Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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Languages on sidebar

On the left hand side of any Wikipedia page, on the toolbar, there is a section devoted to interwiki links to other language versions of an article. I want to propose a small change to the mediawiki software wording here. At current it is simply named "Languages", which is rather ambiguous and vague name. I think that when somebody less experienced at Wikipedia, usually a reader or newbie, sees that and the links below it, that if they click it they can get the whole of Wikipedia translated into that language. I propose it is changed to something short but similar to "View this page in other languages". This clears up any confusion to what you may consider to be a very minor thing but could be very hard to get their head round for readers. Rcsprinter (talkin' to me?) @ 11:27, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

"In other languages" would probably fit. But your solution does not solve the stated problem. I'm as likely to think I'll see a trasnslation of the EN page if we say "View this page in other languages" ... the operative problem being "this page". The interwiki link allows us to view the treatment of this subject in other languages. "Other language versions" might work. "Articles on other languages" also. But we're swapping brevity for perceived accuracy, which still might not be parsed by the user. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:53, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Why not "Other languages"? Tony (talk) 12:14, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Funny, in my toolbar it shows as "in other languages". Lectonar (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:20, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Are you using any custom code that might be overriding the default? —David Levy 12:59, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Not that I am aware of; but still, it shows "In other languages", even on this page here. Lectonar (talk) 13:03, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I guess you have selected "en-GB - British English" as language at Special:Preferences. Then you see MediaWiki:Otherlanguages/en-gb instead of MediaWiki:Otherlanguages. en-gb is not recommended at the English Wikipedia. See Help:Preferences. The page history of MediaWiki:Otherlanguages shows some variation years ago but not since 2007. David Levy used the Simple English Wikipedia as reason for not saying "In other languages".[1] PrimeHunter (talk) 13:38, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for that; I guess I must have chosen it when I started may account, some 7 years ago. Never had any problems, though. Cheers. Lectonar (talk) 13:54, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I just harmonized MediaWiki:Otherlanguages/en-gb and MediaWiki:Otherlanguages/en-ca with MediaWiki:Otherlanguages.

If the British English and Canadian English options are to remain available, we should apply the various customizations (with changes in spelling/wording where appropriate). For the messages in which no English variety issues exist (presumably most), we could use redirects. —David Levy 17:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

One of the Wikipedias is written in simple English. —David Levy 12:59, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Keep "Languages". Apart from linking to this subject in another language, it also links to the whole Wikipedia in that language (with "whole" admittedly being smaller than English). You stay in that language if you follow wikilinks there, use the search box, click the logo, and so on. "Languages" is brief and about as clear or open to misunderstanding as alternatives that are not ridiculously long. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:38, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Keep "Languages". Agree with PrimeHunter - it is ambiguous, but it's short and it won't take the reader long to find out what is meant once he actually follows the link... --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

We will have a huge language button on top right.

The WMF is developing a huge button that says "English" on the right corner, so readers will find the articles in other languages easily. --NaBUru38 (talk) 20:09, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Why not have it say "On Other Wikipedias"? Then it encompasses, say, Simple English, while avoiding the implication of translations. ∴ ZX95 ^[discuss] 01:00, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

My preference is languages because that is more explanatory than other wp's. Technically simple is a subset of English. Apteva (talk) 02:53, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

The issue was raised, however, that "Languages" is likely to make some people think that the linked articles are translations of the English one; that was why I suggested "On Other Wikipedias", which is much less ambiguous. ∴ ZX95 ^[discuss] 15:29, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Note to keep archiving bot away. Rcsprinter (yak) @ 21:43, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Will this be affected by WikiData or will the wording change we are proposing still be changeable? Rcsprinter (whisper) @ 15:59, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

This is unrelated to Wikidata. I believe this is somewhere in Mediawiki and can be changed if there is consensus to do it.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:08, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Redirects don't work on MediaWiki interface pages, but you can transclude one into another. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:18, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Simple English at top of languages

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

A request for closure of the discussion has been filed. Fylbecatulous talk 19:20, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

The primary question for this discussion is- Should the Simple Wiki be put at top of the languages bar? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 20:11, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The issue was already discussed on the Village Pump and had garnered supports too, but due to an amateur mistake on my (nominator) part, it had to be closed on mainly technical grounds. Relevant discussion related to the issue may be found in the following places-

• The Original discussion in the Pump encompassing a broader range of issues
• RFC and subsequent voting on the above (Later being narrowed down to the above question asked here)
• Discussion related to the closure of the topic above
• AN discussion on re-opening the RFC after closure
• Discussion at Bot requests to deliberate on Technical implementations of the project
• A related thread in the Idea Lab.

Adding an RFC to have wider community opinion- TheOriginalSoni (talk) 20:11, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

Feel free to discuss any of the issues already discussed and add your/previous statements here.

• Please see WP:Manual of Style/Layout#Order of sections. Apteva (talk) 07:19, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
• I noticed that simple English is already the top link in the foreign languages on the WP:MAIN page. Does anyone have any insights as to why this decision was made? Might it shed some light on this discussion? AgnosticAphid talk 11:07, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
  • That simply reflects the current ordering at W:, which comes from {{Main Page interwikis}}, which has been that way since simple was added in 2007.[2] Apteva (talk) 02:43, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

• What's going to happen when Wikidata comes along? MER-C 10:08, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I believe enWiki shall send a note to the developers of WikiData to customize our language sorting list. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 05:06, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

• A thought - can we measure the success or otherwise of these links? If we switch the position, then a clear marker of success would be that a) it gets used and b) it's found useful.

a) is a simple matter of recording traffic from en.wp to simple.wp - if it increases significantly, then good. b) is a little tricker, but it seems safe to assume that if people go en.wp > simple.wp > other simple.wp - they follow an internal link to another simple page once there - then they're finding simple useful.

I don't know if we currently have the analytics data to do either of these - particularly b - but if we do, it might be worth setting up some kind of test. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:14, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Can anybody explain how and when this is going to be closed? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 15:28, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Voting

• Support as nominator TheOriginalSoni (talk) 20:11, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose'. I'm going to say what I think, and I apologize if it sounds impolite or hurts feelings, but it's what I think. Simple English Wikipedia is mostly a failed experiment. The task that it theoretically sets for itself — explain ideas just as complicated as those of any other Wikipedia, but using simple language — is basically just not possible. There is no justification for giving it priority over genuine natural languages. --Trovatore (talk) 20:30, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Two things. First - Simple wiki is not as good as it should be mainly because of the coverage it fails to get from users who are actually "searching" for something to edit substantially. I believe this proposal could get it some decent coverage. Second - I dont think its impossible to do what the Simple Wiki tries to do. All it envisgages is Wikipedia, but just without the technical Jargon and the sophistication in languages and sentence construction that is like a signature style of the wiki now. Challenging? Yes. Impossible? I dont think so.

And finally, Simple gives a scope for the readers who do not have the technical mind to understand the current articles, to do so - A place where everything is simple. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 09:52, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

We disagree. My view is that it is, in practice, impossible. Technical "jargon" (used judiciously) is actually the simplest and clearest language for expressing technical concepts. If you ban it, clearly explaining the concepts becomes tedious to the extent of impeding the effort of getting them across at all.

That doesn't mean that people shouldn't try, if they want to. So far they have not succeeded. Given the inherent implausibility of the goal, I do not think that we should distort the interlang listings just to advertise it. --Trovatore (talk) 18:42, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

If both of you are under the impression that Simple doe not use technical terms, then it doesn't sound as though either of you are sufficiently informed to be able to judge the success of the project... (see Macdonald-ross' reply below). Osiris (talk) 00:51, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. I'm afraid I have to agree with Trovatore. Whatever it is that Simple wants to do, it has never succeeded in even clearly defining that goal, let alone making any significant headway towards achieving it. Its programmatic statements about it are largely either vacuous or self-contradictory, and its practice is chaotic. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:50, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. Unlike the other posters, I don't really have a view on Simple English Wikipedia. Sometimes, it can be quite useful; at other times, it's hopeless as a reference tool. However, it is easier to locate Simple English in the list of interwiki links if it is in the correct alphabetical order. No need to overcomplicate it. — This, that, and the other (talk) 11:25, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

  I believe the point of the proposal is not to make it easier to find, but to make people be aware of its existence at all. Being buried in the middle of the list is easy to overlook, being at the top makes it clear it's different (and it IS different) and calls attention to itself, which is what the proposer wants. Most people don't know it exists, after all (though granted, many people don't realize anything but en exists...) ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:31, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

  Or just change the font color. Others are completely different language, "Simple English" is not!-Tito Dutta (talk) 19:48, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

• No opinion as to whether it should be at the top or not, but I'm not sure it makes sense to be having this discussion now. As I understand it, interwikis are going to start being handled by Wikidata in a few weeks, which will probably take the issue of how to order things away from the English Wikipedia. A while later we'll probably have ULS here and have interwikis selectable through that instead of the current list display, making the point moot. --Yair rand (talk) 19:58, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
  • First I've heard of this. Can you give a pointer to further information? --Trovatore (talk)
    • On which part? There's some info on Wikidata at d:WD:I. Wikidata interwikis are going to be used on Hungarian Wikipedia starting January 14 (announced at d:WD:PC#next steps for the first Wikidata client - the Hungarian Wikipedia), followed by the Hebrew Wikipedia, and then the English Wikipedia, and then all the other Wikipedias. There's some stuff on ULS at mw:ULS. --Yair rand (talk) 21:11, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

In the previous discussion, I was told that we can contact the WikiData developers (or something like that) and place a request so that Simple English comes out at the top for us. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 04:39, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, really the Simple English Wikipedia was even worse an idea than Klingon. Its mostly good for laughs, and quite honestly might be the least useful link in the list. Prodego ^talk 06:50, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose - If we want to promote the simple English WP, we'll need more than this - and I don't think that we should promote it in the first place. Ajraddatz (Talk) 05:36, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose we do need something more sophisticated here, but it should be user driven not project driven. Ideally we need something that looks at the languages you have set in babel boxes and user preferences and prioritises those links accordingly. So if you speak two other languages and and are looking at an article that has 23 other language versions including one that you speak it should list that one first. ϢereSpielChequers 15:52, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

• A good idea, but most people who read Wikipedia are not users. And even for users, that would probably be implausible for the Wikidata developers. Language links won't be hosted locally much longer. Osiris (talk) 00:51, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

• Computing power is getting steadily cheaper, so I'd be surprised if the developers had a difficulty with this. As for most readers not registering accounts, if you give people features that they find useful they will create a free account in order to access them. The same argument applies to possible changes like the image filter and an American English/English toggle. I suspect we have a few readers already who have accounts in order to have a watchlist or a different skin, we certainly have lots of accounts that have been created but which never edit. ϢereSpielChequers 15:33, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

• Well, there are a lot of benefits to registering an account already and the vast majority of readers still don't bother with it. Putting that aside, though, that covers foreign-language speakers (at least speakers of those languages with their own version of Wikipedia; my native language isn't even close to having its own). What about the other target audiences here? Native speakers with a lower reading capability (e.g. kids and special-ed students) and ESL readers who are learning English? These are the readers we're aiming at here, what would you suggest they do when they encounter articles that are too difficult for them to read? Osiris (talk) 07:20, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

