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I think "edited within the last 60 days" is a decent figure -- but before even choosing a limit, the MediaWiki changes need to be made. Of course, whatever changes are made, the toolserver should still be blocked from seeing ''which'' particular users are watching. '''<font face="Century Gothic" style="text-shadow:1px 1px 3px #999;">[[User:Equazcion|<span style="color:#008;">Equazcion</span>]] <small>[[User talk:Equazcion|<sup>(<span style="color:#007BA7">talk</span>)</sup>]]</small>''' 16:51, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)</font>
I think "edited within the last 60 days" is a decent figure -- but before even choosing a limit, the MediaWiki changes need to be made. Of course, whatever changes are made, the toolserver should still be blocked from seeing ''which'' particular users are watching. '''<font face="Century Gothic" style="text-shadow:1px 1px 3px #999;">[[User:Equazcion|<span style="color:#008;">Equazcion</span>]] <small>[[User talk:Equazcion|<sup>(<span style="color:#007BA7">talk</span>)</sup>]]</small>''' 16:51, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)</font>


:I like, I expect centijimbinarians like, I expect peasocking centijimbinarians don't like it. I extrapolate anitpeasockingcentinjimbinarians would like it too. I suggest I should round down my extrapolationdefiningjargon vocabulary to a less significant number of decimal phrases. <span style="text-shadow:#c5C3e3 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em;">[[User:Penyulap|'''Penyulap''']]</span>[[User talk:Penyulap|<span style="font-size: 1.2em;color:transparent;text-shadow:green 0em 0.2em 0.02em;"> ☏</span>]]
:I like, I expect centijimbinarians like, I expect peasocking centijimbinarians don't like it. I extrapolate anitpeasockingcentinjimbinarians would like it too. I suggest I should round down my extrapolationdefiningjargon vocabulary to a less significant number of decimal phrases. <span style="text-shadow:#c5C3e3 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em;">[[User:Penyulap|'''Penyulap''']]</span>[[User talk:Penyulap|<span style="font-size: 1.2em;color:transparent;text-shadow:green 0em 0.2em 0.02em;"> ☏</span>]] 18:50, 15 April 2012 (UTC)


Is it difficult to give us a choice?
Is it difficult to give us a choice?

Revision as of 04:38, 16 April 2012

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Share button

Discussion

Hey, just a suggestion. I personally would like to have a Share button so that I can directly share articles or photos on Wikipedia on Facebook or whatever. Especially like the photo of the day, but really on everything would be cool. Kag427 (talk) 22:28, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose: Wikipedia isn't a social network.Jasper Deng (talk) 22:27, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • See User:TheDJ/Sharebox. This is a perennial proposal, and nonsensical opposition like Jasper's is the norm. Of course Wikipedia is not a social network - but why should that stop us facilitating the sharing of the knowledge of Wikipedia on social networks? Fences&Windows 22:33, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • This has been proposed several times and shot down every time. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:55, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Fences. The more perennial a proposal, the more evidence that it could be worth revisiting. Wikipedia is not a social network, but facilitating sharing of our content through those sites doesn't somehow turn us into one. Plenty of other news sites and other info sources do this without themselves turning into social networking sites. Social networking is a prominent tool that other sites can and should make use of. The resistance to it is based on a stale and archaic feeling that association with social networking means catering to a teen trend, but if that ever were true, it certainly isn't anymore. Equazcion (talk) 13:27, 23 Mar 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose The ability to copy and paste URLs is already built into everyone's browsers. Wikipedia must not host any of the tracking code that comes from any of those socially sites. Ntsimp (talk) 14:26, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Wikipedia is not a social network and should not be. Mugginsx (talk) 16:06, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agreed, let's not host tracking code. Should it be decided that there's consensus for a share button, we can then discuss possible ways of implementing it without any such tracking. Equazcion (talk) 14:38, 23 Mar 2012 (UTC)
  • Support : What's the point of having all this information if it can't be accessed easily? Paper encyclopedias were made obsolete by (desktop/server) CDs, CDs were made obsolete by the Internet (and... Wikipedia), but now social media and smartphones/tablets are becoming a large player in the way that information is accessed and shared. It's a question of "evolve or die". Best, Markvs88 (talk) 15:08, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support if it's easy to disable in preferences and doesn't have share options to Wikimedia projects or other sites where it's probably unwanted. Wikipedia is not a social network but why make it harder for users to share Wikipedia on actual social networks? Copy-pasting a url may seem trivial to us but many of our readers have asked for a share feature which can be simpler and prettier. Many people today are used to share features and it will make more users give us free "advertising" whether or not we are elitist enough to claim that it shouldn't make a difference. Copy-pasting also has potential traps. http:// is sometimes omitted, and many link-parsing programs will ignore a trailing ')' as used in our disambiguations. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:24, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Before we go any further with this, what buttons do we intend to put on the new "feature". As noted in the last discussion, there are hundred of social networking sites. It wouldn't be feasible to list all of them, as it would render the tool useless. We would have to leave some of them out. In doing so, we would be breaking our position as a neutral encyclopedia. Having a limited number of buttons is no better than having a big social networking ad on all articles. Both would result in many editors leaving the project. If you want the tool for just yourself, then install the .js script, but before installing it sitewide it might be worth considering the consequences. Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 15:37, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • As noted below, there are 330 services. I am not sure what order AddThis presents them in initially, but as you use them, the most used move to the top of the list. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:42, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • It would be easy enough to have a Preferences tab to choose the ones registered users want. For initial display and anonymous users, we'd need to figure out a method of choosing, sure; but I don't think that's something we need to decide "before we go any further". Ie. the POV issue shouldn't be a block to this proposal. We'll deal with the caveats once we've established consensus that the community is in favor of the feature in general. As for scripts, they're great if you know how to use them, but I'd go out on a limb and say the majority of users who would need a share button to share an article are generally not the ones who would easily find out about the script, or even know how to install scripts. Equazcion (talk) 16:00, 23 Mar 2012 (UTC)
    • You often have to make choices, also when creating articles, adding entries to lists, adding references and external links, and so on. I assume a new share feature would be similar to User:TheDJ/Sharebox which places a "Share" link in the toolbox. You have to click that to see any of the available options. If you click an ISBN number in an article then you get a page like Special:BookSources/0-596-51516-2 with many options. If you enable "Add a selector to the Wikipedia search page allowing the use of external search engines" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets then you get 5 external options at Special:Search. I don't think we should be so afraid of making choices that it prevents useful features for those who want to use them. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:12, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This is a total no brainer. Claiming that social networks have nothing to do with a collaborative wiki is exagerated to say the least. It overlooks our talk pages which are one giant social network without face pics dedicated to spreading information). Nit picking about which social network to use is just nit picking and can be constructively dealt with in the process of implementing the feature. --Shabidoo | Talk 16:47, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, but please allow individual users to disable it for themselves: (edit conflict) I am proud to not be a user of Facebook or Twitter (or any social networking site) and thus not be infected with the disease/plague that has enslaved the world in the past few years. But the fact remains that there really isn't any good reason to not implement a share button. We could make it a gadget for registered users that is turned off by default, but where does that leave the countless unregistered readers who are infected with the plague and would like to share Wikipedia content on their social networking site of choice? I don't want to be forced to have the share button looking at me when I browse Wikipedia, so I believe that individual users should be able to disable it for themselves.
Adding a share button does not make Wikipedia a social networking site; it simply makes it easier for people who may not be technically savvy enough to know how to copy URLs to share Wikipedia content on their social networking site of choice. The reasoning that some opposing !votes use, that "Wikipedia is not a social network", are so baseless that they should be struck out or ignored. There is NO rule that I see at WP:NOTSOCIAL that would forbid a share button.
There are some privacy concerns above on having a share button. If the share button can be implemented without it tracking users, etc., then there is no good reason that I can think of to oppose having a share button.
—{|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|} 17:08, 23 March 2012 (UTC).[reply]
  • Conditional Support/Strong Oppose I would support under the following conditions: (1) There are zero privacy issues (not even what is mentioned below as point 1 under #Sharebox privacy) when nothing is shared, and it can be disabled in preferences; or (2) it is not enabled by default, and the privacy issues are clearly mentioned next to the "enable" checkbox. Otherwise, I strongly oppose. I also note that something not meeting these conditions would most likely violate m:Privacy policy by leaking IP addresses and page view statistics to a third party without the consent of the user involved. Note that my condition #1 effectively requires that no scripts or images are loaded from non-Wikimedia urls, at least until a share is actually initiated. #2 could be done now by making Sharebox into a non-enabled-by-default gadget. Anomie⚔ 17:16, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose, no benefit is obtained by making canvassing easier nor to send free traffic to one commercial website over another. Also, the WMF is working, afaik, on a well made extension to do this and discussion should be delayed until such a tool is available. Snowolf How can I help? 23:01, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional Support per the two provisions proposed by Anomie. Just because WP is not a social network does not mean that its content cannot or should not be shared on social media venues. On the contrary, it would be great promotional tool. Besides, I see WP content posted on FB fairly often as it is. That said, as Anomie notes, privacy issues are of vital importance and must be adequately addressed. Also, the feature should be optional for users as it may viewed by some "as a privacy threat (even if these concerns are properly and effectively addressed) or as an attempt to "social media-ize" Wikipedia. I also agree with Anomie (and others who have voiced similar concerns) that if these stipulations are not met, the proposal should not be implemented.--JayJasper (talk) 20:04, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongest ever oppose I'd personally be discouraging these things. OK, social networking is good. But there has to some limit. Never ever. WP:NOTFACEBOOK clearly states that WP is not a social network. Those who want can use User:The DJ's sharebox. Remember, privacy is also concerned. AddThis is still collecting a lot of statistics, but less then when they actually track your browser. Dipankan says.. ("Be bold and edit!") 09:54, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Share buttons can be useful on pages with dynamic URLs, but since any link to a Wikipedia article will always work (barring deletion or modification to a redirect), there's no need. You can simply copy the URL of the page you're looking at and paste it into the email or whatever other type of message or document you're writing. Nyttend (talk) 14:36, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose - solution without a problem, perennially offered by social-media advocates who don't understand the concept of "encyclopedia". None of these services lack a facility to simply post the URL of any Wikipedia article you wish to "share"! Besides, this is impossible to do without adding privacy-invading code, favoring one service over another, etc. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:34, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • No one claimed it was a solution to a problem. It's merely a proposed improvement, and one that's been requested by many people who might not find copy/pasting as intuitive as we do. To claim that it's only suggested by "social media advocates" would be unfair. I'm no social media advocate. Those share buttons seem entirely superfluous to me. Nevertheless my support for this is based on my stance that we should be vigilante in not surrendering to our own dorky pedantic techie asperger club tendencies by saying that them there sharing buttons those kids are using these days are totally unnecessary, when everyone else seems to think they are. There should be some limited accommodation for something the audience seems to want, even if we the providers don't see the need. Equazcion (talk) 17:30, 26 Mar 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose—share buttons are not, on balance, in our interest. There are 4 main parties to consider: readers, editors, Wikipedia as a whole, and social media sites. Social media sites would love it if we added share buttons, because it sends them traffic—that's the whole reason those annoying buttons exist: to reduce the effort of being active on a site by embedding external opportunities to visit it. Most sites use these mini advertisements for social networks because there's a symmetric effect: if someone shares a link to their site, then they, in effect, receive free advertising to that person's friends through the social network. Since Wikipedia as a whole gets a lot of traffic anyway, the benefit here to Wikipedia is minimal. There is a good argument that it helps technophobe readers, but I don't think that that's a strong enough point to counter the fact that it might introduce tracking of Wikipedia users to some degree, or that it's inherently non-neutral because any reasonable interface will highlight the most-used networks first. I would support some sharing functionality, but only on the conditions that it a) benefit editors somehow (they get little to no benefit from standard "sharing" as editors) b) be strictly opt-in, and c) strictly avoid introducing users to more tracking than is expected in our Privacy policy. I'm not sure how those conditions could be fulfilled. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits|⚡}} 18:30, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Although the explicit arguments you provide here have to do with privacy and neutrality, they seem to be an incidental excuse to back up your revulsion to giving free advertising to social networks, which overshadows most of this comment. I think this is a good example of the general feeling here. I join everyone in that feeling, I just don't think my personal disgust is a good reason to block a feature that objectively is useful to everyone outside our inner sanctum. As much as we shouldn't seek to advertise other sites, we also shouldn't explicitly seek to avoid doing it incidentally at the cost of a feature readers will find useful. As for NPOV and ensuring privacy, I think it's already understood that supporters of this feature have those as prerequisites. Equazcion (talk) 18:52, 26 Mar 2012 (UTC)
      • I won't hide my distaste; I don't want Wikipedia to give social networks (specifically, big social networks) free advertising. However, I think that the "objectively" useful feature of bypassing a bit of copy-pasting is trivial enough that it is balanced by concerns of privacy and neutrality, and I don't see that it benefits Wikipedia itself to add "share" buttons. Since I don't see a net benefit, I don't think it's a good idea. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits|⚡}} 20:08, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as an option in preferences people could enable. Also I think we could make a gadget for this. Petrb (talk) 09:09, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose – Social networks generally have ways to "share" anything, whether the website being linked to or scraped has a "share" button or not. Many websites, including Facebook, have bookmarklets for this purpose as well. Hyperlinks work just fine when referencing a Wikipedia article and we already have too much obtrusive and unnecessary JavaScript slowing things down and taking up screen real estate. Facebook also already lets you "like" articles on Wikipedia. Not everybody wants social networking crap on every website they visit, and Wikipedia has for a long time been one of the only popular, useful websites to not have advertising and try to stay away from irrelevant intrusive crap. —danhash (talk) 18:40, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. See Nihiltres, probably best response. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 18:53, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per my reasoning the last seven times this has been brought up in the past year. Sven Manguard Wha? 21:09, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support There is no good reason not to do this. Using just the most popular sites means that there is no violation of the "neutral encyclopedia" principle. I agree that this would not be incredibly easier or faster to use, but there is no good reason not to use it. I would, however, suggest that users be given the option to disable it. Robert 17:48, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
    • Nonsense! "Using just the most popular sites" means that in fact we would be entrenching and reinforcing the current popular sites (as we see them through our cultural and technological blinders), and making sure the winners stay on top. We are not here to pick the winners, and that would be a total violation of the neutral encyclopedia principle. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:14, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. We want to drive traffic to the site. Anything that gets us more readers and more editors is a good thing. Virtually every modern web site has Share buttons, from the BBC News[1] to Harvard University.[2] Even Nature, the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal[3] lets its readers share knowledge with others. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't make it easier for our readers to share knowledge with others. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:19, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Our readers are able to copy paste the url and send it to others. This method is much better than any share button. Those who want to use a sharebutton can use a script in their vector.js. Von Restorff (talk) 13:29, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Previous discussions

