing Wikipedia, or that someone rewrites the entire parser in Javascript. Realistically, probably 95%+ of resources are spent serving anonymous browsers, not editors, so it wouldn't make any significant difference.

Anyway, for future reference, proposals like this should probably go at WP:VPT, where the devs will see them, not here. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

'Move this page' command

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the move this page command is now causing more problems than it is worth. Of late a lot of new users seem to join WP and engage in vast numbers of page moves, often without any fixing. Examples of the virtual orgy of page moving can be seen here and here. That is just one user's move in the last couple of days. I am coming across mass moving of articles of late all the time, much of it by newbies. Some of the changes are correct, but often others here have no specialist knowledge to know if the change is correct, and no explanation is needed to justify the move. The moves could be to made-up names or may be complete bullshit for all we know.

I specialise in the areas of Irish history, politics, state institutions and monarchy. At this stage I can't keep up with all the changes. Users constantly come to me saying "look what has been done now" and I find that someone has moved 20, 30, on one occasion 117 articles, in one go. The manual of style and naming conventions are being torn to shreds by naming that often is done without reference to them; indeed is done by people who don't know we have them at all.

Maybe it is time to remove the right to move pages unilaterally. We could either require all moves to go through the formal requested moves procedures, though that may be cumbersome where the move is merely to correct an error in naming. Another option might be to create an alternative corrected name procedure whereby a user could indicate that a name was flawed and request an admin move it. The corrected name procedure could allow these requests to be categorised so that the request could be seen by someone who knows a bit about the topic/area, etc. If the admin sees that, yes, there is a problem, they could then do the move. If it is debatable, they could put it to requested moves to allow a full discussion and decision by users.

The idea would be a variant on the requested moves procedure used right now with admins doing the moves. It could work as follows: {{corrected name|existing name|new name|category|reason}} as in {{Corrected name|Cahal Brugha|Cathal Brugha|Ireland|Brugha spelt his name with a 'th' not a 'h' in the middle}}{{Corrected name|John Wiki, 3rd Duke of nowhere|John Wiki, 3rd Duke of Nowhere|capitalisation wrong on N}}