• Support - I only recently got familiar with Simple and that was only after my attitude with En Wikipedia degraded and I sought out other projects to participate in outside this one. Had that not happened I probably would still be oblivious to it. Simple is useful and if its a failed experiment its only because access to it is hidden among a sea of links. The English Wikipedia is the prominent link and always has been since the creation of the project so naturally so its going to get more activity. Moving the link up in the interwiki list doesn't just garner traffic to simple, it lets the readers of the article know, that there may be a simpler version of it that they can start with to gain at least some familiarity with the subject. Its easy for us to discredit the site because we can all clearly read and articulate english, many of us at an advanced level. But try reading a site in another language, maybe using google translator and see how much it makes sense. Kumioko (talk) 17:00, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose I'm concerned about the effect this might have on contentious articles - fringe, biographies, etc as it might drive vandals, BLP violators, etc to work on the Simple version. Dougweller (talk) 15:17, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support. It is true to say that reliable articles on science and other technical subjects need non-simple technical terms, and Simple does use them. We approach this problem by 1. agreeing that accuracy is a prime objective in science communication (we have a consensus on this), and 2. by using appropriate editing techniques. A technical term can be linked to a page which explains it, to an entry in Simple wikt (our version of Wiktionary) or by explaining it in a footnote. The fact that some of the negatives appear not to know this is interesting. I think if one looks at some of the pages on molecular biology, or immunology, or astronomy, you can see some fairly good examples. Some topics are relatively undeveloped, because we have no-one with the background to handle a particular subject -- physics for example -- but that is a reflection of the problem that we have too few editors to handle the work that needs doing. On the other hand, English Wikipedia has quite different problems. There are an astonishing number of long, verbose and unreadable articles, where struggles between editors have destroyed any sense of structure. Articles wander this way and that way, everything that anyone can think of is stuffed in... The standard of prose in many articles is truly dreadful. It is very difficult to improve pages on important topics because of the time taken in endless discussions. Much of English wiki is a closed book to the many, many readers whose reading skills in English are average. Simple English is a sensible answer to a real problem. It deserves to be better known, and the proposal is one way to go about it. Macdonald-ross (talk) 22:55, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support. Not doing anything in response to all the article feedback is just not productive. Whether or not you find it useful, not all readers have a sufficient knowledge of English. To readers of this wiki, the link to SEWP is the most valuable link in the list. If they're reading this wiki, chances are good they can understand a bit of English -- if they want to read the topic described in clearer terms, they'll be able to see the link more easily. Nothing wrong with sorting it at the top at all. Osiris (talk) 00:51, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support - as expressed by so clearly by Osiris above. --Peterdownunder (talk) 23:00, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support per above.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  04:27, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support, as per nom.--TVBdxiang (Talk) 06:08, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support - As Osiris says. Yottie (talk) 16:39, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose, on the grounds that "Simple English" is ill-conceived. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:25, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support Osiris does a wonderful job explaining what I couldn't have said any better. MJ94 (talk) 18:50, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support Basically per Osiris. AIRcorn (talk) 09:13, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support I couldn't have said it better than Osiris. -DJSasso (talk) 20:04, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose: Simple Wikipedia is a joke. Most of their articles are out-of-date stubs. It's not helpful to most readers, who just have to come back here to find what they're looking for pbp 05:07, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Purpleback! Nice to see you here. :) Osiris (talk) 14:28, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: Should be noted that most of the "Support" votes are active on Simple English Wikipedia, if anyone's interested pbp 19:32, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• And the fact that you are banned there doesn't play into your opinion at all? -DJSasso (talk) 19:07, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
• A sudden rush of supporters does seem to have occurred here after Macdonald-ross advertised this discussion on simple.wp's village pump. Jafeluv (talk) 13:48, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

• I wouldn't really call it a sudden rush seeing as how they are spread out over a number of days. But yes simple was made aware of the discussion. -DJSasso (talk) 14:09, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose - If it ain't broken, don't fix it. This is hardly an issue. --Futuretrillionaire (talk) 16:11, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

In this case, it would not appear that nothing's broken. As I mentioned in the previous discussion, many reader feedback on well known articles repeatedly ask for a simple version of the article, or show that the reader in question failed to find the necessary information from the large (and should I say excessively long) enWiki page. Exposure to the Simple Wiki would help in solving this issue. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 16:35, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)Support. Simple English isn't a different language edition, unlike the other entries in the list, so it should be distinguished. I also agree with Madonald-ross and Osiris above - for the record other than a updating my user page there just now, my only connection with the project is a handfull of edits in 2005-6. As for Purplebackpack's comments above, we do not filter the non-English langauge edition links because of good or bad quality, so what justification is there to do so in this case - particularly as it could be a spur to improving their content? Thryduulf (talk) 16:36, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support, agree with Thryduulf. --Nouniquenames 16:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support echoing above supporting opinions. Small effort which could help a number of visitors. Kennedy ^(talk) 17:38, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Note - I would also note a couple things that have been brought up above. Most support voted are from people familiar with Simple and its mission and purpose. Most of the oppose votes have never edited there and thus likely have no understanding of its purpose or mission. Kumioko (talk) 18:15, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• Conditional support - this should be done within the Mediawiki software, but not by manually editing articles. It it easy enough for the software to sort the displayed links in any order. The order of the interwiki links in the source of the page should not affect the order in the rendered page, and trying to put simple first in the source of the page is a never-ending maintenance headache. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:34, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I am not sure I was clear enough, but it was implied that it shall be done within the MediaWiki software. Among the discussions between those who knew the technical aspects, it was proposed to inform the WikiData developers once the proposal was passed. I intended to discuss those technical issues only once there was a clear cut consensus on the original proposal TheOriginalSoni (talk) 18:41, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

It ewas not very clear to me, but I will edit my comment. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:53, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose efforts should be made at making this encyclopedia more accessible, not split off to a redundant project. --Jayron32 18:36, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose Jayron32 summed up my thoughts exactly. Legoktm (talk) 19:05, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
• Comment. To most other languages, putting en in one place and simple en in another makes no sense. That can be fixed without contention. If simple englash is a worthless project it can be axxed, but there is clearly a need for a kids encylcopedia as well as an adult one, and I would see simple English more along the lines of that rather than it simply being one geared to those who do not have any three syllable words in their vocabulary.. Apteva (talk) 20:11, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose As much as I like the ideology behind it, I don't believe this is totally necessary.

First, no reader is required to gain a full understanding of an article. As I said in the previous discussion, they may simply read the lead and look at the pictures if they do not understand an article. We have a template to indicate that the lead does not summarize the contents well enough; it should be used more often. Other resources exist for those with insufficient knowledge.

Yes, this has the potential of destroying the ability of a Wikipedia reader to get information by looking at the images alone! But why did you say no reader is required to gain a full understanding of an article?···Vanischenu^「m/_Talk」 07:59, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Second, readers who really and truly wish to gain a full understanding of an article will make a strong effort to do so. This will actually be more beneficial to them than a watered-down Simple English version, which I should note can appear to be condescending at times.Pokajanje|Talk 21:00, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Just one point that I will like to make here. Not everybody is as proficient in English as our average Wikipedia editor here. There are plenty of places where I personally had to reread paragraphs several times just to understand what it means. It is then illogical to assume that all the articles here will be within the reach of the standards of the average reader. There will be plenty, if not many, who would not be able to gain a full understanding, despite really and truly wishing and trying to get it. And everyone certainly does not have as much time as you might think. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 21:23, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Third, I fully agree with Trovatore's quote above: "The task that it theoretically sets for itself — explain ideas just as complicated as those of any other Wikipedia, but using simple language — is basically just not possible." It is impossible to achieve a perfect balance between getting information across and making it understandable.

Finally, I think proposal shows Wikipedia's systematic bias. Would this proposal affect the ordering on other-language Wikipedias? If so, that would be very biased, as they likely have no more use for a Simple English article than I. There is no reason not to have Wikipédia Français Simple or other Simple Wikipedias, so why not create them? Because when "Simple English" is between Norwegian Nyorsk and Azerbaijani in its article count, with only 35 featured articles and 59 good articles, it can pretty much be considered a failure.

In summary: Simple English interwiki links at the top would only be partially beneficial, for 94 English articles. Pokajanje|Talk 21:00, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Are the Norwegian Nyorsk and Azerbaijani wikis also failures? --NickPenguin_(contribs) 21:04, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Clarification - This proposal is solely going to affect the English Wikipedia, and not any other language Wikipedia. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 21:16, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• I believe several editors might not realise or may forget this, and so I am going to repeat what has been earlier said in the previous discussions - There are literally dozens (possibly hundreds) of editors and potential editors, especially new ones, who fail to contribute completely to the project because they do not find anything to edit here. Most of the things that they could have edited have already been, and there is precious little for them to try their hands on.

On the other hand, we have the Simple Wiki, which is a failed project in the eyes of several users. In my opinion, this is not because it is inherently a doomed task, or anything of the sort. Its mainly because the Simple wiki does not get the due coverage it gets. I believe that once the Simple Wiki link is put at the top of the Languages, most editors who would otherwise have not been able to contribute here would come and add to the Wiki, as it is still way far from a comprehensive project. Furthermore, many readers who might benefit from a simple explanation and rules for Chess would now find something that actually makes a lot more sense to them. Do these benefits and potential benefits outweigh other concerns? I believe they do. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 21:16, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I doubt that I am alone in thinking that the reason that Simple English Wikipedia is a failed project isn't for a lack of content or for a lack of editors. In both of those areas it would be hard to call it anything but a success. Rather Simple is a failed project because it does not provide a useful resource for readers. In other words writing simplewiki is inherently a doomed task. Prodego ^talk 21:32, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

We shall agree to disagree on that one. For you, its inherently a doomed task. On the contrary, I see it only because of a lack of awareness among the readers and the editors. These concerns calling the simplewiki a "doomed task" sound surreptitiously similar to similar concerns voiced by opponents of the enWiki itself. And yet, I do not think we have failed here. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 21:40, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• First of all, let me stress that Simple English Wikipedia is a small community, of perhaps twenty named, and perhaps another 10-15 unnamed contributors. Throughits size, the need to regulate is far less than with a big project that regular English Wikipedia. We have not limited the creation of new articles, and our admin team regularly deletes the nonsense that gets created. While we cannot agree on what the target group really is, the resulting articles are often easier to understand than the regular English counterparts. Yes, we lack editors, and yes, our target group is probably not native English speakers. Now take the example of a learned person, who simply has not learned English completely so far; would it not be helpful for those people to get the link to the "easier-to-understand" version before the others? - Similarly, wouldn't it be a laudible task to help those few editors create decent articles? - Have you ever tried explaining a scientific concept, using scientific language, but at the same time making sure that someone outside that domain of study can grasp it? -Wouldn't that be more thrilling than simply copying the formulas from the textbook you get from the library? - A purpose, perhaps? --Eptalon (talk) 23:31, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• Note to the closing admin - Per this on Eptalon's talk page, this is a Support and ought to be counted as such. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 09:27, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose as a vote of no confidence in Simple. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:40, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

You know: there are a lot of things about Simple that desperately need fixing. But it makes it a hell of a lot harder when it's got critics pulling it down whenever they get the chance. You don't have to help the project; this isn't a vote of confidence, and you don't have to vote either way. This is about helping the readers locate easier-to-understand information on the topics they're reading. Osiris (talk) 11:01, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

You'll get no sympathy from me; I advocate shuttering the project. Sven Manguard Wha? 22:40, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - I don't have any first-hand experience with Simple, so I can't guess as to its current or future status, or how it should be mmarketed. However, if a decision is made to move Simple to the top of the interwiki list, please change Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/IW so that AWB follows the new rule. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:47, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support I'm not the biggest fan of Simple English wiki, but it's not a different language so it shouldn't be listed in the middle of the foreign languages. Ryan Vesey 00:55, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support As CBM said above somewhere, as long as the reorder can be done within the mediawiki software rather than bots going and making million of edits. ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 04:12, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support Simple English is different from all the other links in two ways: it isn't really another language at all, and all of our readers will be potential readers of Simple (since all of them can speak English). We don't filter the other language links by quality, and I don't see any reason why we should do so here. Hut 8.5 09:39, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support. A link to Simple English version of an article seems qualitatively different to most readers of the english wikipedia than a link to the Afrikaans version of the article: everyone here can read the former; most can't read the latter. If the point of the simple English Wikipedia is to make other Wikipedia articles more accessible to those with limited English skills, which I think is fair, then moving the link to the simple English article out of a mass of foreign languages makes sense to me – it's the most likely link to be useful. It seems poor form to deliberately bury the link to make it unlikely to be used, which seems to be the goal of those opposing the proposal out of a dislike of the simple English Wikipedia. AgnosticAphid talk 10:59, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
• No thanks I don't feel this is appropriate at all. Interwiki links shouldn't be filtered for the dertriment/preferment of a particular project and its certainly very closed to other projects to advance the argument that simple is more useful to our readers than other projects. I would suggest that's actually not true and there are a lot of our users who have more than one language. Spartaz ^Humbug! 15:22, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