Each of these has gotten bogged down in "Wikipedia is not a social media site." While that statement is quite true, it has nothing to do with giving users the tools to share on other sites. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the thread for changing the size of PDF downloads; except for the final (irrelevant, as far as I can see) comment on the thread, it was completely unrelated to social media. Nyttend (talk) 14:39, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. To add another policy here, Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral in policy. If we link to certain sites, it will be very difficult to keep from endorsing them indirectly. The only possible way to remain neutral and create the ability to share on any social network.
Additionally, I'm rather afraid that this will create a flood of uninitiated users who will start to use the talk page for discussion of the article's topic, making it impossible for contributing users to discuss improvements to the article. Interchangeable|talk to me 20:49, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sharebox services

The Sharebox user script uses the AddThis bookmarking service to add e-mail and share buttons to the Wikipedia toolbar. As of March 20120, AddThis supports 330 services. A few highlights:

---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sharebox privacy

From User:TheDJ/Sharebox:

  1. This tool tells AddThis not to track you. I'm not guaranteeing that they don't track you. AddThis is still collecting a lot of statistics, but less then when they actually track your browser.
  2. If you are concerned, just don't use this, or write a new tool that has all the AddThis functionality. I looked around, it does not seem there are any usable open source alternatives that have the amount of share options of AddThis.
  3. The Facebook and Twitter icons used by AddThis, are simply share links. They do not have the privacy issues of Facebook's own Share and Like buttons. Yes these major sharing websites know a lot about you, but that doesn't mean that this is automatic. By not using the official buttons of these websites, but simple links, you are in control about what the site knows about you. In practice this means they know what you share, not what you read. If you don't want them to know what you share, don't share.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Gadget850 (talk • contribs) 15:39, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Share by email

Many people oppose comparing this to a social network. I simply don't see a reason, this proposal is called "add a share button" not "convert this project to a social site". A simple button allowing users to share the article / picture using email would be a good for beginning, and later if found useful should be extended to more services, which could be defined by user. If this tool was opt-in there is no problem with privacy and doesn't affect anyone else but the people who want it. So why could ever someone oppose this with a reason "wikipedia is not a social site" do these people even think of it, before hitting oppose? Petrb (talk) 09:16, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Make suppress redirect available to trusted users

