Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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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 discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (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 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.

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These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

Redirect on Contribution pages, "redirect=no"?

uhh....i think people just don't really have an opinion on it. I, for one, have almost never encountered the situation you've outlined. On the offchance i do click on a contribution that's a redirect, i just click the history or diff links instead to see what changes the person made. I suppose a better place to ask would be the technical section... --`/aksha 02:27, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, this is definitely a good idea. `/aksha is right - move this to a technical section and it'll get noticed and maybe even implemented. Good luck. Nihiltres 18:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea (found it annoying myself before), but yeah this may have been better on the technical pump. -- nae'blis 19:52, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Medical Disclaimer Discussion

Copied from WP:RT Proposed Medical Disclaimer Template

I think that articles on medical conditions and treatments should bear a disclaimer. Particularly if it is deemed that people might use the information provided in lieu of seeking proper medical care. I made a template in my user space that I think addresses this concern: Jerry lavoie 01:48, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

{{User:JerryLavoie/Templates/med}}

Which looks like:

File:Bitag medical icon.gif

Medical Disclaimer

Wikipedia (including its related projects and mirrors) is Not Intended to Give Medical Advice. The contents of articles on medical conditions, treatments and devices, (including text, graphics, and other material) are for informational purposes only, and may not have been reviewed by competent Health Care Professionals. This article is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding any medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of Content found on Wikipedia. If you have a medical emergency, call your physician or Emergency Response System (eg. 911) immediately. Wikipedia does not recommend or endorse any specific third-party tests, physicians, products, procedures, opinions, or other information found in its articles. Reliance on any information provided by Wikipedia, is solely at your own risk.

The replies I got at templates proposals were:

This is a bad idea. See WP:NDT, but in essence, the problem is that we already have a Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer, and tagging specific articles will cause problems with articles that are not tagged. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 01:37, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the rationale in WP:NDT for medical disclaimers is a bit weaker, but still applies. If out of "common sense" or whatever you think we should start adding medical disclaimers, gather some support at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) and see if you can convince people. —Dgies^t c 07:54, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not going to generate a huge list of articles here, because I do not think that people would appreciate it. Suffice it to say that if you wikisearch for "treatment" "home remedy" "cure" "diet" "prevention" "drug" "non-prescription" etc, you will find numerous wikipedia articles that do tell people to do something at home without their doctor's consent to help with a medical condition. Some even suggest that people can diagnose themselves using other wikipedia article content.

IMHO This is dangerous, irresponsible, and threatens the project from a legal standpoint. Our General Disclaimers found through clicking on the single word disclaimers at the bottom of each article is in no way adequate enough to reasonably preclude people using our content in a manner that could cause them great harm.

Here is a snippet from Herbalism which I arrived at by entering Herbal remedy:

Mixing Herbs. To counteract the various complications and side-effects of an ailment, or to produce a more rounded taste, a number of herbs may be mixed, and formulas are the preferred method of giving herbs by professional herbalists. A well-known mixture used against a cold includes eucalyptus leaf, mint leaf (which contains Menthol) and juniper berry. Another is the age-old favourite "dandelion and burdock", from which the popular fizzy drink was derived.

Fresh or Dried? Many flower and leaf herbs lose volatile compounds within a few hours, as the juices and oils evaporate, the scent leaks away, and the chemicals change their form. Drying concentrates other compounds as water is removed. Most herbal traditions use dried material and the reported effects for each herb tend to be based upon dried herbs unless otherwise specified.

If you are using fresh herbs, you will need more of them, and the tea will have a somewhat different effect. Finely chop the leaf immediately before using it.

Does this article not tell people to treat themselves a certain way after self-diagnosis?

I think that my Medical Disclaimer template proposal should be considered seriously, and the fact that WP:NDT exists should not be used as the sole basis for the discussion. Jerry lavoie 14:12, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I would have to disagree with you, per WP:NDT. The example you bring is no different than any article that may be improperly sourced or not neutral. If an article is properly sourced and neutral, i.e. follows WP:V and WP:NPOV, plus perhaps a modicum of notability (per WP:NN), we would cover all bases. The omnibus clause at Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer is already there, and should cover us, the same as no legal advice, no financial advice, no personal relations advice, etc. If we present things properly, no problem exists by definition, IMO. Crum375 14:24, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The fact that somebody considers this necessary is a sad statement on the litigious nature of our society. I propose that we include a template instead

General Disclaimer

If you are not competent to act within the bounds of common sense, and are likely to perform any action which a disclaimer template might be required to prevent, then you should leave this site.

perfectblue 14:31, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I would Support this (perfectblue's) disclaimer. Caknuck 07:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to me that much of an issue to have a small template at the top of some pages, one that wouldn't mar the reader's experience, but would be more direct than the tiny "disclaimer" at the bottom of the page that leads to the medical disclaimer only after passing through the general disclaimer. Something like this, perhaps:

This page contains information of a medical nature: see our medical disclaimer.

That said, while I hate to suggest that this discussion be moved again, if you want to change the policy at WP:NDT, the place to discuss that is really Wikipedia talk:No disclaimer templates. -- John Broughton | ^(♫♫) 15:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I will consider moving this discussion, but for now I feel it is getting good feedback here, so I'd like to leave it here for the moment. I will not comment on the sardonic reply from Perfectblue97. I agree that the template I proposed is perhaps too obtrusive, and I like the idea of a shortened version as sugested by John Broughton. Jerry lavoie 16:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and for the other comment that I did not mention: As far as citing the existence of existing policies in a discussion about the merits of said policies and proposed changes thereto; I find that a little too illogical to really participate. (I know that's a split infinitive.) To me, it's like saying "There should be a law against speeding, because under the law there is a speed limit". I do not understand this approach. Jerry lavoie 16:33, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia should not be giving advice of any kind, let alone medical advce. We're WP:NOT a howto (treat yourself). Don't tag it with a disclaimer, remove it. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:08, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Although that sounds nice, what do you do in this situation: medical condition X has symptoms Y, and a recommended treatment Z. All sources (let's say) unanimously agree on X, Y and Z. Many people could construe this unanimity as 'advice' of using treatment Z if you have symptoms Y for condition X. Do you suggest removing the article? under what grounds? Crum375 22:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd say use attribution to make it clear where the treatment recommendation comes from. Medical articles need to be especially well-cited. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:24, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure, we can attribute it from here till next year[1][2][3]...[1000], but you still end up with what could be seen as advice by some, especially if there is apparent consensus among the sources. Hence the main point raised is valid; the solution IMO is as I noted above to rely on the overall WP disclaimers, which as you noted would also apply to anything else that could be construed as advice in any topic. Crum375 22:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

My definition of advice, which I believe is his, is something which says "Do X", or any conjugation thereof. Wikipedia should not be saying "do X", although we can still say "People Y and Z say to do X". -Amark moo! 02:41, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the WP wording would be: "Medical condition A occurs when the body's ability to produce B is diminished[1]. Common symptoms are C and D[2]. The prefered treatment is E[3][4]." or some such. We would not normally use the words: "people do A for B". We try to make it sound encyclopedic when there is consensus we just say what it is and cite the sources. Crum375 03:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this discussion is going great. Lots of valid points out there. Let's see if we can get some other people involved (not to stack the vote either way, but to seek consensus from a broader group). I'd be surprised if this was the first time this has come up. Anyone know of any archived discussions we can review? Here are some questions for use to think about:

• What do we do to existing articles that seem to give advice or seem to 'promote' a particular product, device, therapy, or provider?
• How do we keep such content from getting back in?
• Should there be a category for articles with this potential so someone could easily browse them periodically?
• Of course the obvious: To have or not to have a disclaimer template.
• Is anyone interested in forming a wikipedia project to standardize and patrol articles for no medical advise
• Shoule we have a specific policy that addresses this? eg. WP:NMA
• Where do we go from here? Do we take the discussion somewhere else with a goal in mind?

Thanks, Jerry lavoie 03:58, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I would say that NMA would follow from the basic WP tenets. I personally have not seen any example that shows that any change or addition is needed - but I am open minded. Crum375 04:19, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

While I have no firm opinion either way about this topic, if it is decided that it is necessary the disclaimer should be much smaller then the one presented at the beginning of this discussion. Maybe two sentences. --The Way 07:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Speaking as a medically-qualified person, I feel that any article which gives medical advice should ideally, in theory, carry a disclaimer template of some kind. The debate on the exact form of the template pales into insignificance, it seems to me, in the face of the question as to who will apply templates and who will police articles to ensure their presence. But leaving that aside for the moment, and speaking in medico-legal terms, my understanding is that in the event of legal action being taken on the basis of an article contained in Wikipedia, the liability rests with the author and not with the encyclopedia. Am I wrong?--Anthony.bradbury 16:20, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Does EB carry a separate disclaimer template on each entry that relates to medicine? How about entries for legal issues? investment related? Flying? Diving? Skiing? Crum375 17:11, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Why don't add the warning in the WikiProject box? Oh, I remember when articles about hurricanes had a big disclaimer there. -- ReyBrujo 17:23, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the difference between taking medical advice and taking investment advice is that if the medical advice is wrong you might die. But skiing too, I guess. And diving. My point remains - if an article proffers advice the legal liability rests with the author, not with the encyclopedia. Possibly more people might turn to Wiki for medical advice than would for legal or investment advice, but I have no data.--Anthony.bradbury 17:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. "medico-legal terms"? What does that mean? Are you initiating an attorney-client/physician-patient relationship based on your post? If so with whom, everyone who reads it? Where's your disclaimer? Are you admitting malpractice by asking whether you are correct (didn't you research the matter yourself)? Are you authorized to practice both medicine and law in my jurisdiction? Are you going to compensate me if I detrimentally rely on your advice? (etc. etc. etc.) ...

Hopefully you see the point here. This is a slippery slope, you can't put infinite disclaimers on every molecule of thought that someone may unreasonably misinterpret. Besides, the matter is already addressed by the link that appears at the bottom of every WP article. dr.ef.tymac 17:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I think you are starting to see the picture: any encyclopedia is going to include a lot of information, some of which some people will construe as 'advice', no matter what you say. And risks exist in many areas: even bad investments can lead to suicides, and of course there are lots of risks out there in life in almost every area. I think it's clear that if we were to add a warning template for one topic (e.g. medicine), we would be remiss if we avoid it on other risk-related topics. And 'risk-related' would cover a large proportion of our articles. Again, use EB as a reference (no pun intended), they've been around for a while. Crum375 17:45, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

"the legal liability rests with the author, not with the encyclopedia" ... If you are offering this as legal advice, I hope you have your malpractice insurance paid up. If you are not, then you might want to check the validity of your statement; especially since the very definition of author is not a trivial question that laypersons can be expected to resolve while munching on a bagel at the internet cafe. dr.ef.tymac 17:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Since medical articles are prohibited from containing WP:OR, wouldn't it be the person who gave the advice in the first place (eg the WP:V sources from which any medical page is constructed) who are liable?

perfectblue 17:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

As I do not give medical advice in Wikipedia, my malpractice insurance is not an issue. Though it is paid up, and I thank you for your concern! My statement is based on legal advice received, but I am not legally qualified and do not really wish to get into an argument on this point. User:Perfectblue97 may be right, but I suspect that in his scenario it might depend on whether attribution was quoted.--Anthony.bradbury 18:00, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for making my point. You and I both recognize that your post was not intended as professional advice. Sure, perhaps *someone* might have, in which case all those questions would have been relevant, and a disclaimer would have been necessary. Fortunately, for the astoundingly credulous people out there, the disclaimer is already there. dr.ef.tymac 18:10, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

• WP:NDT. >Radiant< 15:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

What about putting the disclaimer on the article talk pages where medical advice seems to be given? It would be nice if this was a simple template shortcut format ie: WP:NMA. The template could have the "this template is misplaced" feature of other talkpage-only templates if it was inadvertantly placed on an article. Jerry lavoie 02:52, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Here's a simple question to answer: why do we use copyright disclaimers? The same rational to use them for using images/music files online applies to medical advice by non-professionals. The disclaimer is appropriate, and I give my humble approval - as the internet isn't a place to seek medical treatments, but info to discuss with your family MD/DO (as they're the only people qualified to practice medicine, by law and with actual knowledge). I know a lot about medicine, have even taught a MD a thing or too, but I will never claim to be a physician, nor offer any advice without disclaimers (because folks are indeed gulible and I won't play with shotguns in public). Hiding behind some porous law that claims that sites are free from liability, is the same in-your-face attitude that recently got at least 10 people fired from that radio station claiming, "they signed release forms" thinking that was enough protection. A young woman died, and things change quickly when the media exposes it in it's ugly light (have to be pretty crass to wave a disclaimer as the lady was saying her last words to the world). The law is fickle, and changes as quickly as the political winds blow. For those reasons, it's better to be safe than sorry, because "freedom of speech" isn't going to mean much when a company has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, in members in jail, or it's readers dead.FResearcher 21:00, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Additional disclaimer notices are an unnecessary complication and a special case. Wikipedia does not give professional advice in general, and this should be clear. The most I would support is ten-word general message to this effect at the bottom of every article, or a place that is equally non-distracting. -Pgan002 01:16, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Disclaimers are annoying to the extreme. It suggests that I'm better off ignorant, or that such articals are for some kind of entertainment, which is nonsense. I believe wikipedia forbids how-to's and advice, as opposed to information. That's enough. --Insect 20:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Boo to tags in general! There is already a disclaimer on every page, and that's enough!+mwtoews 01:03, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

'No to tags--In the USA t is illegal to give medical advice with a commercial transaction. Since Wiki is nonprofit, it is not illegal for us to give medical advice. But I would be happy is wikipedia was full of "how tos" :) Puddytang 02:51, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

This discussion seems to be dead, but I'd like to add my support for a medical disclaimer like the one JerryLavoie proposed. WP:NDT isn't set into stone, as its disclaimer says... —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 13:29, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Permit personal attacks...

...Against the subjects of articles, so long as said attacks:

• Are clearly made by specific users
• Are opinion, not slander
• Are made in user or article talk space.
• Are not intended as sly ways of attacking other wikipedians.

Your thoughts, ladies and gentlemen? Dave 21:27, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Why should we be a platform for hate? We're not a soapbox for positive or negative opinions. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:49, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:NPA seems to only refer to personal attacks against other Wikipedophiles. Am I missing something or is there policy against badmouthing (expressing negative opinions about) the subjects of the articles on user or talk pages? dreddnott 22:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to assume that the above is merely an attempt to create faux Greek for "people who like Wikipedia" gone horribly wrong, but you may want to pay attention to possible alternate readings in the future. Kirill Lokshin 23:15, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:BLP, WP:CIVIL, and just general consensus. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Are we talking about information criticizing, say, Hitler, or a living person who is controversial? I'm not really sure what you mean here, but it doesn't sound good. I've seen plenty of negative comments about George W. Bush on userpages (hell, we even have a userbox about it), but if you launched a string of complaints on Talk:George W. Bush, it would not be considered good form. GhostPirate 23:07, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

You seem to have confused Wikipedia for a discussion forum. --Golbez 04:14, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Talk page and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines make it clear that talk pages are to be used only to discuss improving an article. We have enough problems accomplishing that with such a policy in place. Why in the world would we want to fill up talk pages with comments by anyone with a strong opinion about a subject, pro or con? We're here to write an encyclopedia, not conduct opinion polls or provide a soapbox (see WP:NOT). -- John Broughton (☎☎) 05:07, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not, of course, talking about giving ones opinion for the sake of giving an opinion. I'm simply talking about allowing normal speech patterns on Wikipedia talk pages. E.G. "Althogh I think that X is a horrible person, I have removed XYZ section from the article as it is not properly sourced". Dave 13:10, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Same reason we don't use profanity or slang in our article prose: it's unnecessary, distracting, and detrimental. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 16:13, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Weird - so this proposed change would allow, what - short attacks against someone, but not long ones? (Try writing that into a policy.) More importantly, a lot of figures are controversial, and a lot of editors are more than happy to attack someone expressing an opinion about a subject with which they disagree. I can just see admins trying to break up a fight by telling editors that one of them is allowed to say that X is a horrible person, but the others aren't allowed to defend X? In fact, the example you gave is a perfect one to illustrate the folly of this suggestion - remove the first nine words (the attack), and the sentence is improved. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 18:50, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Libel: It is Wikipedia policy to delete libellous material when it has been identified. -- ReyBrujo 18:53, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I cannot agree at all with any such abuse on Wikipeida. See my proposal of this date below. Fergananim 11:26, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I, too, cannot agree with this. semper fictilis 17:57, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I think we have some conflicting opinions on policy and arbitrarity at work because apparently this is already a de facto policy. How is this criteria not met by this incident? - WeniWidiWiki 08:02, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

"Older"/"Newer" navigation for watchlist

Would it be possible to add navigation to the watchlist, similar to the "History" and "Contributions" pages? With large watchlists that feature very active pages, the "last x changes" setting in "Preferences" can often fall short of when you last logged in. That means going into the preferences, changing the size of the watchlist, and then either having to go back and reset it OR forgetting (and then facing the increased load time every time one calls the watchlist). Thoughts? --Ckatz^chat_spy 03:18, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Do you have the option to collapse multiple changes to the same page turned on? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 18:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I did use that feature for a while, but found that I was able to do more with the non-collapsed version. (It often saves a lot of time in checking frequently updated pages, as you can see the context for edits rather than just the last one.) I would think that adding navigation shouldn't be all that difficult, given that the code already exists for the other pages. However, if there is some reason that it isn't doable, another option might be to add an "override" feature on the Watchlist page (much like the "Last 50"/"Last 100"/etc. choices on History pages. That way, you could choose a temporary increase in the number of edits, without having to adjust your default setting. --Ckatz^chat_spy 19:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Umm, there is a manual override at the top of the watchlist page. It says "Show last 1 | 2 | 6 | 12 hours 1 | 3 | 7 days all". ;-) --Quiddity 01:15, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Tried that. It limits your watchlist, if the setting goes too far back for your liking. However, it doesn't extend it, which is what I would like. If, say, you're set for 500 changes, and that times out 18 hours back, adjusting the settings you mentioned still only goes back the same amount of time.

Ah, well that's probably more a WPtechnical question. Or try searching bugzilla. --Quiddity 19:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

A while ago [1], I suggested making the watchlist a regular page, made up entirely of links, so that checking it would be a "Related changes" thing for the watchlist page, and so that editing it would be like editing any other wiki page. Naturally, this would include the page having a history. Clicking "Watch" would add a link to the desired page at the bottom; clicking "Unwatch" would replace any link by an empty string. Users could freely edit their watchlist, e.g. to organize it by grouping the links under various headings.--Niels Ø (noe) 10:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Article Podcasts

Hi, I have a lot of snippets of time during the day in which I have free, quiet time. I typically play a podcast to learn a thing or two while I have no other preoccupation. I was listening to a Berkeley Physics for Future Presidents podcast and thought a 20 minute long podcast (similar to a radiocast on NPR) in which a narrator goes over a Wikipedia article of popular interest (or in observance of a current event relating to the article.) I thought perhaps the Wiki admins could maybe even have time to interview the headliners and people of considerate interest and information pertaining to the article. I think, with a streamlined format, relatively brief duration, and the added ease of listening to the article in lieu of reading it (which I'm not discouraging) Wikipedia article podcasts could summon an active interest in learning.