  But surely, generally speaking, simple English is more likely to be useful than any other individual language? AgnosticAphid talk 00:56, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support Per Ryan Vesey et al. It's not really another language, it's a supplement to this one. --GRuban (talk) 17:16, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose I don't like Simple English WP, and giving it prevalence atop the rest of the pedias is something I can't support. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 23:19, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

  Why should this WP:IDONTLIKEIT view be given any weight by whomever closes this discussion? Thryduulf (talk) 09:16, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose If someone is viewing the regular English version of an article, why would they need to see the simple version? HueSatLum 23:32, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

  What if you do not understand the regular article, and need a simpler version? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 08:52, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

  Mathematics articles on WP are frequently far too advanced for me to understand, and I'm an intelligent native speaker of English. Simple English coverage of these topics would be very useful. Thryduulf (talk) 09:16, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

  That's true, and that's probably why the simple version exists in the first place. For me, when I was just a Wikipedia reader, I never paid any attention to the language links on the sidebar. Anyways, it's still there, just not at the top. HueSatLum 23:02, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support This could be the boost that Simple needs to get going. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 01:58, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm skeptical about the idea that sending more readers over to Simple would give Simple a boost in productive editors. Simple will always fail, by necessity, because it lacks the crucial source of life blood that successful wikis have: being able to recruit your editors from your readership. With normal wikis, if you are a competent reader of the wiki's language then you are a good candidate for becoming a competent editor in it. But with Simple, if you are a reader who needs simplified English to understand things, that does not mean you are going to be a good writer in simplified English. Because writing simple English is not easier than writing normal English; quite the contrary. Taking a reliable source about something (which will obviously be in normal English) and then breaking that information down to a simplified but correct linguistic form without dumbing down or distorting the content is a hugely difficult task; it needs more than the average proficiency of a competent English speaker, not less. Those people who Simple addresses itself to as readers will invariably produce broken English, not Simple English. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:34, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Umm.... I believe you are making the mistake of assuming all users and editors who shall start noticing the Simple wiki shall be less than average. Also, I do not think that there are currently no editors in Simple who are more than proficient in English. Not to forget that any average and sub average editors shall not be using complicated words, which would be precisely the motive of the Simple Wiki. Experienced editors can always then copyedit for further clarity. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 10:04, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, of course there are some good editors over at Simple. But they are people who work there out of sheer idealism, not because they were guided there by their own needs as readers. And as for low-proficiency writers not using complicated words: oh yes, believe me, they do, all the time. Because the complicated words are there in the sources they work from (or copy-paste from), and they lack the linguistic skills to replace them with simpler ones. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:14, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I hope you do not imply that only those who "require" a simpler version of articles will notice and go to and contribute to the Simple wiki, should we decide for this proposal. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 11:17, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose: There should be no priorities with languages. --NaBUru38 (talk) 16:33, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per NaBUru38. If a reader is not a native speaker of English, then they are going to be a native speaker of another language. If they wish to get the gist of an en-wiki article before reading it properly, why do we believe they wouldn't rather use their home-language Wiki for the purpose, rather than the simple: version? Elevating this particular sister project above others strikes me as arbitrary. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 20:43, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Just so you know, my native language is not English. Yet when it comes to understanding and learning things, I use English and not Hindi. For Hindi is not the language where I can understand scientific stuff like Radiation or Earth. Its English. So just in case I do not understand the English page, its only Simple which can help. And there are plenty of those who are worse off than me, who will be more helpless. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 03:33, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I am certainly not going to dispute your personal experience of the site – but my question is, why do we think that more readers as a whole prefer simple: to de: for native German speakers / ar: for Arabic speakers / etc.? Do we actually have good data on this? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 16:44, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Maybe someone with more data might help. Till then, I also point out that there are plenty of native English editors who may not understand the enWiki article well enough. For them, Arabic will not really help. Simple on the other hand, will. Not to forget that since the reader has chosen to read the original article in English, they might want an explanation too in English, and not any other language. Or else they would have gone to that language immediately. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 18:43, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support: How can I oppose if it brings only good? No harm done to those readers who like not to see Simple English, and for those who like to, this is very helpful. Any reader who knows English would be able to understand Simple English. Period. Also, no one forces you to click on the link; if you like you can get there easily, and if you don't like it, then you are not much affected by this as it is not different from having the Arabic and others at the top; so why oppose it for not liking BE, simplewp, or the community?···Vanischenu^「m/_Talk」 07:59, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support - Most useful link to the vast majority of readers, so it makes sense that it should be a the top. There will be cases in which readers won't be able to understand an article on this project, so by having the simple version linked in a prominent position, they can easily try the simple version. Failing that, anyone who doesn't like the Simple English project shouldn't be bothered by the change. CT Cooper · talk 12:54, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support as it aids those who need it most and has minimal to no negative impact on everyone else. Having the link to Simple at the top makes it easier to find for those Simple is aimed at: "people with different needs, such as students, children, adults with learning difficulties and people who are trying to learn English". SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 14:44, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support as per Osiris -Cameron11598 (Converse) 00:56, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose: Simple is super :-/. I think we really ought to stop advertising it all. Per Spartaz, Sven, Fut.Perf, and many of the other opposers. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:39, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support - I have only made a handful of edits on Simple, and I'm not sure if I plan to edit there more; that being said, I support this proposal. Osiris sums up most of my thoughts in the relevant support - to the English Wikipedia readers, Simple is most often the most relevant "language" on that list to people who read English. This change would make Simple more accessible to people who would find it useful, even if some or most of us English Wikipedia don't. I see people opposing because Simple English isn't a language - they're right. It isn't a language by traditional standards. However, it may be one of the best ways for people to understand a topic they'd like to learn more about, coming from the English Wikipedia. A boost to the top for Simple would not only make it more accessible to readers, but it'd make it more visible. I didn't know that much about SEWP early into my wiki career, but I can certainly say the project isn't a waste. With this extra visibility, editors may find a desire to explore and build upon Simple, making it an even better resource for knowledge. Knowledge is for everyone, it's a language we all understand - English isn't. MJ94 (talk) 03:47, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support as the most useful language link to the majority of readers of the English Wikipedia. JASpencer (talk) 23:01, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose as per Ajraddatz.  TheArguer  _{SAY HI!} 00:38, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support. I am not sure that the simple English Wikipedia is a good idea, but so long as it exists it should be at the top. In addition, maybe it should be followed by a number of dialects and languages very close related with English, such as Scots, Ænglisc and Norfuk. In fact, I think every language should have a set of related languages that are automatically privileged in this way. Hans Adler 00:05, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Nah, no way. Things like "Ænglisc" or "Norfuk" are nothing but playgrounds for a handful of enthusiasts; they have absolutely no legitimate role as actual sources of information for anybody. The proposed argument for privileging "Simple" is that there are speakers out there who can read simplified English with more ease than normal English. But there is not a single person in this whole wide world who reads Old English with more ease than modern English. And I doubt there are any such readers of "Norfuk" either – anybody who can read "Norfuk" can also read English, not equally well, but better. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:20, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
    • I understand your point, but I still think that these playgrounds should be grouped together rather than mixed with the serious languages. Maybe at the bottom if not at the top. Or here is a better idea: We could have a WMF-wide user option for privileging some languages in this way. Everyone could have their favourite languages on top when logged in. Hans Adler 17:02, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support irrespective of the quality of Simple English Wikipedia (note that I am not a contributor there). There is a connection between English and Simple English which doesn't exist between English and other languages. Listing Simple English under 'S' is a massive usability failure: why would new users expected to look there for a version of the current article in simpler language? I see that a lot of the oppose !votes are taking this as a decision on the quality of SEWP. That's not the point: it's about usability for readers. MartinPoulter (talk) 12:56, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. Setting language priorities is a bad precedent, IMO. Kaldari (talk) 21:34, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
• I would fully support this if and when Simple Wikipedia improves to the point that it is as good as the other top ten Wikipedias. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 22:32, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. In full disclosure, I have been editing there about three weeks. (Not because of this discussion; I followed an Alice in Chains album article over to correct something). I've made 33 edits (2 of which were to hang wallpaper on my user pages). I thought I would be useful there since I have a knack for decreasing the grade level of written text (print newspaper journalism background). Although I've only made changes to a small number of articles, I've read many, of which I've watch-listed most for possible tinkering. I will leave out of this discussion much of what I find difficult in editing and adjusting there; except to say that if there are indeed only 20 or so active editors manning the gates on Simple, if we and the public all flood over, the situations will degrade even more. This is not to say I won't continue to edit there, but I am not gazing through rose-coloured glasses. Actually, I find the articles more difficult to parse there than here and I have no lack of intelligence. As an aside, when my daughter tells me she has difficulty comprehending an article here on our full-blown technical Wikipedia, I tell her to read the article talk pages for clues. That is an avenue that not all the public is aware of, either. Cheers! Fylbecatulous talk 02:17, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. Because Simple is simply crap. 188.26.163.111 (talk) 23:41, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support - Even if there are quality issues with SE articles (I've never edited there, and rarely use it myself), the simple fact of the matter is that it is also in English, therefore, on the English Wikipedia, it should always appear at the top. Lukeno94 (talk) 13:13, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
• support This provides an obvious suggestion to people who wish to rad what is supposed to be a simpler version of the article. If there are problems there, more people working there will fix them. It's not reasonable to compare it with the top 10 WPs, because it has a different purpose--if it in any way resembled ,for example, the deWP or the frWP, it wouldn't fulfill the purpose of being simple. This particular WP is an exception to the usual rules on language versions, and should be treated specially. DGG ( talk ) 17:48, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support as a logical idea, essentially per DGG. There is a lot of en.wiki snobbery in the opposes, I'm afraid. No, not every other Wikipedia can have our resource pool, but regardless of quality, simple is more closely aligned with en.wiki than any other project. Jclemens (talk) 07:28, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
• Great idea A lot of people find main Eng articles to complicated and this would help them easily find a simplier version. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:29, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose. Giving greater focus to the Simple English Wikipedia is contrary to the goals of the real English Wikipedia. Our aspirations are for well-written articles. Well-written articles, even on complex and technical topics, are by definition readable. Where they are not, as is the case for many mathematics articles, for example, the solution is to improve the quality and readability of the primary project's material, not to create a fork that then requires the maintenance of two pages. Setting that complaint aside, the Simple English Wikipedia fails at the goal of providing an introductory-level interface to those sorts of difficult topics; very few of the Simple English articles correspond to deeply technical topics at .en; rather, most of them are low-hanging fruit that was relatively easy to convert down to Basic English. Taking mathematics, for example, five minutes of looking at the Simple English equivalents of challenging, but important, topics was not encouraging. Lie group has no Simple English article at this time. Hilbert space has a very non-Simple mess of an article. And differential equation highlights the condescending tendencies of the Simple project ("Although they may seem overly-complicated to someone who has not studied differential equations before, the people who use differential equations tell us that they would not be able to figure important things out without them."). Even if Simple were a potentially useful adjunct to .en, which I don't think it is, it's clear that it is not ripe to receive special benefits. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:29, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. Let's give priority to this hopeless parasitical project that drains time and effort from the real English Wikipedia. Oh, wait a minute, let's not. Britmax (talk) 15:49, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
• Strong support (non Simple editor). A person looking for French will generally find French, it's obvious. A person looking in English and not finding it easy to read may not know there is a simple english. Prioritise it. It's (for better or worse) the language of this wiki and a lot of people worldwide might benefit if a simple version is easier to notice. An influx of editors and readers may benefit that project (I disagree with arguments that simple shouldn't get extra awareness in case we might not get extra editors to cope! Same goes for any wiki promotion!). It may help that project (good!) and it's implicit in having simple that some users cannot benefit from enwiki as we would hope - the answer is not to indulge in victim blaming and how it's their fault they cannot handle our full and comprehensive articles with complex English. Point them to simple, if they want it, and make it easy. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:36, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