Hi. Why not make the suppress redirect option available for auto-confirmed users? First of all, it is of great help to all users working in WP:RM. Secondly, that is going to make the names simpler. Consider on a bad name of a article; written professionally. Like: "Example is a bad guy" is the article title; but the article's content refers to the apple iPad, written brilliantly, without bias, etc. This would be of great help to all auto-confirmed users. Thanks. Dipankan says.. ("Be bold and edit!") 10:20, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Misuse of the suppress redirect function will leave the editors who created the page confused and lost. Also, the potential for misuse by vandals, who have no trouble getting autoconfirmed would be substantial. Snowolf How can I help? 11:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Then make it available for editors with 6 months and 1000+ edit's experience or something like that. Whatever, it's going to very useful for all workers in areas which requires moving of pages. Dipankan says.. ("Be bold and edit!") 12:37, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A better way might be to give the option to everyone when there are no links to or transclusion of the page. (May need some development work though.) -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:08, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. This will, for all intents and purposes give autoconfirmed users the power to delete articles. What's to keep someone from moving an article into their userspace, waiting a while, and then CSD U1ing a "userspace draft"? (or just leaving it there to rot) --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:24, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't move log still be there? Can't users abuse this approach already, or are incoming redirects checked when U1 is requested? Even if they are, the user can replace original article with a non-redirect. Isn't that why history/move log should always be checked regardless? Just wondering. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
As an admin, I can assure you that it's easy to overlook single entries when looking over a page history for a U1 speedy; I've made mistakes of this sort more than once. I've recently seen lots of pages get speedy deleted that didn't qualify even for regular deletion — they had been moved and then tagged, and there were so many of these pages that the deleting admin didn't realise that there was a substantial problem. That's the biggest reason I oppose this idea, but even beside that, I think it's a solution in search of a problem. Seeing how I almost never see any type of {{db-move}} situations at CAT:CSD, I believe that Dipankan greatly overestimates the number of times that this ability would be used. Finally, if just about anyone can suppress a redirect, we'd likely see lots of redirects getting deleted needlessly — I often see redirects up for deletion despite points 4 and 5 of WP:RFD#KEEP; if this proposal passes, we'd run the risk of breaking tons of incoming links and links in page histories. Nyttend (talk) 14:50, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

User Right

After a community input it is decided that many users support a user right for this. Those who want to support this; give reasons for for your support. Those who want to oppose this; also provide reasons. Please use the hash sign, put support or oppose.

Actually I see quite the opposite above. There were only a few supports and plenty of opposes, so I thing that "many users support a user right for this" is inaccurate at best. Clearly there is no support for this measure as shown above. Snowolf How can I help? 14:16, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Most user's are thinking about auto-confirmed but it's not. Dipankan says.. ("Be bold and edit!") 16:15, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The BIG deletion / editor retention proposal thread

Here's a series of proposals designed to improve quality AND improve editor retention. Most of these work together.

These ideas aren't perfect, no, far from it. But they are a start and may help with quality AND editor retention. I encourage everybody else to add their ideas to this thread. I especially encourage editors from the WMF to add their thoughts. Thanks for taking the time to read this. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Background

Deletion on Wikipedia is not deletion. It's hiding things from people.

Type Notes
Everything Our core developers can see everything inside the database and stuff that's outside the database.
Oversighted Hidden from everybody except Oversighters and the above.
Deleted Hidden from everybody except admins and the above
Nothing implemented so far Hidden from everybody except registered users and the above.
NOINDEX Only hidden from search engines. This is used on many thousands of non-notable articles in user space, the WP:INCUBATOR and in WP:AFC.

We can take advantage this idea of deletion as hiding things to fill in the gap above to make us more efficient and improve editor retention.

Proposal 1: Create a "hidden" article namespace

There are thousands and thousands of non-notable articles are spread all over Wikipedia in user sandboxes, the WP:INCUBATOR and WP:AFC. These have been sitting around for years, so it's obvious they do no harm. Why? Because nobody sees them. They are hidden (i.e. deleted from search engines) using NOINDEX.

Expand this idea by combining the WP:INCUBATOR and WP:AFC, we create a new "hidden article" namespace. This namespace would only be viewable by registered users that are currently logged in. This way the entire rest of the world, as well as search engines, would not be able to see the articles it contains. The namespace could be called Under construction to be friendly to new users.

PLEASE NOTE: We would use our current deletion system solely for things with legal implications, like attack pages, copyright violations and related things.

There would be a flag so that the same article title could not be created in both namespaces (i.e. if an article exists in one namespace it could not be created in the other). Search results for registered users would include the hidden article name space while search results for unregistered users would not.

The hidden article space (a kind of "soft-deleted article" space for non-notable but verifiable content) would be like Wikipedia of the past, where articles could develop slowly over time and it would provide a safe haven for new users and their creations while they learned our rules. This is kind of an upside-down version of several different WP:PEREN proposals, most similar to this one. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I took the liberty to rename the "deleted article" to "hidden article" in the proposal above to better represent the intended usage; "deleted article" is a loaded word at Wikipedia since it has legal implications. Diego (talk) 14:01, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Support
  1. Support as proposer. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Extreme utterly overwhelming support. Automatic userfication has a number of benefits over on-demand userfication, and no drawbacks (any deleted article can be userfied anyway). This proposal has no new risks and allows verifiable content to be retrieved for reuse at other articles; it should be extended to all readers -not only registered ones- so that anyone can edit the content that is not notable but it's still allowed by WP:V. Though, only articles deleted through AfDs should be placed at this new space to ensure that they don't have Copivio or BLP problems. Diego (talk) 13:41, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    The benefits for automatic userfication are at least the following:
    • Any editor can reasess the reason for which the article was deleted, years after its deletion.
    • Any editor can reuse verifiable content and references from the article, years after its deletion.
    • Any editor can check whether there's interesting content in the article history. This currently can't be done for deleted articles or those copied to Deletionpedia.
    • It reduces the workload of admins who currently have to assess and perform requests for userfications one by one.
    • It doesn't require an admin to userfy the content, so the benefits above can be exercised instantly without human intervention. Anyone who opposes sayng "but you can retrieve the content by asking an admin" are missing the point - the burocratic barrier of an admin request is a steep requirement that reduces the number of articles that can be accessed in that way, and thus harms the usual wiki process as most articles in that situation won't be reviewed.
    Diego (talk) 13:53, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support. This is a more orderly implementation of the incubator and userfication. The more general point is that Wikipedia deletes things when there is no need to conceal the history. There's no reason why any random non-admin editor can't take a new article and Move it straight to the user's userspace with no admin intervention at all, nor why an AfD needs to order anything more than this in most cases. But an "in construction" namespace gives people a more standard way to move it, makes it easier to find and collaborate on the article, and encourages development of a more standard point at which it is moved back to mainspace. Wnt (talk) 18:50, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
  • This proposal, and the one below it about a "view-deleted" user right, will both never happen. The idea of allowing non-admins to have access to deleted material has been explicitly vetoed by the Wikimedia foundation, [4]. Which actually I guess pretty much kills all of your proposals actually except the one about combining AFD and DRV. --Jac16888 Talk 12:58, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Editor retention is not to come at the expense of the quality of Wikipedia. The reasib anyone wants to come here is because we have the reputation for being good; any proposal which sacrifices overall quality in the name of editor retention will literally cause both to fail: no one will want to come here because the quality will fail. --Jayron32 13:45, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Deletion on Wikipedia is deletion. Sysops are given the right to review deleted material for various technical and legal reasons. But these are deleted entries as decided by the community. PRODs/AfDs are given a week and this is enough time to either demonstrate that an article passes WP:GNG or doesn't (plus a few IAR cases). Potentially useful articles not ready by then can be userfied. Everything else is unsuitable for the encyclopedia and keeping it available won't really serve any purpose except encouraging misuse. The editors have to accept our notability criteria and guidelines; "keeping" their deleted article does nothing for the actual article quality. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:42, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion

Comment I quite like this idea and the other associated with it. I think it would be good to deminish the negativity associated with deletions, especially for articles which do not have legal issues and which are in any way potentially notable (leaving it to the de/promotion proces to see whether notability can, indeed, be verified). However, as you yourself pointed out, there have been quite some proposals which are somewhat alike this. I think it would be wise to make an inventarisation of why those were not accepted and give detailed explainations as of why your proposal overcomes the objections. Furthermore, I would start with a debate concerning the general idea of having a work-in-progress namespace and using a de/promotion proces instead of a delation proces. You/we do not need to go into technical details concerning rights, or for example the relation with article creation by new users (e.g. relation to article creation wizard). And, considering that it is an idea with far-fetching consequences, I think might be wise to create a seperate RfC thread instead of creating this potentially huge thread.