You may wish to look at the discussion here at the Wiki Project Radio on Podcasts. Podcasts fall under that project. Maybe the suggestion could be refined there and expanded here with their help. Ronbo76 04:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. [OrderlyRoom82] 13:26, 9 February 2007

With your permission, I think this should be called Digital Audio Articles, since "podcast" is a neologism, and it implies that only IPod is compatible. BuickCenturyDriver 11:54, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Spoken articles -Will Beback · † · 00:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The spoken Wikipedia project already have a podcast/webcast/audio RRS feed/wahatever. Just subscribe to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/rss&action=raw&ctype=application/rss+xml Just note that you can't actualy use it on most portable players because they rarely support the OGG format, but programs like Winamp and what not can play it just fine. --Sherool (talk) 09:04, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: Infinite Ban on all Wiki Abusers

I have being distressed, especially lately, but in fact throughout my tenure as a Wikipedian, by the number of fellow Wikipedians who have left our community. By that I mean those who have chosen or being forced to leave due to personal attacks and vandalism, either of their home pages or articles.

Its being my experience that ALL of those who fall under this category have being people who have added tremendously to our project, both in scope and depth. It is therefore a source of anger that ahmadans, who's tenure here is bellicose, offensive and in no way a meaningful contribution to Wikipedia, has driven so many invaulable colleges away.

Therefore, I wish to open a discussion on effective ways of dealing with such abuse. For my own part I would like to see such abusers (as opposed to the general Wiki user and contributor) banned very quickly indeed. Attacks by such abusers usually have being on-going for quite some time before a warning is given, and further time elapses with furthing warnings before a ban is evoked. Yet even then such bans have a finite duration.

My proposal is to replace the first warning with an outright infinite ban on any and all abuse. I would like to see this apply in the following cases:

• 1 - Where abuse has occoured on several occasions (i.e., more than twice) prior to it being brought to the attention of the wider Wiki Community.

• 2 - Where an apology for bad beheaviour and promise of future good conduct has being asked for and not given within a set time-limit.

• 3 - Where an apology for bad beheaviour and promise of future good conduct has being given and broken (no time limit on such a promise).

In my own experinece, an Infinite Ban on abusers is the only course of action open to us. We have all seen that if a given 'contributor' begins such beheaviour they will continue with it whenever and wherever they please. Therefore, simple warnings are just not good enough. Action must be taken as soon as any abuse is detected. As with illness, prevention is better than cure. And while we cannot perhaps repair the damage abusers have committed (and which we were unable to prevent) on our fellow Wikipedians in the past, it is only in our common interest for each other and Wikipedia that we do so in future.

I would very much appreciate the thoughts of other Wikipedians on this subject. Is mise, le meas mor, Fergananim 11:24, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

There are already Community bans for people judged harmful to the community. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 00:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I would like to remind, regarding this proposal, that no one is without the potential for reform. People can grow out of ridiculous vandalism, and the reason Wikipedia is successful is because of the diversity. Aceholiday 17:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think a blanket policy is needed when we have a forum for discussing these things. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I, too, suspect that a blanket ban would end up (1) not solving the situation and (2) giving the real trouble makers (who know the rules and how to exploit them) another weapon to use. semper fictilis 17:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

etymology field to the anatomical entries

I would like to suggest adding an etymology field to the anatomical entries of Wikipedia which are in Latin. For example: "latissimus dorsi" Etymology: New Latin, literally, "broadest (muscle) of the back"

Practical jokes in "new message" boxes

See also: WT:UP § JOKE, and Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents/UI_spoofing

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but here goes. Are there any restrictions on off-site links - and if not, should there be? Many editors have probably seen the practical joke imitation "new message" banners that redirect to the Wiki article on practical jokes, or something similar. However, yesterday I came across one that redirected off-site to a blog page. I asked the editor to reconsider the setup, since there was no indication to a casual user that such a jump would occur. He appreciated my concerns, and reworked his pages accordingly. However, at the same time, he pointed out another user's "joke" nm banner, advising me to "Make sure your anti-virus is up to date." I didn't actually click the link, but found that it linked off-site to a CGI titled "brain.cgi" - which apparently has some reports of virus activity connected to it. Thoughts? --Ckatz^chat_spy 09:37, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Malicious links have no place on wikipedia. (even articles like shock site need to make it explicitly clear what lies on the other side.) Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 09:49, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

If it were up to me, I'd ban every single one of those silly immature new message joke banners. It isn't funny, the joke wore thin ages ago and they are just plain annoying. But, it isn't up to me. pschemp | talk 09:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Concur. Let's get rid of them. There is a page somewhere saying that userpages are for the purpose of writing the encyclopedia (not an exact quote). I always took this to mean that anything off-topic can be brought up for discussion and possible removal. Along with userboxes, this seems to be a prime example. Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:17, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I've disabled the external link in question [2]. I didn't dare look at the link in question but a peek at it through on online web checking tool confirms the presence of a script. Very naughty. Megapixie 10:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Hah he reverted it back. On closer inspection it is harmless - but it's very naughty disguising an external link as an internal one. Megapixie 10:22, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

So everyone agrees that it is acceptable to delete fake "you have new messages" boxes? CMummert · talk 12:58, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I think all we need to do is adopt wording in policy somewhere that spoofing the MediaWiki UI is not allowed and it will be open season on the little buggers. —Doug Bell ^talk 13:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I added a paragraph at Wikipedia:User page (here) and pointed discussion this way. CMummert · talk 13:15, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I have never supported a change more than this one. Said elements are annoying. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:11, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I would also agree with disallowing this sort of practical joke. I think there was a situation in which one of the userbox migration bots kept stopping because it came across fake new-messages banners and thought they were real, so this is more important than just the annoyance value. (It's kind of ironic that users sporting such banners had their userboxes gradually degrade due to the bots not being able to replace them, but this interfered with other users too.) --ais523 15:22, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the fake 'You have new messages' banners should be banned. However, with the bots, if they come across a false-positive new-messages banner, they can always check http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php?what=userinfo&uihasmsg to see if they really do have messages. Tra (Talk) 15:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The annoyance factor certainly high, but I didn't think about the potential for username phishing and other fraud before this morning. Since these fake messages have no positive function, the easiest thing is just to make them deletable on sight. CMummert · talk 16:50, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Not all UI changes are disruptive or confusing. This wording needs to be rethought. Take a look at User:Coelacan, where I have a username overlay. Nothing wrong with that. — coelacan talk — 21:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Of course not everything is disruptive. The sort of page the wording is intended to cover is User:Drahcir (this version). It isn't going to be possible to define "disruptive" objectively, so some common sense will be required in applying the policy. I don't expect an automated "user page bot" to go around scanning for unsuitable user pages. CMummert · talk 22:01, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Faking the UI is intentionally creating confusion where something looks like clicking on it will give you one thing when it gives you another, or producing a page that looks like something it isn't (like creating a user page the looks like the page you get when there is no user page by that name). Decorative changes that don't impact how someone interacts with the UI wouldn't meet this criteria. As CMummert points out, however, trying to define this too narrowly leaves the definition open to abuse. —Doug Bell ^talk 22:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Lone voice of dissent here. I think declaring open season on a harmless joke (I'm only talking about the harmless versions, like the one that was just removed from User:Certified.Gangsta's userpage) is unkind and petty. It sorts oddly with the next sentence, which has been there for a long time, and which I really like: "As a tradition, Wikipedia offers wide latitude to users to manage their user space as they see fit." The new suggestion also fits badly with all the other matters under the heading "What can I not have on my user page?", because those all have very good reasons. For instance, putting extensive personal information, or fair use images, on userpages is readily seen to be actually harmful. The fake New Messages box thing is the only single one that's merely based on irritation. I ask people to please reconsider. What happened to "The Wikipedia community is generally tolerant"? Also, it seems illogical to bother to say "please", if the jokes are actually going to be vigilantly removed and "should" not be put back. That's not "please", that's an order. If y'all want to include advice against joke messageboxes in this guideline, OK, but could we please at least leave it as advice, rather than encourage other users to go on removal rampages? Because that's going to upset people. Bishonen | talk 01:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC).

I agree, as annoying as I think they are, I think it's better to mention it as advice not order. It's not THAT annoying. If they are disruptive (linking to a virus/script) yes, then obviously they have to go. Garion96 (talk) 01:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

We tolerate silly user page content up to the point at which it becomes harmful. Deliberately misleading people in this manner impedes their efforts to build an encyclopedia. These pranks are flagrantly harmful, and I would have attempted to outlaw them long ago if I'd realized that so many others agreed. —David Levy 16:57, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Bishonen here. I find the fake messages stupid and annoying but I don't see much gain in outlawing them. I do however see one serious concern- there are occasional new editors who don't click on new message links since they think that the links are some sort of spam. This may be more likely if they were to click on one of the fake links before getting any new messages. However, this circumstance seems unlikely. JoshuaZ 01:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Here are the two reasons the reason that I support the change in the User page guideline.

1. Suppose that user A makes a fake UI that points to external site X. Then the person who controls external site X can, without the help of user A, turn site X into a phishing attack by making it a copy of the "You are not logged in" page.
2. There is no positive, or even good-faith, reason to put fake UI on your page. Its only purpose is to harass other users. Given that it is also a potential security risk, we might as well say that it "may" be removed.

It is true that there is great lenience about user pages, but it seems reasonable that the guideline can ask users not to engage in behavior that is broadly offensive to the community. This is underlined by the potential phishing risk of fake UI - it should not benecessary to doubt every UI link when editing a user's talk page. CMummert · talk 01:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Upon further reflection, I realized the issue is already covered by WP:DICK. CMummert · talk 02:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Gee, it's hard to think of things much worse to put on your user page than things that undermine the trust we expect people to have in the UI of the site. Much more disruptive than a nasty statement on their user page that we wouldn't allow. Why oh why we want to tiptoe around letting people spoof the UI so that we don't cut into the freedom of expression allowed on their user page I don't get. It's a small curtailment of what people are allowed with a better reason than much of what is on the current policy. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

• Last night I removed this very fake-banner suggestion from the 'motto of the day' project. That would have added the fake banner to dozens(hundreds?) of user pages. Ick. Barring it altogether gets my support. It's a bad meme, and should be snuffed out. However, I think the section currently at Wikipedia:User page is in violation of WP:BEANS...? --Quiddity 02:38, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:BEANS is always a Catch-22: if there is no written guideline, then it is much harder to argue in favor of removing things, but every guideline in oppositon of some behavior violates WP:BEANS. Still, when I wrote the current wording, I made it as vague as possible because I respect the idea behind WP:BEANS. Can you rewrite it to be even more vague while still being comprehensible to the average editor? CMummert · talk 03:02, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Good point; struck. (I guess I was hoping there was a solution to that, which I just hadn't thought of. ah well) --Quiddity 06:22, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

There is one useful benefit to the practical joke you have messages. It lets the reader know that the user whose page they're looking at is, more than likely, a dick. I don't think they're worth banning on that ground alone, there are plenty of other cases of things that are rude and stupid but legal. And so there should be, because creating thou-shall-nots all the way to the border of good behaviour will inevitably mean that we overshoot sometimes, and ban some good behaviours. But given that the messages will cause some bots to stop, I agree with the prohibition, at least until there is another equally simple way for bots to know that they really have message. Regards, Ben Aveling 11:12, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

There is a simple way for bots to find out if they have new messages. In fact, it's even simpler than screen scraping as it's an api. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php?what=userinfo&uihasmsg will show if the bot has messages and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php will document this function. However, a down side of this is that an extra server request must be made every time the banner appears to check if it's legitimate. Tra (Talk) 11:47, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that a fake new-messages bar is worth complicating bot programming for. I also don't think that there's a query.php uihasmsg check built in to the popular bot frameworks, so it would mean changes to existing bot code (which can be a bad idea; imagine if a new-messages banner was confusing an adminbot, it would have to go through a new RfA so that the uihasmsg check could be implemented!). By the way, Tra, you probably want to change the output format of that query.php check from the human-readable xmlfm, which has to be screen-scraped, into something more useful for bots. --ais523 11:54, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

you probably want to change the output format Yes, I know it would need to be changed; I just left it as xmlfm for this discussion, which is being read by humans, and not bots. Tra (Talk) 12:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm still amazed by all the angst this proposal is creating in the name of freedom on user pages. We're not "creating thou-shall-nots all the way to the border of good behaviour"—we're talking about a very specific, practical and non-content-based prohibition on spoofing the UI. There's not lots of gray area here or some dangerous slippery slope. Even without the bot issue I would think this is a no-brainer; with the bot issue this should be a slam dunk. —Doug Bell ^talk 12:01, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Bots, slam-dunk. Off-wiki links of any sort, slam-dunk. On-wiki practical joke type links, I don't like them. But it feels heavy handed to ban them just because they're childish and annoying. Regards, Ben Aveling 12:10, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

• Excellent idea to finally ban those stupid new message boxes (by which, of course, I do not mean banning the users that create them). >Radiant< 12:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

DOWN with fake MediaWiki UI elements!!! HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:02, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't have an issue with the existence of the joke as it wasn't funny when I didn't click on it the first time. However, shouldn't hiding a malicious link be a bannable offense? MLA 17:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I think purposely hiding any external link is a punishable offense. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 06:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I consider that this div class (usermessage) has been abused, and that its abuse should be curtailed by enforcement, not by a “please don’t” message on WP:UP. Most importantly, the community is able to be elastic about interpretation of WP:UP in murky cases. If consensus is against such orange user messages, which appears to be the case, then they shall be removed. There may also have to be an MFD for all of the user subpages of the general note “Sign here if you’ve been fooled, lol!” Gracenotes^T § 18:17, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The "please don't" message is unlikely to curtail the fake boxes without enforcement. Having the wording in the policy guideline just makes it clear that there is consensus against them. —Doug Bell ^talk 19:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Policy.. ? You're talking about "enforcing" a guideline. If what you want is "banning" the boxes, and sending in the marines to aggressively remove them (which seems to me quite counter to the wikipedia spirit, and you, Radiant, may wish to flee in terror in an orderly manner round about now), perhaps you should in fact propose a policy to that effect. Bishonen | talk 19:56, 13 February 2007 (UTC).

In this case, however, this proposal and common sense line up very well. Guidelines should not be ignored unless there's a relatively good reason or exception. Enforcement... would be troublesome, yes. Editors might feel insulted if they were compelled to follow it by force. Blocking someone else as a preventative measure, from putting a usermessage on his or her user page, is ridiculous and pernicious. Overall, that this issue appears light ignores some relatively significant consequences.

There is consensus against deceptive usermessage class use, but the enforcement of consensus is not required for general circumstances. I'm still wondering about whether a policy is worth it or not. Please fill in the following table as you see fit:

Pros and cons of false new message boxes
Why to prohibit	Why not to
Users often click on them without thinking, resulting in possibly downloading a virus or being directed to a malicious site. A user may also find him or herself in the security-threatening situation described by CMummert People don't like it, find it annoying Many bots are coded in various languages to look for this div and possibly desist functioning until further instruction is given An editor may be doing a systematic task (like reverting vandalism or tagging talk pages) when they are interrupted to consider a false talk page message	The Wikipedia community is tolerant, and shouldn't crush jokes just because they're irritating The bot issue can be worked around, with some extensive recoding (?)

This table can also be completed for other UI elements, some more significant than others, others trivial compared to some. Gracenotes^T § 21:18, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it would be helpful to have a policy to point to. I disagree that the prohibition of deliberate trickery that interferes with the encyclopedia's construction runs counter to the Wikipedia spirit. —David Levy 21:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

As a proud owner of the practical joke banner, I firmly believe that outlawing the joke banner is against the true spirit of wikipedia. If we decide to censor everything on userpage, talkpage, and subpages, there are things such as User:Markaci/Nudity, which some people consider to be disruptive. It is basically a breach of individual freedom on userspace. I have removed the joke banner on my talkpage couple of months ago after a bitter dispute with User:Centrx who blocked me for 1 second for doing so despite strong opposition from the community and later refused to apologize. Since I believe talkpage is the main source of meaningful conversation on wikipedia, as a compromise, I removed the banner from the talkpage. However, subpages, archives, and userpages are different. Userpage is more about being creative, at least in my opinion. And just because I have a banner on my userpage doesn't automatically make a WP:Dick or a sockpuppeter.--Certified.Gangsta 02:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

The one second block was for your habit of egregariously removing valid warnings because you viewed them as "a mark of shame", and unrelated to the banner. --tjstrf talk 02:03, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Those warnings are not valid, obviously. That guy is abusing the system and admin priviledges. Anyway, I could've build a case to desysop him but I don't have time. The reason he blocked me seems to start from the banner dispute which he interpret as deception. Then things escalated from there. Then he randomly framed some unjust accusation to make me look bad out of personal vendetta obviously. The other thing is, if wikipeida is only for editing, we might as well remove userpages altogether since only talkpage is relevant to actual editing.Certified.Gangsta 02:49, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

We allow user pages to contain practically any type of content that doesn't cause harm. Deliberately interfering with people's attempts to improve the encyclopedia is harmful. —David Levy 03:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

They were valid warnings for delivering incivil threats of ban to other users. And you're continuing your disruptive behaviour along the same lines now[3] by removing anything you don't like and saying that well-grounded warnings from admins are invalid. I suggest you drop both the vendetta against Centrx and the unfunny disruptive banner. --tjstrf talk 03:03, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

You're reincarnating the favorite straw man used against this proposal—censor everything. This isn't about censoring anything, it's about not mucking with the user interface of the site. There's no slippery slope involved with censoring content associated with this proposal because it has nothing to do with content, only with form. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:08, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

The "true spirit of Wikipedia" does not include deliberately deceiving fellow users in a manner that impedes their efforts to improve the encyclopedia. —David Levy 03:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

First user already blocked over a guideline which is still being discussed.David Levy, you have now removed the banner three times from Certified.gangsta's userpage, and threatened to block him if he restores it again. This is exactly the kind of behavior I was worried about when I saw the proposed new paragraph, and I don't mean CG's, I mean yours. Would you consider walking away for a few hours, please? Sleep on it, and think about it? I'd also be interested to know if this type of conflict escalation is what other people were envisioning when they expressed approval of the new paragraph? I have reverted, by the way, removing the bit about how users "should not put it back", which you had re-inserted with this edit summary. I've got to ask, why are you so angry? P.S. Breaking news: and now I see you HAVE blocked him. This is too, too bad. Please unblock, or I will. :-( Bishonen | talk 03:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC).

1. I suggest that you re-evaluate your opinion that users should be permitted to forge software messages for the purpose of deliberately confusing and misleading others (thereby preventing them from improving the encyclopedia).