If there was any real chance that a user seeking a more approachable article would find it at Simple, I might be inclined to agree. But (assuming Simple is desirable at all) the articles most in need of Simple equivalents are the least likely to have them. Between Simple's "very good" (featured) and good articles, there are zero on mathematical topics, zero on core physics topics, and vanishingly few on pure science topics at all. And articles on controversial or divisive topics are typically wretched (not that our Israel/Palestine content is flawless, but ... still). In short, the things Simple is most needed for are the things it most demonstrably fails to provide. And in the few cases where both encyclopedias consider their articles on a topic to exemplify their best work, we're generally only 1 (or less) Flesch-Kincaid Grade level higher (Saturn, for example). Simple has all the problems inherent in a very small content of fork of en, with very little evidence of producing a useful encyclopedic tool with greater ease of reading. Could that change? In theory. If it does, I'd reconsider giving it a special relationship to en. But right now, its "special relationship" is that it is allowed to exist and be linked to at all. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 16:56, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. With respect to the Simple editors who do good work there, the overall quality of that project is low. The core idea has merit - that users who are not proficient in English might find Simple English easier to understand. The problem is that Simple is not a good resource for many of the reasons already discussed above. Consequently, we stand the chance of actually leaving the reader worse off by promoting Simple. Moreover, I would argue the majority of readers who struggle are those for whom English is a second language. In theses cases, promoting Simple is far less useful than promoting their natural languages. It thus becomes a case of hubris or arrogance to assume that Simple is the best option. Resolute 17:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support I would go further and suggest that a link to Simple be present in all wiki-en pages, regardless of whether there's an article or not. That's how Wikipedia grew, with redlinks. But if people don't know about simple, then they can't contribute to it. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 00:17, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support. This is a fairly rational approach to linking what is, essentially, an extension of the English Wikipedia (much more so than any other language wiki). Readers wouldn't possibly know whether they should look at B in the interwikis list, for a Basic English version, or S, if they even have any inkling at all that there is a version with simpler language. In handling info-en tickets I often come across people who, after answering their request for a simpler version of some articles (they usually ask in the form of a proposal: that is, if a Simple English Wikipedia didn't exist, it should), they mention that as it is the links aren't as intuitively accessible.

Squeamish Ossifrage: even if simple didn't have the relevant articles it wouldn't matter as there wouldn't be any interwiki links to them, and as such this wouldn't make a difference. -- Mentifisto 00:07, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

• Support. The low quality of Simple English is not a good argument. Even the best articles have wikilinks to low quality articles. Simple English is a different thing than a different language article, if it were done well (and there are good articles out there) it would serve to simplify articles for people who can't understand the English article. Speakers of other languages know where to go to find the article in another language, but most English speakers do not even know about the language sidebar. Making the Simple English link just a little more prominent (I would support some kind of better promotion for quality Simple English articles) could be a help. --JFH (talk) 19:42, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support - Definitely. I didn't know this existed when I was learning English, and it could have been very useful. No real alternative solutions to the problem have been given. Icarus^talk 03:01, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support - Simple English is not like other languages so it is OK to treat it differently. I think it actually makes things clearer. I would also separate it out very slightly by adding a one or two point gap between it and the other bullet points. Yaris678 (talk) 09:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support. I understand the argument regarding the simple English Wikipedia's quality, but this applies to many other Wikipedias as well. As long as the endeavor continues to exist, we should treat it in the most logical manner possible, not downplay its existence "as a vote of no confidence".
  Much of the opposition stems from objections to the idea of providing special treatment for the sake of promoting an English project. While valid, this concern focuses on the wrong argument. "This is the English Wikipedia, so let's help the simple English Wikipedia" is a poor rationale. "Let's provide an intuitively organized list" is a much better one. "Simple English" isn't a separate language, so no one unaware of this Wikipedia's existence would know to look for it under "s". Placing its link at the top of the list has nothing to do with "hubris or arrogance"; it simply makes more sense from an organizational standpoint. —David Levy 10:08, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose as per the many arguments above regarding the failure of the Simple English wiki. Unlike other language wikis, the majority of non-stub pages aren't even in the wiki's "language", rather have been copied and pasted from the regular English wiki to await a "simplification" process that seemingly rarely happens. Simple is also now old enough that arguments that the project is still teething don't figure, the project is systemically flawed. Simple is effectively a low-quality Xerox of the English wiki, and is quite useless at its intended purpose. It would not be helpful for en.wiki to promote this for readers struggling with English. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 10:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

  It's possibly worth noting that most support votes here seem to cite the laudable ideals of Simple, whilst the opposes cite the actual state of the wiki. I'd suggest people in this discussion familiarise themselves with what simple is actually like. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 10:20, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

  I assert that both arguments (from the proposal's supporters and opponents alike) are largely irrelevant. If the simple English Wikipedia is a failure, that's a good reason to close the project and remove its links altogether. It isn't a good reason to continue linking to the simple English Wikipedia in an unintuitive manner. —David Levy 10:35, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

  I suggest the same to you, LukeSurl. Your second sentence is completely false, and demonstrates that you don't really know enough about the project to be able to question the knowledge of others. For the record, any article that has been "copied and pasted" is speedily deleted. And you haven't provided an alternative suggestion. What would you suggest to the readers, if you were responding to the feedback logs? For example, if you were responding to these three posts regarding Jupiter, what would you suggest? Would you suggest that local editors rewrite their article (Jupiter is a featured article, so not likely to happen), or would you direct the readers to simple:Jupiter? Or perhaps you have a different suggestion altogether? Osiris (talk) 07:04, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

  My apologies. I based by comment above on out-of-date experiences with the wiki a few years back and a chance random article. I've had a more thorough look through, and, while my opinion of the project is still not high, I realise my above comment is in error. I will now withdraw from this discussion. LukeSurl ^{t c} 19:03, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

• Support - It would probably be the most helpful language link of them all. — nerdfighter^(academy) 04:11, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

This voting has been been open for eight weeks. Isn't it time to close it and count? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:21, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes. How does that happen? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 10:43, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I have made a request at Administrators noticeboard Requests for closure Wikipedia Namespace They seem to have quite a backlog and the list is long, but we are added. Fylbecatulous talk 17:59, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Extra content on mobile version of Wikipedia main page.

I propose that the topics "On this day..." and "Did you know..." also appear on the mobile version of the main Wikipedia pages. The ammount of extra data is downloaded is not significant and one of the major and most interesting sections of the main page would also be available for mobile devices.

Option to watch a Section of the Village Pump

Of all of us involved in the Village Pump, some might be watchlisting it only because they want to keep track of only one or two proposals at the Pump, and not all the rest (I know I do it). So I think an option to watchlist only a particular section of the Pump might be a good and relevant opt-in feature for anyone who does not want to see all the proposals, regardless of whether it involves that person's interest or not. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 15:10, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

You can already do that: if you watchlist Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), for instance, you'll only get watchlist notifications if threads under the technical section change. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:25, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

No. That means you watchlist only the technical. My point is that I am interested in only 3-4 topics out of 18 that make up a 200k "Proposals" page on the pump. I would want to see the changes in only those few of them, and not every time someone else changes something at the pump. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 15:38, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

That's something I'd support wholeheartedly. I made a similar proposal in the past, where I suggested that the Village pumps contain only transcluded subpages and when you edit a section, you automatically edit the subpage. (I'd need to look for the proposal in the archives). There was also a BRFA in the past for a bot that could mirror discussion threads on some other page (that bot never materialized, however). -- Toshio Yamaguchi 15:30, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

My memory was incorrect. I was thinking of Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 89#Subpages at TfD and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 74#Change TfD to use subpages, both of which are concerned with TfD. However, I also found this. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 10:10, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, a capability along these lines could be useful in lots of places. There are times when I want to watch a thread at a particular noticeboard without watching the entire noticeboard. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:50, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Subpages are good, but they have some limitations -

a) For systems structured on a per-article basis, they have a natural structure - WP:AFD/ARTICLENAME, WP:RFC/USERNAME, etc. Any page titles which collide are almost guaranteed to have a meaningful connection in some way and can be dealt with by hand. For something like the VP, though, we have a lot of less meaningful section titles - "Option to watch a Section of the Village Pump" is good, but things like "Fonts" and "MathJax" are going to produce a lot of title collisions.

b) They're a lot trickier for new users. "Create this page, edit this page, and add a transclusion" is a lot more off-putting than "hit edit and add something". Andrew Gray (talk) 12:47, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

c) They make it much more difficult to casually watch all discussion on the page. Right now, I just load the diff since the last time I read the page and see what changed. With a subpage scheme, I'd need to be watching and unwatching subpages all over the place. Anomie⚔ 13:13, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I dont really think subpage is the best way to deal with this situation. Someone with more technical expertise on the same could really comment on what will be the best way to do it. What I intend is a button/star along with section headings (near the edit button) which could allow me to watchlist or unwatchlist only that section of the page. Whether or not it is done through subpages, or made opt-in (through Preferences), or be implemented on all pages could be decided by further discussion on the same. But as such, it would be a lot simpler for a lot of people if we could just have the option to watchlist only certain sections of the page. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 11:30, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Subpages can be done as-is, but "proper" per-section watching on a single page would require some pretty heavy lifting on MediaWiki itself. This has been a requested feature since 2004 - Template:Bugzilla - and it seems that the lack of a practical way to do it is the major stumbling block. Andrew Gray (talk)

Is there any forum which might be useful to discuss if this and how implementation is possible? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 10:38, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Watchlist_changes. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:40, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

• I'd support this, and in fact I'd say this should be extended to everything outside article space as well (and maybe talk pages)! Lukeno94 (talk) 08:57, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

• Strong support This would be very useful and enable one to better follow the discussions one is interested in without the need to use liquid threads (which I've never been a fan of). -- Toshio Yamaguchi 10:14, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
• Comment I also support this because I know that Wikipedia:Mirror threads isn't going to happen (unfortunately), which would be even more useful. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 10:21, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
• Strong support All notifications for changes I'm not interested in also increases the risk that I miss the ones I would like to see. Lova Falk talk 10:58, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support. It's not clear how one would implement this, but if it were magically possible to watch individual sections on these big noticeboard-like pages, that would be amazing, so I obviously support it. (On the other hand, had I only been watching one section of this page, then I wouldn't have seen this discussion!) Mark M (talk) 11:47, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Make edit summary mandatory before submitting

I want to request so everyone have to fill up the "Edit summary" before you can submit your edit to reduce vandalism and to explain changes. As some people seem to not explain their change/s after edit on the "Edit summary" regardless if it's a vandalism or not. --Mr. Washee Washee (talk) 11:46, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Given that edit summary prompts have been perenially proposed and rejected, I think it's safe to say that this more extreme version of the same idea is not going to get consensus. Yunshui 雲‍水 11:53, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Question: Is this proposal to promote Help:Edit summary to guideline or policy? If not, then I'd oppose this, because there is no requirement to use edit summaries. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 13:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Anyway, forcing editors to always use edit summaries might be counterproductive. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 13:47, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

There has just been a long discussion about this here. Lova Falk talk 14:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't know that guys, thanks. I just had a quick look and saw what you mean. Toshio Yamaguchi, in a way yes. I also wonder if some editors (mostly unregistered or new users) even recognise if it's there. But I still stand up to what I requested and hopefully one day it will pass. But I can also see why it wouldn't pass either once I had a look at what other people say on this section and other section similar to this. --Mr. Washee Washee (talk) 21:01, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

It is a good idea in theory, but check out my edit summary for this post to see why mandatory summary input isn't likely to change much. Resolute 21:23, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Vandals tend to not tell the truth regarding their edits. Most do not announce that they have just torn an article to shreds. I've seem some really crafty and sly edit summaries that one would swear would be a good edit if you didn't take the time to check it out. ツ Fylbecatulous talk 14:17, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Why do you think that forcing people to submit an edit summary would make them less likely to commit vandalism? On the contrary, requiring an edit summary would make vandals and newbies a little harder to spot. I'd accept that disadvantage if there were an advantage that outweighed it, but I don't see why requiring an edit summary would lose us any vandals. It might however just lose us the occasional goodfaith newbie who just wants to fix a typo or correct some error and gets thrown by the final straw of a little extra complexity. ϢereSpielChequers 14:41, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Rating edits/editors - Plus ones & thumbs/up down

Hello WP collective,

I'm curious as to whether we've given consideration to any kind of ranking or rating system for edits and editors. I'm thinking some kind of thumbs up/thumbs down system similar to what's used on user comments on news sites but for WP edits instead.