In summary: (possibly) good idea, but start with the general idea and not the technical details. JHSnl (talk) 13:16, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • We should be using NoIndex on new pages until they've been patrolled, but that's under discussion in a separate RFC. The wiki is about collaborative editing, and currently that works best in mainspace. ϢereSpielChequers 08:03, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As a reply to all the Oppose not-votes, this proposal is not equivalent to the perennial requests for universal access to deletion. It's essentailly equivalent to a default userfication for every deleted article, except for cases where userfication would be explicitly denied for legal concerns. The benefit is that it doesn't remove the page from the Wiki process and thus removes an artificial barrier to edit that the WMF created only for legal-risk-prone content, but which was extended without reason to other types of content where it doesn't provide any benefit. The [Wikimedia foundation Wikimedia foundation veto] of free access to deleted space was only addressed to content with potential legal problems, but that content would be explicitly curated from inclusion at the new "automatic-userfication" space if only content from AfDs is placed there. Diego (talk) 13:41, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • I agree this is not the same as viewing all deleted articles.
  • Saying that a week is long enough for a PROD? That's an example of the problem. Some person who is not a career Wikipedian doesn't log in for a week, months after he started an article, and now he's got to beg an admin to try and fix whatever was wrong with his article? Perhaps only to get mocked because it violated a few of the thousand policies and guidelines he doesn't know? That's not enough time for new editors we want to recruit to be able to respond to one person who didn't like their work. Wnt (talk) 18:57, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 2: Create a deleted article user right

Create a new user right to move articles in to and out of the deleted article space. This could be given to users who can show an understanding of notability AND have referenced a few articles. Users with this right could go around cleaning up Wikipedia by simply moving articles in to the new deleted article space by PRODing them and performing the move themselves. They wouldn't have go through WP:AFD as these people will be trusted users. Users who violate that trust would lose the right. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. Support as proposer. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Some support. Admittedly, people with this right are "as good as admins". Nonetheless, I believe Wikipedia should experiment with a la carte adminship, people with the userright to view deleted articles or the userright to protect and unprotect articles or the userright to block users, but not all three, as a potential transition stage to adminship that might have somewhat lower RfA standards to alleviate the shortage. Wnt (talk) 19:00, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 2
Discussion
  • We could achieve the best part of this in a very non-bitey way by allowing registered editors private space in userspace. Userpages and usertalk would still be viewable by all, but if we allowed editors to set subpages in their userspace as either private or public then we would have a simple to understand way to work on drafts and also to decide whether to open a user page to collaboration. Serverspace is now so cheap that we shouldn't worry about the odd gb of clutter we are storing for free - its far cheaper to keep it than go through it. For long dormant users it would be quite non-bitey if an admin could tag old drafts in subpages as private - that way the next time that editor logged on their subpage would still be there, but with a little tab marked "make public". ϢereSpielChequers 08:17, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 3: Combine WP:AFD and WP:DRV

Combine WP:AFD and WP:DRV to create Articles for Promotion/Demotion (WP:AFP/D). The new WP:AFP/D would run much in the same way as AFD does now, except that articles would be promoted out of deleted article space OR demoted in to the deleted article space. WP:AFP/D would be used mostly when articles are moved in and out of deleted article space inappropriately or when there is deletion warring. Users with the new deleted article user right could perform most of the closes. Admins would only be needed to close discussion where consensus was difficult to judge.

This form of deletion is a lot less bitey than it is now and should encourage new editors to spend more time working to improve their articles AND at the same time keep article space clean of non-notable articles so the rest of the world never sees them. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. Support as proposer. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
Discussion

Proposal 4: Start new articles in the new space

Have newly created articles start off in the deleted article space. This would ensure that attack pages and copyright violations would never be seen. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. Support as proposer. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
  1. This would be similar to wp:ACTRIAL, which the WMF vetoed, so no chance of passing. Yoenit (talk) 13:04, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose violates AGF. RJFJR (talk) 13:35, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, though only on technical grounds. WP:ACTRIAL was passed by the community overwhelmingly, and the foundation vetoed it. I still believe in my heart that restricting article creation to autoconfirmed users is the best path to improving editor retention as it acts to prevent the bad feelings that come from having your earliest work trashed, but the foundation disagrees fundementally with that, so this proposal stands no chance. --Jayron32 13:49, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • On a slightly offhand note, I'd have no qualms about re-proposing WP:ACTRIAL now. It's been 6 months since this veto (or whatever it was) occurred. I'd similarly have no objection to a repeated proposal once every 6 months thereafter. Equazcion (talk) 14:41, 29 Mar 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose: per above. Rationale to support? Whenaxis (contribs) DR goes to Wikimania! 22:57, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • All articles start as deleted is even worse than the ACTRIAL idea, that "only" had a false positive rate of circa 30%, this would be rather worse as it doesn't seem to be limited to just biting editors who are not yet autoconfirmed. There are ways to improve the new page process, starting all unpatrolled articles as noindex would help and be non-bitey as the authors wouldn't know that their article was being checked first. ϢereSpielChequers 22:46, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I suppose you have in mind some hypothetical deleted article space that users could still read and edit, but if so, that's an "under construction" space more like the first proposal I support above, and a different deleted article space would still have to exist for new articles that failed the cut, unless the unlikely though admirable perennial proposal for all deleted articles to be made visible would pass. So this is too confused to work with. Wnt (talk) 19:06, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion

Proposal 5: Separate WP:NPP in to 2 groups

Modify WP:NPP to have two groups. Group 1 would look for articles with legal problems like WP:BLP violations and copyright violations and tag them for speedy deletion by admins. Group 2 would be similar to the users at WP:AFC and they would have the new deleted article user right. They would look for new articles to be promoted out of deleted article space. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. Support as proposer. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose

Oppose: copyright violations and BLP-violations are handled by tags that are placed on violations which are patrolled regularly already. Otherwise, contacting the OTRS team is efficient enough. Whenaxis (contribs) DR goes to Wikimania! 22:57, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: single patrollers working from a single list of articles should be able to find both problems. The key is to have different actions, i.e. one to be deleted entirely, but the other moved to an Under Construction space of whatever variety. Wnt (talk) 19:07, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Proposal: Modify WP:CSD to use the new space

Some of the "G" criteria of WP:CSD would no longer be needed. Exceptions would be G3, G5, G9, G10 and G12. The entire "A" series would be irrelevant and not needed anymore. There would be a few exceptions such as articles created in user space. These exceptions could be handled by users with the new deleted article user right. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. Support as proposer. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Strong support. A new space is not even needed, though an Under Construction/Rough Draft type space would be desirable. Things like "patent nonsense" and "test pages" could be userfied right now. Even when that seems like a waste of time, it sets a less hostile tone for the new user, and deleting stuff takes time also. Deletion should be reserved solely for those pages which actually need to be concealed from the public due to some kind of serious issue like copyright.
Oppose

Oppose: Rationale, please? Unnecessary user right. Whenaxis (contribs) DR goes to Wikimania! 22:57, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Proposal 7: Modify WP:PROD to use the new space

Modify proposed deletion to move articles in to the new deleted article space. This would ease the burden on admins and allow non-admins to delete non-notable articles. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. Support as proposer. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
  1. Oppose: per my #Oppose 6. Whenaxis (contribs) DR goes to Wikimania! 22:57, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose allowing non-admins to delete non-notable articles. If someone wants the ability to delete other peoples work then they should go through RFA. ϢereSpielChequers 22:37, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support and Oppose. A "prod" should not lead to article deletion, but only to rough draft status. However, this should be distinct from true deleted status. "Prod" should not be used for things like copyright and defamation issues; that should go to deletion - having prods point to a space for draft articles makes this distinction much more important, however. Wnt (talk) 19:31, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion

Proposal 8: Define tagging for deleted article space

All articles in deleted article space would have a notice that can't be removed, stating something like this

An additional set of tags would be used on the talk page, but they would look like regular messages rather than the scary boxes. They would have canned messages similar to GA checklists with little check marks to tick. The canned messages would be simplified versions of WP:GNG, WP:V and WP:RS with links to the full policies. Once the check marks are all ticked, it would add the article to a promote category that Group 2 NPPers would watch. They'd come by and promote the article out of deleted article space. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. Support as proposer. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support, pending details. A more consistent and collaborative handling of draft articles is good, and such tags are part of it. The exact nature of the checklist, I'm not so sure about; I think it may only be feasible as some canned advice, and even then it could quickly become overbearing. (when I say that, I'm thinking of that first page from the new file upload wizard... I must have looked at it ten times before I found the box to proceed from it) Wnt (talk) 19:34, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose

Oppose: The creator of a page can already ask an admin to e-mail a copy of the article to them and allow them to improve it within their own user space. Whenaxis (contribs) DR goes to Wikimania! 22:57, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This additional request step is harmful to the wiki edit process, as only people who knew the content before it was deleted will be able to request an admin for undeletion. The idea of Wikipedia is that anyone can improve the work of others; this proposal is intended to extend the possibility to review and reuse deleted content to people that didn't see it before it was deleted. Diego (talk) 13:45, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion

Proposal 9: Deprecate userfication of articles

Userfication of articles would no longer be needed as any article that would be userfied would now be put on deleted article space. User space could be kept clean of non-notable articles. This would also allow experienced editors to collaborate with new users on their new articles in a way that's not as easy in user space. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. Support as proposer. 64.40.60.152 (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose

Oppose: deleted article is an unnnecessary namespace. Whenaxis (contribs) DR goes to Wikimania! 22:57, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Allowing userspace drafts when people desire it would allow them to avoid collaboration when they're not looking for it, without having to keep the content totally offline, where I'm afraid it might not ever find its way back to us. Wnt (talk) 19:37, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Proposal 10: A no-consensus solution

I think that a draft article namespace (what some are calling "deleted article namespace" above) is a great idea. But I think we're going to have a hard time pushing it through. So let's focus on a solution that requires no consensus policy decisions but accomplishes the goal for those willing to pursue it.

