Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 

• Table of contents
• First discussion
• End of page
• New post

The proposals section of the village pump is used to discuss new ideas and proposals that are not policy-related (see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) for that).

Recurring policy proposals are listed at Wikipedia:Perennial proposals. If you have a proposal for something that sounds overwhelmingly obvious and are amazed that Wikipedia doesn't have it, please check there first before posting it, as someone else might have found it obvious, too.

Before posting your proposal:

• Read this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.
• If the proposal is a change to the software, file a bug at Bugzilla instead. Your proposal is unlikely to be noticed by a developer unless it is placed there. If you do not wish to create a Bugzilla account, you can use this page to request that another user file a request for you.
• If the proposal is a change in policy, be sure to also post the proposal to, say, Wikipedia:Manual of style, and ask people to discuss it there.
• If the proposal is for a new wiki-style project outside of Wikipedia, please go to m:Proposals for new projects and follow the guidelines there. Please do not post it here. These are different from WikiProjects.

« Archives, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213

Suggestion to make Cancel button as noticeable (in same type of box as) the 3 boxes to its left

When I was first using Wikipedia (it can be overwhelmingly confusing at first if you're not used to looking at lots of mark-up!) I used to accidentally miss (not be able to find) the cancel button quite frequently, and sometimes ended up clicking on 'save page' or 'show preview' instead! (Then having to undo it, I think. It's all a bit of a blur, honestly, but I know I kept missing the cancel button.) So I think it might be helpful if the cancel button was as noticeable as the 'save page' and 'show preview' buttons, perhaps just by putting it in a box like the 3 currently to its left? (And maybe making it red, or pink, or something.) Just a thought. Thanks very much. (p.s. Wikipedia is great! I love it! Go Wikipedia!)--Tyranny Sue (talk) 04:31, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I think making it a button isn't too bad, but coloring it different... I dunno.
Keep in mind that you can also always just hit "back" in your browser, or click on the "article" or "discussion" tabs at the top (depending on where you are). EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:36, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea to make it a 4th button (Save page/Show preview/Show Changes/Cancel edit) and would cut down on accidental newbie saves that appear as vandalism. Is there any way this can be advertised more for a larger audience to discuss? --64.85.214.183 (talk) 18:51, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Great idea, aside from the coloring. Cancel is as much an action as the other three, and standard in most interfaces. –M^T 02:27, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

This is a great idea and really, why was it not included in the first place?! The very fact people have commented on it raises that simple question. In addition, if people make a mistake and don't correct it, it simply creates more work for everyone else!? I think the most relevant question is...Why isn't it a button, rather than why it should be a button.

Let's see some postive action on this Wikipedia ^©Wiki User 68 ^Talk_Work   Portal 00:15, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• Support fahadsadah (talk,contribs) 17:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support — The inclusion of 'cancel' as a button would allow its selection via tabbing (at least in Firefox), which is the main method that I use to navigate from edit screen to action when editing (working on an edit, tab => summary line, tab-tab => minor-edit, tab-tab-tab => watch, tab-tab-tab-tab => save, etc.). Using the keyboard shortcut like this is faster than navigating to the action link by mouse. Until I can type with my mouse, I will retain a fondness for keyboard shortcuts. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 11:41, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support, see above. –M^T 04:30, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Watched counter

Wikipedia:PEREN#Create_a_counter_of_people_watching_a_page

There are more good editors than vandals. Even if making the counter visible and the 'unwatched pages' page public resulted in massive abuse, editors would quickly remedy the problem by adding unwatched pages to their watchlist. Can an admin tell us how many pages there are on the unwatched list? Reasons for doing this, or why the 'vandalism' objection is invalid:

1. Good editors would overwhelm vandals.
2. Displaying "<5" for 0-4 would make this useless for vandals.[1]
3. If there are still vandal concerns, an adminbot could be set up to ask recently-active editors to "adopt" articles.
4. This would allow editors to find pages that needed "adoption".
5. This would relieve the admins who are taking care of the unwatched list.

What other reasons were given against this proposal? It might help if the PEREN page linked to the discussions. Without knowing what was said, the reasoning sounds like "the vandals would make this impossible", which is often a poor objection. –M^T 03:50, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

The list of unwatched pages is limited to 1000 entries, sorted alphabetically. It is rare that it extends beyond the letter A. Every time it is refreshed, there are a number of editors who dutifully watch hundreds of pages from it, yet every time it is refreshed with a new list. It really is like emptying the Atlantic with a teacup. I think the problem is hugely more widespread than you anticipate. Happy‑melon 09:36, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Not that they don't need watching, but how many of the first 1000 are redirects? Mark Hurd (talk) 11:26, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Given that points 1 and 2 would address the vandal problem, doesn't what you're saying just give us all the more reason to support this proposal based on points 4 and 5? –M^T 13:51, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Another possibly 'simple' short-term solution is to provide another special page that lists unwatched pages by order of most recent edit and that can also still be limited to the first 1000. If that overlaps between runs, we'd be clearing the backlog from the more 'important' first. Otherwise we're no worse off. Mark Hurd (talk) 00:12, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Great idea. This would not only eliminate vandalism worries, but would also be extremely useful. This feature is a frequent request, is useful and informative, and aside from vandalism I don't think there are objections. We have the following options:

1. Modify wgAllowPageInfo to display "<5 watchers"
2. Change the list to order by last-edited rather than alphabetical, reduce displayed entries to 100, allow all to see it
3. Change the list to order by least watched, then last-edited, reduce to 100, rename it to "least watched articles", allow all.

I would support going directly to 3, but we can do a more gradual roll-out by implementing 1 and 3 (I think these are trivial changes, but perhaps a dev could comment) and then removing 1 when the list starts to shrink. Were there any lurking objections? –M^T 00:53, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

In the flagged protection and patrolled revisions trial implementation, special:Unreviewedpages, which lists pages that have never been patrolled, will indicate the number of active users watching the page. It's only accessible to reviewers. Cenarium (talk) 01:00, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

This seems like its a lot more trouble than its worth. If you really want to help with vandalism, just get rollback and download huggle. I disagree that "Good editors would overwhelm vandals." really deals with the vandalism problem. This sounds like how wars used be fought, where each army would just stand in a line and shoot at the other one, and the bigger one would usually win. It worked, but not particularly well. Saying that fewer than 5 people watch a page still makes it nicer target for vandals, it just doesn't narrow it down quite as much. Since the people watching it might have left the project ages ago, it could still have 3-5 watchers but effectively be 0. Mr.Z-man 01:02, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Countervandalism activity is more than just RC patrol. Somebody needs to watchlist articles to catch the vandalism that the RC patrollers miss -- the majority of my vandalism reverts take place hours to days after the fact. --Carnildo (talk) 01:19, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't like vandalism patrol, but I would like to make things much easier for editors and much more demoralizing for vandals. Your objection seems against the weakest part of the proposal. The implementation of #3 is a trivial change to an SQL "ORDER BY". The strongest part is editors being able to adopt unwatched pages. This is strengthened by the possibility of a "least watched last edited" page. Vandalism already targets unwatched pages (just click random and mess up an obscure article), this proposal would allow editors to target this already-vulnerable class of pages. –M^T 08:07, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

When your database contains several million rows, changes are rarely "trivial." The code for Unwatchedpages doesn't count the number of people watching the page at all right now nor does it use an explicit order, so you would need to add the "ORDER BY" and would also need a "GROUP BY." The other issue is that the list is only updated once every week or so. Given that we get about 11,000 edits per hour on around 6000 distinct pages, "most recently edited" might as well be random as it would be out of date within a few minutes. Based on a quick and dirty estimate using the number of pages in the list right now and how far it gets alphabetically, I would estimate that there's easily 60,000 unwatched pages. At 100 at a time, with updates once a week, it'll take 11 years just to work through all the pages with 0 people watching them, ignoring all the ones that are added in that time. Mr.Z-man 18:41, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I didn't and don't endorse a broken version of a recently-edited page. Given that wgAllowPageInfo doesn't use a field in the page table, I agree that it isn't trivial. It would require adding a field and index to the page table (cf. page_random, page_len, page_touched) that kept track of watchers. What sort of disruption would the addition of this field cause? Consider where unnoticed vandalism mostly occurs. The proposal would put into view these pages (which are highly vulnerable, seldom altered, and recently altered). This would allow editors to have a central place to patrol for vandalism (see Wikipedia_talk:Special:UnwatchedPages#Purpose. It would also allow editors to find pages to watch. There's a great reason Jimbo requested the unwatched pages, and given that that method is too overwhelming, there remains a great reason to implement recent least-watched pages. –M^T 23:39, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Adding new tables to the database is relatively simple. Altering existing ones is generally avoided. I believe it requires stopping replication on, altering, then re-enabling each slave server one by one, then switching the master to update that. After updating all the databases, a script would have to be run to populate the new field. The page table on enwiki currently has 16,575,280 rows, and grows constantly. I've no idea how big the watchlist table is. If this is done, it might make such a special page possible (and able to be updated dynamically). The index would also probably have to be on page_latest as well if you want to be able to sort by most recently edited. Mr.Z-man 00:08, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Not forgetting, of course, that while the database master is being updated, the whole wiki goes read-only (unless they do something wierd like setting one of the slaves to be a temporary master, which could work I guess). This is the schema update script, yes? Happy‑melon 17:05, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

\ Ah, pages isn't indexed by date. How does recent changes work then? (schema, large image). Perhaps it would be more appropriate to add this sort of field there. This would also involve adding a field, but might be less dramatic. The field would list the number of people watching the page at the time the edit was made, and could be used to generate our desired list. –M^T 02:40, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Since RecentChanges would otherwise need to read from about five different tables every time it was requested, it actually stores all its data in its own separate table. Every new elegible edit or action puts a copy of its log into the recentchanges table as well as whichever permanent table it uses, and ever hundredth edit calls a function to clean out rows from the table that are older than the limit (currently 30 days). Happy‑melon 17:08, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I should amend the proposal.–M^T 19:38, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Tracking watchers on recent changes

Vandalism is a problem on all pages, but it is a much larger problem on pages that, on average, have fewer or zero people watching them. One solution to this problem is Wikipedia_talk:Special:UnwatchedPages, which was requested by Jimbo, is accessible only to admins, is updated infrequently, and is therefore very difficult to 'clean out'. Another solution, advocated here, is to modify the recent-changes table in MediaWiki to grab the watcher-count from the watchlist table. We would then be able to create a "recent changes in unwatched articles" page. This page would let editors catch vandalism that would usually have gone unnoticed for long periods of time. It would also encourage editors to expand their watch-lists, and urge editors to contribute to fringe/stub articles that are seeing some recent activity. It would also allow us to finally address one of the WP:PERENs. To get this proposal off the ground, we would need:

1. Interest from editors. Other potential benefits. Perhaps a straw-poll.
2. Critical comments, including reasons why this might not be as useful as stated.
3. Solid estimates of cost - can this be done without locking the site? How long would it be read-only for?
4. Input from a developer. Should one be contacted to check feasibility?

Comments addressing any of these four points are especially welcome. –M^T 19:38, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Now this is an interesting, and probably feasible, idea. Technically, it could probably be done without a schema-change, and it could be useful to do so; the code in FlaggedRevs, for instance, uses the fact that it has to do a database lookup to be more clever in what it shows: it only 'counts' users who have logged in in the past 60 days, for instance, which is pretty neat. If the servers can take the strain, having that feature available on Recent Changes would be very useful, and avoids the issue of pages apparently being watched because they're on the watchlists of users who last logged in three years ago. Performance-wise, having a rc_watched column in the recentchanges table would massively reduce database load when viewing RecentChanges. Or we could define a few more types in the rc_type field (only ~3 actions defined out of a possible 16 million!), and avoid an explicit schema change, but the devs might find that a bit hackish (I remember there being hiccups over the RevDeleted bitfields). On the other hand, that field then has to be populated on every action.

Procedurally, it sounds like a godsend. Unwatched articles are only dangerous if they're edited; unwatched but untouched articles are no harm to anyone. Happy‑melon 14:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I think 7 days would be the best last-login time, unless someone can give a better figure. Given the rate of revisions vs the rate of access, and the many other fields in recent changes, I don't think that this would do too much damage to performance. And the benefits, as you say, are a godsend. Should we get dev feedback, or try to get a few more comments? –M^T 02:36, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I guess it should be the latter... –M^T 04:28, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Straw poll

The proposal is to create a recent changes page for unwatched articles to prevent vandalism by modifying the recent-changes table in MediaWiki. (I'd really prefer not to see this one archived, since it would open up several useful features. It would permit Watched counters. A now-ignored bugfix in the watchlist code and the addition of a 'checked' watchlist row would then let you patrol your own watchlist. Adding a public-watchlist preference would then give us a passive form of Flagged revisions.) Though this is a software feature request, support from editors would help.