It strikes me that some kind of ranking system should be easy to implement, and might help give clearer picture as to which editors are producing consistently helpful and beneficial edits on WP.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to have this kind of idea. Can anyone point to a previous discussion on a topic like this? I'm curious to know what pros/cons were brought up. NickCT (talk) 16:11, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I'll gladly look into this for you. But I am pretty sure you wouldn't get much support; many editors would likely feel that the system could be abused or overused, resulting in a less collegial atmosphere between contributors. dci | TALK 00:17, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm also curious to know what the "pros" of such a system would be since I can't imagine how this would improve our content. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:45, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox - I can think of two potential pros.

1) It's good to recognize "good" editors or editors who done extraordinary work, right? At the moment, there isn't really a good mechanism to make a rapid assessment of editors' contributions beyond basically looking at edit counts.

A big part of the genius of WP is crowd sourcing. Creating a plus/minus system might be a good way of crowd sourcing recognition of good editors.

2) A plus/minus system might help admins make assessments about editors in ANIs and Enforcements. If I'm an admin looking at an editor and I can see most of that editor's edits are rated pretty negatively, it might influence actions towards that editor.

@dci - re "the system could be abused" - Oh sure. But frankly, how many ideas for new features have you heard about which one couldn't say "it could be abused"? NickCT (talk) 03:42, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Anyone who would use the number of "likes" and "dislikes" a user has as a way of evaluating a user subject to an ANI thread or other request for sanctions shouldn't even be here. This is not a popularity contest. Admins would get disliked by anyone they had ever blocked, meanings the most effective, dedicated admins would be the most disliked. No, just. no. Terrible idea that is completely incompatible with the idea that we make decisions based on strength of argument and consensus, not numbers. I am confident that I speak for the majority in saying that there is basically no chance this will be supported anytime in the foreseeable future. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:49, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Beeblebrox. Terrible idea. Most editors do as well as they can, and if they make mistakes, a friendly note is much better than a load of thumbs down from other editors. Lova Falk talk 19:10, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I think something in this area is worth exploring. A big part of how Wikipedia works is establishing trust - partly through experience, partly through simplistic cues like "userpage is red". A more systematic way of measuring trust could be useful (with due caveats not to overrely on it, since like any system it would be abusable). For instance, if I could assign users a trust level of 1-10, I could then use that to filter my watchlist (or Recent Changes) - if I'm pushed for time, I might say "show only edits by users with trust level of 5 or lower"). The older Wikipedia gets, the more we need to think outside the box for ways to make maintenance easier. Even if trust levels were kept 100% private (nobody ever knows anyone else's trust ratings, given or received), it could be a useful tool. Rd232 ^talk 19:24, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

See WikiTrust.—Wavelength (talk) 19:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

@Wavelength - Interesting site. I like the WikiTrust uses sophisticated "data mining" algorithms that assess the credibility of editors (users that make changes to a wikis content) by tracking their contributions.. I wonder what my WikiTrust score is....

@Beeblebrox - I don't think you're really trying to see the point. We're not talking about "popularity". We're talking about usefulness and productiveness. If I came up for ANI and you were easily able to see that great majority of edits I'd made had been deemed useful and productive by the community at large, you might reasonable look on me differently than if the great majority of edits I'd made had been deemed unuseful and unproductive.

Outside the ANI thing though (which was really just a side point), you really don't see any usefulness in having a tool that would let one rapidly assess the level of contribution of individual editors?

@Rd232 - Yeah. I guess my original thought wasn't one of trustworthiness, but I think that's a interesting line of thought worth pursuing. NickCT (talk) 22:24, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually i think you are the one missing the point. You are talking about how this would work ina perfect world and I am talking about how it would work in reality. Unless 'every single edit by every single user was reviewed by a completely neutral and honest third party this would not do what you think it would, it would just be a tool for miscreants to go on about how they don't like something and conversly a tool for POV pushers and tag team edit warriors to support one another. No good would come of it. This is not facebook and the vast majority of Wikipedians don't want anything that makes WP more like facebook.

If you seriously want to propose this and seriously expect it to happen you need to realize that this would be a very big change in the entire culture of Wikipedia. A thread here is not going to be sufficient, you would need to open a formal request for comment and list at WP:CENT and possibly get watchlist notices and so forth for it as well. If you really believe this has a chance in hell of happening you can go ahead and do all that, but I am telling you right now it would just be an enormous waste of time and this idea will be very strongly rejected by the community. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:40, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

. Tarc (talk) 17:01, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Suppose everyone starts with the same base score; but those who have less contributions/more negative contributions have a lesser bearing on the difference their vote makes on the overall score. Then the miscreants would have a much lower score themselves, and would not be able to hugely affect the scores of others. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 17:45, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

As for this idea itself, it is a fine idea, and one worth thinking about. I think we should look into the various possibilities and pros and cons and how the algorithm could or could not work. And then try to chalk out a proposal for the same. A well-thought proposal for this might be able to garner community consensus through CENT and RFC. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 17:45, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I we start getting scored and it is taken the least bit seriously I am sure I am not the only one who will immediately quit this project. Luckily, as i said I do not believe this has any realistic chance of happening anytime soon so I'll leave you all to discuss this absurd, useless fantasy amongst yourselves. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:50, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Back in 2004 we briefly had an experimental web of trust system - Wikipedia:Trust network. It was a good idea. However, it never took off. Perhaps it's time to give it another try. — Hex (❝?!❞) 18:56, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Horrid idea, per Beeblebrox. If you want to show someone that you approve of them, leave them a talk page message or something. Sven Manguard Wha? 22:34, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Talkpage messages don't scale. It's a bit like saying "we don't need an editcount, you can just look at individual edits". The main argument against is really that a public rating would be like editcountitis times a million. Hence my thinking about an entirely non-public system. Rd232 ^talk 16:20, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox - re "If you seriously want to propose this" - If you look at my initial post, you'll notice it was more of a question about whether this idea has been discussed before rather than a proposal that it should be so. re "work ina perfect world " - I agree with that definitely. It would be really difficult to get this to work in a way which wouldn't be an unhelpful "popularity contest", but I'm not sure that's a reason to disregard it out of hand. Regardless, I'm a tad surprised by the amount of apparent animosity this idea developed. I think I'm just going to slowly walk away.

Thanks all for the notes about WikiTrust. That appears to be the closest effort to an editor rating system that's been done so far. NickCT (talk) 07:36, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Bad idea. It would encourage competitive-style editing and it would lessen the collaborative atmosphere. There are already mechanisms to reward and admonish editors through barnstars and templates. Not to mention that thumbs up/thumbs down systems have various problems on other websites. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:46, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Banners

In my opinion the proliferation of prominent scare banners at the top of articles, often timestamped with increasingly ancient dates, sometimes five years ago or more, makes Wikipedia look like it is broken and unmaintained. 86.130.67.84 (talk) 18:43, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

What do you suggest? --j⚛e decker^talk 19:56, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Make them less prominent and less damning of whole articles (except where the entire article really is crap, which is a small minority of cases). When a reader first alights on a mostly worthwhile article, informing them that someone in 2008 thought the article needed more citations is not the screaming priority that this system of banners seems to assume. 86.130.67.84 (talk) 20:53, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Maybe Wikipedia is a bit broken and unmaintained... But I somewhat agree you. Maybe people tend to cooperate by *adding* up their contributions, so there is less of a tendency to remove warnings then to add them. - Nabla (talk) 21:12, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Er, it's not just that "someone in 2008 thought the article needed more citations". Often it's more like "someone in 2008 thought the article needed more citations - and no one has disagreed since". And in that case it is doubtful if we are really dealing with "a mostly worthwhile article"... After all, sources are the most important part of the article. The text simply gives context to sources.

Likewise, "makes Wikipedia look like it is broken and unmaintained" is not a problem. Well, many articles are "broken and unmaintained". Why should we hide that? It's not like we should dishonestly inflate the reputation of Wikipedia.

On the other hand, if the tags mark a non-existing problem, they should be removed. But you do not need Village pump for that. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 23:11, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. This category might be a worthwhile example. Take a look at what's in there, and tell me what you find. You don't have to look at all 400, a dozen or two will do.

More importantly, I really don't believe that making the tags less visible is going to make them less objectionable to folks. It may reduce how often they actually get acted on, but .. of course, what we want *is* for them to be acted on. --j⚛e decker^talk 02:15, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Maintenance banners that note credibility or neutrality issues are probably useful for visitors. Banners that are directed solely at Wikipedia editors (such as notability templates and merge requests) may be too distracting. Could the second category be hidden, or made less visible, for non-registered visitors? Praemonitus (talk) 02:29, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately in my experience tags "that note credibility or neutrality issues" are an extremely bad predictor of whether such issues actually exist, & rarely encourage any of our dwindling band of text editors to sort out issues. I'd agree the long-term ones (ie not merge requests & similar) could well be smaller, or even visible only to registered users who have set a preference. "This article needs more citations" or whatever is little use to most readers and, again, a fairly poor predictor of whether the article has fewer citations than most. In the pioneering days of WP people actually used to go round clearing up tagged articles, but there's little of that now, as the queues show. Johnbod (talk) 20:36, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that does seem to be the case. Perhaps the approach needs a re-think? Praemonitus (talk) 00:31, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
P.S. The {{Orphan}} template can probably be automatically removed in many cases.

I fully agree that the banners can be shorter. Banners for editors (those that are not useful for readers) can be put on the Talk page. Lova Falk talk 08:21, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Shorter—OK; Talk page—No. They would be missed there. Consequently less editors realizing a fix is needed. Less incentive for a newbie to try to help out by making their first edits. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 09:47, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Have any studies been performed that demonstrate a correlation between the presence of a maintenance banner and the number of constructive edits performed by new editors? For me at least, some of the banners actually deter constructive edits. I sometimes perceive a "it's not worth the significant effort required to fix this broken article" message.

For example, I just randomly came upon the Chloe O'Brian article. It has five year old banners and plenty of anonymous edits, but none of them appear intent on actually addressing the banner messages. It would require significant effort to address those concerns, so why bother? Praemonitus (talk) 22:19, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I've spent a high proportion of my time here in the last 3 years doing cleanup, and I've noticed a few things. Things get tagged primarily by bots, single editor crusades (often AWB or database report driven) or NPP work and a lot less by "natural attrition" or normal editing. Things get untagged by changing the rules (ie orphans used to be <3, now it's 0), by single editor crusades or the occasional backlog drives (ie GOCE's work, or some WikiProject collaborations). Most editors just don't seem to care about the tags. I'm very proud that I was involved in the work that WP:URBLPR did getting the CAT:BLP down from over 50,000 to essentially 0 (only deletion candidates). But when we looked closely at who was doing the work, it was about 10-20 of us doing 90% of the work, and probably 3-5 doing 50% of the work. Likewise, I'm very proud that my preferred project, WP:WikiProject Australian rules football has it's cleanup list down to under 9% of articles (of course I know that it doesn't mean that we have 91% perfect articles, but we (I) try to fix what's been tagged). When you look at how most other projects are going, very few move by more than a couple of articles each week, unless it's a bot pushing it up, or an editor/project drive pushing it down. In late 2011 it was suggested that we drive to clear all of the 2006 and 2007 tagged articles in WP:Australia... and we (well, not really we, it's again only 2 or 3 editors, not me) are still going. Natural attrition spread amongst 4 million articles doesn't do much.