2. I removed these banners from more than 90 pages, and this is the only user to edit-war over the matter so far.

3. I did unblock Certified.Gangsta as soon as he/she promised to cease the disruption. He/she then explained that this promise is valid for 24 hours, so I'm prepared to re-block if the disruption resumes. —David Levy 03:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

This makes me want to add it to my userpage, even though I think it's stupid. But I won't, and only because I don't edit to make a point. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 06:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Two cents here... when I was a newbie, I clicked on those joke "new messages" banners. Now that I've been around a while, I get the joke and don't click on them. Heck, I can go in my monobook.css and make my real "new messages" appear some other color or whatever. But, for the sake of newbies (per WP:BITE), these practical jokes should not be allowed. --Aude (talk) 03:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I've got yet another con. When I'm on a slow computer (read: public one) and am just logging in for a few minutes (you know, just to make sure no one is calling for my head, maybe copyedit something, maybe make a follow-up comment on some talk page) these fake message bars can be really disruptive and time-consuming. They serve no positive purpose, yet they serve multiple negative ones. Luckily, I'm seeing consensus to remove them based on this thread, and will do so. Picaroon 03:47, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll invoke a wider consensus, as the matter of the guideline addition, and of this block in particular, is now on ANI.[4] Bishonen | talk 04:10, 14 February 2007 (UTC).

Get rid of all of them. They've been annoying for a long time now. --Cyde Weys 04:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Lots of stuff is annoying. It's just a little joke, and it allows editors to feel human. We're not unfeeling content-generating robots - at least, those who are either have accounts ending in -bot or are not welcome anyway. Dehumanizing editors does not help build an encyclopedia, and I think that those who think it does are misguided. --Random832(tc) 04:44, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Am I the only one who sees the irony in this statement coming from someone with the user name Random832? :-) —Doug Bell ^talk 05:08, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

There's plenty of potential user page content (including humor) that causes no known harm. Is it so much to ask that people not waste other users' time by deliberately tricking them via forged software messages? —David Levy 06:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

P.S., David Levy, can you defend your characterization of these as "deliberately confusing and misleading others (thereby preventing them from improving the encyclopedia)."? --Random832(tc) 04:48, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

In case it wasn't clear, the word "deliberately" applies strictly to the "confusing and misleading others" part. The time wasted (which prevents the editors from improving the encyclopedia) is an unintentional (but nonetheless harmful) side effect of this joke. —David Levy 06:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Folks common sense needs to apply here. To make a blanket rule that's going to block everything resembling MediaWiki functionality including lame "new message" joke alerts is just draconian. There are no doubt legitimate concerns about users spoofing certains functions of MediaWiki but I'll be hard pressed to agree with those who want to inlcude the Practical joke "new message" alert amongst those concerns. (→Netscott) 04:54, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Certainly, there are worse examples, but that doesn't mean that this one isn't bad. —David Levy 06:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

David Levy, where did you get the impression that there is strong consensus for your block?--Certified.Gangsta 05:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I've made no such claim. Evidently, some people believe that I overreacted. I disagree. You deliberately violated a guideline (which you knew existed to prevent disruption) after being warned not to. You also removed the warning. —David Levy 06:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

It's not an understatement to say over 95% of wikipedians believe you overreacted. The guideline is deliberately added by you and active discussion is still ongoing here, with various minor edit war on the guideline page. Unilaterally removing the banner, harssing me on my userpage, then intentionally warning/blocking me after you nearly break 3RR on my userpage is definite no-no for admins. The banner is not even disruption. I consider your warning to be one-sided, subjective, and an invalid threat. Basically, an abuse of administrative priviledge.--Certified.Gangsta 06:16, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

1. You're right. That isn't an understatement; it's an overstatement. I take the concerns expressed by these users (whatever percentage they constitute) very seriously, but I disagree. This, however, doesn't mean that I would dismiss their viewpoints and block you again. If there is no consensus for such an action, so be it. I'm but one sysop trying my best to enforce policies and guidelines to the best of my understanding; I have no delusions of grandeur or belief that my opinions are sacrosanct.

2. Again, I didn't author the guideline addition.

3. My removal of the banner was far from unilateral. At the time, there was overwhelming consensus.

4. Advising a user to follow a guideline is not harassment, and the 3RR does not apply to the reversion of vandalism. (Deliberately violating a guideline that exists to prevent disruption is vandalistic in nature.) I would never block someone with whom I was involved in a legitimate content dispute.

5. Considering the fact that I unblocked you as soon as you agreed to stop restoring the banner, would you care to retract your previous allegation that I sought to stop you from participating in this discussion? —David Levy 07:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

This seems to me to be more of the same militantism that rears it's head on Wikipedia every so often. Some users seem to think Wikipedia should be as clean, stiff and dour as an English tea room or a board meeting in Japan, forgetting this is somethign most us do for FUN. Improving this project is, or at least should, not be another job, with a thousand HR decrees. It's a joke. take it case by case. Make the rule say such things should never lead to external sites, or to content of a non-family nature within wikipedia, for example Genital Piercings. But if you've got a fake 'leave me a message' up that leads to the Hand page, as in 'talk to the...', that's funny. Lame, but funny. (ish.). Tolerate it, and move on. I don't even see the associated WP:DICK in it that some here seem to. Learn to laugh. I try to remember, when I hit those things, that that user's here to have a GOOD time, and I should too. ThuranX 06:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia should be profressional. Playing jokes on other users is being uncivil. I support allowing it because wikipedia is BASED on freedom and accepting a whole host of different editors. There is no case where these things are helpful though, and users SHOULDN'T use them. I oppose enforcing such a rule, but support making it known to editors that it isn't appropriate. i kan reed 06:07, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

1. There are plenty of ways to have fun (and even joke) on user pages without deliberately confusing and misleading fellow editors.

2. Any attempt to deem certain types of content "non-family" in nature (and ban such links from user pages) would be met with far more controversy than this has been. —David Levy 06:13, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Alright, the idea of this - a spoof You Have New Messages box people can place at the top of their page - is really quite funny. But only as a joke told, not done. CyberAnth 06:47, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

My thinking doesn't fit the below poll. I think fake new message banners are annoying and I think a tiny bit less of contributors that use them, but they're harmless, as long as they don't lead anywhere bad. I'd support a suggestion that they not be used, and a further statement that if they DO lead anywhere bad, anyone can remove them with a good edit summary and a note on the user's talk page, and reinsertion is not approved. That may be too nuanced, but I have non standard things in my userpages too, and I'd hate to see us all restricted to everything completely standard. ++Lar: t/c 21:50, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Straw poll

There's plenty of commenting above, so please just register your position with your signature below. Leave the comments to the discussion above. ChrisGriswold removed the previous added text stating that there was no consensus, so I'd like to see if that's true or not.

Question: Should language similar to the following be added to WP:USER:

Please do not put fake versions of the MediaWiki user interface elements such as a fake "you have new messages" box or fake category links on your user page or user talk page. Because these fake elements are difficult to distinguish from the actual MediaWiki interface, they undermine trust and carry the appearance of fraud.

Why on earth do we need a poll? Good grief. Don't interpret this as a personal attack, but it appears that everyone in the community is fighting each other over something absolutely stupid and small, and not even bothering to block trolls or vandals. Ridiculous. If no good reason for a poll is brought up, I'll close this one. Yuser31415 20:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Yuser31415, although this is called a straw poll this is moreso a discussion and the reason this is true is that virtually every participant has voiced their views on it. (→Netscott) 20:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Agree

1. —Doug Bell ^talk 08:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
2. - Agne^Cheese/^Wine 08:25, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
3. There's room for harmless fun (including silly jokes) on user pages, but using forged software messages to deliberately confuse and mislead fellow editors is not harmless. —David Levy 08:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
4. This has the potential for serious abuse, and doesn't help build the encyclopedia. -Will Beback · † · 08:33, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
   • This is overbroad, why not just ban the "serious abuse" (I'd even support a blanket ban on containing external links in these) rather than everything? --Random832(tc) 17:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
5. It should be glaringly obvious to anybody who respects wikipedia and its encyclopedic purpose. Tyrenius 10:04, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
6. These false messages confuse new users and disrupt the activity of established editors who are trying to perform batch tasks. —Psychonaut 10:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Editors should carry on with the business of editing. The Wikimedia servers are provided for the sake of creating an encyclopedia, not for engaging in practical jokes and other tangential activities. Zunaid©® 10:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
   • If people feel that wikipedia is "no fun anymore", some might not contribute at all. Time is not a fungible resource to the extent you are suggesting it is. --Random832(tc) 17:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Agree totally with the suggestion — MrDolomite • Talk 10:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Agree very strongly - it's deliberately disruptive, a potential security hazard for the unwary, confusing for new editors, and not funny anyway. I believe any kind of UI spoofing should be strictly prohibited by policy, but this is a good start. CiaranG 10:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
   • How is a link to Practical joke a security hazard? The stance you are supporting is too broad for your arguments, why not just ban external links in them? --Random832(tc) 17:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Total agreement here. -- Qarnos 10:55, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    It's my opinion that the opinions in the discussion above are mostly in favour of this change. --ais523 11:17, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    • So, what's _your_ opinion about whether this change should be made? Summarizing the opinions in this discussion are the straw poll's job, not yours. --Random832(tc) 17:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Personally, I think they should not be allowed (see my comments above). However, straw polls are best for indicating whether a consensus exists, rather than forming one, which is why I was commenting on what I thought the opinion was at the time. (Note that the strength of opinions has changed since I made that comment, so I've struck my vote above.) --ais523 10:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

11. Yes, as long as it doesn't say "Fake MediaWiki UI elements may be removed without warning and should not be replaced once removed" which was in a previous edit on that page. Garion96 (talk) 12:50, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Absolutely PeaceNT 13:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Agree completely...and a bit surprised that there's any dispute about this. This juvenile nonsense serves no legitimate purpose, and is annoying to the point of being disruptive. Spoofing mediawiki interface elements does not fall under the umbrella of legitimate self-expression. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 16:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
14. I used to have it, but I'm convinced of it's inappropriateness after reading the above. · AndonicO ^{Talk · Sign Here} 16:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Of course you should not be able to fake part of the software interface to trick someone into clicking. It is a waste of time. It is not about power tripping, not about a failure to take a joke, it is about wasting my time by trying to fool me into thinking I have a message when I don't. It is disruptive. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 18:17, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
16. These things are easier to ignore after you've fallen for them once or twice, but that doesn't excuse the first two times being irritating and (now that further dangers have been outlined) dangerous. It's a good joke in theory, lousy in practice, and should go. UI is UI, not your playground. -- nae'blis 20:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
17. Very much agreed, if only for the precedent it sets. I will concede that many of the users who indulge in this do so with no malice, but nonetheless I feel it is a bad idea and a waste of time. DS 21:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Definite 'agree; its annoying, disruptive, and the general idea of 'spoofing' part of the MediaWiki interface - this is by no means the only source of fun, but lets not even get started on signature books. :/ RHB ^{Talk - Edits} 01:31, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Per Jimbo. – Chacor 01:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
20. If you're waiting for something really important, you shouldn't have to deal with this.--CJ King 02:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
21. Maybe on April Fools' Day. PTO 02:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
22. Agree the wording is a bit soft ("please"), but if it is explained to people that this is community concensus, then they should observe if as if policy, methinks. Jerry lavoie 02:36, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
23. I am pro user page freedom in general, but aiming to mislead/fool others is generally childish and should be discouraged. Dragons flight 02:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
24. Agree. Might be a good April Fool's day prank though. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 03:37, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
25. Agree completely. -- KirinX 03:52, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
26. Strongly endorse such a proposal. Now to get tough on non encyclopedic user pages. Jorcoga ^(Hi!/Review)08:49, Thursday, 15 February '07
27. Per the as yet unwritten WP:NOT#A PLAYGROUND. Moreschi ^{Request a recording?} 19:13, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
28. Agree Wiki user pages have room for fun, but tricking editors decreases the quality of wikipedia, and is highly annoying -- feb^talk 02:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
29. Endorse ~ Arjun 22:56, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
30. Agree They serve no possible good purpose, they annoy wide crosss spectrum of users. and they contribute towards deprecating the original and useful functions of userpages. DGG 05:58, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
31. I concur absolutely, childish jokes and pranks have no place on Wikipedia. We aren't Myspace. Michaelas10 (Talk) 20:28, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Disagree

1. While I didn't have that bar on my page before, I have it on now. Jeffpw 08:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Honestly, David Levy, why do you care so much? Mike H. I did "That's hot" first! 10:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
3. you never hear their standard issue kicking in your door, you can relax on both sides of the tracks Pink Floyd, Gunners Dream. Sums it up. ALR 11:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Malicious instances should be removed. However, a fake new messages bar that links to "practical joke" is not malicious, and fake categories are certainly not a problem. Most importantly, these are in userspace, hence almost invisible to the vast majority of users of Wikipedia. Policing userspace does not help us build an encyclopedia, it just annoys people. Draconian measures against userspace silliness are disrupting Wikipedia far more than userspace silliness does. Kusma (討論) 11:47, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Disagree strongly, don't make "rules" based on WP:ITANNOYSME, don't bully users. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bishonen (talk • contribs)
6. How lame can you get? Honestly people, don't you have actual articles to edit? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 12:47, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Lamest, dumbest proposal ever existed. 'nuff said.--Certified.Gangsta 13:03, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Whoa, everyone. Be civil, even if others aren't. That said, "deliberately mislead and confuse" is a gross overstatement of the matter, and as long as it doesn't link to an external link or an offensive article, I don't see the problem. We are not faceless content-generating robots, and trying to force us to act like we are does not help to build an encyclopedia. --Random832(tc) 13:25, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
9. In particular that it specifically mentions the "new message" joke is draconian. I agree with User:Bishonen this change is coming about as an application of WP:ITANNOYSME which is wrong. As I've said before, where MediaWiki spoofing is occuring for nefarious purposes then of course something needs to be done. If the wording were to more specifically target this then I would change my view and support additional wording. (→Netscott) 15:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Can't you take a joke?! Reywas92^Talk 16:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Why are we polling? There's obviously no consensus here. IMO, those that think these things need to be barred by policy from user and user talk pages are on a power-trip high. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 16:06, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
12. I'd be fine with it being mentioned in a "some people don't like it, you should consider not having it" sense, but an out-right declaration that you can't have it is, as many others have said, draconian. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:07, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't see how the word draconian can be applied, we are asking that people not spoof parts of the Wikipedia interface, we aren't asking them not to make jokes. I cannot think of any website that would allow users to spoof the interface of their software. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 19:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Well, I can't actually think of any other websites where a user can spoof the interface... EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:24, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Practical jokes are funny. They may not be the first time they get you or the 100th time you see it, but somewhere between #5 and #90 you thought about someone else clicking that link the way you did that first time and thought it was pretty cute. I wonder how some of you pushing "deliberate disruption and malicious intent" make it through April 1st every year. ju66l3r 19:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't think the rule prohibits jokes, just spoofing the software, jokes are fine. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 19:52, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    • No, the rule does prohibit practical jokes because they require some semblance of normal function in order to get you to use them in normal practice...to then show you the error of your assumption of normality. There are many ways of determining whether the item is content or not and some of these are not even disruptive (e.g. navigate a page or two as you would have been doing normally and see if the message persists before clicking on it). ju66l3r 20:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    • Why should users be forced to jump through hoops to determine whether the message notification is real or phony? Why can't we simply have a rule against deliberately tricking people in this manner? There are so many truly harmless jokes. Why should deliberate disruption be permitted? Simply because some people find it amusing? —David Levy 20:45, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    • I dunno if these were rhetorical or not, so here goes: Because consensus can not be met to add a new rule against these. Do you see Burma Shave signs and uproot them because someone might not have had their eyes on the road even though many of us find them humorous and unobtrusive? We deal with minor harmless disruptions every day. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Heaven help the child that knocks on your door and runs away. You really appear to be hunting field mice with an elephant gun. ju66l3r 21:21, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    1. I was asking why consensus cannot be reached on this matter.

    2. I remain unimpressed with users' "the harm is minor" argument. Yes, Wikipedia faces far worse threats than this, but so what? It's deliberately disruptive.

    3. Would you care to address the bot issue? —David Levy 22:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    David Levy, I don't recall reading anyone saying "the harm is minor"... who's saying that? I'm saying it is harmless (and that's what I'm seeing others say) (→Netscott) 22:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    Plenty of people have said they find it annoying and do not want to be subected to it. Annoying people is not harmless. It's disruptive. Tyrenius 22:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    Tyrenius, I disagree that if something is annoying be default is is not harmless. I have found the new message jokes very annoying yet completely harmless. (→Netscott) 22:39, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    Those were scare quotes. Yes, some are literally arguing that the messages are harmless, but others claim that the harm is too minor to justify spoiling people's fun. —David Levy 22:44, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    The rule does not forbid practical jokes, it only forbids practical jokes that impersonate features of the Wikipedia software. I see a lot of attempts to make this rule look like more than it is, it is a rule against impersonating technical features of Wikipedia, that is all. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 20:48, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    I'm actually swayed by ju66l3r's comment, which is the most insightful thing I've heard on this subject yet. Since UI spoofing is possible, it might be better that people are exposed to it via practical jokes and know they should question the validity of what they see. CiaranG 20:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    I ask that you try applying that logic to other disruptive acts. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 20:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    If someone found a way to replace my "Special pages" link in the toolbox with a wiki-link to the article on Mental retardation (with no way of using the real "Special pages" link then I would agree that impersonation impedes my ability to use a function on the page. When I have gotten new messages on a page that has one of these practical joke links, I have seen them both. One is not overwritten by the other (and in any cases where it is coded to do so, I would agree with you that it needs to be changed to a flatter more-joke, less-impersonation version). I have seen user page and user talk page items that "impersonate" real templates and warnings. Of course, those usually have text changes and not just link changes. Are you looking to strike all of those too? It's deliberately disruptive to make me read the entire template to determine if there's a serious warning on their user page or not. Where is the line drawn for impersonation of Official Wiki-business? ju66l3r 21:21, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

14. As long as it isn't malicious, I don't see the harm in this. I came across this once, and thought it to be quite entertaining. Rarelibra 21:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    The fact that the person wasting my time does not feel malicious, does not change that fact that it is wasting my time. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 21:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

15. Ironically draconian and disruptive measures such as this waste more time and frustrate more editors than a million fake message bars ever could. — MichaelLinnear 00:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
16. First things first, I don't oppose this proposal. This is a "neutral" comment that's being posted here to make sure it's read by the supporters. Apparently there's a script at User:GeorgeMoney/UserScripts that removes those fake new messages boxes on userpages. I think installing a script like this is preferable to blocking people for something so petty and generating a lot of hot air on somewhere like ANI. -- Steel 00:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

    Some of these banners are generated using raw code instead of the "usermessage" class that the script replies on. Regardless, I don't see why it should be anyone's responsibility to install special scripts to block other users' deliberate disruption. —David Levy 00:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

    Damn you David, why do you have to say something that I actually agree with? Regardless of which way this goes, I fully agree that forcing everyone to install a script is unreasonable. EVula // talk // ☯ // 07:06, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