• Support. –M^T 04:28, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Make the Watchlist more like an Inbox

In my email inbox, I can mark new emails as read, mark them for followup, and move them out of the inbox. The Watchlist is Wikipedia's equivalent of an inbox, but I can't do any of those things. The most important one would be the ability to mark the recent changes appearing in the Watchlist as "OK, don't show this change on the Watchlist anymore" (but show any subsequent ones, of course). This would allow a degree of processing of the Watchlist in the manner of an inbox, and make it much easier to process very large watchlists. Thoughts? Rd232 ^talk 20:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I think this could be accomplished fairly simply as a javascript in your monobook.js. I don't really have the time or javascript specific skill to make it myself though. Chillum 20:33, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Me neither. Any volunteers? Anywhere I can request this from editors who do have the skills? Rd232 ^talk 23:35, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Just want to voice my support for this stunningly simple, and brilliant, idea. DuncanHill (talk) 23:39, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd support this, as long as it's an optional feature. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

After some thought I'm guessing you're drawing a parallel with emails being marked as read automatically? That's not what was suggested, though as an optional feature, there's no harm in it. Rd232 ^talk 04:17, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

• Tagging articles on our watchlist, so that any notices about them appear in the folder we specify, would be quite nice. That'd make things much easier to manage. I'd also like to set it, so that if something I care about has a tag for deletion or merge discussion, or someone erases everything and puts a redirect there, I'd have it in a main category, so I'd notice right away. There are just far too many articles to keep track of otherwise. If everyone had everything they ever worked on, on their active watchlist, it'd be too huge to pick anything of importance out. So some sorting is going to be quite useful to make sure people can stay aware of what's going on. Dream Focus 04:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki has had at least part of this feature request for a long time. On wikis like Meta, bold entries are the unread changes. When you click the diff and reload your watchlist, the entry is no longer bold. And there's an option to mark all entries as read. (Much like an e-mail client.)

It's not enabled on en.wiki due to ... performance reasons? They tried to enable it a few months ago and it didn't work properly. Or something.

The folders idea is interesting, but would require rewriting the watchlist code significantly, and there's no shortage of other bugs that are already long overdue to be fixed. Someone should still file a bug about the folders idea.

In general, the watchlist code is rather outdated and could stand for a major rewrite (including being able to watch only talk pages, being able to set auto-refresh, inline unwatch links, URL parameterization for things like hiding bots, etc.) --MZMcBride (talk) 06:41, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Didn't it cause the mail server to explode for some reason? I seem to remember Brion strangling someone because it dumped the load of the entire site onto the mail-sending daemon. Or something like that.

I expect the 'folders' idea would be duped to the "multiple watchlists" bug...

Happy‑melon 14:01, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, I totally support something like this. I don't use the watchlist, because it fails to give me vital information and doesn't allow me to check off certain edits as okay or requiring follow-up. These options are really needed. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:54, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

• I would absolutely love to be able to watch only talk pages. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:24, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Go to the watchlist, and in the "Watchlist options" box, pick the Talk namespace. Voila, only talk page edits. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:57, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
    • Actually I meant specific pages to be talkpage only (like user pages, or the FA of the day, etc). ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 21:15, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

'Comment: I didn't really want this to become a shopping list for Things I'd Like My Watchlist To Do. In the back of my mind was that what I was suggesting might be relatively simple technically (as simple as anything is on WP), because it could just be an additional per-user table (edits to be filtered from watchlist). I don't know if the thinking was right (probably not...), but please bear this in mind. That said, I'd love to know more about the idea that some major revision to the watchlist system exploded (and hence might be fixed?). Rd232 ^talk 01:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

• I like this idea. All this time I've just been trying to be the most recent editor on every page of my watchlist. --Explodicle (T/C) 15:35, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Watchlist alerts

We should have a notice that is similar to the "You have new messages" banner. Something like:

One or more pages on your watchlist have been edited (view watchlist)

-- IRP ☎ 03:00, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

This though would be the most annoying thing ever. The new messages banner annoys me now, and it's rare. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:24, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Opt-out ability for banners

If the banners are annoying, then we should have an option available to allow users to opt out of the watchlist and/or new messages banners. -- IRP ☎ 20:32, 27 April 2009 (UTC) |} We should have an alert similar to the "You have new messages" alert when a page on our watchlist is edited (however, it should be an optional feature. Click "show" (above) to see the example). Who supports or opposes this proposal? -- IRP ☎ 00:30, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

This proposal was hidden because its mostly unrelated to the proposal that (originally) started this section. Depending on how its implemented, if its implemented, one proposal for watchlists being implemented will not necessarily mean that implementing the other is easy. Implementing either of them in the core software would be a major change and not particularly likely to happen soon (if someone starts working now, I would say a month as an absolute minimum) for reasons similar to a perennial watchlist proposal. The watchlist system right now is rather simple. Most proposals, including some of those made here would be a major change. Mr.Z-man 01:48, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The simplest way to do it would be to create a .js file for it instead of a change in the software (just like the proposal above). -- IRP ☎ 02:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

It would be terribly impractical for anyone with more than a handful of articles on a watchlist. I would definitely opt out, lest I have a big orange bar all the time. I wonder how many people would actually find such a feature helpful. LadyofShalott 04:13, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I have 2,861 items in my watchlist, and it would make simple browsing of the encyclopedia all but impossible. If you want to know if one of the pages on your watchlist have been edited, then... check your watchlist. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:59, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I have to say, that's a really rather radical idea EVula... that aside, I too would opt out, as I have 1,554 items on my watchlist. In all honesty, I can't see anyone with more than around 50 items even considering this... _TalkIslander 22:23, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia (United States)

In the interest of making Wikipedia more of an international representation how about having days in which there is neither article nor comment on 'Welcome to Wikipedia' that relates to the United States of America.

Every day I read the welcome page, and there is always at least one and usually several American references under one or more of the following welcome sections:
Today's featured article
In the news
Did you know...
On this day...

There are over 200 countries in the world, of which (according to Wikipedia) 53 have English as the official language. I get tired of always finding stories on America. Please at least attempt to reduce the American content on the welcome page. I have nothing against America, but look forward to the day on which there is no mention of the USA on the welcome page. B. Fairbairn (talk) 23:11, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

So to combat bias, you would omit all mention of a certain country? And that's not biased? Why not even it out? Also, welcome to Wikipedia! You must be new here or have never engaged in discussions about the main page, because there is a constant argument about whether or not there is too much emphasis on the US. Incidentally, right now, the featured article is about America and Vietnam; ITN has zero stories mentioning the United States; three out of the eight entries on DYK involve or mention America; and one out of the six On This Day entries involve America. So, what exactly is your complaint? Yes, there are over 200 countries in the world - and at least 18 are represented on the Main Page at this moment. So, clearly your problem isn't that there is too much America stuff - it's that there is any America stuff. --Golbez (talk) 23:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I am proposing that Wikipedia omit mention of a certain country for at least one day out of 365. The USA is the only country in the world that gets a mention 365 days out of 365 on Welcome to Wikipedia. That is where the bias is. B. Fairbairn (talk) 23:33, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

You're going to have to show your work on that one. And, so what? The majority of first-language English speakers, and probably editors, are American. Should we give each countrya special day? --Golbez (talk) 23:35, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. Better than giving one single country a mention every single day. If you want proof, look through the archives. B. Fairbairn (talk) 23:48, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

The number of English-speaking countries is not what's relevant to such content, but the % of English speakers from those countries. While English may be the official language of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, their total population is only 0.04% of the US. Even the population of the UK is only 23% of the US. Many countries also have multiple official languages. English is an official language of Kenya, but so is Swahili and only 7.19% of the population actually speaks English.^[ref] Mr.Z-man 23:42, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

As far as English-language speaking countries go, fair point. Even taking into account the fact there are millions of Americans who have Spanish or another language other than English as first language.

But... the Welcome to Wikipedia page contains references to many countries other than English-speaking ones e.g. (for today) Iraq, Spain, The Philippines, Kenya, Mexico, Iceland, Ukraine, etc. In which case the US has 306 million out of 6,707 million people (4.56%). Of course you could argue that a higher proportion of Americans have internet access than in any other country, but this still does not address the raised issue: why should there always be one or more references to America every single day of the year on Welcome to Wikipedia. B. Fairbairn (talk) 00:09, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Because 1) there are more American editors than any other type, so it makes sense that more is written on American subjects; 2) American stories tend to get more international press than those in St. Vincent, and thus tend to be more prevalent in ITN, and 3) What's the problem, exactly? So what if America is mentioned every day? So? --Golbez (talk) 00:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I am asking for a change. Just one day (for starters). Is it impossible? Does there always have to be American references? Or is it a condition for Wikipedia - is there a contract clause, something like "Wikipedia must have one American related article on Welcome to Wikipedia every day of the year or the USA will ban Wikipedia"? B. Fairbairn (talk) 01:14, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

B. Fairbairn may be interested in WP:Systemic bias, which exists in an attempt to counter systemic bias on Wikipedia. And for what it's worth - in my opinion it's not so much that there is always something about America on the front page, it's that it is so often obscure, un-noteworthy, and "world famous in Hicksville, Alabama" type stuff that annoys me. That and the incomprehensible "all state 8th inning running noses" malarky. DuncanHill (talk) 00:48, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Nice contribution, particularly the "often obscure, un-noteworthy" point.

And often the states of the USA are referred to as though they are countries. With no reference to the USA e.g. in today's welcome, 'former owner of radio station KIHR in Hood River, Oregon, began his career...'. Ask a British, Australian, South African or Swede to name the 50 states of the USA and probably less than one in a thousand would know them all. Or care. B. Fairbairn (talk) 01:23, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Which is why Hood River, Oregon was linked in the listing. Mr.Z-man 01:29, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

You are correct. I looked and found references to places in other countries without a mention of the country name, and so withdraw the comment. Getting back to the main issue: there is always the American connection, and the trivial American story or stories. B. Fairbairn (talk) 01:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

So? You've yet to demonstrate how this is a problem that requires a rule to combat. --Golbez (talk) 02:26, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

As for "trivial stories," the Did you know... section highlights recently created articles. Since we already have articles on pretty much everything "major" (any new "major" thing would likely be in the news section than DYK), the blubrs are generally about trivial things regardless of what nation they relate to. I certainly don't care about the Bigeye sand tiger, but I don't have any problem with it being on the main page. Mr.Z-man 02:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

There is no problem; there is a minor issue, and that is there is always yank material on wiki welcome. Always. Every day.
Now I have nothing against Americans and the US. America is the greatest country in the world. That is my opinion, if it counts for anything.
From nothing the American pioneers built a superb free (apart from 250 years of slavery) nation where each person is the equal of the next and where every person can express their own beliefs (as long as they do not support Communism).
The US did the free world a fantastic service by voluntarily coming in (albeit late) during two world wars and making the difference between equal powers, enabling many people to continue to live free and not under tyranny.
In subsequent years it is unfortunate that the American government got carried away with the "Domino Theory" in Asia, and the American government has at times had a tendency to think it has the right to interfere with the way all other countries are run, but nobody is perfect.
America is the best, and I understand Americans like to read about themselves and their wonderful country, however, surely there is a limit. B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:49, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I would disagree that "America is the greatest country in the world" as you can't scientifically measure its "greatness". Anyway, it's getting off topic: Golbez wrote that (to paraphrase) "...there are more American editors than any other type so it makes sense to [write about their country more]" that is wrong. People come to Wikipedia to find a fairly represented encyclopaedia that doesn't write for one specific audience (bar the language, of course). It's actually a very narrow minded view to have and I'm willing to bet that Golbez is from America himself. I for one support B. Fairbairn's proposal to reduce the amount of American influence in general on Wikipedia (not just on the Main Page). This is an international encyclopaedia; nothing less, nothing more. Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 13:12, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

It's also a very narrow minded view to assume Golbez is from America himself when he has said nothing to the affirmative nor contrary. ;) --Izno (talk) 13:33, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your support, Pat. Unfortunately many Americans from an early age are brainwashed into believing America is the greatest country in the universe, and all other peoples are inferior. Getting a significant number of Americans to stop praising themselves is a very difficult task when Americans are trained to love their country above all else (except perhaps money). This attitude is demonstrated by the common American catchphrase "God Bless America". In other words, too bad for everybody else. B. Fairbairn (talk) 13:34, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Sarcasm and rhetoric does not help your case, B. Fairbairn. --Izno (talk) 13:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I say it as I see it, Iznogood (a character from an Asterix book). And I try to stick to the point without going off on a tangent. B. Fairbairn (talk) 14:12, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I do enjoy Asterix, though I don't recall which book it was from, as I didn't even know the name derived from an Asterix book! :O (I picked "Iznogood" up as a name when I saw a friend using it... that said, Izno is, from what I can tell, a unique derivative!). Still, the sarcasm is not the same as calling a spade a spade, and so you should drop it, as calling a spade a spade would be more skin to your original message: there is systemic bias here. Which we already knew about, and which there are many active editors working to reduce. As with the suggestions below, why do you yourself not turn to aiding instead of insisting it be changed, when we have no control over who edits what when? --Izno (talk) 15:19, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Not Asterix. Same author (Goscinny), but a different artist. Iznogoud --83.253.251.213 (talk) 20:20, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Ita est (Latin: yes, thus it is). You are correct. And I could swear that somewhere in one of the English translations of the Asterix books is a character named 'Iznogood'. If so, I see now why the name was chosen (the Goscinny link). Cannot remember which book though. Might have been a newer one like 'Black Gold' or 'Magic Carpet'. B. Fairbairn (talk) 02:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Since when is America the only nation that has a motto like "God Bless America?" – God Save the Queen? The US didn't invent nationalism. Mr.Z-man 16:18, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Excellent point with God Save the King/Queen. This discussion is bringing forward some interesting observations. Good on you, Z. That one has got me thinking. Maybe I too have been guilty of being indoctrinated by my country of origin. B. Fairbairn (talk) 02:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Instead of calling for a ban on US topics, why don't you join in the decision-making processes and promote non-US topics? That would be much more effective than whinging here, and much more constructive than an arbitrary ban or quota. Anomie⚔ 13:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I have not called for a ban on US topics. Far from it. I have asked for there to be at least one day per year on which there are no American related stories on Welcome to Wikipedia. Once a month would be well beyond expectation. Once a week impossible. I am calling for one US-free day, not a ban. B. Fairbairn (talk) 13:46, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

For one reason or another, more energy is devoted by Wikipedia's editors to articles about the US. They are rewarded for these efforts with a higher proportion of front-page coverage. If you see this is as a problem, the solution is to put your energy into improving the articles on the other side of the scales. Then you will be rewarded to see what you perceive as an imbalance, countered. Essentially you seem to be complaining that one area of Wikipedia is being improved faster than others? Happy‑melon 13:52, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Why should I have to do anything other than attempt to persuade the numerous people who already contribute material to Welcome to Wikipedia to stop focussing on all things American. I am but one person. It is better to help others try to not be so obsessed with writing about only one country, than to vainly attempt to overwelm all other contributors with material about the rest of the world. B. Fairbairn (talk) 14:07, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Because this is a volunteer project and people only work on what they want to work on. You can suggest it, sure, but anything more than that and you look like you're trying to tell people how they are allowed to CHOOSE to spend their time editing WP. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:48, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Because the way to fight bias and improve the project is to counter it with content that we're currently biased against, not fight it with more bias. Prohibiting certain content, even if its just from appearing on the main page, discourages editors. What you're saying is that you shoudn't have to do any work, and that other people should just listen to you. That's not how it works. As Melodia says, we're all volunteers, we work on what we want to work on. Mr.Z-man 16:18, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Quite right - it is absolutely wrong for someone to try to discuss their concerns, such behaviour is intolerable on Wikipedia! DuncanHill (talk) 16:30, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I notice that, as usual, hitting random article over and over produces at least half articles that have nothing to do with the USA, including the usual high proportion of non-English-speaking placenames and soccer/football players and teams.