So I generally agree with the ineffectiveness of banners. It's the associated categorisation that may lead to improvement, not the banners. I'm all for inline templates ie {{citation needed}}, as they highlight a specific issue about a specific section of content in the article. But overarching tags like {{refimprove}} don't really do much to the reader, and are shown to be fairly ineffective to prompt editing.

Proposal: Could we have a system where the full banner is shown for the first 3 months after it is tagged (ie only show the ones dated Dec 2012 - Feb 2013 at the moment, auto change to Jan to March 2013 on March 1) and then automatically hide or shrink it (small box to the right, like the "Wikimedia Commons has media related to:" box size, saying "this article has issues to be resolved" or similar. {{side box}} seems to be the box generator) to be less obtrusive after that. Keep the categorisation going, so that cleanup lists track it, but make the article look better whilst it's waiting to be improved. Because having giant banners has been proved not to work by the existence of the extensive backlog in most cleanup categories. The-Pope (talk) 07:11, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

And why is "mak[ing] the article look better whilst it's waiting to be improved" a good thing? I would understand if it simply means that the tags are not beautiful - but in such case the solution is making tags beautiful, not hiding them. But having a hidden tag will simply take all flaws from having a tag and not having one. In some cases tags are not removed when the problems are gone. Well, they will stay for even longer periods if one won't be able to notice them.

The problem is that you seem to assume that tags are meant to encourage newbies to correct the articles. But there are more objectives:

1. To mark the articles for the editors that specialise in cleanup (for example, you).
2. To show the readers that there is something wrong with the article and they should be especially careful.
3. To show the readers (potential and actual editors) that this article should not be used as an example for other articles in some respects (in other words, to educate the potential and actual editors about Wikipedia's policies and the like).
4. To show the writers what they did wrong.

Hidden tags are not going to perform functions 2 and 3. Functions 1 and 4 will also be impeded.

Finally, there is one more thing. In many cases the articles actually are really hard to clean up. No tags are going to change that. If we want real improvement in such case, then a tag like Lithuanian "lt:Šablonas:Beviltiškas" should probably be used. It says that the article is hopeless (having numerous problems that make it almost impossible to adapt it to Wikipedia) and if one can write just a couple of reasonably good sentences to replace it, one should do this. In a sense, it is a "dispensation" from WP:PRESERVE. If that doesn't work for several months, the article gets deleted, leaving red links. That's the solution if someone really wants to reduce backlogs. But in such case it should be agreed that "in some cases, deletion is 'clean up'"... I am not sure if community is ready to endorse this... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 16:37, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I like the gist of The-Pope's suggestion, although I'd suggest a longer interval such as a year. Regarding Martynas Patasius's points: #1 – doesn't need to be visible to readers; #2 – most of the templates don't serve this purpose, and those that do are directed at editors rather than readers; #3 – seems purely punitive; #4 – shouldn't this be be handled through user talk pages? Of these, #1 can be handled via editor-visible markers, while #2 should be specifically focused at the reader rather than the writer. Both #3 and #4 seem instruction-focused, which strikes me as an invalid use. Praemonitus (talk) 18:54, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I guess a reminder that there is no significant difference between "editors" and "readers" is in order. All readers are potential editors. All. In many cases this potency doesn't get actualised (to use jargon of Aristotel or St. Thomas Aquinas), but it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Thus all declarations like "doesn't need to be visible to readers [but has to be visible to editors]" are invalid.

"#2 – most of the templates don't serve this purpose, and those that do are directed at editors rather than readers;" - which do not? In the previous version of your post ([3]) you mentioned an unreferenced article (relevant to everyone reading the article, since it is the references that give articles value; the text just gives us them context), "a three year old notice about an article reading like an advent that has long since been addressed but never removed" (would be relevant to everyone reading the article, if the problem was there; but the tag is even less likely to be removed if no one can see it) and "[a] four year old notice telling the reader that the article is an orphan" (actually, I don't think that orphan tags are useful to anyone - some lists would be more useful in this case). I don't see how your objection applies to any of them...

"#3 – seems purely punitive;"... Punitive..? So, who gets punished..? I don't think I understand this objection.

"#4 – shouldn't this be be handled through user talk pages?" - yes, that is one alternative. But it requires more work and the benefit is not necessarily worth the effort.

"Both #3 and #4 seem instruction-focused, which strikes me as an invalid use." - well, it doesn't look like invalid use for me... Would you like to elaborate..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:46, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

The difference between editors and readers is the person's own intent. Our aim is to be useful to people who come here to look stuff up. Our means includes the fact that they can also change stuff, if they like. Just because the same person can act in both capacities doesn't mean there isn't a distinction, or that it isn't useful to keep the distinction in mind. It should be kept in mind when deciding how to present information on the article's topic, versus "meta-information" on the article itself. --Trovatore (talk) 21:01, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Trovatore. Nobody is an editor until they click on the edit button; until then they are readers. Logically, the concern of a non-editing reader is the information on a page; not with Wikipedia editing policies, cross-article linking, notability requirements, potential merges, article structure, or even trivia. The reader wants reliable information about the subject. Warnings about potentially unreliability, neutrality, advertising, and possibly about poor writing would seem most relevant to a reader. Praemonitus (talk) 22:14, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Er, you might count that nobody is an actual editor until pressing one of edit links. But the reader is always a potential editor. Let's keep the terminology (as in Potentiality and actuality)) correct.

Still, I'd say that actualisation of the potential to be an editor already starts when one makes a decision to edit (if not earlier). That happens before pressing any link.

And at that moment the future editor is indistinguishable from future non-editor. That's one reason why all talk about "readers" and "editors" as if they had nothing to do with each other is flawed.

Finally, I find all talk about needs of readers strange. We do not know what thousands and millions of our readers need. Let's not pretend that we do. Let's make a good encyclopedia for its own sake. That's our mission anyway, and the readers are likely to benefit (or otherwise they shouldn't be readers). --Martynas Patasius (talk) 00:03, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, quibbles about self-imposed terminology aside, I believe the discussion is focused on making a good encyclopedia. The original point being that the banner messages don't make for a good reading experience. An encyclopedia perpetually littered with "under construction" signs is not an encyclopedia that is focused on its readers. If the percentage banners don't fade away over time, then they're not doing their job. But that is something that Wikipedia could, and perhaps should, be measuring statistically. As for what the readers need, well we're all readers as you repeatedly stated. Praemonitus (talk) 02:00, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, perhaps I should have added a smile after "Let's keep the terminology [...] correct."...

Still, good terminology does help to formulate the arguments precisely. For example, you say "As for what the readers need, well we're all readers as you repeatedly stated.". Well, I guess it means that some of your arguments that have been worded in the way that concerns what the readers want, actually mean that you do not like tags. Well, maybe you should actually say so, instead of calling yourself (and, I guess, the ones who agree with you) "readers"..? For, well, I am a reader too and I like the tags. So, I guess that in this unrepresentative sample half of the readers like tags and half do not..?

And that precision would help. I can ask you why do you dislike tags. I cannot ask "the readers". I can try to persuade you, to negotiate with you. But I cannot do that with "readers". I can only dismiss "their" concerns as uninformed and irrelevant. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 22:39, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

On the whole I was simply agreeing with the OP and expanding upon the concern a little.

If you want a personal perspective, then my additional concerns are two-fold: (1) many of the banners appear to only be of interest to a pool of dedicated editors who are intimately familiar with Wikipedia policies, and (2) the banners occupy a region of the display that represents part of the interface rather than being part of the article. The first issue may potentially be a source of distraction and confusion to visitors. The second looks to my eyes like a useability hindrance.

Obviously I can't say how much of a problem these represent for others; for me they appear to be an interface design issue that can be addressed without significantly hindering the purpose of the templates. For example, the templates could appear for some interval of time (say ~5 seconds), then retract into a smaller form that can be manually expanded (perhaps via JavaScript). Praemonitus (talk) 02:51, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• As a result of this discussion I've made this proposal below. Ryan Vesey 21:36, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Help new users by making link to help more prominent

Many users of Wikipedia simply read articles and don't get involved in editing them, possibly because they don't know that they can actually do this, or perhaps because they are unsure of what to do, or are nervous about getting it wrong. Help and guidance is available, but it isn't necessarily easy for newbies to find.
I propose adding a link to Help:Getting started at the top right of every screen that IP users see, next to the Create account and Log in links. This should help new users to more easily understand how Wikipedia works, and how they can contribute. Bazonka (talk) 08:58, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

What about using Help:Contents instead? That's already linked in the "interaction" sidebar under "Help" - the idea of making it more prominent for users who aren't logged in makes sense to me.. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 20:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Help:Contents would be OK as well, but as you say, it is already linked on the page. Help:Getting started seems more appropriate for beginners, but I don't have strong feelings either way. Bazonka (talk) 19:50, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

For consideration - since Help:Contents is displayed under the ► Interaction tab on the left side of all pages. I just made (3 days ago) Wikipedia:Help index - that has it all - one stop shopping - editors can find any help by topic there instead of the runaround you get with other pages. Moxy (talk) 19:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Placing a "Travel guide" link to Wikivoyage next to the geographic coordinates in articles on cities and countries

Fig 1. Visitor traffic to Wikivoyage

Fig 2. Mock-up

Fig 3. Subtle version

Proposal

I want to propose to place a "Travel guide" link to Wikivoyage next to the geographic coordinates in articles on cities and countries.

We recently successfully launched our newest sister project Wikivoyage. During the week after its launch we ran a banner atop every Wikipedia article to inform the world about this endeavour. According to the regular editors at the site this resulted in a large number of constructive edits by new users. According to Alexa this promotional effort briefly put the site in the top 1000 of most visited sites on the Internet (see Figure 1.)

With the banner taken down a week later, visitor traffic remains far above what it was before the official launch, but nowhere near the level it was right after launch. Currently we link to Wikivoyage from our articles, as we do with most of our links to sister projects, from the See also or External links section. However, articles on cities and countries tend to be exceptionally long (Rome counts in at about 15 000 words) and readers are thus unlikely to scroll all the way to the bottom of these article and notice those links.

I propose we link to Wikivoyage from a slightly more prominent place: the top of the article. Mock-ups can be seen in Figures 2 and 3. I hope such a link will attract additional contributors to Wikivoyage and be helpful, or otherwise unobtrusive, to our readers. I would suggest starting out with the version in Figure 2 and move to the more subtle version in Figure 3 after we have managed to establish sufficient brand-awareness among our readership.

(The technical implementation would be realized by adding an additional field to {{infobox settlement}} and {{infobox country}}, and a small tweak to {{coord}} and {{coord/display/title}} to render the actual link.)

—Ruud 18:38, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

We don't link to Commons, Wikiquote, or Wikisource at the top of articles either. Why should Wikivoyage get special treatment? Rmhermen (talk) 18:43, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I would not object to placing other sister links in a more prominent place if they are highly on-topic (e.g., wikisource:Bible (King James) from Authorized King James Version or wikibooks:Haskell from Haskell (programming language). As Commons and Wikitionary cover a very wide range of topics they might be less suitable.