  • Definition of deletion. The sole purpose of deletion (speedy, AfD, or RevDel) is to deny access to the page history. Any page can be blanked or greatly reduced by normal editing. Any page can be chosen to be maintained in a reduced form by some kind of consensus discussion. Any page can be protected from editing by an admin. All these things - blanking/reduction, protection ("salting"), consensus determination - are sometimes confounded with deletion, as they may be done during the AfD process. But the only time when deletion is needed is when there is something so worrisome in the history, like a copyright violation (not just Fair Use) or defamation (not just quoting the wrong sources) that it is judged necessary for admins to conceal it. For us to realize this is the first step toward reform.
  • Do not delete incomplete new articles, but userfy them. If an article lacks copyright, defamation, or such history-concealment issues, don't attach a prod, don't ask for speedy deletion, don't propose for deletion - if you think an article is substandard, leave a talk message for the editor, and if the concern isn't addressed, move the article to the user's userspace (User:Soandso/My Not So Great Article). If the user disagrees with this, the issue becomes a contested move rather than a contested deletion, but otherwise much resembles AfD discussion.
  • Index userspace drafts. We should have a real "rough draft" userspace, but we don't. So let's start a category, Category:Userspace draft articles, and put these articles into it, perhaps as part of an associated template, complete with subcategories. Let's make some navigable pages to make up for a lack of a separate namespace. Once we have a namespace de facto, maybe we'll get one technically also.
Support
  • Wnt (talk) 20:00, 3 April 2012 (UTC) (proposed)[reply]
  • Support. We should find a new name to distinguish several degrees of removed articles, since "deletion" is a loaded term in which all the actions you describe are mixed as a whole. I propose "redlink" or "redlinked deletion" for denied access to the page history. "Soft deletion" is already understood as a way to delete articles without hiding its history, so both terms are enough to differenciate the different outcomes. If this proposal #10 gets consensus we should change the Wikipedia:Deletion process and Wikipedia:Proposed deletion guidelines to recommend the process you described for soft deletion. If not - well, the good thing of this proposal is that it can be used without consensus. Diego (talk) 15:34, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
Discuss

Re-propose Autoconfirmed article creation trial

In April 2011, a proposal was put forth to implement, on a trial basis, a requirement that users be autoconfirmed before being able to create new pages [outside their userspace]. The proposal was closed as having consensus for implementation (500 editors participated, with two-thirds supporting implementation). Consensus was subsequently established for a timeframe: A 6-month trial period followed by a 1-month evaluation. The proposal was nevertheless not implemented due to the refusal of individuals at the Wikimedia Foundation, who at the time of the implementation request that resulted from consensus, furnished their own arguments that it was a bad idea.

The rationale for this proposal were:

  • New pages patrol is close to unmanageable due to the high volume of article creations.
  • About three-quarters of new articles from non-autoconfirmed users are deleted.
  • In good-faith cases, having a new article deleted is disheartening to new editors, when (as the theory goes), had they been forced into editing existing articles first, they would have had a better chance at understanding Wikipedia's core policies prior to their first article-creating effort.

Pertinent links:

I've perused the bugzilla request for implementation with some interest, and chose a couple of moments I'd like to share:

  • [5]: "...what a lot of new page patrollers seem to miss is this: If the workload is so high, why are you so intent on eliminating the funnel of potential new patrollers [sic]? It's a weird form of self-harm going on here."
    • I'm not sure if this requires any retort, but to share my personal take, I liken it (somewhat; I realize the metaphor isn't perfect) to suggesting that the removal of any bar to entry for aspiring police officers would be a good idea, since some of those will eventually join Internal Affairs, so there will be more people to address the misconduct that is the result of the lack of any bar to entry. Equazcion (talk) 16:05, 29 Mar 2012 (UTC)
  • [6]: "Are you familiar with the actual hard statistical data which shows that nearly three-quarters of all articles created by non-autoconfirmed editors are deleted, most of which are deleted immediately?" Response: "Yes, I am familiar with that statistic ... I think it mostly supports that a lot of people are trigger-happy deletionists eager to ramp up their edit counts so that they can "make admin faster" more than it means that everyone in the world has Bad Faith."
    • This seems contentious at best, especially since the statistic was about the number of new pages actually deleted (by their reviewing administrators), rather than merely the number of new pages tagged for deletion (by ordinary users possibly aspiring to become administrators). Equazcion (talk) 16:05, 29 Mar 2012 (UTC)
  • Several comments expressing technical concerns were addressed in the following comment, where an editor presented a simple 7-line code fix: [7]. This comment received no reply.

It has been over 6 months since this overturn of consensus occurred. Per WP:Consensus can change, I'd like to re-propose this idea, in the hopes that the individuals at the Wikimedia Foundation could be persuaded to change their consensus, which apparently supersedes ours.

Consider this either as a direct re-proposal of Wikipedia:AACT (the proposal for a trial implementation), or at least as a discussion regarding the possibility of re-proposing it. I was not present or aware of the initial proposal nor its rejection by the WMF, but seeing both sides laid out in front of me now, I can say I'm thus far a firm believer that this is a good idea. Equazcion (talk) 16:05, 29 Mar 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're mistaken with respect to reevaluating consensus. The previous proposal was not canceled by a lack of consensus, but because the WMF sort of banned its implementation as incompatible with their goals and policies for Wikipedia. I tend to agree with that view; Wikipedia is what it is because anyone could arrive and create an article from scratch without previous burocracy nor requirements. Also there's an alternate approach that is expected to solve the problem that doesn't require a prohibition for newcomers to create articles - the WMF is dedicating efforts in developing some new interfaces for the Article Creation Workflow and page triage for patrolling new articles. This change is in line with their studies to improve the experience for newcomers, improve editors retention, and should have a strong impact on most of the trivial stuff that consist the majority of the workload for patrollers. Until this new system is implemented and we see how it fares, a re-proposal would follow the same fate as the first one. Diego (talk) 17:55, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Snap; Diego said what I was going to, but faster and nicer :). If you all want to take a look at the plans at New Page Triage, it'd be great to have your input, but I think re-running the autoconfirmed trial proposal will lead to the same outcome as last time. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I also think that re-proposing ACTRIAL would be a waste of time, because attitudes have become too entrenched. In the TL;DR discussion here (start about a third of the way down, or don't bother), the refusal was defended on the grounds that the WMF Board's resolution on openness obliged the WMF staff to refuse; that argument was undercut by a Board member who pointed out that the resolution did no such thing, and said:

"In general, the Board does not micromanage the work of the projects; nor is it generally the role of the WMF to set Project editorial or community policy. An exception to that principle was made in this case, for better or for worse. But that was not directed by a Board resolution."