More seriously, we shouldn't respect one person's animosity to US subjects. Mangoe (talk) 17:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

You should have to do more than influence because information on the Main Page is based on contributions. Articles that have been recently created or improved go in DYK; substantial news stories with that have pages created for them appear in In the News; Featured Content contains pages that have been deemed exceptional. If you want more information on the welcome page, you have to contribute to get it there. You can try to get supporters to help you, but an all out ban (even for a day) is not the way to go. You would have to have a day where nothing historic happened in the US, where no substantial US article was created, and where no recent news pertained to the US. This would not only make the page behave differently for a day, but it would also be censoring news if something important were to happen in the US. Rather than creating a special case, you and supporters for your cause can affect the welcome page by focusing outside US scope to create needed articles, contribute news stories, improve topics, etc. You could even plan a day to contribute more than usual to bump US topics off the page. But as others mentioned above, this needs help from volunteers that are interested in the topics. —Ost (talk) 18:17, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I have noticed that Wikipedia is a rather culturally biassed encyclopeadia, specifically to Northern American and selected parts of Western Europe. It is interesting that if one goes to Criticisms of Wikipedia, a criticism that is mentioned there is Wikipedia's U.S.-centric bias. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:35, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

If you look up the one cited ref there, it refers to a claim by an Aussie Poli Sci Econ prof about editing Hugo Chavez. The article in question is tugged all over the place by everyone, and looking in history I cannot see that this person ever edited the article or made any comment on its talk page-- not that I'm sure he didn't, but there's no obvious evidence that he did. In any case, it's only one article. I personally have run into cases where there were substantial differences in the US and European experience, and was accused of bias for daring to incorporate material from the American side. All around I think this isn't really as bad a problem as claimed, if all that can be found is one IMO dubious and unsupported claim.

The deeper issue is that taking the USA off the front page for a day doesn't do a thing about this. I note that as of this moment, the only items pertaining to the USA are five items in DYK, and at that I had to check three of them to be sure. In that, this is probably a tiny bit unusual, as one would tend to expect at least one item in "On This Day" to pertain to a US event. It's not unusual that the news has no US items, or that the featured article isn't about something in the US. The proposal, it seems to me, is sort of an act of penance to be performed to appease the spirits of anti-US resentment. Mangoe (talk) 20:42, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey people (or should I say 'buddies') - it appears that improvement may be happening already. There are only three references to America on today's Welcome to Wikipedia 1) The Treaty of San Francisco, 2) the mention of a very minor dispute (as far as the rest of the world is concerned) between native americans and their invaders, and 3) some completely and utterly useless trivia "that John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, lives in a warehouse he purchased for US$2000". Come on, you can do it.

Briefly skimming through some of the points above I realise now that some material I added does appear to be sarcastic. Some comments were not intended to be that way. I do very firmly believe that the US is a great country. The US government has helped more countries than any other country has. The US has provided a safe haven to more persecuted peoples (e.g. Jews) than any other country has. I think America and the American people have had a really positive influence on the rest of the world in their pursuit of democracy and liberty.

It is just that after a while people from other countries can get tired of being exposed to US attitudes and US ways and US self-righteousness. Many television shows come from the US, most movies come from the US, many tourists are from the US, and the internet is well and truly dominated by the US. And yet only 4.56% of the world's population live in the US. B. Fairbairn (talk) 01:38, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I can assure you with utmost certainty that your posts here had zero to do with the choices of today's featured article and picture, and the entries for ITN, DYK and OTD. As for being tired of it - Get over it. And enjoy the next century when things will be dominated by China instead. --Golbez (talk) 01:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The 'next century'? You mean the current century i.e. the 21st. I am looking forward to it. At least it will be a change. Gung hei faat coi (Cantonese: Congratulations and be prosperous). B. Fairbairn (talk) 02:20, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Golbez needs to assume more good faith, methinks. And I can think of 101 nicer things to write than "Get over it." Wouldn't you agree? I must congratulate B. Fairbairn on being able to hold his cool; lesser people would've jumped at the opportunity to point out Golbez' failings. Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 12:25, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Pat. Often it is best to refuse to be drawn into a pointless slanging match, particularly when it is exactly what the other individual desires. B. Fairbairn (talk) 10:57, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I am wondering whether it would really help to solve the problem of Wikipedia's cultural bias simply to have days when some other country than the United States gets prime focus on the main page or on "Welcome to Wikipedia"; if one looks at other articles, one can see that coverage is likely to be better for certain parts of the world than others (indeed, not just the United States, but my own country, the United Kingdom, is likely to get better coverage of topics relating to it than those to do with say, eastern Asia or Africa. An African philosopher-theologian such as John Mbiti currently has less information in his article than one would be likely to find on U.S. politicians, or items in the British media such as Susan Boyle or the row concerning the hoax calls by Jonathan Ross or Russell Brand last autumn. However, one side of me says - one just has to face it, a cultural bias towards selected parts of the world is likely, not just on Wikipedia but on other websites, for a simple reason. Where are people more likely to be using the world-wide web - in the United States, the United Kingdom, possibly Germany or France? Or in Africa or Asia? Perhaps this proposal just hit upon a cultural bias which one is likely to find on web resources in general. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:28, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

And, to be fair to Wikipedia and to the world-wide web in general, I do wonder whether the printed Encyclopaedia Brittanica may have shown a similar cultural bias. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:08, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. Count me in. I have never studied the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, and fortunately now do not need to as long as Wikipedia remains free to all users. B. Fairbairn (talk) 11:00, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Based upon past experience at DYK this "solution" will result in one of two scenarios, forced creation of an all-American day for every anti-American day or driving off contributors. Wikipedia is written by volunteers, and volunteers have a strong tendency to contribute on subjects of which they are both interested and knowledgeable. As roughly half of all Wikipedia contributors come from the United States between 40 and 60% all contributions with a geographical bias are thus U.S. related. Designating a non-U.S. day will thus create a backlog of U.S. related topics that when flushed from the queue will by default result in an all-American day. The other option is that you disqualify these contribution from appearing on the Main page and thus remove a primary incentive for contributions by people whose knowledge and interests are in U.S. related subjects. --Allen3 ^talk 12:25, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is not easy. Maybe there could be an option added to wikipedia's my preferences - how about American Material on Welcome Page? Yes or No. Selecting Yes would show the usual welcome page, and selecting No would ensure all future welcome pages for the user would not include American events in the Did You Know and On This Day columns. The In the News area would remain as is. When contributors add articles there could be a check box like This is a minor edit called something like American Material, which would be checked by default for those with the American Material on Welcome Page option set to Yes. B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:04, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

So I was correct - your problem is that there is any American content on the front page, and you would prefer the option to omit it completely. A question - what if another nation came to dominate in place of America? What if all of the stories, in the absence of any American articles, were mostly about Australia? Would you campaign for an option to omit those as well? --Golbez (talk) 00:00, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

But what is special about American material (other than the fact that you personally would rather there was less of it)?? Wikipedia also has a bias towards content related to obscure sportsplayers and small towns in India; should there be a preference "Footballers on Main Page"?? "African villages on Main Page"?? Why is it necessary to take the trouble to create an "american-free" main page but not one that avoids these other unduly-weighted topics? Happy‑melon 09:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

If you read the start of this topic you can see mention of the fact that there is always American material on the Welcome page. That is what this is about. No other country is mentioned anywhere near as much. Let me give you an example of the effect this has on readers. I work in a section where there are dozens of people with online access, but as far as I know there are only two people who visit Wikipedia - and the excuse for not using it from most of the others is that Wikipedia is too Americanised. I assure people that it is not - that there are thousands of items that have nothing to do with the US. But of course as soon as they open the wikipedia main page there are always a number of American articles (as well as the international ones)... and it turns people away. B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

As I said though, the solution is not to fight bias with bias. All that does is discourage contributors and slow overall growth, which does a disservice to readers. Mr.Z-man 16:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

This is not so much a response to the original proposal as a comment on this discussion in general. To me, it seems that this discussion has been one of the most interesting discussions to emerge from Wikipedia: Village Pump, and I wonder whether this could be the start of a new article in Wikipedia - called, for example, "Cultural Bias in Wikipedia"? For any one who does not think this is worthy of an article in its own right, it could be merged with, for example, Criticisms of Wikipedia or History of Wikipedia. Perhaps we could even extend this and construct an article on "Cultural Bias of the World-Wide Web"? Items here will get archived before too long, whereas an article in the main part of Wikipedia would be visible for many readers well into the future. I do think it would be shame if the fruits of this interesting discussion soon disappeared from easy visibility of most readers of Wikipedia - an article on something like "Cultural Bias in Wikipedia" could use this discussion as a starting point. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay - let's do it. For a start I guess we need to remove usernames, dates, and highly intellectual comments like "Get over it" and "What's the problem". :-) B. Fairbairn (talk) 23:48, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The opinions and statements of a bunch of random Wikipedia users about Wikipedia is certainly not a reliable source about anything. Mr.Z-man 23:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Keep the facts. Remove the opinions and statements and attacks.

Fact 1: The USA gets one or more mentions 365 days out of 365 on Welcome to Wikipedia.

Fact 2: The USA has 306 million out of 6,707 million people (4.56%). This number is disproportionately low compared to the amount of USA material that appears on Welcome to Wikipedia. B. Fairbairn (talk) 00:05, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Should we apportion mentions on the front page based entirely on proportion of the population their countries represent? Because I suspect that the Solomon Islands, with .007% of the world's population, might be being overrepresented by being mentioned more than once every 40 years. --Golbez (talk) 00:23, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

B. Fairbairn, I think this is as far as one is going to get in this discussion. I would recommend that you take what we've learnt and go ahead and improve the encyclopaedia to the best of your ability. Golbez: I'm disappointed at your behaviour in this thread. You've been dismissive and sarcastic; never a good combination, sir. Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 00:52, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I calls em as I sees em. --Golbez (talk) 00:59, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I haven't read the entire topic (TLDR), but Main Page right now only draws attention to an American topic in a single area right now (today's FA, which is a total crapshoot as far as nationality is concerned). Given my impression of what I have read of the topic, I'd be hard pressed to not respond with a dismissive and sarcastic attitude; the idea that the Main Page is too US-centric (or that it, heaven forbid, mentions the US at all) is pretty silly. EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:27, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break: Welcome to Wikipedia (United States)

The "facts" still consist almost entirely of original research by users. While its fine for a discussion or an essay, it makes a pretty terrible basis for an article. Personally, I don't see what's really wrong with Golbez's 00:23 comment. It was sarcasm, but it wasn't attacking anyone, and it raises a good point. If we try to even out the coverage by population alone, you're going to reduce the USA coverage, but 90% of it would just be replaced by coverage of China and India. We could argue that its no longer biased, but it would be far less diverse than it is now. Mr.Z-man 02:05, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

No. I am not asking for there to be an even proportion of representation from each country; I am asking for there to be a reduction in the number of articles on Welcome to Wikipedia related to the United States of America. It will make Wikipedia more of a pleasure to visit for non-US readers - they will be able to read through the articles on Welcome to Wikipedia without having to wade through US-related tripe. Genuine US news articles and important US items should stay, the same as other for other countries, but let us put American trivia where it belongs: in a section specifically dedicated to the Untied States. I mean, United States. B. Fairbairn (talk) 17:14, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

So articles on the US are "tripe" now. And I get it, you made a joke about the country's name. That's how you maintain the high road! --Golbez (talk) 17:17, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)And to the significant proportion of readers who are from the US ([2] - 22% of visitors for all Wikipedias are from the US, I can't find any stats for just en.wikipedia), we just say "screw you"? What you're proposing is not fighting an implicit bias, its just replacing it with an explicit bias, which is worse. Then we couldn't even say we're trying to fight the bias on the project, because we would be actively trying to make the most visible page biased. Mr.Z-man 17:41, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

It was a genuine typo. I did not correct it because I was mildly amused by the error.