17. Disagree, per Bishonen. Let it go. riana_dzasta 01:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Disagree. The panties-in-a-wad brigade should be stopped. Kyaa the Catlord 05:59, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
19. I wholeheartedly disagree with adding the above statement to WP:USER. —KingIvan 07:27, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
20. Come on. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

    Okay, this isn't a vote, do you have a reason to oppose banning spoofing the user interface? I see a lot of votes here with no explanation. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 00:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

    Comment I think people are seeing this as a poll on that particular message box joke, rather than a pool on UI spoofing. -- Qarnos 01:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

21. Avoid instruction creep. I think the boxes are very annoying, but I don't think we should tell people not to put them there. If you see one, just remove it. ~a (user • talk • contribs) 19:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

    So you'd rather people edit war over them, than clarify existing guidelines/policies? -- nae'blis 19:42, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

    There's an indefinite number of things that people could argue about. I don't think we need to "clarify" everything that could possibly need clarification. We'd have too many policies for people too learn. Oh wait, that already happened. That's why WP:CREEP is there: this is a trivial issue. ~a (user • talk • contribs) 07:59, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

22. This poll has new messages - I oppose it. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 22:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
23. User pages are not articles and we shouldn't crush jokes just because some people might find them irritating. Kingjeff 03:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
24. Everyone who thinks there is the need for some new rule here needs to chill and buy a sense of humor. If someone tricks users into clicking offsite links, that's disruptive, but a gag is not. Are we seriously going to block a user because his user page is a waste of time?— Randall Bart 21:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
25. Per what I said on the AN/I thread, this is utterly senseless. Titoxd^(?!?) 02:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Neutral

1. I didn't want to make a clothespin vote, so I going with no opinion neutral. It's a balance between freedom of expression and potential for abuse. Jumping cheese ^Cont@ct 11:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

   Comment - Abuse? How can a joke banner on a userpage do any abuse?--Certified.Gangsta 13:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

   Frankly, I voted for "neutral" because of the time of the voting, it was like 12 agree/4 disagree. I was swayed by the bandwagon pressure...had I voted now, I would have cast a disagree ballot. But, I don't want to change my vote, since it'll probably not pass anyways and settle on no consensus. =) Jumping cheese ^Cont@ct 20:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

2. I hate those silly boxes, but I'm completely against harassing users over something that really isn't doing any harm. If we want to edit the userpage page to discourage practical jokes, fine. It's probably a good idea. But PLEASE, no more edit warring with users over what they have on or remove from their pages unless it involves personal attacks, copyrighted images, or material designed to shock. And no more blocks of users for doing something that may be annoying but that doesn't violate policy. Musical Linguist 00:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

   It violated a guideline at the time. Despite knowing this, the user repeatedly restored the banner (mostly without summaries and sometimes with the edits labeled "minor") and removed a warning from his talk page. He later indicated that he was under no obligation to follow the rule because "it's not a policy, it's a guideline." —David Levy 00:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

   It still violates a guideline. See WP:USER below. It's there for the person's entertainment (at the expense of other users who don't appreciate it), not in any way constructive to building an encyclopedia. Tyrenius 02:23, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

   Tyrenius, I respect you as an editor but honestly your interpretation of that aspect of WP:UP is too large of a stretch. Its essentially a strawman argument to liken the "new message" joke alert to that line. That line is referring to info like what level you've achieved and how many armour points (etc.) you have on a particular roleplaying game, etc. (→Netscott) 02:35, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

3. I essentially agree with Musical Linguist. Asking someone to remove it is fine; but if they refuse, so be it. I'm not sure adding another !rule is worth it. I have a pretty low opinion of editors who have it on their page (I mean come on... it's so old at this point it isn't even funny; not that it was particularly so in the first place), but there is no reason to block and a !rule would just be used as a block reason. The only situation I would have a big problem with is if it was being used to feed editors out to an external link (particularly one to a site with malicious code) and at that point a block would be justified under existing conventions.--Isotope23 19:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
4. I'm also not too keen on this, but don't want to actually oppose it. semper fictilis 18:00, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

(End of straw poll)

1. Well duh. Of course we can recommend against it, we don't need a poll for that. That doesn't mean we should be blocking people for "violating" this rule though. >Radiant< 17:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Fourth option

That the real new message box should be moved outside the content box so that it cannot then be spoofed, rendering this whole thing irrelevant. Votesopinions in this section are in addition to support/oppose/neutral above.

1. --Random832(tc) 17:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

   While it seems sensible this "solution" is not very practical because the reality is that with CSS code virtually anything is "spoofable" with regards to how a page is displayed on the Wiki. (→Netscott) 17:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

   wikicode CSS can only apply styles to its own content. You can move the fake box up, but you CAN NOT move the title down to where it would be if it were naturally placed above it. --Random832(tc) 04:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

   I'm sure that most anyone competent in CSS could find a way to spoof it. I think this user page is fairly illustrative of what I'm talking about (notice the Wikipedia icon in the upper left hand corner). (→Netscott) 04:10, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

   This page is an example of how nearly anything can be spoofed. If I wanted, I could put everything in a div and move margin-top up, and change the title, so that it looks completely like the diff page. Gracenotes^T § 16:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Fifth option

With regards to the proposed wording, what would you all think of re-wording it to only exclude UI spoofing with malicious intent? Personally, I agree with the proposal as it stands, but re-wording it in such a fashion may at least allow us to come to a compromise consensus. -- Qarnos 10:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Crafting intial guidelines about "new message" joke banners

Per the fairly clear consensus about certain aspects of the joke "new message" banner discussions I have intiated a proposal to begin crafting a guideline about them. I invite those interested in participating to join the discussion. Thanks. (→Netscott) 18:08, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

New Wikipedia:User page addition

Stemming from the shared (and we believe consensus per the poll, etc.) concerns and after much discussion and back and forth I have added a section and subsection to WP:UP arrived at by a number of the parties involved in this. I invite those who have been following these developments to review this new section. As well as the talk that developed it. Thanks. (→Netscott) 00:08, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:USER

I fail to see what the discussion is about. See WP:USER#What_can_I_not_have_on_my_user_page.3F. This specifically mentions:

Games, roleplaying sessions, and other things pertaining to "entertainment" rather than "writing an encyclopedia,"

This is even more the case if some users find something annoying. I've already removed a false message box and would have moved to blocking if the user had not been co-operative (which he was).

Tyrenius 08:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Woah...hold on there. So you also support blocking users before a consensus on a iffy policy is reached?!? So users aren't allows to have stuff on the page that make people smile? Jumping cheese ^Cont@ct 08:59, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

And that rule was taken out of context. Jumping cheese ^Cont@ct 09:06, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) No, I support blocking users on a stable guideline over which consensus was reached a long time ago, which I have copied above. Yes, users are allowed to have stuff which make people smile. They're not allowed to have stuff which annoy people, which one of the people who used to have one plainly admits is the case:

I know it can get annoying sometimes, so if you don´t like it, then never visit my userpage nor any of my subpages

There's quite a few people here forgetting that editing is a privilege, not a right, and it's one granted for one purpose only, which is the creation of an encyclopedia. Once that priority is put back in place, then other problems sort themselves out. I suggest you forget about practical jokes, and get on with creating some good article content. Also user pages are not "private property". They belong to wikipedia. If you don't like that reality, then there's always myspace.

Tyrenius 09:13, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Tyrenius, there should be a lot of latitude in the first statement that you quoted. Building a sense of community is important, and surely every involved Wikipedian should be able to have a trivial (not excessively time consuming) or personal subpage. The user page guideline is just that, a guideline; I agree with you that the trouble caused by this, however, transcends that of a guideline. Check out my table above. Please don't argue by quoting from WP:UP about what should and should not be allowed -- that's essentially not the issue, since it more applies to social networking.

Finally, blocking a user causes much more collateral damage than you can imagine. Protecting a page is a much much much better idea, if needed. Gracenotes^T § 19:25, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

There is a box that can be ticked when blocking a user to not block the IP address, therefore avoiding collateral damage. Tra (Talk) 19:41, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

That's not what I meant. I meant that a user that otherwise could contribute content and revert vandalism would be blocked, which is over all bad for the encyclopedia. Remember, blocks are meant to be preventative, so what are we preventing here? If the user is being disruptive, then a block might be warranted, not for this in itself. Gracenotes^T § 20:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Grace, I don't think a block would be given unless the user refused to allow the item removed, I don't think anyone is advocating blocking anyone who does this. To put it another way, the blocking policy that requires blocks to be preventative as opposed to punitive would not be effected. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 20:35, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm kind of hurt by your brash response. I don't like being lectured. It sure isn't helping Wikipedia either. grrrrr... Jumping cheese ^Cont@ct 09:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Then it might be advisable to be more cautious before making accusations. Tyrenius 10:13, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Yo Jumping cheese. I got your back.--Certified.Gangsta 09:42, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Uh...thanxs? =) Jumping cheese ^Cont@ct 09:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

This reminds me of an AfD where people don't know the policy. It seems like many people don't know about WP:OWN and WP:USER and of course WP:NOT. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 14:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

You don't have to be mad to edit here but it help

If anything lends credence to the old adage it is this discussion. Steve block Talk 10:54, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

• Um, thanks, but this was a section for a reason. I give you, {{insanity}}. Steve block Talk 11:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

  Oaky-dokey. —Doug Bell ^talk 12:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

  pig in a pokey! Steve block Talk 17:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Question

Many of you feel these "jokes" are harmless. Say I found one of these jokes, and I fall for it, and I find it disruptive, what do you think of me posting a note below the "joke" saying "The above message is fake, you do not neccesarily have a new message."? HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 22:06, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I placed a warning in a hoax box and the user removed it, obviously wishing to carry on wasting people's time. What was particularly annoying was that I was under pressure with a lot of intense messages and activities happening simultaneously, so I kept clicking the hoax one without thinking. Editors have a right to be able to trust and rely on official notifications. In this instance I found this hoax box to have a very disruptive effect. Tyrenius 22:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

New Page form to fill before publication?

Sorry, this is User:Chris is me, and I just thought of this idea and am too lazy to log in (I'll verify the account later). What if, instead of restricting page creation to 4-day-old users (which allows a lot of junk), we have users check off a little forum under the "edit summary" button? The reason a form would work instead of the header nobody reads is because the page would not be created unless the boxes were checked. Here's some examples:

• I believe that the subject is notable (has been mentioned in multiple reliable sources)
• The subject of this article is not myself, my close friends/relatives, or otherwise someone I am acquainted with. The article is not vanity.
• The article above is not one of an organization or company I work for or am attempting to represent in a positive light. My article is NPOV written in a tone that favors no side.

_{add more}

How about it? Sure, some junk will still get through, but it'd be nice for those users editing in good faith to realize what Wikipedia is not. 69.19.14.35 21:39, 12 February 2007 (UTC) _{This post was made by -- Chris is me (user/review/talk) when he was unable to log in}

Two concerns: First, people who really are just trying to self-promote will just go and check all the boxes regardless. Second, new people will have no clue what "My article is NPOV." means. --tjstrf talk

...but.. wouldn't it cut some of the junk down from good-faith new editors? This way, we don't have to spend as much time assuming good faith (some time, but less) since a good faith editor would see that their article wasn't right for Wikipedia. -- Chris is me _{(u/c/t) 05:27, 13 February 2007 (UTC)}

Only if after completing the form a set number of times you don't get hassled with it anymore. —Doug Bell ^talk 12:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, bad faith editors will ignore the boxes, but it does allow us to know they were already told. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:47, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

In those relatively rare cases where someone has written an autobio in an objective way, or started one & then somebody unrelated rewrote it, the article has usually been kept, in spite of having gotten here illegitimately. I think we would lose some good articles this way. DGG 06:15, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

google-like spell check

I have always loved Google's "spell-check" when searching for a term I do not know how to spell. I use this often before I search for the term on Wikipedia. It would be great if I could simply skip the copy-paste step and have the spell check on Wikipedia. Not being computer-saavy, I couldn't begin to suggest how to do this. Thanks!

This has come up quite a few times. Basically, spell checking has had to be disabled on Wikipedia search for performance reasons. I would suggest that you continue to use Google for spell checking. Tra (Talk) 04:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

If you're using Firefox, I find that the built-in spell check works very well, and it doesn't require any cut-and-paste operations. You can install a wide variety of different languages and switch between them quickly and easily. As an example, I default to Canadian English, but I can "right-click-select" to switch to British English or American English if the article requires it. (Apologies if this sounds like a promo for FF, but the feature does work quite well.) --Ckatz^chat_spy 09:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll back that up. I use the same feature for the same reasons. -- KirinX 16:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

How do I find firefox built-in spellcheck?

For those not in the firefox cult, the Google Toolbar, which works in IE and many other browsers I believe, offers similar text-box spell checking. -Indolences 17:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

How about a built in spell checker when actually editing articles? RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 21:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Firefox 2.0 does this out of the box. MER-C 11:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

And you can also do this with the Google Toolbar. Tra (Talk) 14:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The Google check is helpful (I used it before Firefox added spell checking) - but it unfortunately has a size limit wherein it will only do the first "x" errors in a large group of text. The Firefox one doesn't seem to have that issue. --Ckatz^chat_spy 20:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

What I've done with the Google spell checking for long pages is I either edited the article in sections or I copied and pasted part of the article into another text box and spell checked that. Tra (Talk) 20:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Performance reasons? Is there no way around this? I think it would greatly improve the performance to have a "did you mean..." or spellcheck option, like Google. Aceholiday 17:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

First link on page ought to be changed

The first link on the page to: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/opensearch_desc.php

Gives a file of the type: application/opensearchdescription+xml

It would be far better to link to http://en.wikipedia.org/

Lynx doesn't have a native viewer for this application, and I belive most browsers don't. Falcone 09:15, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Are you talking about the article OpenSearch? Or something else? I can't see anything using that link anywhere... --Quiddity 18:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

He's talking about <link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="/w/opensearch_desc.php" title="Wikipedia (English)" /> - most browsers don't display this, and some can presumably use it to add search box abilities. --Random832(tc) 19:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, the html header metadata. I don't know anything about that.

Anyone else? --Quiddity 19:05, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I think you'll have to ask at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). --Quiddity 19:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Deleted Revisions

Currently deleted edits are retrievable up to June 2004, it is time that we actually start cleaning out the deleted old mainspace page revisions for up to, say 2 years? I was reading up this, I do not believe that anyone would really want to look up for something on mainspace that was previously deleted for more than two years, and I'm sure there are costs for maintaining this database. Over half of what is created today is deleted everyday, and we know that several of them are spam/vanity/copyright violations. Do we really need to keep and retrieve them in five years' time, for example?

At the moment images are not undelete-able for up to June 2006, but in future it's going to take up a lot of space if we don't have a cut-off time. Let's be practical, do we really need to retain imagevios, CSD#I4s, CSD#I5s for more than a year that takes up gigs of space and maintenance costs? - Mailer Diablo 16:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

• Probably not, but it is my impression that most costs go to bandwidth and processor speed, rather than server storage. >Radiant< 17:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

The deleted revisions are not a problem. If they were, the developers would already have pruned them. They have already warned they can purge all deleted revisions without any warning, and that we shouldn't depend on them being kept forever[5]. --cesarb 17:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

We need a Template:Let the developers worry about it for people worried about server load. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

We already have a Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. --cesarb 01:05, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Article evaluation

Recently we´ve been discussing the problam of the quality of the articles on cs and we´ve been talking also about article evaluation like a good tool to support wikipedia´s problem to meet the quality.

The article evaluation would help both readers and users. It can be done by implementation of a tools present in a browsers of a new generation which are based on the evaluation of sites by users. This can be done by transporting this know-how into wikimedia software or by (I am not sure if this is real) a robot which will copy the evaluation from the browser into the article.

But you can say, well the articles of the famous people will reach on top also if they will be in bad conditions because fans will like their design, etc. Thats why I see 3 groups of evaluators: readers, users and specialist. Than each article can be sorted by 3 points of wiev and/or 3 types of evaluations. How to show it in the article, or if to list it in category its another problem. You might say, "but how you will make the group of specialist?" "Will they work for free?". Well, I think lets go and ask: "Mr, Blah Blah, would you evaluate these 20 articles for wikipedia?, please".

Finally I dont know how those browser technically works, but I heard that our friends from wikipedia foundations are working on the new browser using this technollogy - so it might help.--Juan de Vojníkov 17:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm guessing that your last paragraph refers to m:Wikicite, a future system for automated fact citation and checking. While that will certainly help, I'd guess it will take years before a it's in place and widely used.

More generally, Wikipedia has consistently rejected the idea of designating anyone as a "specialist" or giving any editor more power over an article than any other editor. In fact, there is a "fork" of Wikipedia - Citizendium - that is taking exactly the opposite approach to quality, a sort of top-down approach.

Citizendium is apparently no longer a fork of Wikipedia, in that, from what I understand, they have recently purged any articles which were originally created from Wikipedia articles. Corvus cornix 23:15, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

As for reader evaluation of articles (and somehow moving those evaluations to the Wikimedia software), I think Wikipedia prefers to encourage readers to fix articles rather than vote on their quality.