The current move this page command is now too dangerous given that with Wikipedia's size moves may not be spotted, or the scale of moves may be such that no one editor can wade through them all and check them out. We need to get this all under control before it does even more damage. It has done too much already in specialist areas. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 21:01, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it is a problem, I think that it would be better to just have a few people randomly check the Page Moves log (which I do often, anyway) —Mets501 (talk) 21:22, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I disagree, on the grounds that a user without the option to move may be tempted to copy-paste move instead, which would double the mess. Maybe we should consider modifying the Mediawiki:Movepagetext template to more strongly recommend seeking consensus prior to a move. Deco 21:23, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Ditto Deco, he said exactly what I would have in different words. Nihiltres 02:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Having seen some of the moves Jtdirl is talking about I am inclined to agree with some of his arguements that it is simply too easy to move a page. One of the most problematic issues is that a move in itself does not flag up in your watchlist - theirfore it might take some time and damage before you realise whats happened (this can be a nightmare if vandals attempt to circumvent and move to "odd" names). Whilst taking away the function for most logged users would be a back step in the wrong direction certainly the move page could be better worded to make it clear that in cases of doubt or when it is not a clear-cut spelling mistake that a consensus is a must on the talk page. And that above all the move command is not a license to move. Djegan 17:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
As long as moves are un-doable without too much grief, this is consistent with Wikipedia's basic approach - anyone can edit, and anyone can undo the edit. --John Nagle 17:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that they are not undoable "without too much grief". Some time ago I had to spend 6 hours over a number of days undoing screwed up moves by another user. It would take one user hours to untangle some of the moves, and verify the name changes, in the example I mentioned originally. They could be fixed easily enough when WP was a small encyclopaedia. but with over one million articles all it would take would be twenty new users to engage in the wholescale moving of 20 articles to require 400 fixes. Many new users move a heck of a lot more than 20. (I came across one user who move 300 in four days!!!) Because the new names didn't show up on watchlists and they were rather specialised articles the moves weren't noticed (as happens, when the moves were going on, no-one with a specialist knowledge was on, and by the time they came on, so much else had happened that the changes were way down at the bottom of their watchlist or off it.). I only spotted it when I caught the user vandalising articles and looked at his edit history. At that stage I had no time to fix the complete mess that user created. I constantly get messages and emails from people saying "have you seen what user:x has done to such and such?" Or "where is article x gone to? I just keep getting redirects to redirects to redirects". Those of us working in specialist areas are getting a bit tired of spending most of our time on WP these days reverting vandalism and moving articles back to their original location as required by the manual of systle. For example, not that many people know about the Irish Unionist Party. I could move that to Unionist Party of Hawaii and it could sit there for months, because no-one would notice until they were went to the original article and found it at some nutty location. If only one hundred articles are moved every week to a nutty location, and not spotted, that could mean over 2000 articles have been moved this year alone. With one million articles we simply cannot keep up with all the fixing. And on the evidence, the number of wild moving by new editors seems to have rocketed. I've come across five or six new users who in the last two weeks between them must have moved between 400 and 500 articles, many of them to rubbish names and away the name chosen because of the manual of style or naming conventions. At this stage that move this page command has to go, before it reduces whole parts of the encyclopaedia to a tangled mess. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 22:18, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
But moves are undoable by anybody except an administrator if the page has been edited since the move. The original name exists as a redirect, and it is impossible (I think) for an ordinary editor to move a page back to its original name. An ordinary editor either has to ask an administrator to do something, or start a vote to move the page back. The present system makes it all too easy for new editors to make a mess of things. Noel S McFerran 01:40, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