Doing some small research, here is what I found. For Today's Featured Articles for 2009 the following applies: (non-country and multiple country references not included)

Location	Articles
Antarctica	2
Australia	3
Canada	3
Central African Republic	2
China	1
Easter Island	1
Europe	1
France	2
Germany	2
Greece	1
India	2
Italy	3
Lithuania	1
Roman Empire	3
Singapore	1
South Vietnam	1
Sweden	1
UK	21
USA	36
USSR	1
Vietnam	1

(Note: 'UK' includes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, covering from Stonehenge's creation in 2,400BC to now. The 'USA' articles cover from the first recorded European landing in North America in 1513 to now) B. Fairbairn (talk) 17:32, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Though I don't see how "tripe" could be a typo, your findings are also somewhat dubious. What do you put Acid2 under? What about Sequence alignment, Actuary, Aldol reaction, Oil shale, Saffron, Cystic fibrosis, Infinite monkey theorem, Free will, Parapsychology, Omnipotence paradox, or Intelligent design? All of those are Featured Article quality, and have all appeared on the Main Page as "Today's featured article" at one point or another. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:44, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, with a calculator you will be able to work out that so far in 2009 there have been 31+28+31+30+3 days. i.e. 123 days. There are 89 days covered in the table above. In the text above the table is the clause "non-country and multiple country references not included". This is where the articles you mention are. B. Fairbairn (talk) 17:51, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw that after I posted. However, your table is still deeply flawed information; if you tabulated the number of times a country is referenced in an entire year, rather than just this one so far, we'd have a bit more accurate information. Even then, though, I don't see what the problem is; the Main Page isn't being dominated by the US, and you've made it abundantly clear that you're not looking to counteract bias, you're just looking to be biased in the other direction. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:54, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

However, Easter Island and Antarctica seem to be significantly over-represented. Mr.Z-man 18:07, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

TFA is being dominated by US articles. Followed by UK articles. And one third of a year is a fairly significant representation. Getting back to the point I started making, there is always American material on the Welcome page. Always. Never a day without. No other nationality is represented daily. Is it because American people have to read items about their country every day of the year? Do you continue to require assurance of your importance to the rest of the world, my friends. B. Fairbairn (talk) 18:05, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm done talking to you after bullshit like "continue to require assurance of your importance". You're obviously trolling, plain and simple. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a strange thread. Someone says that too much of our coverage is focused on the USA, and rather than saying, "how can we get more international featured content?," we defensively argue that there's not really an imbalance? Who cares?

Is anyone actually against the idea of a greater proportion of featured content coming from non-US-centric topics? The suggestion clearly has merit, so why cavil over the wording used in making it? -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:11, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

The argument isn't being made to have more international featured content, it's to limit US-related topics. It isn't a semantic difference. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I really don't see that as the main point of the original poster. "A day without coverage of the US" is an unfortunate choice of rhetorical device, but if one looks for the meat of the suggestion, one finds it in the valid premise that we could be more diverse. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:38, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately there are some readers who take the suggestion of reducing American content as a personal attack on themseleves and on their country. Let me assure all American patriots that the 'reduce American material on the Welcome page' suggestion is not anti-American, and not meant to sound anti-American. The USA is a great country, and there are many wonderful people there. No sarcasm intended. It is just unfortunate that some Americans tend to be raised to believe their country is by far the best in the world, and that everyone elsewhere should share this belief, and that everybody else wants to know all about the USA. B. Fairbairn (talk) 18:33, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I think it's best not to put it in terms of limiting US content, but in terms of expanding non-US content. You'd be much less likely to trigger defensiveness that way. The best strategy might just be to get "I'm So Bored with the USA" up to FA status. ;) -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:38, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, reading back over it, the "continue to require assurance of your importance" is a bit below the belt. My statement (a rather disappointing one in retrospect) was prompted by the reading of an article proclaiming the US as the last remaining world superpower. No offence intended EVulta. And no I am not trolling: if you are disturbed by what you read, do not read it. B. Fairbairn (talk) 18:51, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I would also suggest you not ascribe motives to the people who disagree with you. Perhaps they're disagreeing not because they're all a bunch of flag-waving American patriots but because they really don't think the idea is in the best interests of the project? Just a thought. Mr.Z-man 19:03, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. My responses haven't been because I'm an American; it's because I react strongly to stupid ideas. It's one thing - something I strongly support - to advocate more editing and featuring of a wider variety of articles. It's another thing to whine, "There's too much America! Give us the option to ignore it!" and somehow, astonishingly, not see how 1) insulting and 2) stupid that is. B. Fairbairn, you're concerned about too much America? Then dilute it. Get some Australia articles featured. Write some new articles and get them into DYK. Find some interesting things that happened outside America on a particular day. But don't feed us this tripe about how you just want to give the rest of the countries in the world a fair shake. They have one - it's all up to you. There is zero preventing you or anyone else from getting topics on a wider variety of countries on the main page. But you would prevent people from having their work about America being showcased? --Golbez (talk) 19:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

¶ If a large proportion of English-Wikipedia's editors come from North America or the British Isles, then certain things are likely to be true:

1. the subjects or people with which they will be most likely to be familiar will most often relate to the U.S. or U.K. (had this been a century or two ago, and the editors come from traditional schools, then they'd be equally familiar with Biblical or Classical themes)
2. there will be likely be more editors (not all Anglo-American) contributing to, and checking on, a U.S. or U.K. theme than on other themes (many eyes, brains and fingers being, of course, an essential part of how Wikipedia as a whole has been able to maintain quality, accuracy and neutrality)
3. and therefore, there are often better odds for a U.S. or U.K. article like New York City getting Featured Article status.

§ Another parallel cause might be the availability of sources in languages understood by most Wikipedia editors, both on the Internet and in their local libraries. bookstores, and academic classes. For various reasons, some obvious and some less so, it's far easier for them to find such material about North America and the British Isles than about other parts of the world. (Even when a greater proportion of Internet material is in Chinese, Spanish or South Asian languages, that won't mean a corresponding increase in the number of competent English-Wikipedia editors able to convert such material into Good Articles.)
§ This isn't any kind of boast (although I was born in London and live in the U.S.), and even less an attempt to denigrate articles about the Continent, Australasia or the Third World. I just think that the reasons for an imbalance in featured and home-page articles might not be simple chauvinism, narcissism, egocentrism, xenophobia or disdain for other cultures. And the answer is to deal with the underlying cause by recruiting more editors who are knowledgeable and interested in non-Anglo-American topics, or by putting more effort oneself into researching and writing about such topics.
§ I know there's a certain circularity with unfortunate resonances ("if only there were enough qualified X, then..."), but no such arrogance is intended. —— Shakescene (talk) 19:54, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

No arrogance was noted from this quarter. Good to have a contribution from a learned contributor. Skimming through the comments above it is apparent that some contributors can raise very valid points, and some cannot. Below are five of the most useful comments, mixed in with five of the most useless comments thus far presented. Decide for yourself which are pearls of wisdom and which have no use anywhere.

1. "What's the problem, exactly? So what if America is mentioned every day? So?" Golbez

And you have yet to point out the problem, apart from you think there's too much America. You never elucidated how that was a problem that people other than you should care about. --Golbez (talk) 16:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

2. "I have noticed that Wikipedia is a rather culturally biassed encyclopeadia" ACEOREVIVED

3. "Wikipedia is written by volunteers, and volunteers have a strong tendency to contribute on subjects of which they are both interested and knowledgeable" Allen3

4. "Still, the sarcasm is not the same as calling a spade a spade, and so you should drop it" Izno

5. "As for being tired of it - Get over it." Golbez

I can be 100% sure that if everything on the main page was Australian, I wouldn't care a bit. You could learn from my example! --Golbez (talk) 16:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

6. "the solution is to put your energy into improving the articles on the other side of the scales." HappyMelon

7. "22% of visitors for all Wikipedias are from the US, I can't find any stats for just en.wikipedia), we just say 'screw you'" Z_Man

8. "in my opinion it's not so much that there is always something about America on the front page, it's that it is so often obscure, un-noteworthy" DuncanHill

9. "You should have to do more than influence because information on the Main Page is based on contributions" Ost

10. "I'm done talking to you after bullshit like 'continue to require assurance of your importance'" EVula

B. Fairbairn (talk) 10:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Because this is the proper way to conduct a discussion - grab 10 nuggets without context for... what, exactly? What is the point of reprinting #10, even though it was a valid complaint against a comment you retracted? Jeez. Stop trolling and move in to actual editing. --Golbez (talk) 16:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

How about WP:DFTT? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:33, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Ok, it's clear that you've taken the time to go through the discussion and pick out the salient points. Now, what do you, personally, intend to do with them?? Which school of thought are you going to ascribe to? Happy‑melon 12:09, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

This proposal's obviously not going anywhere. This looks as good a time as any to stop wasting my time. Mr.Z-man 18:48, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

With slight exception of TFA, there really is no one decision maker on what gets featured on the main page but rather a collaborative effort of volunteers who choose from a pool of contributions. If anyone wants to change what appears on the main page in WP:DYK, WP:ITN and WP:OTD then the simple solution is to produce non-American, "non-trivial" content. As others have noted you really can't criticize volunteers for using their own free time to create "trivial" American content because that is what they enjoy doing. If you want to see different content on the main page, you simply have to offer an alternative by providing different content options. You can't sit around and wait for the content to magically appear. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 12:01, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I am mosy certainly not having a go at volunteers for using their own free time to create "trivial" American content. What I am saying is that the trivia should not be appearing on Wikipedia's Welcome page. Leave it on Wikipedia - some of it is interesting - but put it somewhere else. I mean, look at today. Who could care less that "Leonard T. 'Max' Schroeder Jr. was the first American soldier to land in Normandy from an assault boat" apart from maybe his descendants.

B. Fairbairn (talk) 12:17, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes...the article Leonard T. Schroeder was created for WP:DYK by an editor with an interest in the subject and it met all the valid criteria to be featured. But the reason why the Leonard T. Schroeder article was featured today and not an article on a West African diplomat is because that article hasn't been created yet! Or maybe it has been created but it is only a 1 or 2 line stub that needs to be expanded? Again, there is an easy solution to change type of content that you see on the main page. You have to offer alternative content to feature that is not US related. Otherwise we are just going to pull from what available content is submitted by volunteers who are dedicating their free time to write about topics that they are interest in. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 12:41, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I most certainly do not have any objection to volunteers who dedicate their free time to write about topics that they are interested in. As long as it is dedication and not defecation (;-), as in the case of the "first yank on the beach". Come on guys and gals, put patriotic blurb relevant to your country somewhere that your compatriots can read all about it, without having to expose it to everybody else. B. Fairbairn(talk) 13:01, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't discriminate and doesn't have dedicated "US-Only" or "Non-US Only" sections" but rather we have "WP:Did You Know, WP:In The News, WP:Today's Featured Article and WP:On This Day sections that are color blind to all races and nationalities. All of these sections to the main page are an open door to the masses that only require one dedicated soul to take an interest in a single article to bring it up to standards and have it featured. What you are proposing is to fight bias with bias, to set up a "US-only" drinking fountain because you're concerned that no one has yet built a watering well for a African village. While the cause is noble, the means are misguided. The solution to countering systematic bias is to roll up our sleeves and bring these under-represented topics to DYK, ITN, FAC and OTD and dilute the concentration of US/UK topics. Creating a "US-Only" drinking fountain does nothing to improve the quality and coverage of this topic because it only pushes the problem under the rug. These non-US articles still need to be created. Making the "trivial US" articles go-away are not going to make the quality and quantity of non-US articles magically improve overnight.Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 13:36, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia: U.S. version: break after formatting changes intermission

B Fairbairn, I take issue with this recent comment of yours: "Come on guys and gals, put patriotic blurb relevant to your country somewhere that your compatriots can read all about it, without having to expose it to everybody else." I think this is a misreading of what's going on. People write what they know, and what they can easily research. Therefore, we have better coverage of topics that immediately surround most of our editors.

I think your proposal, insofar as it is to improve coverage of other parts of the world, is a very good one. However, if you present it in terms of reducing US coverage, then you will inevitably trigger a defensive reaction, which will undermine your ability to float any kind of proposal. Accusing people of nationalism is a terrible way to get them to see the best in your idea and agree with it. Honey catches more flies than vinegar, yes?