Reasons for treating Wikivoyage specially would include, as mentioned above, the relative length of the Wikipedia article from which we link and the fact that there is more competition in the "travel wiki" market than in the "quotations wiki" market. —Ruud 18:51, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, Wikipedia doesn't have issues with too many quotes, source material or media being added to articles. Many destination articles, however, get overrun with business links and touty tourist material. JamesA ^>talk 00:30, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

• Incredibly strong support I think this is an excellent idea. Ryan Vesey 18:54, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support We sometimes link to Wiktionary at the top of articles (e.g. see Rig), and we have Interwiki links down the side of articles. There is no harm in linking to, and raising the profile of other Wikimedia projects here in Wikipedia, and this is no different and I think that it's sensible. I prefer the subtle version though. Bazonka (talk) 19:00, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
• If the wikivoyage:Iowa page is typical of a Wikivoyage page, I could support the "subtle version" listed here. As for the placement issue, placing it with the geolocation information makes sense to me. Having the information at the top of the page may or may not make sense, but it is the status quo ante and this discussion isn't the place to discuss/change that, imho. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 20:39, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
  • The status quo is that inter-project links go in the External links sections - not even the see also section. See Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects#Where to place links Rmhermen (talk) 01:20, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
    • I was referring to the satus quo of placing the geolocation information at the top of the article. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 02:41, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
• Comment - I'll abstain from voting, being a new Wikivoyage administrator. Although this proposal primarily speaks about the benefits to Wikivoyage, I can think of a few notable benefits for Wikipedia. Before Wikivoyage launched, many country, city and Tourism in xx articles had issues with being too touristy. While any tourism section should be factual and speak about trends in tourism and government campaigns, often it devolves into a paragraph about the best places to visit when you go to this destination. By adding the link to the travel guide in a more prominent position, it may encourage users and businesses to go there and add travel information where it belongs. It will also help prevent unnecessary links under the External links header. JamesA ^>talk 00:30, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
• Comment It's very obvious when reading comments at the Help Desk, Teahouse, and article feedback tool, that many readers come to Wikipedia expecting information that an encyclopedia can't/shouldn't provide. Including the link will be beneficial to readers, and will also ease the strain on Wikipedia editors because misguided new editors who want to provide travel guide like information will be directed there as well. Ryan Vesey 04:38, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose, I am not seeing a strong enough argument for privileging one sister project over all the others. All our links have so far gone at the bottom of the page (or sometimes the bottom of infoboxes.) Rmhermen (talk) 18:06, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Not true. Wiktionary links often appear at the top of pages, like in the Rig example that I mentioned earlier. Bazonka (talk) 18:25, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

That is a disambiguation page, not an article. See above where I linked to our standard advice on link placement. Rmhermen (talk) 06:40, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I never said it was an article, but a page, which is also the term you used above. Bazonka (talk) 22:29, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Watchlist notice backlog reduction

When I started editing Wikipedia, there was a watchlist notice with a goal to add references to all unreferenced BLPs. Clicking a link in that notice would bring you to a random unreferenced BLP for you to add references to. There was a progress bar that showed the process of clearing the backlog. I would like to propose that another Wikipedia-wide backlog reduction goal be set. I don't have a huge preference in regards to which category we use. Personally, I think referencing is a huge issue and we should start with Category:Articles lacking sources from October 2006 (or create a new category with some combination of categories from Category:Articles lacking sources. Per Special:Statistics 134,639 registered editors have made an action in the last 30 days. If each one of those editors tackled two articles from the category, the entire backlog would be removed. I'm sure requests like this are normally spammed on other noticeboards, but I have no idea where to spam this to, so if anyone wants to do so, please go ahead. Ryan Vesey 21:18, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I've informed the watchers of MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-details. Ryan Vesey 21:20, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

• I've got a busy week and will be gone for the next 7 days. If people want to discuss this proposal in the meantime, go ahead, otherwise I'll reintroduce it when I am back editing again next week. Ryan Vesey 22:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

From one month alone, 1,434 unreferenced templates have remained in place for more than six years. I wonder how many have been removed? That would indicate how successful this template approach has been at addressing the issue. It may be that these articles just don't have the necessary references available. Or there could be other explanations. Praemonitus (talk) 01:16, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

HotCat misunderstandings

A while back, HotCat was enabled by default for all registered users, after this discussion. Since then, I've spotted a recurring issue with new users: on user talkpages and some other talkpages, inexperienced editors are using HotCat in an attempt to start a new thread. The logic behind this is understandable (new sections go at the bottom of the page, there's a lttle + sign at the bottom of the page, + means "add something", it opens a field you can type into: QED, that little + button is how you add a new section), but the result is invariably the addtion of a redlinked category and a confused new user. User:Zerosprite was recently blocked for repeatedly trying to start a discussion using HotCat, which brought home to me the seriousness of the problem. Several potential solutions present themselves:

• Disable HotCat by default, and make it an opt-in gadget again.
• Disable HotCat on talkpages.
• Change HotCat's interface appearance to make it less easy to confuse with a content addition tool.
• Limit HotCat so that it can only add preexisting categories, not any text added.
• Do nothing, and simply explain to new users that they've make a mistake when it happens.
• Change the MediaWiki interface so that a New Section link appears at the bottom of talkpages as well as/instead of at the top.

I'd be interested to hear other's opinions of these ideas, or any other solutions to the problem. I'd also like to know if other people are encountering this; I do most of my work with newer editors, so I may be getting a biased sample. Yunshui 雲‍水 10:01, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I love having HotCat and use it meaningfully and correctly, I hope. One thing that did surprise me though, when I first was gifted with it: If you just click on the empty + sign at the end of the row to the right and enter something (anything), it is an automatic save: no chance to review or change your mind. Only if you click on the "modify several categories" option way at the left of the page are you then presented with a preview of what you've just done before your edit can be saved. This happens automatically when you click on save, if you are modifying several; there is no way to save until, at least, the edit preview screen shows up to give you a chance to tinker. When I was first experimenting with how HotCat worked, I accidentally entered some crazy category by doing the single + sign edit choice at the right side of the category row and had to revert myself. Perhaps this could be changed. Fylbecatulous talk 14:36, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Grant proposals for The Wikipedia Library and The Wikipedia Adventure

Hi folks. Two grant proposals I submitted for an individual engagement grant are up for review:

• The Wikipedia Library - An expansion of the Wikipedia Library program, to attract new donors, improve outreach to research databases, and prepare for improved technical integration and management of donated accounts
• The Wikipedia Adventure - Creation of an interactive, educational, guided journey for new editors, integrated with the new Guided Tours functionality.

I'd love your feedback, comments, questions on either/both proposals. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 20:33, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Info box birth name

In Infobox about a person, the "birth_name" displays as "full name". This is a problem with people like Garry Kasparov, whose birth name is different from his full name now. Could "birth_name" display as "birth name"? And could there be a "full name" field? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:30, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

proposal - implementation of some way of organized saving my wikibus for later view

I am using wikipedia extensively to research particular knowledge using a particular path of search, and I found it rather insatisfactory that I can not save somewhere on my account in any satisfactory way these particular paths, so that I can return to the information whenever I need, with ease. I am sure this type of improvement is very simple, and yet extremely powerfull for a lot of people looking for info using wikipedia. Hope to see this feature soon.

"search path" is not well defined, so it's hard to claim this with certainty, but presuming these "search paths" can be expressed in a textual form, you can save them in your userspace: just press "sandbox" on the top menu, and you'll get dropped in a personal page in your userspace. you can open as many such pages as you want - "Sandbox" is just the default name, but has no special meaning. for instance, if you want to save a specific searchpath, and call it, say, "Queen Elisabeth II", what you want to do is type in the searchbox "Special:MyPage/Queen Elizabeth II" (without the quotes) and hit ↵ Enter .

in the form that will open, you'll find an option to create this page (the name of the page will be "User:<YOUR USERNAME>/Queen Elizabeth II). choose it, paste in your searchpath (again, assuming whatever it is you call seachpath can be expressed textually), and hit "Save".

later, you may have many such searches saved, and you may not remember them all: one way to get to them is to go to your user page (i.e., click on your username in the top menu), choose "Page Information" from the toolbox, and from there choose "Subpages of this page". you will see all the previously saved searches.

peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 17:17, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• Wikipedia doesn't currently log the reading patterns of individuals (which would be needed for automatic "saving" like this to work) and for privacy reasons it is very unlikely we will start doing so in the future. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:23, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• Use the bookmark feature in your browser. Easy breezy. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:23, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

history - updated since my last visit

In a history, "updated since my last visit" was added several months ago, which is nice. But it would be even nicer to have a button to click on to show all changes since my last visit. It would be much easier for the user, not having to look at how far down the history that message goes and clicking in the appropriate radio button, and then the show button. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 17:23, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

You can click the "cur" link on the most recent non-"updated since my last visit" revision instead of messing with the radio buttons. That's a slight improvement. Anomie⚔ 13:57, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but it would be better if the computer could do that for you. It knows which edits have been made since the last visit, so it should be easy to have one button show only those changes (since your last visit). Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 15:36, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Bubba73. I'm not sure what you mean by the "updated since my last visit" feature. I tried to locate it but failed. (I'm using Vector.) Could you describe where (or whit) it is detail? Jason Quinn (talk) 16:52, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

If I go to the "view history" of an article (or talk page), it shows the list of recent edits. Next to the edits that have been done since the last time I viewed the page, it shows "updated since my last visit". Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:10, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Proper nouns

The articles in the name of PROPER NOUNs may be titled in a fashion that would enable one to easily differentiate it from the same word/phrase literally meaning itself, without having to actually visit the corresponding page. In the case of presence of more number of articles that naturally have the same name, we use (description) like xxxxxxxx_(philisophy), etc. What I am actually trying to convey here is that - what if the same kind of notation is globally adapted for all the articles in Wikipedia, that would help one to decide whether to visit an article page or not by clicking a link from the currently seeing page.

User:Mariraja2007 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mariraja2007 (talk • contribs) 03:00, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting. Could you give an example? —Theopolisme (talk) 22:02, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Here is an example of what I was trying to convey.

When I was going through the Wikipedia article Polaroid_(polarizer), under Related Topics I was able to see Impossible Project. With the curiosity and temptation to find out about it, I wanted to visit that page (An activity which I would later realize as a sheer waste of time). After hitting that link, I found that it is rather the name of an Enterprise that works with photographic materials. Although I was never interested in knowing about such a company, without my willingness I was persuaded to visit that page; which is partly due to my curiosity and partly due to an inherent blot in Wikipedia’s system of naming/titling an article page. This is just an instance, which happened recently so that I remembered. I have faced this several times and also many others would have faced the similar situation of intending to see something and landing up somewhere else.

What I would like to propose here is the usage of one word description of that article in a bracket as in: Mercury (element), The Apple (1980 film) and Einstein (novel) for all of Wikipedia’s Proper noun articles. I know that the same scheme currently exists for disambiguation cases, when conflict arises as described in Wikipedia:Disambiguation. Why not do we extend the same for all of Wikipedia’s articles with a Proper noun as the article’s subject using suitable bracketed tags like: vvvv (Place), wwww (Enterprise), xxxx (Scientist), yyyy (Philosophy), zzzzz (Organization) and so on.

For a person like me, who is a frequent Wikipedia visitor, I believe that bringing such a change would definitely make sense by help avoid wasting time (that happens due to persuasion caused by the system of Naming/Titling).

—Mariraja2007 (talk) 09:21, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

We only use disambiguators when necessary to allow natural linking in most cases. This is much easier than trying to guess what disambiguator would be necessary for each link in a text. Rmhermen (talk) 16:33, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

make "speedy delete proposal" and "prod" flags to be given by admins

Just saw an(other) example of a new, teen-aged "patroller" pissing off useful new older contributor with a good article (10 sources eventually) by proposing something for speedy in 2 minutes. Seriously...this is not a new record. Has been going on for years. Why not make this a flag to be added (or perhaps taken away) by admin fiat?

And I am really not into admins or trinket awarding or any of that. But since we need to have speedy and have patrollers (to fight the waves of crap), why not have some more accountability and organization. A flag would make things easy. Probably help with newbie attracting and making a nicer environment and less of a first person shooter that Sue complains about. Is a very easy fix too.