Well I have to study M:Wikicite firstly to be able to tell if I ment this. But I didn´t want to give some editors higher powers. I wanted to ask real scientists to evaluate articles of their speciality.--Juan de Vojníkov 15:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Finally, Wikipedia already has an assessment system. The real question is - after every article has been assessed, then what? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I know. This is just one of several possible ways.--Juan de Vojníkov 15:48, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

TfD structure to match AfD

I would like to propose that the TfD process be restructured to match the AfD process. For example, discussion about an article's deletion is relegated to its own subpage of AfD. The discussion about a template is currently done within the TfD page itself. Therefore, monitoring a template discussion is more difficult than monitoring an article discussion, since Watching the page causes you to see a change made to any template deletion discussion. Making the two processes uniform and consistent will also aid editors who make submissions to both projects. There is some discussion from Jan 2006 and a little bit more recently. - grubber 17:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

• The reason it's set up like this is because the mailflow on AFD is an order of magnitude larger than on TFD. >Radiant< 17:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

  Agreed that the volume on AfD is larger. But, what do we lose by changing the process? I can think of plenty of advantages to the change, however. - grubber 17:35, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

  • What we lose is that both nominating and closing become more complex and less efficient. Note that TFD is already "in line" with CFD, SFD, RFD and DRV, so bringing it "in line" with AFD for standardization is not such a useful argument. >Radiant< 17:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    Opening an AfD isn't that hard, or there wouldn't be a hundred of them every day. I don't know how difficult it is to close an AfD as opposed to a TfD, since I haven't ever done it. But in any case, assuming you're right: We would make two edits harder, but make the actual process of voting, watching, debating, and stating easier on all the other editors who participate. It seems like a useful tradeoff. Further, I would argue that making the whole XfD more uniform would be a good thing. Clearly, because of volume, we can't change AfD. Let's change the others to match it instead. We lose so little and gain so much. - grubber 18:45, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Given the volume of AfD over TfD, I think it makes sense that it behaves differently. That said, I have no real strong feelings about this one way or another... EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:53, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I've done a couple of AfDs nominations over the past year, including one in the past week. I've always been struck by how many steps there are to the process, and how kludgy it feels, but it's definitely gotten better. Still, while I favor, in concept, changing the whole XfD to be consistent with AfD, I can see the reason to oppose the change until it's agreed that the AfD nomination process is as smooth and painless as possible. (XfD closing, on the other hand, tend to be done by those who do it a lot, I'd guess; an extra step or two for such closings wouldn't seem to me to be a big daal.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:25, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

(indent reset) My main issues are: (1) Using subpages (like on AfD) is useful to voters. (2) Making the XfD pages more uniform is a good thing (admins and users would need to know only one procedure to use for any XfD page). I don't have an opinion either way if AfD is the "best way we can think of". If not, let's design the "best way we can think of". Once we have a good method, then let's adopt the procedure to XfD as best as possible. - grubber 20:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I see no reason to change other XfD processes to match AfD at this time. Radiant has my opinions already outlined above. -- nae'blis 21:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

If uniformity of process is what you're after this matches most XfD types and AfD is the odd one. Separate pages for every nom make sense when there is a high volume and therefore a high likelihood of edit conflicts, or watchlisting the page is impractical because of so many changes. But separate pages impose a workload/complexity cost. They definitely make sense for AfD, but I don't think TfD needs them right now. —Dgies^t c 21:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Do you really believe the workload is that much higher? - grubber 15:59, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

• The workload is an order of magnitude higher. Yesterday's AFD had 130 nominations, yesterday's TFD had nine. >Radiant< 16:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The attendance is so limited that any good means of attracting more users would help. Having a similar structure would increase useful cross-references to topics that might be of more general interest. And, how does the use of subpages add to the workload or complexity. It's just section editing.DGG 19:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

When I say "workload", I mean the effort required per entry. Higher volume is higher work, but my question is: Does using subpages increase the amount of effort significantly compared to the status quo? - grubber 20:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it does, yes. It requires at least three edits/nine pageloads to make an AFD (due to the three steps), and most other processes (TFD, RM, DRV, etc) can be done in two edits if you're careful. Also, keeping them on one page makes multiple nominations concomitantly easier to perform. -- nae'blis 20:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Don't think we need to migrate to the AfD procedure unless another Userbox War comes along. Even then, at its peak with the current procedure I could still close up to a hundred TfDs per day. - Mailer Diablo 20:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

  My concern is that TfD's are less editor-friendly. It may be more admin-friendly, but it appears to me that the difference is negligible. - grubber 20:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Don't think there's really a need for subpages on TfD, just increases workload, and it's just really not needed....only when the number of daily TfDs multiplies by about five, then consider. Doubt that'll ever happen , however. Alex43223 ^{Talk | Contribs | E-mail | C} 11:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Criticism link on religion navigational boxes

This is a proposal that has been discussed a little on individual talk pages for certain templates found in Category:Religion navigational boxes. Currently, there are a number of pages dealing with criticisms of specific religions, such as Criticism of Christianity, Criticism of Mormonism, Criticism of Islam, Criticism of Judaism, Criticism of Hinduism and Scientology controversy. Over the past few months, some of these religion's navigational templates have included a link to the corresponding criticism page, and some have removed the link. There were proposals to include the link in religion A's template because it was found on other religions X, Y, and Z, and there were proposals to remove the link in religion B's template because it was not found in other religions W, V, and U. I think it is strange when one group of templates are using another set of templates for precedent, and vice versa. So I am proposing that we include a link to the top tier Criticism page in a religion's navigational box, if applicable. I believe that including a link such as this gives a more holistic view, falls within the NPOV policy (and because it is only one link, isn't giving undue weight). If someone is researching a religion, it can be helpful to read about common criticisms, and therefore I believe it is helpful to be included in the template. I am coming here because a respondent at Template talk:Hinduism small encouraged me. What do other people think about including a critical link in religion navigational infoboxes? Thanks for your consideration.-Andrew c 03:03, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Definitely. We're here to provide knowledge on all aspects of a subject, not just to promote a particular viewpoint desired by the subject itself. Tyrenius 03:08, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm the one who encouraged Andrew c to ask about this here - but what I was suggesting was that he enquire about putting criticism links on all WikiProject templates, not just Religions. I don't think it's a necessary or helpful idea. But if it's going to be a new policy, it should apply to all Projects, not just Religions—for example, Projects templates for Countries and Ethnic Groups (to point out a couple of examples that might be as controversial as Religions) should be included in this policy if it's going to be a new policy. ॐ Priyanath talk 03:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, there are some things that aren't going to have any sort of criticism article, but for the ones that do, we certainly should require a link to them. -Amarkov moo! 03:29, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello, law of unintended consequences. I suppose it's not overly important, as there will never be a policy regarding what one should or shouldn't put in one's infoboxes and nav templates. Opabinia regalis 05:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

It's an arguably valid interpretation of WP:NPOV that you should be, and I don't see any unintended consequences. -Amarkov moo! 05:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

That I should be what?

I suspect the criticism links do belong in the religion navboxes. But the way to implement that is to figure it out with the religions projects and editors, not to try making a general policy on the specifics of navbox contents. Opabinia regalis 06:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

It definitely sounds like they should go in. To not include them for some silly reason would be a whitewash. NPOV and all that ... Cyde Weys 06:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks everyone so far for the comments. I apologize to Priyanath for not fully understanding the comment to me, and not making the proposal more broad. I do not believe that there is any policy that specifically restricts the use of critical links in infoboxes. Template:Abortion has links to pro-life and controversy/debate pages. I also do not see an abundence of criticism pages dealing with the vast majority of infoboxes (take template:Pokémon species, is there a "criticism of Pokénon species" article?) I think we should stick to discussing the religion navigational boxes (unless we have specific examples of other neglected criticism articles).--Andrew c 06:37, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Valid criticism articles should be included in any navigation structure about the topic, and sometimes in "See also" sections for articles that don't have nav templates. If the criticism page is bogus/unfair,. edit or have it deleted, don't sweep it under the rug. That's almost textbook POV editing. -- nae'blis 16:31, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I think including criticism articles is probably required according to policy. Criticism article are already on questionable ground when it comes to content forking. If we kept criticism off the template, we would be permanently severing part of the complete article on each religion. Indeed, any topic with a "criticism" article must include it to maintain unity and avoid the worst problems associated with POV forks.

This is not an endorsement of criticism articles, but if we must have them, they should be well-linked to their subjects. Cool Hand Luke 22:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Places of local interest

There is discussion on its talk page as to whether or not this is a consensually-supported guideline. Comments are welcome. >Radiant< 17:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Main Page - "On This Day" Improvement Suggestion

Hi,

I use the Wikipedia main page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) as my home page. But because I live in New Zealand our timezone means that for more than half of any day (midnight until early afternoon) the "on this day" section is always a day behind NZ time and showing facts for yesterday. At the bottom of the section there are quick links for the last three days (ie "recent days"). What would be great is if you also had a quick link here for "tomorrow", being today for us in New Zealand. ie. currently I have to click "more anniversaries" and find the date from the full year calendar.

Thanks for considering my suggestion.

Regards, Matthew Blair Wellington New Zealand.

You can use Main Page/Tomorrow to see what tomorrow's main page will look like. However, if you are interested in adding a link to this page from the main page, you might want to ask at Talk:Main Page. Tra (Talk) 21:37, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if it would be possible to refine the software to implement this through preferences, though I doubt it'd be a high priority for the developers. See Wikipedia:Bugzilla for how to file a request for a software improvement.--Pharos 02:13, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Redirects of BCE# to BC#

I propose making it so that when one searches a year using the BCE dating sytem it will automatically redirct to the year using the BC method. This is a temporary fix to the BCE/BC arguement and it would allow and pages that use a BCE year to not go to a dead end. This would most likely have to be done through a bot which I have no experince on how to make, seeing as there would have to be thousands of rederect pages made manually. An example would be automatically redirecting a page like 350BCE to 350BC. Comments/suggestions? NeilHynes 20:36, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Why not the other way around... if you search for BC it redirects to BCE? Seriously, I can understand that one system should be used consistently, and if the consensus is to use BC (or BCE for that matter) then having a redirect makes sense... but you will probably get some argument as to which to use. Blueboar 20:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Umm... isn't that already the case? 350 BCE redirects to 350 BC, no?-Andrew c 21:28, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I think he's proposing using a bot or something similar to fill in the missing blanks, like 847 BCE → 847 BC. It's relatively harmless to do so in my worldview, and wouldn't require a consensus here unless someone started objecting. -- nae'blis 23:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I see. I did not realize that there were some pages that didn't have the redirect (but then again 847 BC itself is a redirect page). I think it doesn't really serve a purpose to create all these unused redirects. If it is possible, what might be useful is to have a bot that can find redlinked BCE years, and fix them. Preemptive change seems unnecessary.-Andrew c 23:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

One of the benefits of "unnecessary" redlinks is that they help prevent spurious changes from forming. If someone is writing an article and adds 847 BCE to it, then notices it's a redlink and goes to create the page, it could become an inadvertent content fork of 840s BC. By pre-emptively creating the redirects (in a reasonable manner, obviously I don't mean 50,358 BCE) it can help stave off some of that well-intentioned confusion caused by the BC/BCE thing. -- nae'blis 15:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• One of the benefits of not using these unnecessary redlinks is that they encourage people to diverge from the apparent standard of using BC, in effect reinvigorating the entire debate about that, once again. >Radiant< 15:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

That'd disingenuous and you know it, Radiant; the MOS specifically says that there is no "right" answer to the Common Era/Anno Domini question. In many articles it would be appropriate for the flow/npov of the article to use BCE, while still connecting to the proper article. -- nae'blis 15:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Not at all. Considering that the entire category tree of Category:1st millennium BC uses BC rather than BCE, that makes it an apparent standard, which is all that I meant. >Radiant< 13:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

It could be equally well argued that all BC and AD links ought to be redirected to the standard non-religious form. Neither argument would hold-- As we will never settle what is the right form, there's no point in this. For the very few articles where it matters, redirects can be made of an individual basis. DGG 06:20, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Cut-off point change to {{Wikipedialang}}

With the continuing growth of all the Wikipedias, I feel that the "20,000 articles" mark is too low a cut-off point. I suggest that the point be changed to 25,000 instead, which (separating out those that make 50,000) would look like as follows:

---

This Wikipedia is written in English. Started in 2001, it currently contains 6,910,807 articles. Many other Wikipedias are available; the largest are listed below.

• More than 250,000 articles: Deutsch · Français · Italiano · Nederlands · 日本語 · Polski

• More than 100,000 articles: Español · Português · Русский · Suomi · Svenska · 中文

• More than 50,000 articles: Bahasa Indonesia · Català · Česky · Dansk · Esperanto · עברית · Magyar · Norsk · Română · Slovenčina · Українська

• More than 25,000 articles: Български · Eesti · Hrvatski · 한국어 · Lietuvių · Srpski · Sinugboanong Binisaya · Slovenščina · తెలుగు · Türkçe

Complete list · Multilingual coordination · Start a Wikipedia in another language

---

This seems less cluttered, and adds more value to the Wikipedias that make the mark. There's always more room for expansion!

Please reply at Template talk:Wikipedialang#Cut-off point change, thanks :) Jack · talk · 09:54, Thursday, 15 February 2007

IP Userpages

I think IP userpages should get information known about the IP posted on them, this could prove useful for an admin when determaining how much a block may effect legit editors, ect. For example it could contain whois info, perhaps if it belongs to a lan, or specific computer if know, ect.--RyanB88 18:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

That information's added to the talk page at the moment, when known. There are a lot of IP userpages around at the moment as well (see Special:Prefixindex/User:68. (to take a common IP first number), for instance). --ais523 18:18, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

One can tag a given IP address talk page with info found by clicking the [IP Info] link and copy and pasting the info into the template Template:Ispinfo like so {{subst:Ispinfo|whois results}}. (→Netscott) 18:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps IP pages can automatically be generated and tagged? Koweja 18:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Attribution: Merger of Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research

Wikipedia:Attribution, a proposal to subsume and replace Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research, is ready to be implemented. Please review the document and discuss any problems on the talk page. —Centrx→talk • 23:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposal / RfC: Donation appeal ideas

I'd like us to come up with a better text for the permanent donation appeal to unregistered users than the current one. You can contribute ideas at Wikipedia:Donation appeal ideas.--Eloquence* 04:48, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject namespace

Hi, I'm sure this must have suggested before, but why don't we create a Wikiproject namespace? It's always bugged me how wiki appears twice in the title of projects (three times if you count the url). Wikiproject:Chemistry seems to make so much more sense than Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry, anyone else agree? - Jack · talk · 13:52, Saturday, 17 February 2007

This seems to me to be a good idea. But how would this be implemented? semper fictilis 17:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

In the code that keeps track of namespaces, you would add one more entry. This would definitely be a good idea, given the number of projects we have. Koweja 18:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Currently, its use is discouraged. There are pages that would be in that namespace, but they're all redirects: Wikiproject:Arab-Israeli conflict, Wikiproject:Artix Entertainment, Wikiproject:Artix Entertainment/to do, Wikiproject:Chemicals, Wikiproject:Cities, Wikiproject:Countering systemic bias, Wikiproject:Critical Theory, Wikiproject:Judaism, Wikiproject:Music standards, Wikiproject:Soviet Union, Wikiproject:Television, Wikiproject:Tree of life, Wikiproject:Firearms/to do, Wikiproject:Vietnam War, Wikiproject:WikiProject Painting, Wikiproject: Albums, Wikiproject: Sydney, WikiProject:British Crime/to do, WikiProject:Comics, WikiProject:Super Monkey Ball, WikiProject:Userbox migration, WikiProject:WikiProjects, and WikiProject: The Rolling Stones. Granted, this proposal would require a mass number of page moves. Looking over other Wikipedias, the German Wikipedia seem to use the Wikipedia namespace for it, while the French Wikipedia does have a namespace for WikiProjects (see w:fr:Projet:Accueil), as does the Italian and Polish Wikipedia. So Jrockley, you're not the first to suggest this :) --Gracenotes^T § 19:29, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

While it might seem a generally good idea, it unnecessarily creates a lot of work, for devs, admins, and active users, a cost that I don't think justifies a slight simplification. Besides, the "Wikipedia:" namespace is already considered the "project namespace" - it just does not subdivide inherently into a namespace for the projects. If we really wanted to remove excess "wiki"s, we should remove the "wiki" from "WikiProject". As a social change, I don't think that's likely to happen: names like "WikiProject Novels" sound a lot nicer than "Project Novels", even if you consider the double "wiki" in "Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels". Nihiltres 20:17, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Exactly how many Wikiprojects are there? Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory, (among other places) seems to be the place that should provide this, yet it ain't there, and I'm not entirely sure it knows. I think this may be a quirk that would be very easy to find out, if only there was a Wikiproject namespace. By my count, there are even more redirects beginning with "Wikiproject" (44 in Wikiproject and 58 in WikiProject). I can see this would be a lot of work, but I'll be willing to do what I can, and I'm sure at least one member from each of the wikiprojects will be happy to make the switch for their project. I think simplicity is key to our ultimate goals as a project, and in the future it'll only gonna get harder to make this switch. On a side note, along my travels I found these two violations of policy (here and here) - Jack · talk · 00:37, Sunday, 18 February 2007

Regarding the two violations, on the first I've notified the user to move the page; on the second, I've posted a speedy delete since the user has in fact created a WikiProject and apparently missed this subpage when doing cleanup. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:42, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

This issue came up on the mailing list a little while ago. There didn't seem to be any consensus for change. The namespace "Project:" can't be used as it is already some kind of meta-wiki name for the local Wikipedia space. For instance, going to Project:Village pump will end up at the same place as Wikipedia:Village pump. Trebor 16:47, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge GA with FA? A-Class?

See revised proposal section below

I just wanted to moot some discussion here before I did anything rash and MfD'd WP:GA, but it seems to me from reading the GA criteria against the FA criteria, there is a rapid trend in the continually evolving GA project policy towards convergence with the FA process. The key catalyst that caused me to notice this was the relatively recent strict rules adopted by GA requiring adequate citation for all GAs. It appears to me that the only major substantive difference between the two mechanisms is the approval process; for all other intents and purposes the content requirements are nearly identical.

If this is so, why not consolidate these two units together, and gradually review all GAs, a la Wikipedia:Featured articles with citation problems, for promotion to FA status. Because otherwise all I can differentiate between GA and FA is that one is better for instant gratification.

(edit): I'd also suggest that GA's which fail FA criteria in a merge be re-classified as A-class articles. This means that all articles can be individually assessed at any class level, with only one (final) candidacy step in the process, for FAC.

Thank you for your time, Girolamo Savonarola 22:48, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Seems that a link to Wikipedia:Compare Criteria Good v. Featured is appropriate here.

Generally, I agree with this proposal to merge the two, but I would keep separate criteria for each on the same "guideline". (Why are none of the Featured and Good article pages tagged as guidelines?) —Doug Bell ^talk 23:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 23:49, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

The difference in approval process is a major distinction and quite likely a useful one. The GA process is far more scalable than the FA system, which is never going to assess more than a tiny fraction of the articles on Wikipedia. We should see much quicker results from GA. We haven't thus far, however, for which one can offer two reasons:

1. The GA process is bloated. It is not clear why a central candidate page exists, when all the work takes place on the talk page, but having this page certainly substantially increases the difficulty in nominating articles.
2. Further, for many articles its purpose has been obviated by effective WikiProject assessment systems.