The solution to imbalanced coverage is to balance it by adding where there is less. Attacking those who are better motivated and better able to write about their familiar world is unlikely to lead anywhere good. What do you think? -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:49, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Please archive

I suggest that this discussion be archived, as it appears to be going nowhere per Mr.Z-man's last entry.
This discussion is about a proposal to xliminatx any rxfxrxncx to thx Unitxd Statxs on thx main pagx of thx Xnglish Wikipxdia for an arbitrary pxriod, i.x. onx day. As an xxamplx of what such a proposal might accomplish, imaginx if it wxrx mandatxd that xvxry discussion pagx rxquirx at lxast onx paragraph in which xvxry instancx of thx fifth lxttxr of thx Xnglish alphabxt bx rxplacxd by thx twxnty-fourth lxttxr. To bxttxr sxx that thx proposaI itsxlf prxsxnts an unavoidablx contradiction to a common goal of improving thx xncyclopxdia, I rxfxr you to thx final paragraph of thx articlx xntry sxction about Marxist Dialxctics for information on thx nxcxssity of continuxd discussion of this topic. Sswonk (talk) 20:04, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for archiving this. It has got so interesting that I still think that we who have contributed to this one could start a new article for Wikipedia called either "Cultural Bias of Wikipedia" or "Cultural Bias on the web". I do take the comment above that a few opinions by a random selection of Wikipedians (all right, I know in the statistical sense, we do truly constitute a random sample) would not be a reliable source, but if we can find passages for cultural bias on the web, even if just other websites, this could be the seed of a new article for Wikipedia. Can I make a comment though? B. Fairbairn, in raising this topic, appeared to be referring to a U.S.-centric bias, but I would say that there are biasses to other parts of the world, too, for example, I am pretty sure that my own country, the United Kingdom, would get better coverage in the English Wikipedia than say, Sweden or Finland, and certainly better coverage than countries outside Europe or Northern America. If we can do our statistics, this could certainly make for what I would consider a worthwhile answer. I have to confess that I have not observed how much coverage the Solomon Islands get. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:25, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes of course people focus on what they know and are interested in, and the more US people that contribute articles, the more US-related articles that appear. And there are articles about events and people in other countries too, and very possibly a fair proportion of these are also contributed by US citizens. What surprises me is that the US related material is very often about far less interesting events and people. Looking at today's DYK section, there are stories about:

• A naval battle in 1805
  
• An act of battery that took place during a law and order (how appropriate) debate in a state assembly
  
• A story about an aide-de-camp to a European King
  
• A review of a 2009 television film and some controversy surrounding it
  
• An article on a soldier who rose 4 ranks in less than five years (even top soldier Colin Powell took 17 years to do the same)
  

and

• A nothing article about some radio station in California
  
• A story about a Synagogue in New York that has a temporary dwelling in the basement
  
• A story about an American radio show broadcast
  

Possibly all the more noteworthy US items of interest have already been covered, and US contributors have been left scratching the bottom of the barrel looking for things to write about... B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:30, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Talk subpage for references

First of all, this is more of a spontaneous idea than a proposal. I've done some work on external links cleanup a while ago and soon found that most links that I've removed per WP:EL were interviews or newspaper reports that, while not being valid external links, could have been valid sources for the corresponding articles. I didn't have the time (and, often enough, I didn't have the expertise, either) to use these links to improve every single of those articles (there are thousands of articles with too many external links), so I removed the external links with a note in the edit summary about their possible use as a source. I doubt anyone's going to look at the history of the article to find any sources about it, tho, so.. what if an article could have a subpage that would list potential references? So, Blu (rapper) (entirely random example) could have Talk:Blu (rapper)/References, which would contain the links that I just removed in this edit per WP:EL. A template on the talk page could notify our editors that there are references waiting to be used or sorted out, and people could add references to the subpage if they find any (and don't have the time to add them to the article). What do you guys think? --Conti|✉ 22:24, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Two existing approaches would seem to cover this (see WP:Editing policy): unless there are loads of links, just slap them on the talk page with a note. If there are loads, put them on a subpage in your userspace and link from talk. Rd232 ^talk 05:16, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd just drop them onto a new section on the talk page, as rd232 says. Happy‑melon 07:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I've thought about doing that, too, but talk page sections get archived (and forgotten) eventually, making them just as unlikely to be noticed as a message in an edit summary. Having a central place for unused references (which doesn't necessarily need to be a subpage) would make finding those much easier. --Conti|✉ 11:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Add them to a to-do list as a talk subpage. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:48, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

talk page sections get archived (and forgotten) eventually - Actually, that's true only of relatively busy talk pages, a (small?) minority. And even for those talk pages that do have archives, most of the time the archiving is done manually. That means that the editor doing the archiving could (and should, I think) leave alone a section with good but unused sources. So yes, please pop any good ELs you delete that could be, but aren't yet used as sources in the article, into a new section in the article's talk/discussion page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:22, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Alright, I'll do that in the future. I guess I was a bit too pessimistic here, anyhow. :) --Conti|✉ 11:58, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki: namespace

The "message" tab for a MediaWiki page needs to be changed to "Interface page" because not only interface messages, but skins are stored in that namespace. -- IRP ☎ 03:45, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

As are gadgets and all manner of other things. I'd support this change. Happy‑melon 07:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

As would I. The "message" titling is old and hoary, but that's no reason to keep it. — Gavia immer (talk) 19:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like we're looking at MediaWiki:Nstab-mediawiki; I'll leave a note at the talk page, there, pointing here. – Luna Santin (talk) 21:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not really sure it matters either way. But whatever you all decide to do is fine by me. - Rjd0060 (talk) 00:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I've WP:BOLDly updated it, with a link here in the edit summary. Let's see if it shakes anything loose. Happy‑melon 09:43, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Can we make a sub-section for intro?

Whenever somebody edits the intro of an article, s/he has to click "Edit this page" at the topbar. Sometimes, multiple editors edit the article at the same time for other materials on the article. So their edits can be conflicted, and sometimes, edit waring can happen based on misunderstading. A whole size of A or B level articles is very big, so if editors just want to change a bit, and previews it, the loading takes very long. So why don't we make a small subsection for the intro just like other sub-setions [edit] Any thought? --Caspian blue 17:25, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Preferences → Gadgets → Y Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page. –xeno ^talk 17:43, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh!!!!!! Thanks! You're truly one of WikiGnomes (do we have "WikiGnome Barnstar"? :-)) .--Caspian blue 17:49, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Alternatively, you can take the article url and append "?action=edit&section=0", which is basically what the gadget does but with a nice little button. --Izno (talk) 19:36, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, before gadgets, I just clicked the first section's edit link and manually changed the section from 1 to 0. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:29, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I added the gadget but I do not see how to invoke it Sphilbrick (talk) 18:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Could a bot authorise automated addition of the "Recent deaths" tag, please?

Tonight (April 28), I looked at the category for 2009_deaths. I noticed that the two most recent entries here did not have the tag which reads "This article is about a person who has died recently" by their names, so I added them manually. However, as addition of this (and removal of the tag after a week or so, which also seems to be done, at least in some instances, manually) can be rather tedious, I wonder whether a bot could be employed for addition and deletion of the recent deaths tag. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:38, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The tag is not always needed. Sometimes information does not rapidly changes thus making the template unnecessary. A bot to remove the tags after a week or so has passed might be handy indeed. Garion96 (talk) 18:47, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Make each article's class visible to unregistered users

There's near-constant discussion about the addition to WP of what some editors regard as fancruft, e.g. characters in video games and popular fiction. Most proposals tend to strengthen the hands of deletionists, which I think is a bad thing: it's already received unfavourable impression in the press, in which one publication reported the deletion within hours of a new stub article about an obviously notable subject, Political Quarterly; all editors start as newbies, and deletionism drives away some who might become real assets, but can't keep up with the hordes of fan-boys; I dislike the authoritarian idea that WP should contain only articles on subjects deemed worth by "the great and the good", and think such a policy will drive away some readers, some of whom may become good editors, etc.

So I suggest we deal with the presence of "fancruft" and other low-quality articles by making the each article's grading visible to all users, unregistered as well as registered, and link to a short description of the gradings - i.e. one page that concisely describes each of the gradings and what is required to achieve them. Articles which fail WP:N or in which a large percentage of the text fails WP:V or WP:NPOV should never be graded higher than start-class, and the summary of gradings should point out that articles which fail to meet these criteria are considered unreliable by WP.

That sounds like a win-win to me, as it would make it clear to the world that WP, while being "the encyclopedia anyone can edit", does have quality standards. It might even encourage the producers of low-quality articles to start improving them or move on to subjects where there's more scope for improvement.

PS despite my dislike of deletionism in general, I support the swift deletion of articles that violate WP:BLP and / or consist mainly of WP:COPYVIOs and WP:PLAGIARISM, because getting WP sued is A Bad Thing.--Philcha (talk) 14:50, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, define "fan cruft" in a quantitative way, please. No bias in your suggestion, nope, none at all. - Denimadept (talk) 16:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

The point is to avoid the wiki-lawyering and biting that result from attempts to define such things precisely. I dont' think the suggestion is biassed, it's an attempt to find a consensus solution to an issue that causes recurring and often tense debates. I don't know what types of subject interest you and, in the interests of neutrality, have not looked at your contribs to find out. Whatever your interests are, my proposal implies that if an article you edit meets WP:N, WP:V and WP:NPOV it's eligible for promotion to one of the "better" classes and to be advertised as such to all readers. --Philcha (talk) 17:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

It's often difficult-to-impossible to cite how something is notable. Also, it's often the case that fiction component lists are only verifiable in terms of the fiction itself ("in-universe"). Science fiction and fantasy are often like this. While I'll admit that there's a limit to what should be covered, "list of instances where Miles Vorkosigan scratches his balls" is likely over the line, the problem is figuring out that limit and defending it. - Denimadept (talk) 17:11, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

"list of instances where Miles Vorkosigan scratches his balls" cracked me up, especially as I'm an SF fan. Now if you could get some good 3rd-party sources for that, I might help as I think WP needs lightening up - I think Wikipedia:Fac#Gropecunt_Lane is amusing. --Philcha (talk) 17:42, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

That's kinda my point, that the only source is the original fiction itself. Makes it hard to WP:V without doing the "in-universe" thing. So, how do you determine what stays and what goes? That goes back to my original response. Some people seem to have misunderstood what I was saying. Not you, Philcha, but Certain People. - Denimadept (talk) 17:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying to get away from "what stays and what goes" because that approach has so many disadvantages, incl: wastes a lot of time that would be better spent editing & reviewing; causes a lot of time-consuming and often hostile debate; bites newbies and may be losing WP some potentially good editors; is futile, because fan-boys can create fancruft faster than experienced editors can remove it. I'm suggesting that, instead of us chasing the fan-boys, we should force them to chase us - if the carrot of a better grading does not motivate them to improve their contributions, the stick of a "health warning" on their faves is an option, just by varying the text / banner displayed at the top of articles below C-class.

That last point implies something else. Many Wikiprojects do not respond to requests for reviews / assessment. I don't know if there's a central assessment centre, and if there is not I'd help to create and operate one. I review articles for GA status at present, but if necessary would cut back on that to help improve less-good articles and their editors - I'd hope that before too long that would give WP more GAs, editors who know what they're doing, and reviewers, of which WP is short at all levels. --Philcha (talk) 18:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I can't argue with that at all. I don't generally review articles myself, as I don't claim to be definitive as to what constitutes a Good Article. OTOH, compare Harvard Bridge with what I'm currently working on at User:Denimadept/Harvard Bridge, I'm told I have some hint by people who have reviewed that pending effort. Still, I often find myself defending what some call "fan cruft". Recently, I couldn't really defend some based on the Honor Harrington books, as they seemed a bit over the line, but others I've fought for tooth-and-nail, such as my bridge articles and articles in the South Park area. What it seems to me is that you're effectively moving the debates from AfD to a reviewer discussion. Is that your intent? - Denimadept (talk) 19:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure the proposal is about "moving the debates from AfD to a reviewer discussion":

• Reviews are held at the nominators's request, while referral of an article to an AfD is sometimes unnoticed by its creators (especially newbies who don't know about watchlists, etc.).
• At reviews the burden of proof generally lies on the nominators. In theory at AfD the burden lies on the "delete" voters, per WP:DELETE's "deletion should be a last resort", but I've seldom seen it work that way. If nominators don't reposnd at reviwes, they have no-one top blame but themselves - unlike AfD, which generates a fair number of complaints.
• AfD would still have an important role in removing (if clearly guilty) articles that are purely promotional or partisan, or where discussion is needed about whether there is doubt that they comply with e.g. WP:BLP or WP:PLAGIARISM. --Philcha (talk) 20:03, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

That strikes me as a wonderful Inclusionist method. Yes sir, I'd back that. - Denimadept (talk) 20:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I like the links to smoot in the infobox and text of User:Denimadept/Harvard Bridge. That's a good example of helping WP to lighten up, and the 2nd laugh you've given me in this discussion. Thanks! --Philcha (talk) 20:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'm kinda trolling for critique on that article both while I look for more sources and after. - Denimadept (talk) 20:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You're suggesting doing away with inclusion-requirements (at least to a certain extent) and basing everything on grading? I don't think it's a workable idea, but if it were to go forward, it would be important that lower-class articles have disabled privileges, such as not being indexed by Google, and others I can't think of. In principle it's sort of a neat idea, but then wouldn't normal stubs and starts also suffer? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 19:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the proposal is less workable than the current system, where people spend a lot of time in AfD discussions but it's not holding back the tide of fancruft. I guess I am suggesting we fall back to a more defensible position.

What's a "normal" stub or start?

It might be a good idea to introduce a "poor article" grading with a really prominent health warning, e.g. "This is a poor article because .... We are not confident that its content is reliable. Please help to improve it" with a link to a short, simple set of suggestions, including how to get it reviewed for a higher grading. So an article would initially be "unassessed"; might go to "stub" if too short for any real review; if only OK, then it's start-class; if rubbish, it's "poor".