Having re-read all the discussion, I conclude that the refusal was not actually a matter of policy or principle but a dominance game, which is why if we ask again we shall be refused again. It will take a higher-level debate on the extent to which the WMF should try to micro-manage the volunteer projects to bring about any change. JohnCD (talk) 20:18, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've been working here for 6 months and not got that impression at all, from any of the staffers I've encountered. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Problem is not that the proposal is not allowed by tech folks, problem is that it's too controversial. You can't go and submit a bug to bugzilla requesting to change something in such a way. No engineer in wmf would take the responsibility for this change, without having it approved by someone above him. So you should likely forward the results of proposal to Board of Trustees who are ultimately responsible for the wikimedia project, or that's how I understand it. If they agree with the change it will be surely implemented by devs immediately. Petrb (talk) 14:03, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It wasn't the tech folks who refused, it was the Deputy Director of the WMF, Erik Möller. JohnCD (talk) 19:30, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I happen to agree with the WMF on this one - this should remain an encyclopedia anyone can edit. Whether this is an appropriate use of their authority ... well, it's a bit rude, but I'm not sure if the level of project autonomy given really rises to the level of being able to change the definition of the project itself. In any case, I oppose the proposal for a trial both because it is a bad idea and because apparently it won't go anywhere. Wnt (talk) 19:43, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"Anyone can edit" is not an absolute principle - article creation is already restricted to registered accounts, image upload and article move require autoconfirmed, and so on. Moving article creation up one notch from "registered" to "autoconfirmed" is not the tremendous breach of principle it's made out to be, and really doesn't "change the definition of the project itself". But the argument is lost, and I didn't mean to start re-hashing it, only to add my voice to those saying that to re-propose ACTRIAL now would be a waste of breath. JohnCD (talk) 20:43, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Fair warning to editors stumbling across this; Point 1. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:29, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Whether or not you agree with their decision on the merits of the proposal itself is moot. It's already been discussed, consensus established, no need to rehash it. The only question is whether the rejection by WMF despite that consensus was proper (or something). There are no clear rules there, but WMF does tend to maintain the impression/facade that things are generally up to the community. Sure it's a major change, but it's legal, technically feasible, and there's broad consensus for it (plus it's just a trial for now). What's missing? I don't know. I'm lost. Equazcion (talk) 21:47, 4 Apr 2012 (UTC)
Equazcion , your question may be rhetorical, but as someone who supported ACTRIAL, I'll try and give a fair shot at answering it. WMF appears to believe that ACTRIAL will drive away editor in large numbers. (I personally feel the opposite, that ACTRIAL would help new editor retention, and that WMF's focus on NPT as an "alternative" to ACTRIAL demonstrates clearly that they haven't even heard the argument why.) I can't, and don't, fault WMF for trying to push for the same goals I push for. I think it's entirely fair for them to push hard back on moves that they feel could be seriously destructive. I think they're *wrong* in this case, I think they're not listening, but I do think their heart is in the right place. --joe deckertalk to me 22:32, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It makes no difference if they don't think the proposal is a good one. I respect their opinion, but if they don't like the proposal they should've voted and accepted the resulting consensus like everyone else, rather than used the power they happen to have technically to impose their opinions over everyone else's. Equazcion (talk) 22:42, 4 Apr 2012 (UTC)
  • We already know that the WMF's response wasn't proper and not following any policy, let alone any they've articulated. Thus, we also already know the response from them was hypocritical. But what exactly are we going to do about it? I sincerely doubt English Wikipedia members have enough guts to give an all or nothing ultimatum, whereupon the WMF refusing would mean us splitting off into a separate project like Spanish Wikipedia did with Enciclopedia Libre and German Wikipedia has threatened to do multiple times with many established users affirming the stance.
I don't believe we here at English Wikipedia have the backbone to take such a stance. We all love our little power here far too much to give it up, even if it means allowing the Foundation to refuse a request that, without it being implemented, is just leading to further degradation of the encyclopedia.
What the refusal has really shown is that the Foundation cares more about the "encyclopedia anyone can edit" mantra than about making a good encyclopedia. But, haven't we already known that for the longest time? I just don't see anything really resulting from any of this. SilverserenC 22:27, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Where they get the idea that they know better than 375 editors is beyond me. Is knowing which policies are best for the encyclopedia even in their job description? "What are we going to do about it," indeed. It comes down to that -- there might have been no valid reason for them to do what they did, but they can anyway due to logistics. There's a middle between "strike" and "shut up," though. I'll be vocal about how this shouldn't have happened, because guess what -- I can. Besides, lots of people not shutting up when wronged has proven rather powerful in itself before. Equazcion (talk) 22:36, 4 Apr 2012 (UTC)
My position on the subject is very well-known, given I'm the person who started the original conversation. I get the sense people are sick of listening to me on this matter, so I implore other people who feel strongly about this to say something. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:11, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Scottywong

I was one of the 3 main editors (along with Blade and Kudpung) who originally attempted to implement this trial. I have some thoughts to share: It's important to accept that it is extraordinarily unlikely that the WMF will allow this trial to commence in the near term, even if we had a unanimous consensus from 50000 voters. The fact that there was a consensus is not important to them (at least, for this particular issue). This much they made clear. I agree with Joe Decker above that their heart is in the right place, but they're not listening and not making the right decision. However, I also know that they're not going to listen, at least in the near term.

I believe that any real second attempt to implement this trial will have to involve Jimmy Wales. During the course of our original attempt to implement the trial, I emailed Jimbo and got a very long and thoughtful response back. I don't think it would be right to publicize our email exchange, but I feel it would be ok to paraphrase and perhaps post a brief quote from it. In particular, Jimbo says the following regarding the trial:

"I agree with the proposed trial and I think it should proceed. I think that there are some thoughtful discussions to be had about exact implementation details, and I think that any test should involve careful measurement. The simple truth is that no one knows what this will do for new editor retention: there is at least some reason to think that it will be bad for it, and at least some reason to think that it will be good for it."

Later in the email, he specifically calls out the same two quotes from the bugzilla discussion that Equazcion lists above, and stated his firm disagreement with those ideas. The bottom line: Jimbo is (or at least, was) on our side.

In my view, the most likely path that the eventual implementation of this trial would take is this:

  • WMF developers finally finish and implement the new patrolling interface and all of the features associated with WP:New Page Triage, complete with the new landing pages and everything.
  • We all try it out for awhile, and we generally find that it makes new page patrolling easier and more efficient.
  • Statistics are gathered both before and after the implementation of the triage stuff. We find that it has had no significant impact in the number of inappropriate articles created by brand new users on a daily basis.
  • Assuming this prediction is correct, gathering broad support for the trial will be easy to achieve. At that point, a request for the trial is made directly (and publicly) to Jimbo. The implementation of the trial is directed from the top down.

So, in summary, while it's encouraging that people are still talking about the trial, it's likely a waste of time to talk about it before the implementation of Triage is proven to not solve the problem, since Triage is WMF's alternative to ACTRIAL. Don't get me wrong, I think Triage will solve other problems, but it won't solve the problem that ACTRIAL was designed to solve. The time to attempt the trial again will be when this is clearly demonstrated. —SW— yak 04:48, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, NPT is not attempted to solve all the problems the ACTRIAL was trying to: that's where things like the landing page system, as previously described, comes in :). You'll be pleased to know that we are putting a lot of effort into the backend API so that statistics like this can be gathered more easily and in more detail. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
NPT was introduced to fix what WMF sees as the root problem, which is that new page patrollers are overworked and the NPP process is inefficient. While that is a problem (and it's good that it's being addressed), it's certainly not the root problem. The new landing pages, while pretty, will do next to nothing to stop the flood of new inappropriate articles being created and deleted every day. NPT will just make it somewhat easier and faster to identify and delete these articles. WMF is only interested in new editor retention, and they believe that new users will stick around if we give them the freedom to create shit articles. What they don't consider is the impact of allowing someone to put work into an article that clearly has no chance of surviving, and then subjecting that new user to watching their work get deleted by an army of patrollers who have no time to explain their actions, because they have to move right on to the next one. This happens to 3 out of 4 articles created by non-autoconfirmed users, and there are hundreds created every day. WMF is so sure that this common scenario doesn't impact new editor retention that they will not even allow a temporary trial, just to collect data and see what happens. In my opinion, this is terrifically shortsighted. I doubt that the WMF has heard the last of ACTRIAL. -Scottywong| soliloquize _ 15:10, 7 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, no. You say "the new landing pages will do next to nothing to stop the flood of new inappropriate articles...what they don't consider is the impact of allowing someone to put work into an article that clearly has no chance of surviving". The entire point of the new landing pages (well, most of the point) is to indicate to new users very clearly "please be aware your article may be deleted if: yadda yadda yadda". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:49, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but I think it would be generous to assume that maybe 50% of these new editors will even read the landing page warnings, and of those 50% maybe 10% will actually take them to heart and follow them. So, we can look forward to a 5% reduction in deleted new articles. There is a large chunk of people who come to Wikipedia determined to write an article on a non-notable subject, and most of them aren't going to let a polite warning in a red box stop them. We have two ways of stopping them: waving our hands and saying "Please don't!" but still allowing them to, or forcing them to jump over a very low bar and first make 10 edits over 4 days to ensure they minimally understand the rules here. Who knows, over those 4 days they might actually get a chance to read the wall of text that is WP:N, WP:GNG, WP:V, WP:RS, etc. ‑Scottywong| communicate _ 15:12, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Except there's no obligation to learn any of those policies :). The crucial policies of those you picked out - WP:N and WP:GNG - are things that only apply when dealing with articles as a whole. Since we would be stopping editors from participating in creating whole articles, there is no reason to think that they would go and look them up unless they are extraordinary motivated (for the same reason that I don't see fit to read up on the user renaming policy before I go categorise articles). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Articles on possibly-viable topics get deleted for content too, like clear COI and/or failure to show notability (even though such proof still might exist); not to mention, an article full of content violations like OR is also going to get deleted. Participation in editing and/or discussion would make people more familiar with what's accepted on Wikipedia, yes even including which topics warrant articles. I think most of us became familiar with those standards that way, long before actually reading the posted rules. How long it takes for that to happen is another matter, but the autoconfirm time means at least some participation, whereas the landing page is just reading material. Required participation is always a better learning tool than required reading. Equazcion (talk) 18:20, 8 Apr 2012 (UTC)
It's not worth arguing, since WMF's collective ears are clearly not open on this topic. I'm just going to wait until NPT and the landing pages are implemented, and then we can look at the stats and decide how effective they were. ‑Scottywong| talk _ 13:57, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The changes to New page patrol involved in the Newpage Triage system include addressing issues that ACTRIAL ignored. For example under the current system articles created by expanding redirects or by starting articles in sandboxes and then moving them to mainspace don't get looked at by Newpage patrol. My understanding is that both bugs will be fixed in this development - ACTRIAL would have fixed neither bug, if anything it would have made them more common as newbies found that expanding a redirect was their only way to create a new article. So don't judge New Page triage by its success at fixing the issues covered by ACTRIAL, judge it by its success at fixing the issues it intends to fix. ϢereSpielChequers 14:24, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Our responses here are based on claims that re-proposing ACTRIAL is futile since triage is supposed to address those issues. If it's not, as you seem to be saying, maybe we should still be trying to get ACTRIAL implemented? Equazcion (talk) 14:31, 9 Apr 2012 (UTC)
Both would be radical changes to NewPage patrol - Triage perhaps the more radical change because ACTRIAL would have left completely unaltered newpage creation by autoconfirmed editors, conversion of redirects or moves from userspace. The newpage patrol system has gone a very long time without significant change, and there are several improvements in the triage proposal, all of which I believe have consensus and most would be complementary to any future implementation of ACTRIAL. I don't see that ACTRIAL and Triage are addressing the same issues, though there is bound to be some overlap, and others may consider that the overlap is larger than I think it is. As for reviving ACTRIAL either now or in the future, my suggestion to those who supported that idea is that you review the objections and see if you can resolve more of them. ACTRIAL had unusually large support but also substantial opposition - it may have had consensus, it certainly had clear majority support, but it was far from unanimous. I suspect that the WMF would have far more difficulty declining a proposal that 75 or 80% support. Think of it a bit like a bot proposal, if someone proposed a bot that would have circa 27% false positives it would be declined. But if the proposal could be tweaked to reduce the proportion of false positives, then it would become a more attractive option. For example we probably have the technology to write editfilters or a bot that would look at all new articles being saved by editors who don't have the Autopatroller flag and reject those that the bot thinks would probably be deleted by speedy deletion. If that was written and tuned to the point where it would reject a similar number a day as ACTRIAL but with only a 10% false positive rate then perhaps you could get a stronger level of support from the community (personally I'd still be opposed, but if you could get it down to 10% false positives I'd be far less vehemently opposed than I was to the ACTRIAL proposal), ϢereSpielChequers 15:25, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we should have to show stronger consensus due to the foundation's refusal to accept the existing closing based on whichever arbitrary standard for consensus they might be working off of. We already have a standard, it's consensus as judged by an uninvolved closing administrator, and it should be enough. Personally I'm not interested bowing to any sort of "sorry not good enough" attitude to try and come back with a "is this to your satisfaction now?" That's not how it's supposed to work, and it's furthermore a dangerous precedent to accept and accommodate for the future.