There's one exception to that rule: if the sole edit in the history of the target page is a redirect to the page being moved, a non-admin can overwrite it. This means that moves can typically be reverted by ordinary users. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:13, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I utilise the move function a fair bit in instances that are mostly non-controversial. I think I would lose a fair bit of editing time if I have to request moves for everything. Also, I fix a lot of absolutely terrible moves. That takes long enough without going to WP:RM. What I do think needs to be done, if possible, is a bar on moves by users with less than a certain number of edits. Between registering and reaching whatever that number is, it would be fairly evident whether the user is going to be a problem or not. If a user is found to be abusing the moving privilege, he or she can simply have it revoked or frozen for a certain amount of time, like a ban. Users such as the example you provided, who do not heed warnings, would ones eligible for a move ban. Many stop the nonsense after a warning. After a certain number of edits, if they haven't figured it out, then a move ban would be in order. Charles 01:52, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I think a good feature that WP should consider is a tab specifically for the move history of a page. All too often, it is confusing to sift through the history to piece together what moves were made. That history should "travel" with the page whenever a move is made. Also, summaries should be mandatory in order to complete a move. If insufficient or misleading summaries are made, it should warrant a warning. Charles 01:54, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
If the existing admin move-rollback function is inconvenient in some way, specify how and file a feature request at Mediazilla:. Editing the page-move message to be scarier would probably also be a good idea. Beyond that, restricting moves so much would add too much hassle to be justifiable. If you think they should be throttled, you can vote for Mediazilla:1454. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:13, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Moves are fairly normal part of editorial work. There is firstly no good sense to build any more "privileged" positions in Wikipedia, such as "privilege to move". I believe persons who are asking such additional privilege system to be built, are nearing the much-warned "instruction creep" stage. That's something I am warning against. There are of course always those who desire to have more and more control over things - Bush administration is another good example of such - control freak is quite common phenomenon (by the way, also Bush administration is good to gain more control powers by creating and adding people's fears, by doomsday-scenarios and by spreading assumption that everyone is going to attack "the bastion", be it USA or Wikipedia; certain writers above need to learn that others in Wikipedia are also working to make it better, and that the only changes that are improvements, are not those made by the certain writer having the control freak attitude). Btw, we of course assume that Jtdirl is not going to move Irish Unionist Party to a place which is totally wrong - BUT, if Jtdirl so moves, I am willing to assume that sooner or later someone moves it to the right direction, and/or opens a move request - which will make the thing more visible and leads it towards being named in a good way. Perhaps each article deserves one renaming vote - at least then the name will be thought about. And if one has not enough time to do what (s)he wants to do, I remind this work is voluntary. But somehow Jtdirl anyway seems to have so much time at hands that those 6-hour sessions are quite regular - so I would not pity them, god to have a hobby for empty days. Instruction creepism regarding certain naming conventions has come to such a current situation that almost no one is committed to those conventions, either not bothering to make sense of such detailed and self-conflicting instructions or are opposing those. I understand that some initiation of this discussion has come from naming of biographies about royals and nobles, a convention which is actually absurdly twisted, and complicated. The worst thing in it is that some persons (possibly also writers above) proclaiming themselves experts, are actually relatively obstinate, but relatively ignorant of the historical grounds behind such. I would like to see those who pontificate about their "expertise" to actually show it, by telling in clear language where "historical naming of wives" come from and how it has been variously used in works of history, prosopography, heraldry and genealogy, and what prefix titles have been in real use in European history before most recent three centuries. I would bet they are sadly ignorant of such, presumably because the so-called expertise often seems to come from a zeal into Queen Victoria's extended family and next to nothing else. one of the sad things is that naming built upon what may fit to Victoria's various grandchildren, is not in all parts historically relevant in larger context, but still those Vicky-zealots are pushing their untenable namings, throddling over better experts. Funnily enough, Vicky-related biographies seem to be most "protected", there having been unduly long page protects and quite stupid edit wars, made by certain people who somehow try to pretend to be editors in "good standing". And, of course I repeat what I have expressed in other places: Jtdirl is no specialist on feudal and early modern historiography and their monarchies, so that the context of above initiative comes clearer to discussants here. There is the relatively easy way to move articles by making cut-and-paste moves, and some editor above who seems to want more control over movings, has actually done cut-and-paste moves, when it suited to one's interests. It is highly necessary to remember not to push towards cut-and-paste moves with denying the current more proper means to move. Shilkanni 22:15, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Let's define encyclopedic relevance (or notability)