I'm not sure de-indexing lower-class articles from the searchies would be a good idea. I got into WP by finding an article, spotting flaws in it and editing. My impression from a lot of Talk pages is that a lot of editors start that way. De-indexing would throw away opportunites to get articles improved and to recruit new editors who care. --Philcha (talk) 20:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

If we don't delete them, they're just going to become yet another giant backlog. Deletion may not be holding back the tide, but its at least handling them, and acting as a sort of triage to allow people to save the saveable articles rather than expending effort into categorizing poor articles and attempting to save the unsalvageable. I'm all for not being on a deadline, but this seems more like waving a white flag than falling back. Allowing the creation of a previously deletable class of pages will also likely increase the number of those types of pages created, as the people that deletion did previously deter will also start writing "poor articles" again. Mr.Z-man 21:07, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Re "another giant backlog", we're always going to have backlogs because most registered users would rather edit than do maintenance chores - including me.

What evidence is there that deletion deters anyone from writing bad articles? I'd expect reviewing an article and grading it as "poor" would be much less labour-intensive than AfD, so it might make more progress with the backlog of unsatisfactory articles. Then AfD can concentrate on the really serious cases. --Philcha (talk) 21:30, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

It's deterred me from writing articles about more Connecticut River bridges. Whether those articles would become good or not is unknown. - Denimadept (talk) 21:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

We'll always have backlogs, so let's make another? I'm not sure I agree with that logic. My point is that we basically have a finite number of contributors, as such, we can only work through a certain amount of the overall backlog at a time. If we double the size of the backlog without doubling the number of editors working on it, then we decrease the rate that the overall backlogs are cleared, including the more important backlogs (like unsourced BLPs, currently ~30,000) as people shift to the new backlogs. Obviously this is a simplification, but I don't see how replacing deletion with backlogs solves anything. At worst it will increase the backlog of poorly watched pages, putting more strain on RC patrol as well, and potentially cause another Seigenthaler incident (which I believe was one of the reasons we have the currently notability guideline). It wouldn't even have to necessarily be on one of the "poor articles," those would just have to shift the attention of the RC patrollers.

As for evidence, short of doing statistical analysis on deletion logs and new pages, I'm not sure how one could gather evidence to support either side. The theory of classical conditioning would suggest that deletion would provide a deterrence though. If your articles keep getting deleted, you might change what you write about. As it stands, any grade below GA is essentially meaningless and arbitrary, usually assigned after only a cursory, mechanical review (made worse by "assessment drives" for large projects where people are encouraged to assess articles as fast as possible, then these assessments are copied by bot for the smaller projects), so I doubt getting a "poor article" rating would provide nearly as much negative feedback as deletion. We only have 100-150 AFDs per day, including a dozen or more relists, so we can't be doing that poorly. Mr.Z-man 22:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I have that extension enabled that can detect those things and recolor the title based off the class and change the motto to things such as "A good article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A former featured article candidate." We have the functionality that can do this, though I don't think casual users need to know it was a failed FC or not. ViperSnake151  Talk  00:10, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Comment requested

Comment is requested at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ListasBot 5 regarding whether or not there should be a bot that would make non-visible changes to the {{WikiProjectBanners}} and {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} templates so that KingbotK would be better able to handle those pages. Matt (talk) 17:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Adverising Campaign for Wikipedia

I propose a wikipedia-wide campaign to promote the use of wikipedia as a reliable source. Many teachers and proffesors rule out using wikipedia as a reference for essays and other papers based solely on the fact that wikipedia is edited by users. However, this does not diminish its reliability as a source of information. Often, wikipedia is the best source for information as many other places only have bits and peices of the information provided on wikipedia. I propose a campaign that shows people just how reliable we are and why. Point out to people that while we are user edited, it is a very simple matter for any other user to remove false information, and often admin will ban users from editing if they can't conform to the rules.Drew R. Smith (talk) 02:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

We're not a reliable source, despite usually being a good source. If you want to promote Wikipedia like that, I suggest doing something like what's described in this blog post. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 04:01, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

A site as mercurial as Wikipedia can never be a reliable source, because its content is never in a concrete state. Even full-prots can be bypassed by administrators. -Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Cardmaker)} 04:12, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I was under the impression that encyclopedias in general aren't considered good (or 'proper') sources for research. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:17, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

They are good starting points for research. Citing Wikipedia, on the other hand, is bad academics, unless the subject of the paper is Wikipedia or internet usage patterns or something similar. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:24, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Certainly not. Wikipedia is a very dodgy source. (I happen to think that my own articles are among the exceptions, but then I'm biased.) Now, if there were a campaign to increase scepticism of Wikipedia etc, I might give it my backing. -- Hoary (talk) 11:03, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Brief definition/notes for links

How about adding brief definitions to the dialog box so that when I mouse over a link it gives me a brief definition of the term? That would save time since I wouldnt have to click and navigate away from the page Im currently viewing.

I hope you guys agree.

This exists. Log in with a registered user account, go to the "Gadgets" section of Special:Preferences, tick the box marked "Navigation popups", and hit save. :) {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 18:20, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

History tab at the top

It would be less jargon if the history tab at the top say "authors" or "edited by". History is abstract jargon. An "authors" tab would give subtle credit to the thousands of people who have built this encyclopedia. It's a nice thing to do! User F203 (talk) 19:35, 1 May 2009 (UTC) (note, after reading the instructions, this is the proper place for discussion as developers read here according to the instructions.)

"History" is exactly what it is. It's the history of every revision that has been made to the page, and that is not jargon. While I wouldn't argue against a special page to list authors—indeed, I would welcome such a development—I think that it would be misleading to give the history tab such a title, as "authors" or "edited by" is exclusive of a significant part of the purpose of the page. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 01:07, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

You raise a point that I never thought of! Why not have a separate tab for a list of authors? Having a list of authors is a good idea and makes Wikipedia honest (by giving credit to people). Not recognizing authors or hiding it somewhat is intellectually dishonest. User F203 (talk) 17:32, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

History is far, far more accurate a term; just because someone has edited a page does not mean that they are an actual author of the page (such as with vandals), whereas the page does show the history of the article. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:34, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec)::An easier way for the developers is to rename the tab "history/authors". Currently, the history tab is the shortest one so lengthening it is ok. Project page, discussion, and edit this page are all far longer in length.

As far as vandals, they are blocked so fixation with vandals while forgetting to encourage good authors is short sighted.

How about renaming it "authors/history"? Or have a separate tab for authors? User F203 (talk) 17:37, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't see what the benefit of an "authors" page would be, though. Each edit is different; I shouldn't get the same credit for an article just because I italicized a movie title as the editor that wrote 90% of the article. I also don't see what's so arcane about the term "history" that it would need to be changed in the first place. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:52, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Note that no developer action would be needed to change the name of the tab. Any admin would just have to edit MediaWiki:History short if you ever got consensus for renaming it. Anomie⚔ 18:09, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

History is correct. What is an 'author'? Someone who changes 'was' to 'were'? Someone who adds OR or uncited material? Someone who adds stuff we find to be copyvio? I'm happy to be an editor. Dougweller (talk) 18:52, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with EVula/Dougweller. A vandal wouldn't be an author, nor would the person or bot who reverted the vandalism. What about people whose edits were so long ago that what they wrote has been rewritten so many times that it no longer exists in any form in the current version of the article? Mr.Z-man 19:06, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

If not an author, how about an editor? Some textbooks have editors. Or how about "Recent editors"? Rather than just say "No", how about some ideas! User F203 (talk) 19:42, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

If there's a consensus that it's inaccurate (there doesn't seem to be), I wouldn't be adverse to "Article history". "History" is ambiguous, and adding the qualifier (something like "Page history" might work also) would seem the best route. --Izno (talk) 22:05, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Would strongly support changing it to "page history", that should help usability quite a bit. (Edit: I see this has been done before but was reverted as it was "redundant"; which I do not agree with at all) GDonato (talk) 23:37, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I think "revision history" would be good too as that's what it says on the actual history page. I'd prefer it to "page history" or the current "history". Cool3 (talk) 00:02, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Though I don't see the necessity of the change, I'm willing to admit that it's due to my familiarity with the term; "page history" is more descriptive, and is still an accurate name for the tab. I'd be fine with the change. EVula // talk // ☯ // 10:21, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Or simply Revisions? --ClickRick (talk) 11:59, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with several of the editors here. Many ideas are better than "history". History of what? Wikipedia? Roman Empire?

Better terms than history include Page history, Previous versions, Old versions/editor list, etc. One advantage to some use of the word "editors" or "authors" is if someone writes "The Pope is dead", that vandals may be quickly reverted but someone may see it. That someone thinks that a hypothetical "Wikpedia Corporation" wrote it. If we have a tab with some reference to authors or editors or article credit or versions/editor list or something else, we protect the integrity and reputation of Wikipedia in spite of any dumb things an individual editor does.

Note that the common casual reader does not know all the jargon like admin, IAR, history, ban/block, etc. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia not a geek site. User F203 (talk) 16:18, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think lumping "history" along with "IAR" as 'jargon' is an appropriate assessment. While it is ambiguous, it is not obscure or requiring insider knowledge. We cannot protect against personal stupidity: if someone is sufficiently unfamiliar with the way Wikipedia operates that they do not understand the absence of "Wikipedia Inc." despite the "history" tab appearing next to a bolded "edit this page" link, then there is precious little we can do to change that. Certainly renaming one tab is not going to miraculously enlighten them; I don't really see how you think it will. "page history" would be an appropriate clarification. Anything that tries to paint the history page as a list of contributors is, IMO, fundamentally incorrect. Happy‑melon 17:42, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh come on, your "history of what" examples are ludicrous. It's in the same cluster of tabs as "edit this page" and "move". It's pretty obvious that the tab isn't there for any content-related matters. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:26, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

By the by, German Wikipedia has "Versions/Authors", which I don't much like. "Page history" would be OK with me, but I'm not sure how much more helpful it would be. (Not sure how we could find that out, either.) Rd232 ^talk 18:29, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

You might be looking for http://wikidashboard.parc.com/ 199.125.109.77 (talk) 00:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

• Been bold with MediaWiki:History short since my tabs still don't go off the screen at 800x600 and I'd expect most people are higher resolution than that anyway. GDonato (talk) 13:06, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Then let me be the first to raise objection. I think adding "page" is redundant (What else should it be the history of? And why not also change "edit" to "edit page", and move to "move page"?), my main objection as an editor is that it's taking far too much room. And yes, I think that the tabs should be mostly optimized for editors, not for readers, since they don't care. I could of course change it back via javascript, but would prefer just reverting the message back to how it was.
    Amalthea 13:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
    • On a minor note, "edit" does already say "edit this page" and as for "What else should it be the history of?": I agree but we overestimate peoples' common sense :( GDonato (talk) 13:27, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
      • See also discussion at MediaWiki talk:History short which resulted in it being shortened from page history to history... –xeno ^talk 13:30, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
        • Ah, didn't realise the longer version was the default, GDonato (talk) 13:38, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
      • Well, what do you know? Turns out I'm already using javascript to shorten the edit tab. :) Amalthea 13:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
  • I've reverted the change... This thread cannot reasonable be taken as "consensus" as most people probably ignored it being pretty much a dead proposal (no offense to proposer). Please make a new proposal that clearly delineates what will be done. –xeno ^talk 13:21, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Just dropping by to also object; the tooltip explanation (and the many help pages, etc.) are sufficient. Shorter is better. Sorry. JesseW, the juggling janitor 18:04, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

There is a request to "make a new proposal that clearly delineates what will be done". I think this could be rather heavy handed. Rather than say "change to ---", I thought the current situation was not ideal and there could be improvements.

Discussion is useful. Some points brought up, I didn't know before. User F203 (talk) 19:09, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

The History tab is part of the GFDL license, and a different title would be non-compliant. Please read Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License. Even if we are dual-licensed, we need it to stay compliant. Sorry. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 00:02, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

This is interesting, but misguided. I don't think any articles on wikipedia have a history section. The content of an article is the stuff under the title. Interpreting legal documents takes a level of expertise that cannot be verified on a wp talk page. –M^T 05:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

WM seems to believe that linking to a history section is compliant. We do not contain a full list of authors in the text of the article, it is in the history section of the article, which is accessed by the tab. If this does not qualify as a "section", then WM is in violation of the GFDL, so it doesn't matter what it is called. If WM is not in violation of the GFDL, then we shouldn't deliberately violate it. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 05:35, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

So then every non-English Wikimedia project is in violation of the GFDL because they don't have the history tab as "history" in English? Mr.Z-man 15:34, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

lulz. For the English-language Wikipedia (that's where we are now, right?), any time a document (article) is modified the date and the author must be added to the "History" section. Please read the (English) GFDL and tell me if this is not correct. It is very specific about the title of every section so that they can be easily identified on any GFDL document. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 18:04, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Support revisions. If you're an editor, add a javascript. The default interface is for anonymous users. Shorter is not better. A number of people mistake 'history' to be yet another section of the article - a section on its history. The word 'history' should be avoided; and 'revisions' or 'old versions' is the way to go. –M^T 05:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

"A number of people"? How many? Seriously, I can't imagine that this is that perplexing of an issue. EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with M. Would it be possible to have it show up as "revisions" when one is not logged in, and then as "history" for logged in editors? -GTBacchus^(talk) 05:49, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

You need to pretend that you're dealing with impatient and dumb 7 year olds - not because most users are stupid, but because they don't have time to put up with poor interfaces. You're trying to find out about some country. You see discussion (which isn't even about the country, it's just a bunch of tedious arguments) and history at the top. Great, they must have split it up. But no, you're in some weird list now. From a few months ago: User:AxelBoldt/Wikipedia_usability_problems#History_tab. –M^T 08:39, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

How about "Update log"? --Philcha (talk) 17:14, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

That implies a register of changes, where each change was to bring it more up-to-date; many changes are, of course, to add information, or present existing information more clearly, irrespective of freshness. I might support a change to "Log", although I'm not convinced "History" works ineffectively. –Whitehorse1 18:10, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Revisions has about 5 supports, 3 on this page and 2 in the linked. I think that unless a point against it comes up ("not the right word", etc.) it should be our candidate for replacing 'history'. I support replacing history, and I support replacing it with revisions. –M^T 02:31, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Log is inappropriate; it has a similar, but distinct meaning in MediaWiki. On the other hand, the page history contains entries that are not, strictly-speaking, revisions (records of page moves, protections, etc). I don't think "revisions" is any more correct than "history"; probably less so. Happy‑melon 10:42, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

search bar!!