TCO (talk) 08:52, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

You are correct that this has been an issue for years. I'm not sure if it's technically possible to restrict this because it is just adding deletion templates to the articles. I've seen people propose that WP:NPP and WP:RCP should be userrights, which is possible but the idea hasn't gained any traction so far. Another proposal was that articles be given a grace period of X amount of hours, but this was shot down because of concerns about WP:BLPs and attack pages. The usual reccomendation is to educate the people that are doing it wrong. There may have been other suggestions, but I don't recall right now. 64.40.54.147 (talk) 01:33, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Bad speedy deletion tags will alkways be an issue, just as bad edits and creation of bad articles will always be an issue. Education is not just how we do we deal with these issues, it is how we should deal with them. We need CSD patrollers to find all the crappy articles being created every minute of every day. It never lets up, so making users jump through more hoops before we even let them tag an article would not, on the whole, be helpful.

I find it troubling that there seem to be an increasing number of users who apparently desire the creation of new policies preventing everything that they don't want to deal with. Wikipedia does not need to become a police state, there are more than enough rules already. Talk to users who are doing it wrong. (there are even templates for this if it is too much trouble to write a paragraph explaining the problem) If they won't listen, open a community discussion such as WP:RFC/U about it. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:54, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• I did some data analysis on this recently in my official role; actual, undone reviews are few and far between. Novice patrollers are few and far between. Frankly, we need far more of them, and I don't quite understand how creating an additional hoop for potential patrollers to jump through will achieve anything except "you're less likely to have someone take issue with your article, because nobody will ever review your article, regardless of how terrible it is". I share Beeblebrox's concerns. Ironholds (talk) 00:30, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

@Oliver, as community liaison for the WMF, you have done an incredible job making things better, so I have faith in what you're saying. But I hope you will understand that I still have a concern. The general public knows that Wikipedia is a hostile place for new users. The news media has been reporting this for over half a decade. See Wikipedia uncovered (2007) and Editors depart as Wikipedia becomes 'hostile' (2009) as just two of the many examples. The community has known of these issues since at least 2006 when WP:QUIT was created. The community confirmed the problem with WP:NPP when it ran the WP:NEWT experiment in 2009. The scientific study in 2010 by the WMF at strategy:Editor Trends Study and specifically strategy:Attracting and retaining participants#Barriers to increased participation also confirmed the problems at WP:RCP and WP:NPP. And Sue reiterated the problems with reverts and deletions at RCP and NPP in the strategy:March 2011 Update. As an IP editor, the community treats me the same way as the general public or any new user so I am keenly aware of these issues. I prefer being an IP specifically for this reason, because it allows me to judge the health of the project and to see if it's getting better or worse. If you have new data that shows these issues are no longer a problem, it would be great news. 64.40.54.122 (talk) 14:56, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Adding a criticism section to the Koch Industries article and some disinterested thirds parties to watch for whitewashing of the article.

nothing to see here.20:58, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. I'm trying to round up some disinterested third party input so I'm not getting steamrolled by biased editors. My goal is to make the article more informative and encyclopedic and that's it. Here's the current critical part of the Talk Page. Thank you. Cowicide (talk) 21:27, 21 February 2013 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Holiday Logos!

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

We need prettier logos! The French are cool and the English are boring :(. They have a logo for nearly every holiday, and nearly every logo in this user subpage has been featured on the actual interface logo at some point. If this gets approved, I would be more than happy to translate these logos in Paint.NET to English for you. We wouldn't have to actually edit the Wiki.png file, we could house these under filenames like "wiki-xmas.png" or "wiki-newyear.png" and exchange them during holidays for, I don't know, maybe on the holidays, the week surrounding the holiday, 5 days around, it'll work out. Either way, they're cool and we're not! Pretty please? --Free Wales Now! what did I screw up?  15:24, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose!!! I disagree the French are "cool" and the English are "boring." Alternate view: the French are frivolous and the English are serious. I subscribe to neither view, but your attempt to categorize entire nations is unhelpful. I do seriously oppose this; I forsee endless wars about which holidays to include and which to exclude, especially if there is overlap. One puppy's opinion. Also, your sig is annoying as all get-out; please consider simplifying it. KillerChihuahua 16:03, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• Just... no. First off, those are incredibly gaudy. Secondly, consistency is better than frivolous changes. I'd be all for an opt-in sort of thing for this (like a simple gadget that those who want holiday-specific customization can just activate at their leisure), but forcing this crap on everyone is a terrible, terrible idea. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:19, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• Naw — while there's nothing "frivolous" about them, English is simply too widespread to cover every holiday or to pick without imposing one specific set on everybody. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 16:24, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• This idea is probably DOA, but for the record I don't like it either, for the simple reason that I believe it will create needless drama without improving the site in any real way. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:28, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• Weak Oppose Wikipedia should be secular. That said, I don't think for instance changing one of the symbols of the puzzle to a present during the winter holidays would be harmful. — nerdfighter 16:34, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. Our job is to report on culture, not promote or endorse culture. It would be like putting quotes from Jesus and Gandhi on top of every page: well-intentioned and cute, sure, but nonsensical and non-neutral. And yes, it's tacky as well. Designate (talk) 17:22, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose This is not Google. It would cheapen the site. Bazonka (talk) 18:23, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose Trivial nonsense. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 01:59, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

How are editors supposed to find policy?

I had a specific question about notability, so I decided to try looking for the answer in our policies and guidelines, and I quickly discovered you need to have a degree in law to even begin to understand it all. Where is the page that lists out the nutshell version of our policies? I know we have some "broad pages" like the five pillars, but it not helpful in showing an editor where to look to answer their own questions.

Also, why are there no links to our policies and guidelines on the Main Page, or Community Portal? Why do I have to search for policies, shouldn't this information be right there, easily accessible to any user that has a question about content? If we are trying to encourage quality editing, shouldn't we display a general breakdown of how things are? If I were a new editor and I had no clue about how things run around here, I would likely be shocked to discover the thousands of lines of text governing the encylopedia anyone can edit. I think we would do well to showcase the rules we edit by, it would do a lot to encourage a more informed level of participation. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 19:30, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

The very first link on the Wikipedia:Community portal page goes to the Wikipedia:Department directory. There one finds many useful things, including a link to Wikipedia:RULES. However, one does not want to drown new editors in all the policies and guidelines. They are not so central that they should interfere with getting started. The quick overview for beginners is Wikipedia:5P. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:59, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Honestly I have been to the community portal dozens of times, and I have never noticed that link, it is certainly not indicated to be as important as the content it contains. And even within the Department Directory, the sections on the page appears to be placed randomly. For example, "Fun departments" has more space as "Policy creation and revision", and are both located near the bottom of the page.

I understand we don't want to drown editors in policies, but if we consistently run into problems with new editors creating articles and making edits that are unproductive, shouldn't we introduce concepts like the 5 pillars while they are still readers? Aside from that, my more general concern is that the tome of policies and guidelines as not centrally organized or easy to access. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 20:17, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Third time this month I have seen a complaint about the way policies and guidelines are organized/presented - perhaps time to turn Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines into a comprehensive descriptive directory like Wikipedia:Help index or make a new article called WP:Community standards and advice and have it set up with main policies and guidelines and there related essays on advice like with the section Wikipedia:Help index#Community standards and advice. We have Wikipedia:List of guidelines and Wikipedia:List of policies that have some descriptions but again with no relevant advice pages there.Moxy (talk) 20:30, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

That looks like the kind of organization I was expecting. Some indicator of where to look for a certain thing. I would enjoy being part of an endeavour like this. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 21:19, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I'll add a "me too". Policies and processes just seem hard to find. It took me a while to notice that Department directory link. Praemonitus (talk) 01:39, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

• I think User:Okeyes (WMF) woud be a good contact person from the Foundation for something like this. He was involved n a major restructuring and reorganizing of help pages over the last couple years. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:21, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Reading Okeyes' talk page brought me to this recent discussion on Jimmy's talk page, which is along a similar line but about Help Pages. The theme between the two problems, is too many pages has resulted in fragmentation of the information. It is just as difficult to find information on Help as it is for Policies and Guidelines. One user suggests it is a problem of having an adequate search function. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 00:37, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Wish that conversation was seen by Jimbo before it was archived - one bad thing about his page is the archive is set to archive more often then hes at the page. O well - that said i am thinking of starting "Community standards and advice" article over the next few weeks.Moxy (talk) 18:44, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

The answer is that you keep looking until you find the policy you are looking for or become somewhat certain that one doesn't exist. Yes, the policies are sprawling but this is largely due to numerous issues that must be addressed. Detailed policies are necessary and while summary policies serve a purpose, they do so at the expense of duplication and more policies. The rather imposing collection of polices is a tribute to Wikipedia's success although it's easily missed as such. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:58, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Article proposal

What about Sweet Brown? Sweet Brown is an american woman, known on Internet for the sentence ain't nobody got time for that she said at KFOR-TV as a witness of a fire near her house. Ĉiuĵaŭde ^Discuss 21:24, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

You personally will need to add a request for that at the proper forum, Wikipedia:Articles for creation. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 22:03, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Ĉiuĵaŭde, I can't find significant mention of Mrs Brown in independent reliable sources. This means that we are left with very little biographical information about her, apart from her own declarations about respiratory illness and preference for particular beverages. This would make it difficult to write an article about her. (She does seem to pop up on other articles, though.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:10, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Discussion Closed.

Lack of comments and Problems

I think, because of the lack of neutral members interested in controversial topics (Kashmir, territorial disputes, Human-rights, etc), there is currently a trend where more bad edits are justified easily and good ones are perennially in need of justification. Yes, I may seem simplistic. I intend to be.

I can only present one of my typical days of so-called "content dispute", it generally starts of by me making an edit in good-faith, an edit that is most objectively correct and intended to be a fair assessment of all the sources I have at my disposal.

Now, someone else notices my edit and right away reverts it, obviously claiming that it was not improving the article or something along the lines of "it is not needed". Frankly, these sort of rationale seem perilously similar to WP:IDON'TLIKEIT. I try and try to make them listen but it feels like (s)he is not interested. Meanwhile, an admin tells me to seek "wider input" — I like it, good advice. My input-request in WP:ORN/WP:RSN sits there like a lame duck - no comments - not for days, sometimes even 1 or 2 weeks without a single comment. Then, if I am lucky after a jolt or ardor on the talk page, one generous member (who apparently didn't read my request carefully) comes to give input. Sometimes I try to reason with him with a reply of mine, but he disappears never to be seen again on that thread. I am not allowed to go to ANI with only a request for comment.

I don't know how to solve this much apathy towards certain topics, do you?

I have deliberately avoided diff-hunting, I am not pointing at any special incident (there are multiple back-to-back incidents) and reeling off names. It is not the members, but the system.

Problem

With DRN a volunteer can suggest the next logical course in their closing comments. But I am talking about neutral and durable comments on the content not suggestions. Also requests for inputs and requests for comment, as I have noticed during my time here, rarely attract completely neutral editors because the editors who respond to such requests usually and unsurprisingly have some level of there opinions predetermined. I don't blame them; perhaps I would also respond to only those requests that resonate with me and about which I have some sort of reflection, reservation.

Proposal

Let us discuss and create some mechanism which will force other neutral and uninterested editors into commenting fairly. We are not a democracy, are we? At least create a special discussion board (similar to afd) that will notify neutral editors more flagrantly. Don't get me wrong, I don't want it to be disruptive. But surely we can find some way to simply fetch more neutral comments to avoid traditional but unacceptable bias. Thank you all.

P.S. please don't make it an issue about me. I didn't come here to solve my own problems, I am here to solve the apathy and the system at large. Mr T^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 08:13, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

• As long as there is controversy in the world, there will be controversy on Wikipedia. We have a variety of means, including RfC alerts and discussion listings, to attract neutral feedback. If you're not getting the responses you want, either be bold and address the problem yourself or pursue dispute resolution. You're right, we're not a democracy, but we are a free encyclopedia. Editors can contribute in fields of interest to them, and there's no way people will be "forced" to offer feedback. dci | TALK 22:21, 24 February 2013 (UTC)