At the moment the GA process is probably too similar to the FA process to be adding much benefit to Wikipedia. As far as a "merger" goes, it's not clear what that would entail, but assuming that we don't want to change the FA process, it must basically mean scrapping GA. I think it would be worth at least attempting to go back to the original, simpler GA system, thus creating a clearer distinction between the processes. Christopher Parham (talk) 01:13, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I oppose any merger; I think there's a definite difference in actual quality, even if it's not expressed clearly in the criteria. Have a look at GAs which have failed FACs to see some of the differences. Trebor 01:52, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

So you just think that nothing whatsoever should be done? Girolamo Savonarola 15:25, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know; I'm not really involved with the GA process (other than putting a couple of articles through). But many Good Articles come to FAC and fail, so there is a definite difference in standards (even if it isn't apparent from the criteria). FACs only work if there is an editor willing to work on the article, and if GAs haven't already been put through FAC then it implies there is not. Trebor 15:51, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't doubt that there is some difference, but I am questioning if it is enough of a difference to warrant the entire GA apparatus. At the current time, I'd say not. I'd merge the two projects as per my original comment, and abolish the GA class. This would benefit the assessment structure as well, since the articles can still be assessed as Stub, Start, B, or A class by a single individual, based on criteria. So I'd presume that most of the GA's which fail FA in a merger would likely be recategorized as A-class. So structurally, the article is individually assessed from Stub thru to A class, and then if the article is deemed good enough, it only has to jump through one candidacy process - the FAC. Much more linear, simple, and less bureaucratic. Girolamo Savonarola 16:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

That sounds less like a merge and more like an abolition of the GA-class and framework, which would warrant an MfD (note I'm not saying I'm necessarily against that, just saying what it sounds like). There has been a slight lack of clarity in the assessment criteria with GA- and A-class being on different scales, and overlapping to a large degree, so it would be good to clear up where they fit in. But a blanket put-through of all GA articles to the (already fairly overloaded) FAC process, regardless of whether there are editors willing to improve them, would be a mistake in my eyes. Trebor 17:54, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• fix, don't merge. The GA idea was to have a quick and unbureaucratic way of assessing articles that are clearly good, without meeting the formal FA requirements. Now, it appears a whole bureaucracy has accreted around GA assessment as well. The solution is to get rid of it, and turn "GA" back into what it was supposed to be. There are many, many articles on WP that are good without being likely to become FA anytime soon. "GA" to my mind is a tool to facilitate measuring of the distribution of quality on Wikipedia. I say, leave FAC as it is, an assessment on the very best on WP, and turn GA back into something simple and unbloated. dab (𒁳) 16:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

That simple process, in my mind, is more or less equivalent to giving an A-class assessment. See my above comment and my revised proposal. Girolamo Savonarola 16:04, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• No merge. The difference between GA and FA is the difference between one set of eyes and several set of eyes. Hence the FA process is more like a fine tooth comb that can get to the nitty gritty assessment pieces. The purpose and benefit of the GA process is that with a single reviewer you will obviously get assessment and feedback much quicker. Of course the quality of that review is dependent on the quality standards that the GA reviewer is upholding. The push towards stricter citation is a positive development because more articles that are actually good are being recognizes and more articles that are substandard are being improved and brought to compliance with simple policies like WP:V and WP:NOR. The GA assessment process is more approachable than the FA process and is a good way for new editors (or editors new to FA) to become familiar with a criteria similar to FA but only have to deal with the feedback of one reviewer. As the overall quality of GA reviews improve then you will see more GAs succeeding at FAC. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

So what would the argument be against simply folding GA into the A-class for assessment, then? Since they both require just one reviewer, and have similar criteria. Girolamo Savonarola 17:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Revised proposal

Here is my revised proposal based on discussions above. There seems to be a view that the GA has become overly hampered down with bureaucracy, and to many extents apes the FA criteria and structure to a high degree, with the most notable difference being the single reviewer of GA versus the community of reviewers for FA. GA also has been a curious question in regards to its somewhat incongruous shoehorning into the assessment classes (it should be noted that the GA class was not originally proposed in assessment).

Given the more rigorous GA standards from the past, its single reviewer characteristic, and the unnecessary bureaucracy, what I propose now is a merge of GA into A-Class assessment. The standards for the two, content-wise, are nearly identical, and like GA, assessment only requires a single reviewer to judge the article against the class criteria. It makes article assessment classes more straightforward, with all classes up to A being solely based on assessment, with a final bureaucratic candidacy process only required for the top distinction, FA. Based on the current criteria, it is likely that most, if not all, of GA-class articles would qualify for A-class easily. It is also much easier to implement than kicking up the current GA's for (gradual) integration into FAC, which has been noted would be a problem without an active editor. Reassessing GA's into A-class would not face this problem.

I look forward to your comments! Thanks, Girolamo Savonarola 18:19, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I would support that in principle, although I'm not really involved with the GA process (you may want to leave a message on GA talk). However, the assessment process is fairly haphazardly applied too, depending on the activeness of the Wikiproject (for instance the MilHist Proj seems to have a multiple-user assessment for A-class; others barely assess at all). Given my lack of familiarity with the issue though, I will see what others think (particularly if they can explain the need for, and differences between, GA and A class). Trebor 18:53, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• We seriously do not need three different classifications for the quality of articles. >Radiant< 13:05, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Since GA has already been shoehorned into the assessment system, perhaps the rating can be repurposed as effectively a 'B+' grade. There is currently too large of a chasm between A-class ratings (which are rare, and have an associated process in some wikiprojects) and B-class ratings (in practice used for a large range of article qualities that meet the general description of 'okay', which is not at all consistent with the rating's description). This classification could imply that the meat of the GA criteria are met (neutral, stable, referenced, reasonably complete) while allowing things like omission of minor content details, mixed referencing styles or minor formatting issues, or some prose problems, all of which (I think) would generally disqualify an article from an A rating.

I'd like to see most of the bureaucratic apparatus of GA scrapped, and what remains repurposed for its original intention: identifying excellent short articles. Current practice seems to be to call almost all short articles 'start' or 'B', on the assumption that they need expansion, but some topics just don't require more than a few paragraphs. Current practice also essentially blocks these articles from FA status, with the odd rare exception for a hurricane article. Whether this assessment class should also become part of the rating system is not obvious, as the existing ratings are not length-dependent and the 1.0 project might be too far along to permit adding or removing ratings at this stage. Opabinia regalis 17:46, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

You want another rating? Frankly, I think some simplification is necessary. The larger chasm (IMHO) seems to be between Start and B-class. I'm not so concerned with whether or not B and A are massively different, so long as the grading scheme offers some clear identifiers (which I believe it already does, for the most part). These aren't real grades, and no one is being judged, so the need to be so precise is actually adverse to the idea of a grading asssessment (especially given that the articles are constantly evolving). It's a very coarse-grained way of tracking the general progress of a group of articles even moreso than it is used to track any individual one. Any more attention paid to how to exactly quantify the ever-shifting state of an article seems like it would only divert energies more properly spent working on the articles themselves.

The idea is to have a coarse-grained and efficient system requiring a minimal amount of effort. Assessments shouldn't require long perusal of a given article - it should generally be obvious on a quick skim. Making more subtle gradations simply adds more time to the assessing editors' evaluations, and furthermore is likely to adversely affect the willingness of many of them to continue assessments, especially if more rules and grades are being added. The only level at which any prolonged effort should exist is the FAC. Thank you, Girolamo Savonarola 17:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes. There are currently six assessment ratings. Two (GA and FA) have separate processes and can't be assigned by an individual assessor. A third (A) is rarely used, and some projects also confine its use to articles that have been reviewed by multiple people. That leaves an individual assessor with stub, start, and B. Since stubs are usually unambiguous, assessors sort articles into start or B. Surprise! We have an encyclopedia full of start and B-class articles. I'm sure it varies between wikiprojects, but I see much larger variations in quality within than between these two rating classes, and a large gulf in quality between B and A.

So if I were designing the rating system from scratch, it would have five levels available to assessors, of which the lowest (stub) is unambiguous, and the highest (A) is regulated by the corresponding wikiproject. (Obviously FA retains its own process.) That leaves an individual assessor with a practical choice of start, B, or B+/GA/whatever, which I suspect would help in distinguishing between 'usable' articles and 'raw material' articles. It also eliminates the problem of what to assign the current crop of GAs (and GA-quality articles) if the GA process is shut down or reformed. I would not agree that all current GAs are A-class, given the way the A rating has mostly been used. (It's possible, of course, that the problem is underuse of/overly variable standards for A ratings.) Opabinia regalis 18:29, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, to be succinct, I believe that another rating is equal to more bureaucracy. If that's the case, then there's no point. I think you also underestimate both what a B article is and what an A is (and would be under this proposal). They should be clearly distinct. And yes, that may mean more clarity on the grading scheme definitions, but that is a lot easier than forcing yet another grade upon everyone. Please also think over my comments above about the process needing to be coarse-grained. I believe that those sentiments were reflected during the actual creation of the assessment schemata. Girolamo Savonarola 18:39, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind, also, that some projects are adopting more well-defined standards for B-Class (e.g. here). Kirill Lokshin 18:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please! This will significantly simplify the overall structure of the various assessment schemes (since they won't be structured as internal → external → internal → external, but rather as internal → internal → external, going outside a project only for the final FAC) and get rid of the GA backlog/bureaucracy/etc. issues at the same time. Kirill Lokshin 18:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Does an assessment from one Wikiproject apply for all? For instance, if WikiProject Biography assessed a military figure as A-class, would that be accepted by MilHist? Trebor 19:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

In general, it depends on the projects involved, and whether they have particular requirements for a particular assessment level. In your specific example, not necessarily, since MilHist has a formal review process for A-Class (it would, of course, be a fairly good indication that the article ought to be submitted to that review); conversely, an A-Class rating from MilHist is often copied by other projects that don't have any sort of formal review. Kirill Lokshin 19:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, that's what I would've thought. I'm just trying to think things through with regards to rating. One advantage to GA is that articles are centrally reviewed, so GAs are roughly the same quality across the project; considering the difference in activeness of Wikiprojects, A-class could end up being applied rather inconsistently. Although maybe that's not a problem, as you could take into account the processes of the project when considering the "authority" of the rating. (Excuse me thinking out loud here.) Trebor 19:39, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

That's true, I suppose. (But GAs do tend to vary quite a bit depending on who's doing the actual reviewing; so I suspect that the consistency is actually pretty similar across both processes.) Kirill Lokshin 19:44, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

With the over-reaching criteria thing, a big problem with that is that discussion is rather difficult to start. Not because there's some group of people forcing GA to go one way with things, but because many people involved don't contribute to the discussions unless something really nasty happens, there's just so many candidates on the list it takes up a bunch of time :/. I for one have some things i'd like to change with the rules so that they'd go back to older, simpler versions, but I dunno how to start the discussion when sometimes people don't pay attention, and often times large chunks of rules get changed based on the discussions of maybe 3 or 4 people. Not that anyone's trying to make things bad on purpose mind you, its just discussion of process isn't very good yet.... Homestarmy 20:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that anyone is acting out of bad faith, but my whole point is that the GA process is massively inefficient and in some ways counterproductive to other larger processes. I believe that it has some merits, but it also had the bad luck to be created at about the same time, but with little true coordination with, the assessment project for 1.0. Had assessment been started a year earlier, I wonder if GA wouldn't have instead been the efforts of people to create more rigid A-class standards. And with regard to consistency of A-classification across different WikiProjects, surely we can all agree that this can be much more easily improved with tighter and clearer assessment guidelines? Girolamo Savonarola 20:34, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The thing is, many of the things making it more inefficient resulted from the 3 to 4 people discussions i'm talking about, and when the changes happened, not many people really said much. If there were more people to talk about things then there's certainly several rules I for one would like to see reverted to earlier versions, when GA wasn't really as inefficient. But when sometimes I propose things and maybe one person responds, (Like when I got the MoS criteria changed) it makes me feel like it would be a bad idea to just do something like that and change rules back when not many people might notice, it already has confused things a good bit in the past when that kind of thing happens. Homestarmy 20:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah... everyone's going to want to get their hard-worked on article to be good, instead of A-class. It's an issue that's occurred to me before.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 17:07, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

This discussion seems to have lost momentum, which is a shame because I think this is worth trying to sort out. Do people have objections to merging GAs into A-class, and think GAs are worth keeping separate? Trebor 16:32, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

No objections to deprecating the GA rating in the assessment scheme, though I would oppose default mass migration of GA to A. That's something for wikiprojects to handle. If the goal is to disassemble the centralized GA bureaucracy, the proposal should be posted there, and probably at WT:FA too. Opabinia regalis 04:30, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I just saw this discussion for the first time! It arises from the fact that the GA level as in the assessment scheme overlaps with B and (mostly) A, leading to ambiguity and confusion. I am proposing to remove the GA-level from the WikiProject assessment scheme, but have WP 1.0 bot read GAs so that WikiProjects have all GAs listed in their "WikiProject Foobar Articles by Quality" worklists. I think that should keep everyone happy and resolve this problem. Please read the proposal and leave comments. Thanks, Walkerma 04:52, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

• I suppose merging A-class with GA-class for these purposes. Considering that "A" and "B" are the only letters that the system actually uses (it uses "Start" instead of "C", "Stub" instead of "D", and nonexistent articles would presumably be "F"), rendering their use kind of arbitrary and potentially opaque (especially to people unfamiliar with the A/B/C/D/F grading scale), it might be worthwhile to replace "A" with "GA" (or perhaps "Good", to mirror "Start" and be more descriptive to people unfamiliar with WP:GA), and to replace "B" with something that is also more descriptive. Perhaps "OK"-class. (Another, related problem that is probably more significant is that "Start" and "Stub" start with the same first two letters; this is obviously a very bad idea.) -Silence 21:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles about ongoing enterprises should be official policy

This should be official policy. It should be self-evident. Let's talk about it. Dino 00:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I will have to look over it. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 00:24, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. It's written in a manner that's very similar to WP:BLP and, in fact, borrows certain elements from that policy. Notice also what I've said on the Talk page. Dino 00:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

But it is not about sensitive personal matters the way BLP is. Surely it would be better to have it as a guideline first, and see if it does remain widely accepted.DGG 06:22, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

BLP does cover sensitive personal matters, such as sexual orientation, rumors of drug abuse and relationship problems. All of this fits neatly under the umbrella of "negative material." Any negative material in an article about any entity capable of taking umbrage, whether a flesh-and-blood human being or a Fortune 500 corporation, must be handled with a consistent, high level of care and scrutiny. Perhaps the best way to achieve a consistent level of care would be to make them part of the same policy. Dino 21:02, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. Current policy should be sufficient. semper fictilis 03:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose I believe any person mentioned in an enterprise article is still covered by BLP, I see no need for this. ^HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 03:56, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Tagging articles without interwiki links

As you know interwiki linking is of a great importance here, there is also a number of articles that don't have interwiki links to other language wikipedias. so, to make it easier to identify these articles so that the contributors will have them in one central location(a category) thus making it easy for them to find them and add the interwiki links when available/possible. that is about the category, about the template(text-graphics), I suppose it will do the same work as stub templates do, encourging people(users) to contribute, but this time, contribute by finding and adding the interwiki links. example of the template to be added:

"This article don't have links to articles in other languages, please 
help wikipedia by introducing the appropriate interwiki links"

[[Category:Articles lacking interwiki links]]

By the way, this job is to be done using a bot(already have it), the source of uninterlinked articles is the output of Interwiki Robot(pywikipedia).--Alnokta 05:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think a template is necessary, but I see nothing wrong with a category.--§hanel 06:41, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Why do you assume that every article ought to have interwiki links? As the largest Wikipedia, we certainly have much content that others don't currently. It is also quite possible we will have content that other wikis don't want (either because they decide not to include the content, e.g. local differences in notability, or because they divide their coverage up differently so that there is no directly analogous page). I don't like the idea of adding meta-categories (i.e. categories intended for editors rather than readers) when there is a likelihood that some of those categories will never be removed. Dragons flight 06:51, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

huh..Why do I assume? if an article is compatible in one wikipedia and not the other one, then I doubt if it really deserves to stay!! .. when an article is to be written in one encyclopedia the I'm fairly sure that it should be available in every language.. NO! it isn't quite possible that other language wikipedias won't want this article or that to be added to their language.. don't you understand..if an article deserves to be on the encyclopedia then it will be on it.. don't tell me about independence of each pedia and all that talk(that differences are in the administration of each wikipedia, I assume you know that).. so what if the template don't get removed after a year? what harm can do a one line at the end of the article?.. people don't agree these days for the sake of it, not for the subject!.. okay.. you said your opinion..where are the other opinions? I don't do a thing unless people agree upon it(not all of them ofc)..--Alnokta 23:55, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The largest other wikipedias have less than half as many articles. You're going to be tagging hundreds of thousands of articles for no good purpose. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:59, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

This Category idea is really one of the best ever, at least until we get special:interwiki. --Tarawneh 04:46, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Have you compared the number of articles in the English WP and the other languages? See the bottom of the Main Page. (SEWilco 04:51, 19 February 2007 (UTC))

This idea makes absolutely no sense to me. In addition to the concerns expressed above, what about articles that are missing numerous interwiki links but do contain one (or a small number)? They wouldn't be tagged. —David Levy 04:55, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

All right, I won't do anything :)..but you have to admit that all your answers were quicky answers to not let leave a probability of the idea messing with the pedia..a kind of keeping it safe.:)--Alnokta 14:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Not really convinced by the tagging idea (the category idea sounds reasonable as expressed here so far) however I have noticed on occassion that IP editors (or otherwise) will sometimes inappropriately add native language links to a given English article (ie: links that don't offer anything that isn't already covered in the article or that don't provide essential info not found anywhere else except in the foreign language). It would be helpful if there could be a sort of red link for interwiki articles to thereby encourage article development say in the top 25 languages of the world. (→Netscott) 15:11, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I think we're talking about the links which appear in the left column, which are only intended to be links to corresponding articles in other languages. Those other articles are likely to have different quantities of material. Adding links within the article (such as in "See also") is a different situation. (SEWilco 17:22, 19 February 2007 (UTC))

Right, it would be good to provide a red link style indicator for missing interwiki links on the left hand side to indicate (obviously targetted to folks who communicate in those languages) the need for other language versions of the article. (→Netscott) 17:26, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I can tell whether there are links to languages which I speak without needing red links. (SEWilco 03:39, 20 February 2007 (UTC))

Your point being? This is not about you, but about other folks who might happen to communicate in another language coming to Wikipedia and being able to notice that a particular article available in English isn't available in that other languge they communicate in which would thereby encourage them to start one. (→Netscott) 03:45, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

That'd be a major software change, because wikis don't talk to each other to check if link targets are valid. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:42, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

That's true... I don't know how major it would be with BOTs keeping track of things a once daily sweep to check for newly created articles and change interwiki "red links" would be all that was needed. (→Netscott) 03:45, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

User Statistics

Would it be possible for wikipedia to create a user statistics section. What i mean by this is a section on the toolbar that tells a registered user, which pages he has helped to edit, how many pages a user has read and from which topics, a history of pages the user has read, most viewed pages by the user.

For example it could look at very basic like this.

Section	Edits	Views
Medicine	25	260
Computer Games	60	4920

Viewcounts aren't kept due to performance reasons. Edit counting is not encouraged. However, there are tools to break down edit count by most edited pages, by namespace, etc. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 10:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Right, see Wikipedia:Tools#Edit counters and Wikipedia:WikiProject edit counters. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:29, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose for adminship, this user hasn't made enough edits relating to the history of Ancient Persia. All admins should be familiar with that period in time and its nobility. >Radiant< 13:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The proper response to that would be This argument has been identified by one or more editors as constituting an arbitrary demand for a shrubbery. Please resolve this by clarifying the basis for the objection in canonical policy. Expanding the requirement to include chopping down the tallest tree in the forest WITH A HERRING may be met with additional mockery and scorn.. --Random832(tc) 13:51, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

    There's a good tool at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate that goes through a user's contributions and lists which pages in each namespace they have made the most edits to, which can often show up where their interests lie, so you can see whether they're interested in Ancient Persia or some other topic. Tra (Talk) 17:32, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Edit endmatter link?