I would like to suggest a very useful feature to wikipedia, the search bar front and center (top) so people can find what they need quickly, which is the sole purpose of wikipedia. The articles can afford to move down a little bit for a more prominent search bar. Being a web developer, its important to create ui for the user that's the ultimate goal. Its kind of annoying to look for the tiny left column search bar and type your keyword that way. I hope you can fix this problem to better the best web resource ever created. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.73.168.77 (talk) 02:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you'll find much support for moving the search bar in the global interface, but there may be a skin or javascript that can do this for you. –xeno ^talk 13:33, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I think that the 'you can use skins or js' response is one of the reasons the wp interface is so painful for editors, and especially new people to use. That said, if she or he is talking about putting a big textbox above article titles, then this is an ignorant or bad idea. I do agree that it should be moved above navigation, or up to the top right, though. –M^T 05:03, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Tracking potentially dated terms

Main pages: Wikipedia:As of and Wikipedia:Updating information

The {{as of}} template works invisibly to the reader to temporally stamp a time-sensitive claim so that it may be revisited when it needs updating. So,

{{As of|June 2007}} [[Juan Carlos]] is the [[King of Spain]]

appears as

As of June 2007 Juan Carlos is the King of Spain

and the article is added to the category Category:Articles containing potentially dated statements from June 2007. {{Update after}} has a related purpose. My proposal is that terms such as "currently" and "recently" be treated in a similar fashion: that there be templates {{currently}} (currently taken) and {{recently}} which for the reader would output the plaintext terms "currently" and "recently", but for the editor would add the article containing one of the templates to Category:All articles containing potentially dated statements. So for example, the line

[[Al Franken]] is {{currently|May 2009}} waiting to be seated in the [[United States Senate]]

would read

Al Franken is currently waiting to be seated in the United States Senate

and the article the line appears in would be categorized in Category:Articles containing potentially dated statements from May 2009

Do editors think this would be a good idea? Any comments, suggestions or ideas appreciated. Skomorokh 17:32, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. I kind of like it. --Golbez (talk) 18:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

We could probably get away with deprecating {{currently}} in favor of {{todo|inner=<content>}}. --Izno (talk) 18:47, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I like it for "currently." I think the use of "recently" should be discouraged, as its almost always uselessly vague unless clarified by some sort of "as of X" statement; and even then, its not particularly clear (how recent is recently? a week? a month? 500 years?). Mr.Z-man 18:58, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't currently be discouraged just the same, and the statement be rewritten as "{{As of|May 2009}} [[Al Franken]] is waiting to be seated in the [[United States Senate]]"? A templated "currently" is certainly better than a plain one since it provides editors with easier means to keep such statements up to date, but a reader won't know how outdated such a statement is. He is better off with a date. Amalthea 21:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I considered that, but "Barack Obama is currently the president of the United States" sounds better than "As of 2009, Barack Obama is the president of the United States" since barring some catastrophic event, he'll be the president for 4-8 years, which is an eternity in Wikipedia-time. For very short-term things, we should be using specific dates, but for longer-term things, it looks awkward. Mr.Z-man 21:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

"Barack Obama is currently the president", or "is currently^‡ the president", or "is currently^{[nb 1]} the president" might all work too. We might also link the word to an actual date. Since the proposal is to modify 'currently' where it is used, I see no problem. Someone should go and create the template. –M^T 04:54, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I think that option masks the forest with trees; excessive tags (like symbols or note markers) makes the text harder to read. EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:57, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Once it's a convention, it'll be very easy to skim over. The point is that there are many options. I don't even notice note markers anymore, just as I've stopped noticing blue links many years ago. Make it a link to a note. Make the color a bit off. Or don't even bother marking it. –M^T 08:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

For long-term things, I don't think its necessary. Do we really need to worry that much about articles getting 4 years out of date? Mr.Z-man 15:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

While sympathetic to the dislike of using these terms generally, I'm sensing consensus to implement this for where the terms are already used. Any objections to creating the templates and trying them out? I'd need someone technically able to move and adjust all uses of {{currently}}. Skomorokh 15:34, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that the ideal would be something like {{currently|until=2013-01-20}} for situations where there is a known ending point, along with an automatically generated, hidden category like Category:Articles needing updates on 2013-01-20. And otherwise, exactly why is the word "currently" useful? "Buffett is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway." "Franken is awaiting the outcome of legal proceedings to determine if he will be seated in the United States Senate."

If we really do want to use "currently" when there is an open-ended date and we worry that someone won't notice the change, then maybe {{currently|recheck=2009-10}}, with the automatically generated, invisible category Category:Articles possibly needing updates in October 2009. (I'd argue that rechecks shouldn't be scheduled for more than a year ahead.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

We already have {{Update after}} for claims with a known expiry date. I think the current practice of dating from when the claim was made makes more sense than dating from an arbitrary period in the future, because it does not commit to a certain period which might later need to be changed. And to re-iterate, this proposal takes no sides on when these types of terms should be used, only how they should be treated when they are. Hope this helps, Skomorokh 19:22, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion to include eyePlorer.com into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search

Hello. My name is Georg Rehm, I'm a product manager with vionto GmbH which is based in Berlin, Germany. Our product http://eyePlorer.com is an award winning graphical knowledge engine that enables a novel, interactive way of working with concepts, terms and knowledge. We use methods from language technology and computational linguistics in order to analyse and compute knowledge from the German and English Wikipedia, next to selected other highly specialised content sources.

We would like to suggest the integration of http://eyePlorer.com into the Wikipedia search page available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search because we think that eyePlorer.com provides a unique way of exploring and working with Wikipedia concepts and facts (eyePlorer.com is already included in the hub page http://www.wikipedia.de which redirects searches to http://de.wikipedia.org). We would be very happy if you could integrate eyePlorer.com into the list of optional search engines that currently contains Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, Wikiwix and Exalead. One of the developers who work for de.wikipedia.org (Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.) told me that the file http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js/search.js needs to be modified in order to include a new search engine. The line

selectBox.appendChild(createOption('eyePlorer.com', 'http://www.eyeplorer.com/eyeplorer/', 'conceptTerms', 'language', 'en'));

should insert eyePlorer.com into the menu on the Wikipedia search page; the linking scheme is

http://www.eyeplorer.com/eyePlorer/?conceptTerms=hand&language=en

Please let me know what you think of this suggestion. Should you have any questions please don't hesitate to drop me a line.

Thanks to Brandon Weeks from the support team for pointing out that the Village Pump is the right place to post suggestions such as this one. -- Georg Rehm (talk) 13:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I see from your message that you think it is useful, novel, and all sorts of other fuzzy things, but what does it actually do, and why would it be useful to wikipedia? As I understand it, those engines are included due to popularity. –M^T 02:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Making the font size smaller for inline citation numbering

I have a very simple proposal that would be relatively easy to implement and which could improve the readability and visual appeal of our articles: decrease the font size for inline citation numbering. You know, those big ugly numbers at the end of both the last sentence and the present one. We all love citations (or at least we should), but the current numbering is just way too large! What with the density of referencing expected of a modern Wikipedia article, the endless accumulation of notes — often multiple notes at the end of a sentence, and more still in the middle — is becoming unsightly. The superscripted numbers are big and blocky, making articles look messy and stranding each sentence far from its neighbors, an effect that subtly discourages flowing prose. Ironically, the more poorly referenced the article, the better, the more dignified, and the more professional it looks, while the better the referencing is, the uglier the article gets...and lord, by the time you're getting into double digits, let alone triples, you're really looking nasty. This sentence, for example, is farther from its preceding sentence than any sentence should ever be...almost an inch away, wouldn't you say? Worse yet, you can find even more egregious examples on any number of Featured Articles...articles which are supposed to be the finest showpieces for our content. Why must our best work be our ugliest? Quadruple-stacked three-digit blocks of big blue numbers, and in the middle of a paragraph, too. Ouch.

I think that many long-time editors have come to see reference tags for what they represent — seriousness and accuracy in encyclopedic work — and that this has slowly blinded them to how ugly articles get when they're are all tarted up with these ugly blocky blues. I've seen several comments from casual WP readers on the subject, which is what prompted me to make this proposal.

Anyway, the solution is simple: make the numbers much smaller. We don't have to worry about their readability, because even at a considerably lesser size, they'll still be legible — and anyone with serious access/vision issues will already be using a higher zoom level on their browser anyway. Unless there is a strong technical reason why smaller numbers can't work, I think this is a sufficiently easy and obvious and uncontroversial improvement to the project that it should be made as soon as possible. —— Mr. IP 《Defender of Open Editing》 23:32, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

P.S. For a really big improvement, at no cost whatsoever to anyone anywhere, we could also remove those little brackets that needlessly surround every single number, and find a better or at least less obtrusive way to differentiate neighboring cites from each other, like slashes or dashes or such.

Comments

• Strongly support this excellent proposal by this excellent user. Mr. IP 《Defender of Open Editing》 23:32, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• Technically possible by modifying MediaWiki:Cite reference link and related messages. How much smaller do you want the reference link? ^{[0.7em] [0.6em] [0.5em]} What do you use to separate the links? ^{1 2 3 1 2 3} ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:40, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

  Personally, I think that by just removing the brackets, we'd make things a lot prettier. I have no problems with the size. In the above, it's still easy to distinguish one note from another and in other media (books, journals, papers) footnotes are just done with a number without brackets around them. Cool3 (talk) 01:47, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

  Thanks for the responses. I think the second "1 2 3" font size, or a mite smaller, would be about perfect. I figure dashes might the best way to separate out the refs, but I'm not sure. Mr. IP 《Defender of Open Editing》 02:11, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose: It depends on your screen size. I understand how obtrusive the footnotes can be, but on my own screen and with my adequate but less than perfect eyesight, they're just the right size to be distinguishable without squinting. And the square brackets distinguish them from other things, such as footnotes within a section (e.g. to a table) and exponential powers. Not that I'm wedded to [square brackets]: should someone find something more aesthetic that does the same work, of course that would be great. (One side advantage to the present format is that it's a pretty sure giveaway in other places when someone's just copied and pasted from Wikipedia.) —— Shakescene (talk) 05:17, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, if it ain't broke... Plus the brackets improve usability by providing a larger mouse target. Noodle snacks (talk) 06:30, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose on grounds of usability. .reference{font-size:80%;} on your personal. stylesheet would resize them, at least. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 12:02, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
• If it were possible to reformat citations like this, would there be support for that? That could probably be done. Happy‑melon 13:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support I support this as a person who is starting to have problems reading small print, even with glasses. Why? Because it is rarely necessary to actually read the number. While I haven't read The Footnote: A Curious History (Paperback), I'll bet it points out the early footnotes weren't numbers, they were just symbols. The writer used a small set of unique symbols so the reader could track the symbol in the text to the corresponding symbol at the bottom of the page or the end of the work. I'm sure you know where I'm going with this - that very concept precedes the concept of hyperlinks, and is technically unnecessary when hyperlinks are used. We could use a single common (small) symbol to indicate a reference. Anyone wishing to see the reference would merely click on the symbol. I'm not proposing an amendment to the proposal, there are times the numbers are useful - on occasion, I've read a list of references and to see what the reference supported, so unless there is an easy way to reverse a hyperlink, there is value in unique footnotes, and number is a useful choice. My point is that the number doesn't have to be readable, it merely has to be large enough so that the reader can click on it. If the reader really wants to know the number, in the rare case it is desired, the reader can increase the font size. I'm not supportive of the elimination of the brackets. When I see word², I think word-squared, not "reference". There may be another way to make it less obtrusive, though.Sphilbrick (talk) 13:17, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

  Footnote symbols, particularly in media without hyperlinks, need to uniquely identify the two ends of the link. In paged media like books, it is possible to 'reset' the symbol set every time you turn the page, and hence reuse the same small set of symbols many times with no loss of semantic meaning. In unpaged media like Wikipedia articles (which can still be printed and hence not have the hyperlink functionality available), that is not possible; each footnote marker must be unique.