I propose that the Wikipedia community seek a community definition for encyclopedic relevance. Please add your thoughts after mine. Here's my first attempt at such a definition:

For the subject of an article to have encyclopedic relevance, there must be provable common knowledge and reverence of the article's subject within the subject's expected natural sphere of influence and a significant number of references outside the original article author's sphere of influence in cases where the author has a significant real-world linkage to the subject. Neither the volume of Google hits nor a subject's ranking in Alexa (if it's a website) provide sufficient evidence for these purposes.

—  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 19:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Notability has nothing to do with WP:AUTO. Authors often write about non-notable subjects which they're directly involved in, but that doesn't mean they should have to pass additional tests to qualify. I do like the first part, "there must be provable common knowledge and reverence of the article's subject within the subject's expected natural sphere of influence". Deco 20:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I didn't mean to suggest suppression of autobiography in my attempt at a definition, but I believe autobiography is acceptable under my definition. My definition just says that there must be proof of relevance outside the article author's sphere of influence. So if you're writing an autobiography of sorts, you would have to ask yourself this question--"Excluding my contributions or bodies of work related to this subject as well as me or heavily linked organizations (e.g., publishers) talking about the subject, is there enough of a degree of common knowledge and reverence in the expected natural sphere of influence of that subject?" —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 22:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
On second thought, I think I now see the above definition creates a conflict with WP:AUTO and that a decoupling is needed. Here's a second attempt (italicizing the change):
For the subject of an article to have encyclopedic relevance, there must be provable common knowledge and reverence of the article's subject within the subject's expected natural sphere of influence. Further, all references provided for proof should rest outside the direct influence of the subject itself as well as intricately linked parties or organizations. Neither the volume of Google hits nor a subject's ranking in Alexa (if it's a website) provide sufficient evidence for these purposes.
—  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 22:56, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't see any reason why the references created by the author or people affiliated with the author should be disregarded. Does how notable something is depend on who's writing it? It's an objective quality that every reference contributes to. Let's not try to make this definition do too much all at once - I think it's better to depend on the reputability of the sources, as many crank theories are based on irreputable sources created by the author. Deco 00:00, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you, especially because that's not my position. My position is that in determining relevance, we cannot use information that comes from a conflict of interest as I described above (that is, we cannot have someone basically saying "I am important, therefore you must include me"). I'm not saying that someone cannot create an article about themselves or their organization--I'm saying that entities outside of a conflict of interest must demonstrate that they are relevant. I realize that it's difficult to understand what I'm saying, as there are fine points here. Let me rephrase a different way: I am not talking about how articles are created, but rather how their relevance is determined. Anyone should be able to create an article about any relevant subject, even if the author is the subject. But in determining relevance, the subject and intricately linked parties cannot be trusted as a source for that relevance, although they can indeed inform us of sources of relevance outside the conflict of interest. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 00:41, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Example: The President of Arby's can write an article about Arby's. If, for sake of argument, somebody challenges the Arby's article as not having encyclopedic relevance, the President of Arby's cannot provide for proof of relevance that he says Arby's is important. Other officers of the Arby's corporation (or its parent company) also cannot say Arby's is important. But they (as well as anyone else) can point to third-party entities (outside a conflict of interest) that say Arby's is important. I hope this clarifies things. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 00:56, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I still disagree. I think these sources should be included, but weighted according to the standard of Wikipedia:Reliable sources. I think it overextends the concept of notability to take conflict of interest intos account. Deco 01:30, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I now agree with excluding tests for reliable sources, as simplicity is a good thing. But I still can't fathom why anyone would accept self-notability in any possible form, as if someone could assign importance or relevance to themselves. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 19:11, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
It is quite true that the volume of Google hits and/or a subject's ranking in Alexa do not indicate that the subject is "encyclopedically relevant" (q.f. notable), but they do provide some evidence to include when there is nothing else to provide WP:V. User:Zoe|(talk) 21:02, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
If there's nothing else to provide verifiability, then it is worth asking whether the subject is notable enough to belong in an encyclopaedia. It might be, but it should surely provoke some serious consideration. Jakew 21:18, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I am just saying that this kind of information is not enough to prove relevance. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 22:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea in principle of providing a guideline on notability, but I'm not certain of your (Stevie's) proposed definition. I think that may be a little too narrow, and that it needs expanding, with discussion and illustrative examples. We would need to incorporate (and avoid contradicting) relevant parts of WP:NOT and WP:AUTOWP:BIO, and possibly other policies.
I definitely think much more discussion is needed, and refinements are naturally expected. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 22:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I would be interested in working with you on this. How do others feel about doing so? Jakew 21:18, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. As a Wikipedian of over two years, I've long thought a fully fleshed-out discussion on this subject is long overdue. Perhaps it would be a good idea to start working on an official proposal that the community can begin marking up? —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 22:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Note to all: I'm off on vacation for the next few days. On Thursday or thereabouts, if there's interest in working on this as a proposal, I will rejoin the discussion at that time. Thanks! —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 01:01, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
As a practical matter, WP:BIO does cover most of the common cases. Most trouble in the individual notability area is related to lesser figures in the entertainment industry, and for those, we have reasonably objective standards, like WP:BAND. Right now, we do have an AfD pending for a dead Anglican bishop who was the brother of someone famous, but that's an unusual case. Arguably, Wikipedia's standards for notability are too strict for corporate figures and too loose for entertainment figures. Wikipedia would normally accept as notable a performer with two bad albums available on Amazon.com. But the #2 executive at a Fortune 500 company normally wouldn't get in. Personally, I'd throw out every living musician below the platinum record level as non-notable, but the fans would scream. --John Nagle 02:25, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not harmed by including non-notable content, but it can be helped. If you look at the costs and benefits, the latter clear predominate. The one and only possible cost is loss of respect—but frankly, I have yet to see anyone say "Wikipedia must suck because it has 424 articles on Simpsons episodes". I have seen many non-Wikipedians become angered or distressed with our system because their articles got deleted. Let those who will respect us respect us for our breadth as well as our reliability; don't shut out knowledge just because you don't think it's "important" enough. Look at the arguments for and against; weigh the demonstrable alienation and loss of readership on the one hand, and the ungrounded speculation about respect and maintainability on the other. Live and let live: you aren't hurt if someone writes verifiable articles on their favored fancruft, and neither is anyone else. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:27, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
We definitely have different viewpoints about what should be included in the Wikipedia, but let's be clear here: This definition is not about exactly defining what is important, but rather about creating a framework for helping Wikipedians conclude if something is important or not. Recall the phrase "expected natural sphere of influence"--I wouldn't necessarily even vote on Afd's for fancruft I knew little about. The question is not "Do I as a Wikipedian editor find it important?" but rather "Does it appear that the community that naturally surrounds this thing thinks it is important?". Also note that people can still disagree about importance under a definition of "encyclopedic relevance"--it's merely a definition, but by nature it does not give the Afd reviewer an exact answer to their question of importance unless they actually research that question and find out. Under this new definition, we would hope to reduce snap decisions of "Delete" or "Keep". —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 04:34, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