The last heading with an [edit] link is often "See also", "External links", "References", or the like. However, in the source this heading is often followed by other end matter, and editing this end matter by clicking the [edit] link produced by the last heading results in a misleading edit summary. Examples of such end matter taken from a few random articles:

{{start box}}
...
{{end box}}
{{English Monarchs}}
{{Austria-bio-stub}}

[[:Category:English monarchs]]
[[:Category:Musicians who left Nazi Germany|Krips, Josef]]

[[es:Enrique VII de Inglaterra]]

Could we introduce a dummy heading, say ==Endmatter==, to be included in the source immediately following the stuff logically belonging under the last proper heading? It should be suppressed by the wiki software, appearing as an [edit] link, but not as a proper heading, and not in the table of contents. Maybe it should not appear as a heading in the source, but as some sort of internal link template, and perhaps it should appear not merely as [edit], but as [edit endmatter]. In any case, the edit link should open everything following it in the source for editing, and produce an edit summary like /* end matter */. One could also consider introducing a similar dummy heading or internal link template appearing as [edit lead section] or [edit top matter], opening everything down to the first heading for editing, and producing a corresponding edit summary.

If such internal link templates are created (or already exist - I don't really know), or if such wiki software modifications for suppressing dummy headings are introduced, it would be left to the editors (perhaps assisted by suitable bots) to introduce the required changes to the source of our 1645523 exitsting articles.-- 10:24, 18 February 2007 Noe

That sounds like a useful idea. Not sure how to make it though. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 17:14, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Submit it as an enhancement request in Bugzilla. (SEWilco 17:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC))

It's kind of in between a policy thing and a technical thing. I thought this might be the place for a short discussion about the relevancy of this idea, before possibly submitting it to the technicians. So I'd still be happy for more feedback here...--Niels Ø (noe) 19:07, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

magic wikipedia button.....

Programmers unite make a button which can be allowed to float on top of all text on any website when we read a word which we need clarification on we highlight the word and a wikipedia page appears with the definition/encyclopedia info. on that word especially useful in science

This isn't something that Wikipedia developers will use their time to create. Try finding some programmers to help you somewhere else - the coding can't be too hard. If you're on Mac OS X, I happen to know that there exists a Dashboard widget which calls up Wikipedia pages quickly without a browser. Try to find something like that. Nihiltres 23:50, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

firefox already has this feature. Highlight any piece of text, rightclick, and you can search for it in the engine of your choice, including wikipedia. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

If you use the conquery extension, you can search in multiple engines. I have mine set to display "google" "dictionary.com" and "wikipedia" in the normal right-click context menu. --Quiddity 21:30, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Well there is that One click Answers.com Wikipedia edition thingy for Windows and Mac, that does almost exactly that, except you'll end up on Answer.com's mirror of the page rater than on Wikipedia proper. Personaly I just use a custum search in Opera, so any words I type into the location bar prefixed by "en" gets looked up in Wikipedia. --Sherool (talk) 07:50, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Wiki-Lyric

I'm not sure if this is even the right place to suggest it, or whether I can even suggest it, but a sister project which encompasses lyrics to songs would be quite useful. Considering every single lyrics site on the net so far is riddled with pop-ups, it could be a valuable asset. Clockwork Apricot 00:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this probably couldn't be done as most song lyrics are copyrighted. Tra (Talk) 00:32, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

There are already a couple. Linking them might not be kosher due to copyright, but just google for lyric wiki. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 00:36, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Or check out LyricWiki. -SpuriousQ (talk) 06:39, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Children and young editors

This isn't about young people accessing Wikipedia and possibly being corrupted. This is about when they click the "edit this page" link.

A while back I was reverting some edits by User:Ronleilaraymondfan (born 1996), and I had noticed that on the talk someone had slapped a {{test4article}} before realized that they were dealing with a kid and therefore toned it down and added a {{welcome}}.

Now, I'm noticing some edits by User:Fbs. 13 that require reverting or revising (e.g. factual errors, removal of content in talk pages), and the person is apparently 12.5 years old. If the person was older and writing like this, I'd honestly start slapping test templates left and right, but I feel hesitant in laying the smackdown on some kid who I think knows a lot less and is less mature than he believes.

So maybe we really should have some disclaimers when users register. I can't say that banning young editors is a good idea, but it seems that sometimes they doing stuff more associated with vandals, but we can't really slam on some kid who doesn't know any better, right? I'm sure if I was still 12 years old, I'd think I know enough to contribute and would end up doing a lot of stuff like this. Kelvinc 03:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

As someone who was 12 not that long ago, they aren't as clueless as you think. If a 12 year old repeatedly vandalizes, they aren't doing it in good faith any more than someone else would be. And what kind of disclaimers would we put, anyway? "You may be blocked if you do bad things"? -Amarkov moo! 03:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Amarkov, I was a real shithead at that age, I deserved to be blocked when I did, and I did not cry. ^HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 03:44, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm worried by an under-13 editor including his real name and age on his user page. I think that might even make Wikipedia run afoul of some sort of US laws. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 18:37, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

• We want editors of a certain maturity, not a certain age. If a ten-year-old is productive rather than a poopoohead, great. If a thirty-year-old is a poopoohead rather than productive, block them. Easy enough. >Radiant< 13:01, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the tone of {{test4article}} is harsh. But, look:

{{test1article}}

Hello, I'm [[User:{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}|{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}]]. An edit that you recently made seemed to be a test and has been reverted. If you want to practice editing, please use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on [[User talk:{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}|my talk page]]. Thanks!

{{test2article}}

Please refrain from making test edits in Wikipedia pages, even if you intend to fix them later. Your edits have been reverted. If you would like to experiment again, please use the sandbox. Thank you.

{{test3article}}

Please stop making test edits to Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism, which, under Wikipedia policy, can lead to being blocked from editing. If you would like to experiment again, please use the sandbox.

{{test4article}}

You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you create an inappropriate page.

There's a progression of these things. And, since AIV requires a sequence of warnings, if no-one adds a last warning they'll never be blocked. If some leeway should be given in certain cases, it should be given regardless of age. --Random832(tc) 13:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I would say we should stop caring so much about the age and more about if are they helping or harming Wikipedia. (In case you wanted to know, I am 15) Captain panda In vino veritas 03:11, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I do not support discrimination against the age of users. I was 14 when Wikipedia began in January 2001; I discovered it at 17 in early 2004. However, as with all new users, they should be guided into making constructive edits instead of ones that violate Wikipedia's major policies such as WP:ATT and WP:NPOV.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 17:13, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

We already have a policy about "biting the newcomers". IMO, if an editor comes here looking to create trouble, whatever their age, they deserved to be disciplined. For a child, this can actually be quite productive, as being kicked in the butt early often means that they will shy away from undesirable behavior permanently. They may not return until they are older, more mature, and able to apperciate why they got "spanked", but they is actually what we want in a case like that!

I can't remember the name of the person, but there was an excellent tennis player who was always emotionally somewhat out-of-control and who would even shout at the referees if he disagreed with a call. One day, a referee chose to penalize him, the player got ruder, and the next thing he knew the referee had booted him from the match. (Actually, the referee declared the next game to be forfieted, but that gave the set and match to the opponent.) Afterwards, the player calmed down, and later said that looking back, it was a shame that noone had dared to stand up to him earlier, and gotten him to be more mature earlier. The point is that being tough early on someone can actually do some real good, and people should not shy away from doing so when it is needed, especially in the offender is a child. --EMS | Talk 20:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

John "You cannot be serious!" McEnroe ;) (see 4th paragraph at John McEnroe#Final years on the tour). --Quiddity 21:35, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Good point! A good spanking puts a child in order. If any user is bad, then they need a spanking. Hopefully, they will repent. Captain panda In vino veritas 05:27, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Watch Users

This is a feature request that will help vandal patrollers. Currently you can only watch changes made to an article. What I propose is to add the ability to ‘watch’ a user or ip. In this way, when you have spotted some vandalism you can add it to you watch list and keep an eye on it for a few days to see if the vandalism is recurrent.

Currently you could improvise this with some of the third-party tooling some of the patrollers use, but it would be nice to have integrated.

What do you think about this, would it be a helpful addition? Sander123 12:37, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The bot pkgbot on the IRC channel #vandalism-en-wp has the concept of "blacklisted users" (all their edits are immediately reported) and "greylisted users" (like blacklisted, except it's automatically maintained and consists of users who were recently reverted). You can read more here: WP:CUV/Bots#Lists_of_users. It might still be nice though to have your own user watchlists for watching edits of friends as well as vandals that you directly associate with, and if anyone's concerned about privacy, it wouldn't reveal anything not available already through contributions. Deco 21:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I've wanted something like this before; but the problem is that it would ease wikistalking. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 21:20, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The privelage of watching users could be limited to admins to prevent this. Watching users would mostly apply to admins anyways. Captain panda In vino veritas 03:49, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I would love this option, I see not need to limit this to admins, some of our best vandal fighters are not admins. Also, all the information is already available for those who wish to wikistalk, and this feature would make such stalking easier to detect and track. No new information is being made available, just in a more convenient manner. ^HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 03:51, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

That works for me. I was just trying to get the good of the watching users but trying to limit wikistalking. Captain panda In vino veritas 03:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikistalking is a bit independent from this, I guess. If you want to follow any particular user you can just bookmark his contributions page. The problem is, I might want to follow 10 ip addresses that are vandal only, but without the inconvenience of having to check my bookmarks every day. Sander123 09:07, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject user script's script page has a script called 'user watchlist', which might do what you want. --ais523 09:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't work on many platforms. Won't work with anything but IE, and doesn't work on my W2K even with IE. — coelacan talk — 22:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is a bit buggy. I might also add that people living to the east of the Greenwich Meridian are likely to see less results than people living to the west, due to a bug in the way it deals with timezones. It also doesn't work very well if you use it very soon after midnight, for similar reasons. Tra (Talk) 22:45, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Exporting articles to PDF

I think we should export articles to PDF. Does that sound good to anyone? - Patricknoddy 13:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

That sounds hard on the servers. However, anyone can download Wikipedia's database and do it, as the license is free you could even sell the results. ^HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 13:11, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

If you are on Mac OS X, you can export to PDF. Go to File Menu and select Print. On the Print dialog you will see a PDF button in th bottom left corner. Click on it and select "Save As PDF". Voila!—Perceval 03:04, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

If you use Windows, download PDFCreator which lets you easily convert anything into a PDF. Koweja 18:51, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

What I mean is that like maybe we should create like a WikiProject-type group of editors to transport articles to PDF. - Patricknoddy 20:40, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

This is the worst idea I have ever heard. PDF is not fit for human consumption. It's a printer format. It should be used as a printer format, and nothing else. Raul654 17:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Disagree. I have in the past submitted reports in PDF as most people do not have PDF editors - making it almost read only on Windows computers. Thus, it was hard to lift your report or edit it to suit another purpose. I, however, disagree with exporting articles unless it is for personal usage. Ronbo76 05:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

So? What if someone wants to say, print it? ^HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 05:29, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Then they can use one of the methods mentioned above! Or use the "printable version" link in the toolbox.

Having editors/processors spend time exporting every diff of every article into PrettyDumbFormat is wasteful... --Quiddity 19:07, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

A helpful suggestion

A helpful addition to Wikipedia would be a "Did you mean" response like Google has for misspelled words. Just a thought. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.93.149.135 (talk • contribs).

Regretfully, this suggestion is not possible to implement for performance reasons. It's probably best that you just use Google to search Wikipedia, not only for the spellcheck but because the Wikipedia search function is nowhere near as useful or thorough in what it picks up. --tjstrf talk 15:29, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunatly there are no great freeware search applications, and the Foundation can't afford to use Google's. However, if you add "wikipedia" as part of your search string, then it will almost always return the wikipedia page as the first result. Koweja 18:49, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Better yet, use site:en.wikipedia.org to only search the domain. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:07, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Even better - add Henrik's Google search (User:Henrik/sandbox/google-search) to your monobook.js file. Works great! --Ckatz^chat_spy 03:41, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Matching entries on the history page

What I think would be very handy on a history page is a method that shows what past entries match the current entry. That way you can tell at a glance if the current entry had been reverted and to what prior date (without necessarily having to trust the comments). So if the matching pages could be hilighted in some manner (perhaps through the background color) it would save having to do as many page comparisons to check for vandalism. That would greatly speed up page watch checks. Thanks! — RJH (talk) 15:36, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

P.S. To save compute time, the required information could be stored whenever a true page revert occurs. — RJH (talk)

Probably checking just a few (five or less?) prior versions would get 90% of the cases; maybe even checking just the last two would get the vast majority. Even then, I'd worry about a bit about additional server load (yes, I know about Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, but still ... ). Perhaps it should only check if there is an automatic edit summary ("AES" to start the edit summary) or the edit summary starts with "rv" or "re"? (I do agree that this would be useful.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:54, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, a check of the last five or so cases would be sufficient in most cases. That would be beneficial. — RJH (talk) 16:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive#Add_a_.22reverting_vandalism.22_checkbox_to_the_editor_screen Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

All Wikipedia templates should use small icons instead of large boxes: what do you think?

I just created {{Original research2}} with a small icon, which I think should replace {{Original research}} for the fact that large tags are ugly, bloated and self-referential, among other things, and really do marr the way Wikipedia looks sometimes. If you see what I've written on my user page as well as this discussion based on this essay, I suggest the creation of more such 'small icon' templates (which I will attempt to do if people think this is a good idea) and replacing all large templates at the top of pages using bots, which I don't know how to use and would greatly appreciate if someone made a bot to replace the tagged templates with the icon templates, so that all pages using the {{Original research}} tag would have that changed to {{Original research2}}, for example, although all templates using tags at the top of pages should ideally in my view be replaced with ones with small icons, of course. I'd really like to see this change the way Wikipedia looks for the better, but I thought I'd put it to users here for discussion.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 03:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

You're taking this too far. Minor issues like Current Events and Semiprotection could stand to have less prominent warnings at the top, but we need something more noticeable than a little icon there for tagged articles with significant issues, and we don't want to hide the fact that our pages have issues when we know about it. People shouldn't go into articles full of biased language or original research without a warning beforehand, thinking they're wikipedia's best work, we need a warning to tell them "yes we recognize there's a problem, watch out for it, and we're working on it." Icons or little single line notices would be fine for current events and semiprotection , but serious warnings like POV, OR, and other major content issues should be the first thing a user reads. A neater cleaner appearance, achieved by sweeping serious problems under the rug, isn't worth it. It's like taking down all the warning signs around a big spill or construction zone because they're ugly. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Further, using an icon gives absolutely no information about why the tag was added or what it means. We need the talk page link, at least. If you want something less prominent and more helpful, add {{or}} or {{sectOR}} to the specific parts you're concerned with, which both takes away the tag from the top and tells people where the problem is. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:39, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

You can look over the icon and the caption that comes when you hover over it explains everything. This could be told to new users, in some way. If any more icons are created, we'll have to work out a way in which icons don't cover each other up, too.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 04:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Unviable. Hover boxes are both difficult to spot and a browser-specific feature. And the boxes are there for unregistered readers as much as anyone, to whom we have no prior opportunity to tell these things. Deco 06:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

A box generates not only a visual feedback, but also a logical division: you must read everything inside this box to get a concept and is, in itself, conclusive, regardless of other boxes around. The icon has a main drawback: it does not give immediate feedback (the user must hover the mouse there). We want to make it public, in the most easier way, that the article has some problem. A small icon does not give the same information as a ugly purple box. -- ReyBrujo 04:20, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Your points do have some validity certainly, but I urge you to read User talk:Shanes/Why tags are evil and tell me specifically why that essay is wrong.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 06:21, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Because it doesn't talk about content-related tags at all. I agree with the rant entirely (especially about spoilers), but tags that mention potential problems with the content of an article should be front-and-centre so people are aware of the problems before reading. Fagstein 06:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Regardless, I've mentioned this whole idea to WikiProject Templates.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 11:03, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the small icons on the article pages are an improvement over the big template messages. Too often, the big template messages are used as an article-defacing weapon among editors to display their disagreement over that article. The talk page of an article is the place to discuss and inform each other of our concerns in order to improve an article, that includes maintenance and cleanup tasks (and templates in my opinion). It’s of course good to inform the reader of those concerns as well, but we don’t have to scream it out loud to them with big ugly colorful templates. The icons suffice and keep the layout of an article acceptable. --Van helsing 11:16, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I think top-tags that inform the reader about an article having serious problems with factuality or bias are fine. So, tags like {{TotallyDisputed}} and {{POV}}, are important enough to put on top to inform and warn the readers. But in general we're using the tags too often now and in cases where a simple suggestion on talk would be much more appropriate. {{wikify}}, {{Uncategorized}}, {{Cleanup-rewrite}}, {{Copyedit}}, {{Grammar}}, {{Citation style}}, to name just a few, are all meant well, but they are rather confusing and distracting, and outright irrelevant to the 99% who don't even know what the word "wikify" means. They just want to learn about some part of European history or a poet or a disease. The articles should be about the subject or topic, not about Wikipedia or even about the subject on Wikipedia. Pick any article that isn't featured, and I'll have no problem in finding a tag that covers whatever flaw the article has that keeps it from being featured. We have tags for every flaw now. But do we really want a million articles to start with a big framed self referencing box? I hope not. We should keep improvement-suggestions on talk in my opinion, but as a compromise I'm fine with making most of these tags into icons. Editors will quickly learn what the icons mean, while they will be easy to ignore for those 99% who don't care about editing. Shanes 14:13, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Totally agree! Isn't one of the main benefits of those tags that they also categorize the page? I think well-intended non-wikipedians fix grammar and do minor copy-editing whenever they see such problems. I'm very sceptical that when seeing a {{copyedit}} sign, they will stop and copy-edit the entire page, so it makes sense that any notices intended for maintenance should be very discrete. However, as said before, non-compliance tags are very important to even the casual reader. --Merzul 18:34, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, at least some people seem to be in favour of my icons now.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 18:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The whole point of such templates is to be noticed - a tiny icon in the corner won't be noticed, so you might as well just remove the template completely (and manually add the category). I think the templates serve a useful purpose, though, so I don't think they should be removed. --Tango 18:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Suggesting improvements to articles is good, and I can understand why you want them to be noticed, but drawing attention to your suggestions by putting them smack on top of articles is bad. You should use the talk page for things like that. That's what we have talk pages for. We would like the articles to be about the topic only. The style manual states that articles should start with a lead section explaining that topic, not with a self reference about that article on Wikipedia. Shanes 19:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Tango and Nightgyr. Plus, I dislike the icons that are in the top corner already, and wouldn't want to see more. --Quiddity 18:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

It's far too easy to completely miss seeing icons that are in the corner of a page already - I can't remember the number of times I didn't realize an article was sprotected until I clicked Edit. Per arguments above, cleanup and other maintenance templates are intended to be noticeable - if someone finds them ugly, hopefully that'll be incentive to do something to the article to merit removing it. — PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 02:44, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

New pedophile policy

I have created a proposed policy on Wikipedia's attitude towards pedophile editors here. Wikipedia is listed as a "Corporate sex offender" at Perverted-justice.org, and I felt we needed to properly lay out our position. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 04:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate this effort, and think that it may be worthwhile to clarify these issues. However the POV of Perverted Justice should not determine our policies. We can decide them on our own. -Will Beback · † · 05:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Who is "Perverted Justice" and why should we care what they think? --Cyde Weys 06:07, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Cybervigilantes, evidently. Deco 06:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Oooof, no thank you then. Vigilantes scare me almost as much as the people they're supposedly "protecting" us from. --Cyde Weys 06:52, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Seriously. They're out to paint people in the most sensationalist light possible and structuring policies around a reaction to them would be horribly broken. I'm pretty sure that cases involving this are rare enough to be handled on an ad hoc basis. The snopake case had some related issues, but it was more creepy than outright pedophilic. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 09:50, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't find their coverage of neither Wikipedia nor Blogspot particularly sensationalist. (I didn't read anything else). I doubt if Wikipedia, and the same is probably true about Blogspot, can do anything about this issue without sacrificing other values, but the criticism should not be brushed away as sensationalist. --Merzul 15:11, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't find their coverage of neither Wikipedia nor Blogspot particularly sensationalist. Except that they are lying. They state in the Blogspot description that "advocating sex with children [is] an illegal act in the United States," but it's not; as long as you're not calling people to action, it is protected free speech. That's called sensationalism. Ashibaka (tock) 05:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Is Perverted Justice the people who hack into other people's computers on the off chance of finding incriminating images on them? Corvus cornix 19:15, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Suing Vandals

From the Computer Misuse Act 1990:

3(1) A person is guilty of an offence if a) he does any act which causes the unauthorized modification of the contents of any computer; and b) at the time when he does the act he has the requisite intent and the requisite knowledge.