  What about putting the whole thing in brackets? So instead of this,, we get this? Happy‑melon 13:58, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure we can do that. I have been looking at how this is put together— I have a rough draft at User:Gadget850/Cite messages. We also need to consider that {{rp}} is used in conjunction with references. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

It could certainly be done with javascript, maybe with CSS for modern browsers; or it can be done in the extension itself if there's support for it. Happy‑melon 14:43, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

We can eliminate or change the brackets and we can change the fonts size by editing Cite reference link, but I don't see any way to enclose multiple inline cite links in a set of symbols without changing cite.php. Anything we do with the messages is going to be global. Could we add a class that defines the opening and closing symbols? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

With CSS, you can detect when one ref follows another (the sibling + selector). You can then use the "after" selector to add a "separator sign". Unfortunately, it will break on IE6 and IE 7. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:53, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose Maybe tweak the size juuust a bit, but they must be readable. Also, the square brackets are a very old established notation for footnotes, even in print. Combining then in one pair would be an implovement, as long as it can be done without performance impact. — Edokter • Talk • 15:34, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. We need them, and making them any smaller would make them hard to click. The brackets make them easier to click and make things legible²³²⁴²⁵. Support adding a button somewhere to hide the damn things using javascript, though.–M^T 02:59, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Source verification process

Currently, more than likely, the internet is used as a source for a piece of information. While this is all well and good, the internet (in my opinion) is very unstable. Not in its design but in the websites, in that a website could be up one day, and down another. We already are beginning to see this in Featured articles, where a source may go down, but with FA status, its creators (I as one) believe that maintenance can become a little lazy. When FAR may come around, these sources are found. But Wikipedia seems not to have acceptance to the fact these sources were not accurate. That new ones must be found and archive websites don’t have every single website.

On WP:Notablity, it says notability is not temporary. If an article is notable enough now, then it is notable enough in 1000 years. But in 1000 years, will the sources on those articles be available to access on the Internet. (Presuming the internet and Wikipedia survives) In my opinion, most likely not. So every internet source will inevitably have to be replaced. But with the new source, this process will go around in circles. And a source describing a minor issue on a biography, may not be repeated in a new accessible source. So is a source temporary? Why do sources have to be replaced? That’s because in line with Wikipedia policy, we need reliable sources and a dead link is certainly not reliable, and we can’t assume the person who placed the source there was correct. I don’t believe sources are temporary, if a reliable source is trusted now, it should be in 1000 years. But how do we stop this.

My proposition is a source verification process/system. Where templates like {{cite news}} and {{cite web}} have parameters including a verification and verificationdate. The verification will be done by an independent user, and the date when the user provided the verification. The user, will check the source, read what contents it provides against the information on the article and it is verifiable and then sign in the template that the information is verifiable. Then the information should be good enough to survive through the ages. Perhaps two verifiers?

The problem is, this is a huge process, and to have every internet source on Wikipedia verified, would be massive. A huge logistical effort. Also, independent means someone who has not used the article or source before, otherwise, someone could claim incorrect facts, and no-one should verify a verification. There are many flaws already in this proposition, but I believe it’s a necessary step to make. Especially at a minimum, for our featured articles, because I would hate to see, the featured articles lose their FA status due to the gradual decline in source availability. As a writer of a FA, I would hate to see the article lose its FA status after I have left Wikipedia. Look at Karmichael Hunt, it is practically reliant on online sources, in a thousand years, if even one of those sources is still available, I’ll turn in my grave. But in 1000 years, if this went under FAR, it would fail because it had no sources.  The Windler talk  10:42, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I am also unsure if this is the correct place to write this, but please direct me if incorrect.  The Windler talk  10:42, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

You're confusing the issue of whether a source really supports the text with the issue of preserving a copy of the source document. If we solve the second, the first is irrelevant, since anyone can check the source document at any time. And given the huge amount of unsourced text in Wikipedia articles, I really doubt that there is any significant interest here in spending valuable time looking closely at citations that we already have. Particularly since the overwhelming percentage of them do really support the related article text.

With regard to the second - and much more important - issue, you should look at Wikipedia:Citing sources#Dead links, which discusses preventing dead links as well as repairing them.

As for a thousand years from now, I really doubt your or anyone else's ability to predict what the future will look like 100 years from now, let alone 1000, and I think there are a lot more important matters to worry about than whether Karmichael Hunt will still be an FA then. Let's concentrate on what will improve Wikipedia in the next two or three years, yes? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I knew not of the on-demand archive service, thank you for your reply, just food for thought,  The Windler talk  21:47, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Have redirects to redirects redirect

Hi, currently if a redirect page is redirected to another page, it does not follow the second redirect path.

Reasons why this might be a problem: 1. A page which used to exist was changed into a redirect page. Any pages that redirected to that page will now be stuck on that page (well, the user just has to click the link, which will take them to the right page, but I do not find this to be the best solution). 2. Someone might want to redirect to a redirect page in case the second redirect page becomes independent. For example, I created a redirect page "page proofs" which redirects to "galley proofs." I also created another redirect page "page proof" which I wanted to redirect to "page proofs" in case "page proofs" gets its own page (because "page proofs" are not the same as "galley proofs"). I think this example provides a very unlikely scenario (that is, I do not forsee any creation of a page proofs page), but I think there are some instances where this problem could come up. PGScooter (talk) 13:09, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

This was recently discussed this here: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 44#Double redirects. It's technically possible and a very brief glance at that discussion indicates there is consensus to allow double (and possibly even triple++) redirects. –xeno ^talk 13:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

xeno, thank you for the reference! It seems to have a lot of support, and yet they still haven't implemented the feature. Perhaps they are working on it.PGScooter (talk) 13:46, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

or perhaps no one filed the bugzilla yet... =) –xeno ^talk 13:59, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Articles on no watchlists

I would like to see a list of articles that are on no editors' watchlists. Articles that are on regular contributers watchlists are more easily maintained and kept up to proper standards while those that aren't are prone to fall between the cracks and contain substandard information. A taskforce of folks dedicated to keeping an eye on these pages and adding then to their lists could help. I have no technical knowledge of how to start such a project but would certainly "adopt" a couple of dozen pages. J04n(talk page) 13:41, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

There is a list: Special:UnwatchedPages. — Edokter • Talk • 13:44, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I suppose I should have read this proposal page before making my proposal (shame on me). I am not an admin and have no desire to become one but I do enjoy contributing to and maintaing Wikipedia. Since I am not an admin I have no access to the list of unwatched pages. J04n(talk page) 13:54, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Looks like its been broken for years, you can only get the first 1000. That's my experience and commented upon on the talk page. Dougweller (talk) 14:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Oops, that page only being visible to admins slipped my mind. — Edokter • Talk • 15:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, thought this was a perennial proposal. Doesn't seem to be, but here's a related one: Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Create a counter of people watching a page. The arguments against that proposal are even stronger regarding this proposal. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps, Autoconfirmed users could have access to the list? I would be suprised if many vandals fall into that category. J04n(talk page) 18:40, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Then you'd need just one vandal to log on, wait a few days, make some edits and copy/paste the list to a website somewhere. Then the whole thing would become public knowledge. Tra (Talk) 19:11, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, don't worry J04n – you aren't missing much. –Whitehorse1 03:16, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

The link target helps illustrate the unwatched; one of the commenters there posted an update all of those, at least, are now watched. –Whitehorse1 03:48, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

This is on Wikipedia:Perennial proposals under Technical. Rmhermen (talk) 18:58, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Near the top of this very proposals page you will find #Watched counter, which a) solves this problem b) solves the problem with Special:UnwatchedPages lag c) leads to solutions to a large number of other serious and popular problems. All of the points made here have been addressed, though you don't need to read that to support the proposal. Unfortunately, nobody pays attention to the upper 80% of this proposals page, so it'll be dead and archived soon. Please consider reading through and supporting that proposal. –M^T 03:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Names on wikipedia.org page

Hi just a suggestion would it be possible to have say the wiki from whatever Country you are logging in/searching from to appear on this page. To encourage users to also check out and possibly edit less often used wikis. I ask this after reading this thread thanks. BigDunc^Talk 16:40, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Technically possible, probably but not necessarily helpful (as some never go to that page and many countries have multiple languages but you can only, I think, have one preference). But I think it is an issue to be discussed at Meta, not here. Rmhermen (talk) 16:49, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply could you give me a link to were would be the place to post on Meta. BigDunc^Talk 20:56, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

The text for that page is at m:Www.wikipedia.org template so I'd start a discussion on the talk page there, and also leave a note at m:Wikimedia Forum to get more eyes on the other page. - Rjd0060 (talk) 02:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Will do thanks for the replies. BigDunc^Talk 08:10, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Disabling "create a book"

Per the early results of the usability study (ctrl-f "Creating a New Article") and the reported "mess" [3] [4] at CSD that is the result of this usability issue, I propose we disable this additional section, until a more usable alternative is created/proposed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:41, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Have a look at User:Zetawoof/BadBooks also. I've been going through these for a while. It's full of crap. Good stuff too, yes, but mostly crap. DS (talk) 20:43, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I fully agree with you. Our "books" section has nothing to do with building an encyclopedia and everything to do with financial gain. The section is totally divorced from the mission of building a better encyclopedia and only commited to selling the better encyclopedia; selling free content. This was ill thought-out and poorly implemented from the top-down with little to no opinion from the community whether we wanted this feature and whether we support the Wikimedia-PediaPress financial partnership. Wikipedia isn't a vehicle for advertising, neither from its users or its parent corporation. The resulting mess of this uncoordinated and poorly thought out plan to make a quick buck is a total shame to the mission of building a neutral, verifiable encyclopedia. As a user-built encyclopedia we have the final say in this matter and I think there's sufficient evidence to show that the "create a book" feature, the "books" namespace, and the thinly disguised marketing propaganda that goes with it have no place here. ThemFromSpace 22:31, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

This is not about the books functionality, it is about the placement of some of the Books tools. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:51, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I might support temporarily disabling the feature for usability reasons, but strongly disagree with the anti-corporatism of Themfromspace - the feature provides downloadable PDFs for free, and printing articles is critical for getting them into the hands of people without Internet access. But let's not polarize this discussion and stick to the issues. Dcoetzee 23:08, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Mmm. I've nothing against the PDF-creation thing per se, but the implementation we have of it just now does seem to be actively counterproductive in a way we didn't anticipate. Shimgray | talk | 23:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I love the PDF generation myself. That link (which is in the toolbox and not in the "create a book" section. can stay as far as I am concerned. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:51, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

If you're taking about the "Add wiki page" link, it's already been changed to "Add page to book" in SVN. --brion (talk) 23:52, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned, we are talking about the entire "p-coll-create_a_book". It's a lot of extra material with little gain to a small set of users, and confusing to a large group of users to boot. Like has been suggested before, It's better as a Gadget or something. I don't believe the group of users that is affected by this problem is gonna be helped with "Add page to book", I have doubt in their ability to differentiate between Wikipedia and "a book", they might think wikipedia IS a type of book. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:02, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I honestly have no clue what the hell the "create a book" stuff did. It got rolled out while I was on a wikibreak, near as I can tell. EVula // talk // ☯ // 03:22, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Support. Let's not pollute the sidebar beyond the mess that it already is. This needs to be thrown into special pages. –M^T 03:33, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Pretty much the first thing I did after seeing this development was to hide it in my CSS. I love the functionality to generate PDFs of articles. I support having the functionality available, and I'm neutral about WMF and other companies profiting from it. I see absolutely no reason why it needs to be flashed in the sidebar for every logged-in user. If people want to access Special:Book, let them either know where to look for it, or to find it through an appropriate introductory page (Wikipedia:Books or Help:Books) that explains what the hell this confusing feature is and how to use it properly. Happy‑melon 10:49, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, please. The list I created, which currently contains only books which contain less than two articles, or which contain only project-space pages, currently encompasses over a thousand books. This amounts for well over 50% of all created books — it's clear that a lot of users are misunderstanding what the Books feature is for. One or more of the following things needs to happen:

• The Book sidebar needs to be either deemphasized heavily, or hidden until users start the process of creating a book by explicitly visiting Special:Book. As the usability study noted, the current verbiage suggests that this is the correct process to create a new page with. Either it needs to be made even clearer how pages are created, or this feature needs to be toned down a lot.
• The "Books" feature should be renamed back to its internal name of "Collections". A lot of users are ending up under the impression that the Books feature is used to write books, and appear to become confused when adding chapters doesn't give them any way to edit those chapters (because, of course, that isn't how the books feature works). A link to Wikibooks ("If you're trying to write a new book, go here instead") wouldn't be out of place either.
• Logged-out users should not be prompted to create an account to save books. The PediaPress integration can still function correctly without saving a book, so there's no need to invite a user to save a book which (in all likelihood) won't be useful to us.
• As I've mentioned elsewhere, it's much harder (in terms of process) for us to delete a "junk" book in userspace than it is for a user to drop by and create one. This should probably be rectified.

Zetawoof_(ζ) 11:03, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I think part of the reason for the bad usability is that we've always made it relatively difficult to create new articles. This is purported to serve a purpose, like avoiding orphaned pages, but I think it's counterproductive. Why not just have a "Create a new article" link in the sidebar? For the books feature, I'd suggest a wording like "Combine articles into a book." Dcoetzee 11:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Facilitation rather than Mediation

I would like to suggest our thinking about renaming "mediation", calling it "facilitation" instead.

Mediation conjures up the image of one person "in the middle" mediating between "the two sides". The concept is adversarial. Facilitation, on the other hand, widely used in business, just aims to ensure that everybody's interests and concerns are addressed. It does not start with an a-priori assumption that every participant can be assigned to a "side". Having participated in business meetings with and without facilitation, I can vouch for the fact that the difference it can make to the pleasantness of the interaction, and the quality of the result, is tremendous.

Looking at the current RFAR involving Mattisse, that is exactly the sort of situation that good facilitation can help to avoid. Clearly, we can't have a facilitator on every WP talk page, but there might be merit to having a pool of neutral facilitators, who in their role as facilitators are bound not to express views on the topic under discussion, but only to comment on group dynamics and the quality of communication, on talk pages relating to important WP processes, like GA and FAC.

Thoughts? Jayen466 11:43, 7 May 2009 (UTC)