That's disregarding, though, the fact that WMF didn't even allude to any lack of adequate consensus or questioning the closing. They simply said in more or less words that they think we "haven't thought this through" (I think those actually were the words in one comment). It doesn't seem like broader consensus would help, even if we should reasonably be willing to try to provide it, which I don't think we should.

The reason people are drawing parallels is because the new landing portion of Triage is meant to reduce the burden of new page patrol and keep new editors from having their hasty new articles deleted, just as ACTRIAL is. I think people for ACTRIAL would still be in favor of the other elements of Triage, such as the expanded redirects issue you pointed out. You're presenting it as an either/or, all-or-nothing decision (Triage vs. ACTRIAL), but it doesn't need to be. I and other feel the new landing page would not be as effective as required participation prior to article creation, in accomplishing what those features alone are meant to achieve. Equazcion (talk) 15:52, 9 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I agree that New Page Triage is a good thing, and the new landing pages are a good thing; and I also agree that neither of them will solve the main problem that ACTRIAL was designed to solve. The problem is that they were originally sold to us as an alternative solution to the problems that ACTRIAL would solve, and they continue to be sold to us as such. Well, I guess "sold" is not a good word choice, as it implies that we chose to buy it rather than having it forced upon us. But don't get me wrong, I think NPT is a great thing and long overdue, but I continue to believe that we would be much better off with ACTRIAL and NPT. ‑Scottywong| chat _ 16:06, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have a related proposal in mind, which I mention now because it may interest people who have commented here, and because it would need WMF co-operation, and so would need careful preparation and presentation lest, like ACTRIAL, it meets automatic refusal as going against "anyone can edit."

Many of the new pages that get deleted are not the work of vandals or incompetents, but of good-faith new editors who have not understood, because we have not explained to them, what Wikipedia is and what it is not. A policy of "Welcome everyone in, no barriers" means that hordes of people sign on who think it is another Myspace or LinkedIn or a free advertising noticeboard, and are here only to post their CV or write about themselves, their garage bands, their self-published books, their companies or their school netball teams. We let them go all the way to writing an article, sometimes putting a great deal of effort into making it look good, before deleting it. Only then do we tell them "That is not what Wikipedia is for."

Many of the "unretained" editors, and the people who complain that Wikipedia is unfriendly, are of this type. Fluffy kittens will not keep them, or make them happy. If we want to increase percentage editor retention, we should discourage those who are not here to build an encyclopedia from becoming editors at all: replace the "Everyone welcome, come on in and edit!" sign with one that says "This is a project to build an encyclopedia. If you would like to help with that, you are very welcome, click here to register an account; but if you looking for somewhere to write about yourself, your friends, your company, your band, or anything you are closely associated with, this is probably not the site for you." That would reduce the NPP/CSD load, and the number of unretained editors.

I have half-formed ideas on how to go about this. Please do not comment here - think about it, and within two or three days I will post a more detailed proposal for discussion below.

JohnCD (talk) 22:21, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to butt in anyway (sorry!) and just point out that I agree completely with your second paragraph. That's why we're instituting the landing page system. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm aware of the ACW/landing page work, and if I haven't commented it's because it's good stuff as far as it goes; but I don't think it does enough to solve this problem. See WP:Village pump (proposals)#Explain at account creation time what Wikipedia is NOT for below. JohnCD (talk) 22:35, 7 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's a really interesting idea :). I'll chuck it at the editor engagement mailing list: I know we've done some work on improving the account creation interface, but really that should be a focus. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:50, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See my own deleted contributions