To refer back to the original title, let's not define it. As a growing body of work, Wikipedia can't afford to have notability standards set in stone. What is notable for an encyclopedia with 10,000 articles is considerably different from what is notable for one with 100,000 articles, and different again from what is notable for one with a million articles. As th number of articles changes, so too must our levels of required notability. (For a more thorough explanation of this viewpoint, see meta:Incrementalism). Grutness...wha? 06:00, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know; I think we could have 100 million articles and cruft would still be cruft, to a large extent. There really are probably many more genuine encyclopedic topics than even Wikipedians generally give credit for. A real standard for notability would of course be Wikipedia's (or at least AFD's) philosopher's stone; I've often thought something quantitative might work out, if it was based on, say, an exhaustive micro-study of the possibilities in one small Ohio town.--Pharos 09:03, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
After reading WP:N, WP:IMP and other materials, I now realize I am not exactly breaking new ground with my proposal. I am humbled by the complexities involved, and thus believe that this isn't worth pursuing as yet another new proposal. However, I will take my views and use them to formulate my own policy with regards to notability, and use that in deletion discussion. I suppose that is what every Wikipedian does anyway, albeit in an informal manner. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 19:53, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Change to MediaWiki:Revertpage

Currently, when an edit is reverted, the text is Reverted edits by [[Special:Contributions/$2|$2]] ([[User talk:$2|talk]]) to last version by $1 (where $2 is obviously the revertee, and $1 the editor of the reverted-to revision). I think it's confusing to have the username link to contributions, when that's nothing like what we have for signatures and other "default" things: the name by itself almost always links to userpage.

So, I think it should become Reverted edits by [[User:$2|$2]] ([[User talk:$2|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/$2|contribs]]) to last version by $1. Any objections? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:20, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds better, I wonder where you got the idea (uh maybe your name. lol. Lincher 19:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Mild oppose. It does make more sense, but it's been that way for so astonishingly long that it would cause major mindf**ks to all the more elder Wikipedias (such as myself), so for that reason, please don't do it. Also, it wouldn't be retroactive, so we'd have two conflicting versions, which would be less than nice. (Of course, we already have this problem, with popups, etc. But still...) JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Ark, you're right that it wouldn't be retroactive. That's a nuisance. No real point in changing it then, I suppose. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

naming languages in English

I'm not sure if this is something within the control of admins in English Wikipedia, but in case it is.

Regarding language names listed in "In other languages", it would be nice, if, for logged in users, the alternate languages of an article were displayed in English (or more precisely, the user's selected language), instead of the native name of the language (e.g. display "German" instead of "Deutsch"). To me, it only makes sense to show the native name for anons, because you have no idea what language they speak, and we want to help them get to their native language easily. But, if somebody is a registered user, than we can assume text is in their perferred langauge (because language is pickable in preferences). In some case (like codes "am" and "iu") I can't even see any characters, but get "????". I'm hoping this is something that could be changed, that doesn't involve a software change (in which case, it probably wouldn't be worth it). I suppose it's not essential to know that an article is in "Inuktitut", but it would be nice. --Rob 22:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

This would require a software change. The meaning of language codes can be found by looking for the appropriate article, if you're interested; am stands for the Amharic language, for instance. But really, why is an article written in a foreign language whose alphabet you can't understand interesting to you? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:28, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with this proposal. If I am logged into a language that I don't know very well but still can read, I want to be able to see if there is a link in a language I can read better (e.g., I can follow Russian, but I can't recall the Russian word for English, much less know what the Wik Russian abbreviation is for English in case I know there is an English version and simply want to stick in an over-looked link.) On the other hand, if the name in the language of the Wik site being looked at were in the language of that site IN ADDITION, that would be nice. Kdammers 10:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to revive my earlier proposal, and am looking for nominations, if not to "featured sound" status, then at least to something preliminarily like "good sounds". Please see Wikipedia talk:Featured sound candidates. Thanks.--Pharos 02:03, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Isn't there a proposal to change Featured Images to Featured Media? User:Zoe|(talk) 15:26, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Scratch that; please have a look at Wikipedia:Sound of the day instead, an idea of mine that might actually work.--Pharos 14:57, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Templates, Major settlements in counties

Hi there. I have created this template, Template:Major settlements in Lincs which shows the major settlements in Lincolnshire. I'd just like to know whether anyone thinks that it would be woth expanding such an idea to other counties. The only issue that I can forsee would be whether to use Ceremonial or traditional counties. Let me know what you think Lofty 15:48, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


My Wikipedia ideas

The following were taken from my talk page so some of it may seem out of context such as my signaturess and such

Online/Offline Status

I have an idea for the webmasters on wikipedia, if they are interested. I know there are numerous websites out there, including Myspace and Nohomers, that display when a person is signed in and is active. I have also noticed that there are a number of people on wikipedia that have a makeshift system of this, where they must edit their page to tell others that they are on the site. I was wondering if there was a way for the webmasters at wikipedia to get the necessay software/script/code in order for each user page to display whether the user is online or not. Please let me know what you think of my idea and if it can be implemented because I have wanted one on my page, but do not want to deal with the hassle of editing every time I get on or off. Thank you for your time.