3(2) for the purposes of subsection 3(1)b above the requisite intent is an intent to cause a modification of the contents of any computer and by so doing a) to impair the operation of any computer; b) to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer; or c) to impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data.

3(3) the intent need not be directed at a) any particular computer; b) any particular program or data or a program or data of any particular kind; or c) any particular modification or a modification of any particular kind.

3(4) For the purpose of subsection 1b above, the requisite knowledge is knowledge that any modification he intends to cause is unauthorized. 3(5) it is immaterial for the purposes of this section whether an unauthorized modification or any intended effect of it of a kind mentioned in subsection (2) above is, or is intended to be, permanent or merely temporary.

Thus my question is, do the policies and guidelines regarding the production of Wikipedia content make deliberate vandalism unauthorised? If so, I believe that vandals operating from the UK are guilty of a crime under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. If not, I suggest the Wikimedia Foundation explicitly unauthorises deliberate vandalism. Perhaps suing the worst of these offenders, will cause most to stop (I doubt it would even get that far and they'd stop after being sent the first legal letter).

I also wonder what laws in America prevent computer misuse and how they might be applied. Constructive criticism and support of my idea welcome. Note before you reply, that I'm not suggesting we sue people as soon as they put one foot wrong or dscourage newbies from discovering Wikipedia. --Seans Potato Business 15:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Question. How do you intend on suing any vandals without blatantly disregarding our privacy policy and tracing people's IPs to obtain personal information? -Amarkov moo! 19:42, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Three simple letters: N.L.T. (→Netscott) 19:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that you are proposing to hit a fly with a sledge hammer. Only the most persistent and egregious cases are worthy of this type of action. Many of the lesser vandals are schoolchild pranksters who would be as chastenned by being called into the principal/headmaster's office as by being dragged into a court. Also, we first need to remove as much of the allure of vandalism from this site by somehow making it so that an act of vandalism is not immediately seen by the world at large. IMO, this failing on our part makes us an "attractive nuisance", and would weaken any case that we care to bring.

The above aside, I also have some responses to the other editors responding here. On "privacy": The right to anonymity is associated with good behavior on the part of the individual. We do not feel that murderers and other criminals have a right to have their identities hidden and kept from being connected to their crimes. I would extend the same reasoning to vandals here. As for NLT: I most certainly feel that legal threats should not be made on this site by anyone for any reason. However, that does not mean that an attorney working for the Wikimedia Foundation cannot send a letter to someone known to be a vandal seriously threatening to initiate legal action.

So I would personally keep the door to legal action open, but unless you can get a prosecutor to file charges against someone, you are looking at spending thousands of dollars on each lawsuit. I really thing that Wikimedia can spend its better elsewhere. --EMS | Talk 20:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem is, the privacy policy does not say that. It states that personally identifying information will not be released publicly, except under six specific conditions, none of which include suing vandals. And that aside, can you imagine the negative press if the Foundation did decide to sue a vandal? Even if they technically could, it won't happen. -Amarkov moo! 20:09, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

According to the statute you posted, there is no need to sue anyone, since the offence is a criminal matter. The Wikimedia Foundation doesn't even need to instigate the process; any Wikipedia user or editor could theoretically contact the police (in the jurisdiction where Wikipedia's servers reside and/or in the jursidiction of the vandal) as a private individual and ask them to conduct an investigation. Finally, note that in many cases this could be done without violating our privacy policy, as contributions from anonymous IPs are logged and published, and because some vandals freely post their own personal details or other identifying information.

Now, I'm not arguing that anyone should report vandalism to the police; I'm just addressing some of the misstatements and misinterpretations that others have made in this thread. —Psychonaut 19:52, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Posting again about summary style...

I have used Wikipedia for a very long time and recently started to contribute in a more addicted manner, the one thing that annoys me most is the large amount of inconsistencies and poor quality articles that result from splitting of articles into sub-articles on the English Wikipedia. In general, it is probably a Good Thing, but there are serious failings in maintaining this, I posted on the assistance page if there are any projects that deal with this, and nobody has responded. Am I the only one who thinks this is a pervasive problem, or would anybody be interested in doing something about it? --Merzul 15:29, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm... I found discussion about possible technical solutions at Wikipedia:Transclusion, and the many links to essays and discussion; so I have stuff to read, but is there any maintenance project that deal with these issues? --Merzul 16:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

An example of where it is done well, is the article on Charles Darwin. DGG 07:11, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Wow, and {{main}} and {{detail}} are used as they were intended, that's refreshing ;) --Merzul 10:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure though what is the right use of {{main}}, but I'm watching WP:SS and that might be the right place to discuss this whole issue. Wikipedia talk:Summary style might need some attention for other reasons as well. --Merzul 10:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedans by year categories

I have started a discussion at Wikipedia:User categories for discussion#Wikipedians born in (YEAR), as the existing actions have been inconsistent and ad-hoc, and recently prone to wheel-warring and POINT. I think the time has come to seek an overarching consensus on this issue. Crossposted to VPP. --Random832 16:25, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Userbox migration request template

How about a template for proposing userboxes to move to the user sapce per the Userbox migration? - Patricknoddy 21:07, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Currency/Money tags and automatic conversion/inflation adjustment?

(copied from the help desk)

I'm sure this has come up in the past but I can't seem to find any of those previous discussions.

I was thinking that a lot of articles contain references to sums of money and many of those are historic. It would be great if there was a currency tag where the editor can input the amount, type and date of the currency and the wiki would automatically convert that to present day US/EU amounts while still displaying the original amount. This could be done pretty easily with a lookup table with inflation and exchange rates for various popular currencies. -Shaocaholica 21:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... agreed, a lookup table would be handy for that. Unfortunately, wikis aren't good at making lookup tables (at least not the sort the page parser can read) -- if we do it on-wiki, it'd have to be done with an army of meta-templates. I probably know enough about templates to set it up, if I can get the methods down, although (funny thing) I don't know enough about currency exchange to know the methods -- I'd need at least a crash course in getting that done. However, this sort of proposal should probably be run past the community, before being implemented; the village pump is as good a forum as any (if nothing else, they may be able to direct you to any prior discussions, if they do exist). – Luna Santin (talk) 20:01, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I happen to be someone who's interested in both currency and template. Perhaps I can help. But I'd like to ask some questions first. What is the resolution of this historical exchange rate? (daily? monthly? yearly?) How is it stored in wiki? How do you want to update them? bot? oanda.com has daily historical exchange rate, but only for a few recent years. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 04:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Wonderful--I think for out purposes annual would be sufficient resolution; It would be nice to go back as far as possible, but I know just enough to be aware of the really difficult problems here. DGG 07:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

My comment (eg) the few times that this has come up is that it's really not a good idea. Historical "equivalent values" are very much an art, not a science; there's half a dozen different methods you can use, depending on what the thing being measured is and how much it was, and the results can easily vary by up to an order of magnitude or more; even done by hand, a large number of the equivalent values we have in articles are just plain wrong (usually using a consumer-price index to calculate something that's a sizable fraction of GDP...). I would strongly, strongly oppose any unchecked "on-the-fly" automatic conversion system; it's going to give spurious or misleading values as often as it gives helpful ones. It's not so bad for the last few decades, but for anything before that...

Exchange rates are a little more sensible, but I'm not convinced they're needed for non-contemporary values. Shimgray | talk | 23:23, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Making vandals wait...

How about this: if an anonymous editor makes a change that: (a) blanks most of an article, or (b) inserts an obvious vandal phrase, why not make them wait a while and then go through an extra confirmation step? I.e. the system makes an extra check for anonymous edits, taking a little extra time. If the revisions fit some criteria, after 10-15 seconds the editor is given a notice and asked if they really want to make the change. I'm betting that an immature vandal is not going to enjoy the extra wait as well as the additional confirmation, so the amount of vandalism is (hopefully) greatly reduced. — RJH (talk) 16:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like a great idea, as long as it errs strongly toward "allow". Better to let some vandalism through than to inconvenience and piss off well-meaning anons. — coelacan talk — 22:31, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem is, such a confirmation page would have to say something like "Your edit looks like vandalism", which would violate WP:AGF and WP:BITE. The first time an anon user vandalises we treat it as a test, rather than a malicious act. If the vandalism is obvious enough to be spotted by this, it's obvious enough to be reverted by the AntiVandalBots, anyway, so it's not very important. --Tango 22:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

It wouldn't have to be phrased in such a way. How about show the diff and say "Your edit has been detected by an automated system as being potentially unproductive due to [e.g. "deletion of significant quantities of material"]; are you sure you want to continue?" and wait no more than five seconds before enabling the submit button. This would even help in the case of mistakes by experienced users. Maybe also add something like "If you would like to test the ability to edit pages on this site, please go to the sandbox." --Random832 18:55, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the message could be pleasantly neutral. It's primarily the wait that I think would be of benefit. Longer waits based on higher certaintly of vandalism would be even better. If it passes the vandal check a wait shouldn't be needed, so most valid edits should (hopefully) be unaffected. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 19:54, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea. Lets put it into action already! --Seans Potato Business 00:10, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Retain deprecated templates

See Template:citenews for how this might be done. I think that older templates should at least be kept readable (maybe replaced with an emulation in terms of their replacements) so that old versions of articles that use them can be read. --Random832 17:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is that if a popular template is deleted, a bot is run that converts it to a new form, or the category of articles that use the template is emptied out before the template is deleted. In the case of citenews, "what links here" shows only one article using the template in that form, so seems preferable to me to change that article and delete the redirect. CMummert · talk 20:02, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Future Sound Options

I would like to shared an IDEA - this site is great, however if you could ADD some type of pronunciation like SOUND to words, it would help those that have problems pronouncing words. There are some Dictionary sites that have the option of sound of each word you are looking for . For example: "Encarta.MSN" uses (Adobe Flash Player). I hope to see the implementation in the near future thank you (Lili Dixon 20:48, 22 February 2007 (UTC))

Wiktionary is the proper place for this, and it does this as much as possible. For instance, most of the Word of the day seem to have pronunciations with them. --Interiot 21:39, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

getting IP info on anons should be easier.

The user pages of anons who haven't had a message posted to them yet, like User talk:69.153.37.62, should display the same IP information toolkit at the bottom as others, like User talk:65.28.166.83, do. It's a pain to have to post to the page in order to get access to the toolkit, or copy and paste the IP into a tool manually. I know there's a MediaWiki page somewhere where I can make this suggestion more directly, but I don't know where. Help? --— Preceding unsigned comment added by Coelacan (talk • contribs)

The toolbox is there, you just have to go to the user talk page itself, rather than the edit page you get taken to automatically - just remove "action=edit" from the URL. --Tango 22:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, that helps me, but it doesn't help anyone who isn't reading this. It would be useful for many people to have the toolbox added, even if it's just at the very bottom, to the "Editing" page, since that's where everyone ends up; there are no clickable links to the page with the toolbox on it. — coelacan talk — 03:51, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

ebay

I dont know if its the right place for this proposition... but ebay should be added to the list of external links blocked. As most of these links are ads (like The Water Cup) -Sucrine ( ><> talk) 13:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

m:Talk:Spam Blacklist. --Random832 18:36, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

What about the ebay and related articles? Would their external links be blocked? Seems inappropriate. --Seans Potato Business 01:00, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Barnstar discussion

Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals is considering a new Barnstar to be given to people who make great combined contributions to Wikipedia articles and the Commons free-use image collection. Please come by and state your views. Thanks, Johntex\^talk 15:26, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Spelling: Jewellery VS. Jewelry

Dear Editors: I am emailing about the Jewellery category. I personally have no issue with the fact that we have 2 different spelllings on WP - both English and American - as I am aware there are 2 different spellings and for me, it is not a problem. However, I do feel we are having a siginifcant issue here on WP about the English VS. American spelling and I feel I have a good case to revert to the American Spelling. So - here it is. I am a graduate student at Bard here in US. I have read and researched literally hundreds of published titles on this topic. To that aim, I am endeavoring to beef up this category and help WP. However, in the act of reading many titles over many years, I have come to conclude that the American spelling is more dominent in published works on this topic. I don't have a reasoning behind why, I just know that it is so. Because of this, I feel it is neccesary to switch back to the American spelling. Even though in OED, it is jewellery, in every major book on this topic with the exception a few published in UK, it is spelled jewelry. For example - see what is known as "the bible on jewelry," the title is: Jewelry Concepts & Technology by Oppi Untracht. The spelling used is jewelry. Another example: On Amazon, you type in both. For jewelry there are 83,868 Results, for Jewellery, there are 61,300,000 Results - that is a significant difference in published works. I am more than happy to provide a complete bibliography if need be, but in the interest of being user friendly, I ask that you consider this and let me know what you think. Thanks, Archie, archimartinArchiemartin

Common practice here is, when it's purely a Commonwealth vs US English thing - we go with the original intent of the original editor, who in this case appears to have preferred "jewellery." --Golbez 19:46, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I find it hard to believe that WP would cater to one author as opposed to being user friendly. Also - after reading the spelling guidelines it actually looks like the intent to be consistant would trump any original author.

archie, archiemartinArchiemartin

Golbez is right, and we have a guideline on this, in fact. Read WP:ENGVAR. Specifically, in this case, since there is no cultural tie to one spelling or the other, you need to Stay with established spelling and Follow the dialect of the first contributor. In an article about Jewelry in the United States, use the US spelling, in Jewellery in the United Kingdom, use the UK spelling. In all general articles, leave it alone and use the spelling that's already established for that article. — coelacan talk — 19:53, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks guys - and I am leaving it alone in the sense that I am not editing anyone's writing to reflect my ideas. However, I am not leaving it alone in the sense that I think it needs to be changed. If it were not a problem we would not have this major discussion going on usage of style to have the spellings automatically transfer to the common use of the surfer, (see usage of style). I also did contact the original contributor to see what he she thinks. I truly believe there are some serious inconcistancies with not only the desire of WP to be consistant but also with trumping one contributor over the needs of the millions of users. At the end of the day - it just makes good sense - particularly with a noun. archie, archiemartinArchiemartin

It doesn't make any good sense to me. I use American English but I recognize that neither is "wrong". There is no particular reason to standardize to either spelling. Both are "right", and most contributors speak and write in only one or the other dialect naturally. Neither should be forced to adopt the other's dialect across the entire wiki. The best compromise so far has been to leave well enough alone. I see no compelling reason to change that. I would strongly oppose any attempt to get all of Wikipedia to use either US or UK English, and I can assure you that any such attempt that you may be proposing is already a lost cause. — coelacan talk — 20:22, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi - First off - the spelling is not a dialect. Second, I have no issue myself with the two spellings as I said, it is WP that clearly states in the usage area that the spelling and usage should be consistant. If they, or WP does not want that because as they state, "It makes WP look unprofessional" then they should change that. I don't care for myself but you have to admit that usage, and how people surf WP is important. This is not a personal debate - this is about serving the needs of the many and not the few.

Last - there is no such thing as a lost cause. archie, archiemartinArchiemartin

• So, to sum up your original argument, the books you have researched use "jewelry", but Google makes it clear that far more people use the spelling "jewellery" online. Because of that, you want to change it to "jewelry" to make it more user-friendly? I don't follow the logic of that at all. If more people online use the Commonwealth spelling, then surely it is more userrfriendly for us to use it here. Perhaps - just perhaps - being a student of the subject in the US means that most of the publications you have seen have either originated in the US or been translated by American translators. Up until now I did not know that there was a spelling "jewelry". It looks wrong (and is counterintuitive when you consider the pronunciation of the word, too), but now that I know it is an acceptable alternative I'm quite happy to see it in articles - though not for the category. I'm not happy to see it there both for the reason that it appears to be the more user-friendly spelling and - more importantly - for the reasons Golbez and Coelacan outline. Grutness...wha? 22:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
• I don't see how "needs" come into this, to be honest. Americans can read English spellings and vice versa. Yes, we could have debates on thousands of articles about which is the dominant spelling, or which is most widely used in publications, but we don't. Why? Because there are far better ways to spend time. So we keep it simple: if it's obviously tied to a country, use their spelling; if it's not, use the original one. You say "in every major book on this topic with the exception a few published in UK, it is spelled jewelry", which just proves the point - the ones in the UK spell it jewellery. It's simply a difference in spelling, and there's no compelling reason to change. Trebor 22:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

To address both of your arguments - there are more uses on both Amazon and Google for the American spelling indicating that the searchability is there for the American spelling. This is not an "alternative" spelling but another one. Again - I think many of you are taking this as a personal cause or argument when it has more to do with usability as well as the WP rules and manual of style. Believe me when I say that if WP did not state that they want consistency I would not be wasting my time. As for needs - I think it is obvious that we would like to have as much consistency and fact finding as we can so, I don't see how you can ignore the fact that many people, (like myself) originally went to "jewelry" and found zip. Also - if consistency is not important then why are we allowing an editor to make a recent chnage within that article to make the entire spelling to that of jewellery, the English one.

Last, no one has addressed the real argument here which is that the one spelling is obviously more used. Go on Amazon and Google. See for yourself. Thanks, Archie, archiemartinArchiemartin

Random Recent

I think it'd be neat if there were a "Random Recent" link/function, which would show you a random article chosen from the pool of articles that have been changed recently. Perhaps if possible with a callout or second column showing the change, or perhaps changes highlighted. -:)Ozzyslovechild 03:26, 24 February 2007 (UTC)