--WillMak050389 17:39, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that this would work, because (for example), I always am "online", but not always sitting at the computer. Sometimes, if I have to leave to go somewhere for a few hours, and I'm in the middle of something on WP, I will just minimize the WP browser window. So, according to the automated system, I'm "online" and any user can contact me, but I'm not really available to respond to messages. Another possibility would be to have an "active"/"inactive" status monitor (for example, when you make an edit, your status becomes "active" and after you haven't edited for x minutes your status becomes "inactive", but this would require a software change to MediaWiki, and is not something we could do on WP itself. —Mets501 (talk) 16:16, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Whether you're online is typically determined by how long ago your computer last made contact with the servers. A timeout of between five minutes and half an hour is typical. The servers have no idea whether your browser is open or not; HTTP is a pull protocol, so they only know about you when you initiate contact with them. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:11, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
In general, MediaWiki developers prefer to minimize frills like this that require database queries. You could file an enhancement request at Mediazilla: if you like, however. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:11, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

CDDB for albums

My father also introduced a new idea for me to inquire about. We have a project related to the albums that have articles on wikipedia, Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums. Is there a way that Wikipedia could use the CDDB to generate the infoboxes that are requested? Itunes uses it and many other music oriented programs use it, so I was wondering if Wikipedia could use it to help strengthen the album articles and help with WikiProject Albums. Leave comments here or relay this to someone who would be able to work this out. Thanks again for reading my two cents.

--WillMak050389 01:39, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think CDDB would work, because you have to pay an up-front fee, no other similar database can be accessed in addition to CDDB, and the CDDB logo must be displayed. Another alternative that could work would be freedb, for two reasons: all of its content is under the GPL (so Wikipedia could use it) and it accepts and returns UTF-8 data, which WP also uses. —Mets501 (talk) 16:23, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

List of recently not found results

I don't know if this has been proposed before, but I'd like to suggest that a log of recently searched for and unfound items is added to Wikipedia. By sorting them on the basis of times they were searched for and not found, we could more easily fill the gaps that still remain in the database. This would be complementary to Special:Wantedpages and Wikipedia:Requested articles. I'm thinking of posting this to Bugzilla, but would rather first hear the opinion of other users. Perhaps this has been talked about extensively already and found to be unfeasible or unusable. --Eleassar my talk 13:01, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

There may be privacy issues, in that some people may not want the whole world to know when they mis-spelled a word. Andjam 13:18, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

The personal data (IP numbers/usernames) should be available to developers only. The log for others users would contain the following data:

  • strings
  • their frequency (how many times they have been looked for)
  • the date of the first search and of the last search.

It would be possible to limit the time period to be displayed and to set the sorting order (ascending/descending) and whether to include all results or only those that have been searched for more than once in this time. AFAIK the only problem (but a hard one) is that someone would have to take his time to code this ;) --Eleassar my talk 15:31, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this would be difficult to code - at worst a new database table might be involved. I think it would be extremely helpful for learning where to create new articles, but even more importantly, redirects. I'm sure many topics searched for have articles but they're using terminology we never thought of. It may be that large numbers of users are hitting certain common names and right now we just don't know. Deco 20:46, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Back in the Stone Age (three years or so ago), this was a feature of Recent Changes. Recently searched-for terms that were not found were included in the list of changes. It was removed somewhere along the line. User:Zoe|(talk) 21:53, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
  • In response to Eleassar, my concern isn't that the page will mention the person's name / IP, but that people may not want even the misspelling of their search to be publicly available. Andjam 02:16, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Isn't there a better way to optimize the search on Wikipedia? 66.229.182.113 04:01, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Some of this can be handled by automatic search. Some of it can't, if the proper article doesn't even mention the popular search term. Deco 06:48, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I suspect there might be database load issues involved with this, or impracticality due to the server setup; apparently the heavy usage of Squids make it difficult for things like this to be properly logged. If you would like support for this software to be added to MediaWiki, ask at Mediazilla:. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:06, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
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