At Wikipedia:Help desk#My Own?, I asked why I was not allowed to view my own deleted contributions. Several good reasons were given not to see the content of the edits, but I cannot see any reason not to be allowed to see the articles to which the edits were made, the amount of content that was removed, and a list - sort of like "My Contributions" without "dif" buttons. Interchangeable|talk to me 23:49, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The idea of allowing non-admins to have access to deleted material has been explicitly vetoed by the legal advisors for the Wikimedia Foundation, [8]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Orangemike (talk • contribs)
You didn't read my proposal carefully enough. I do not want the deleted material to be accessible; I want to see a list of edits that have been deleted, without the opportunity to see the content of those edits. It would be like "My Contributions" without "dif" buttons. Say I wanted to apply to become an administrator and I looked at my edits. If I noticed that a significant number of them had been reverted, I might think, "Hmm, RfA probably won't pass me if my contributions aren't valuable and constructive. And I've been edit-warring a lot, too. Maybe I won't apply." Presto, a lot of headache for the people of RfA has been prevented. Interchangeable|talk to me 21:05, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like something which would not be needed much. You could always just ask an admin to give you the list--Jac16888 Talk 21:03, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If you agree that there is no harm in having it released from an administrator to a user, why not simply make it available to the users? Why bother with the administrator conduit? Interchangeable|talk to me 21:06, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Because its not currently technically possible to do as you suggest, and little reason for it the foundation to spend money to make it possible--Jac16888 Talk 21:09, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Please explain why it is impossible. If administrators can see the list, and it would cause no harm for a user to see their own contributions, there should be no difficulty in creating the list. Interchangeable|talk to me 21:11, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I can see the list because I have the viewdeleted right, and it includes all the links etc to the contents of the edits, it is exactly the same as a contributions page. To view the list without the links would require a new right, one which doesn't exist--Jac16888 Talk 21:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
How difficult would it be to create this right? Interchangeable|talk to me 21:17, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No idea, but it would require someone being paid to do it, which the foundation is not going to do for the rare occasion when it might be useful, and that would be assuming you got consensus for it, which is not very likely--Jac16888 Talk 21:22, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes it is the name of the article that is the problem. This is especially true of "is gay" style attack pages
cyber bullying is a problem, kids create attack pages on other kids and the link is rapidly spread via texts or social media. Currently we counter this by deleting attack pages PDQ. But if people had access to their own deleted edits, how do you prevent people circulating a link to the deleted article plus the account name and password that created it? ϢereSpielChequers 23:42, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Once again, you didn't read my proposal carefully enough. The person will only be able to view their own contributions, and I mean the contributions, not the material itself. The material will not be visible; it will simply be a list of the user's edits that have been deleted. Furthermore, I would prefer to make this a feature visible only to registered users, not to IPs.
Will any future contributors to this proposal please read my proposal and the subsequent corrections I have made to those who have not? This is not about viewing deleted material, but a list of the articles on which material has been deleted, the amount of content that was deleted, and the edit summaries. Interchangeable|talk to me 23:57, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"Once again?" As far as I remember this is the first time we've interacted. If you think that your proposal doesn't have the problems that I listed, then please explain why you think so. But to be very specific, in order for my comment "Sometimes it is the name of the article that is the problem. This is especially true of "is gay" style attack pages" not to be relevant to your proposal you would need to be giving people access to their deleted contributions without the name of the article they contributed to. The specific part of your proposal that I consider relevant to this was "but I cannot see any reason not to be allowed to see the articles to which the edits were made". ϢereSpielChequers 09:09, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Interchangeable, you failed to read WSC's response. If we let you see "your own" attack page's article name, what's to stop you from sharing "your own" password with other people so that they can login and look at "your own" deleted contributions? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you see this a major problem? Presumably any deleted page would have a noticeable banner at the top. It's not like, "lol here is my login and you can see that wikipedia totally has a page saying jack is gay! lolol". You're really grasping here. --Golbez (talk) 13:56, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I did read it, but WereSpielChequers was rather unclear in his expression of it, so I couldn't understand it. Interchangeable|talk to me 22:32, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you assume that editors who are already here to vandalize and make jokes for their friends wouldn't do that? Along the same lines but more significantly is WP:NOTWEBHOST: we already do have users who think their userpage is a great place to stash cheat-codes and other non-WP notes, why should we enable this further by allowing some of that content to persist as a completely private arena (password-protected free cloud data-store?) even after admin deletion of it? DMacks (talk) 15:37, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I was looking at it as "lol look at what I did on Wikipedia" which is such a marginal case it can't possibly play into decision making. But now I see what you mean, using it as a private data storage, and that is a legitimate concern. --Golbez (talk) 15:48, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Webspace is so cheap nowadays that we shouldn't be too concerned at a few cent's worth being used as free webspace. But cyber bullying is a serious problem and we shouldn't dismiss it a merely "lol look at what I did on Wikipedia". There is a reason why we prioritise the deletion of attack pages and why I and many others put time in to finding and deleting them. Creating a loophole for cyber bullies is not something to be done lightly or without due regard for the consequences. ϢereSpielChequers 19:26, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Cyberbullying presumably means the person being bullied knows they're being bullied. Do you expect most people to get an email from someone they hate saying, "Log in to Wikipedia with this username and password and look at this link!" and actually do it? As for webspace being cheap: True, but that doesn't mean we should be in the business of providing it. --Golbez (talk) 14:29, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Once again, I'm not sure if any of you get this. This feature would enable people to see a list of edits that have been reverted, but not links to the material itself. So the deleted pages would still be invisible. Interchangeable 22:52, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We get it. As has already been explained, this would require a coding change, and you've not provided a compelling reason why it would be worth that much trouble. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 21:06, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ban April Fools pranks

Because some people are too stupid to get them, such as myself. Wikipedia shouldn't be excludatatious. Equazcion (talk) 08:31, 1 Apr 2012 (UTC)

"excludatatious" That's not a word, at least until my link is no longer red. :-P --Cybercobra (talk) 08:38, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

*Support I like a joke as well as the next person, but it has gotten way out of hand, even by my wide standards. Too bad. Mugginsx (talk) 12:35, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose too severe. See alternate proposal more reasonable. Mugginsx (talk) 13:47, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment to all I see and understand that everyone sees this as immature or disruptive and that this year it got out of hand however as long as it doesn't disrupt the flow of information, an entire ban of gags and jokes for a once a year thing is a bit much. If this thing passes, administrators will have their hands full here on Wikipedia during April Fools. I would propose banning all jokes that disrupts articlespace on wikipedia or any other space that is accessed by everyday readers and those that do disrupt article space are blocked from editing for the duration of the day.—cyberpower ChatLimited Access 12:51, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given the time-stamp on the OP, how am I to know whether or not to take it seriously? FormerIP (talk) 13:51, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    True, but the bottom proposal I made is a serious one.—cyberpower ChatLimited Access 14:02, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - April Fools' Day is a widely acceptable prank day. While certain parts of Wikipedia (including the article namespace) need to remain intact, jokes in the "background" areas (Wikipedia: namespace excluding policy pages, discussion pages, etc) should be allowed within reason. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:02, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative Proposal Ban - only those who vandalize articles and guideline pages

Terms: All jokes that disrupts articlespace on wikipedia or any other space that is accessed by everyday readers are strictly prohibited and those that do disrupt article space are blocked from editing for the duration of the day without warning but a notice stating the reason for their block must be presented.—cyberpower ChatLimited Access 12:51, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. Support only the ones that affect articles and guideline pages. Upon reflection, that sounds more reasonable.Mugginsx (talk) 13:14, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support as proposer.—cyberpower ChatLimited Access 14:02, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Any joke that disrupts the wikipedia mainpage should not be allowed, this should not include certain AfDs or user made MFD's. For articles if they are to be done I suggest once Arpril fools is over worldwide these should be deleted right away and placed in an April fools day archive. Deleting Articles for a joke must not be people and must be respectful and clean and have the words "AF" in the deletion context (Example: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/AF2013Earth). Also if this proposal is adopted a eikipedia page be made up explaining these guidelines. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:34, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support The main issue is the article space disruption this brings. Sure, our reader's know this is April Fool's (or maybe they don't, depending on where they live), but they are still coming here to learn and use Wikipedia for some purpose. Disruption to articles is directing disrupting this purpose and shouldn't be allowed, no matter the holiday. SilverserenC 06:06, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support I'd like to see them all go away, since all these AfDs are of questionable humor at best, but this is an acceptable middle ground. Jtrainor (talk) 13:09, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support - we need Wikipedia to be useful as an encyclopedia, and to be welcoming to newcomers trying to learn our rules, all year long. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:58, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support. mabdul 13:01, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support - a terrible example. Rcsprinter (chat) 14:59, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh FFS, I did the same thing years ago. It's in project space, didn't disrupt mainspace a bit, and gave everyone a good laugh. See User:Seraphimblade/vandalbotjoke for the archive. There's nothing wrong with having a little bit of fun once a year, as long as it doesn't disrupt mainspace. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Seriously. I also must say it's very amusing to mess with the MW interface a bit; I rather like what Snowolf and I did. I also have a problem with "blocking without warning", because admins and non-admins alike are known to bitch at people who would dare report penis vandals to AIV who haven't inserted "John loves the cock!!!!" after a final warning. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:18, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
Comments

Alternative Proposal 2 - Delete editors without a sense of humor

We already have AfD and MfC; I hereby propose an EfD process where editors without a sense of humor can be nominated for deletion.

Support
  1. Support As proposer. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:57, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    So do we install the user merge and delete extension and merge them to ?  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  00:39, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support People without a sense of humor should not participate, especially on April Fools.—cyberpower ChatLimited Access 14:03, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Already exists ;-) Regards SoWhy 14:04, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support but it needs to implement the technical ability to delete users, which isn't possible atm Petrb (talk) 14:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support, but the ban should be lifted for one day each year (every April 1st) - if all editors without a sense of humour were banned all the time, who would be around to be fooled / annoyed every April 1st? Meowy 15:07, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

April Fools Jokes and possible guidelines

I'm starting this as per this thread at WP:AN. I realize too there's a small discussion above asking for a full ban; it's without much explanation and is neglecting the longer discussion that precipitated this.

It's inherently unfunny to propose something like this, so I'll first say that I'm not proposing it myself, so much as I'm trying to start a centralized discussion. There seems to be at least some concern that the perennial April Fools Day jokes on the encyclopedia occasionally get out of hand. These jokes have been a staple on Wikipedia since its early days, certainly as long as I've been seriously involved, and many older editors see them as a tradition. That's part of why an all-out ban seems, un-wiki. There have been attempts at guidelines before, notably WP:Pranking which failed around 2008 or so.

On the other hand the jokes have proliferated, and while they seem to be done without mal intent, they do begin to clutter up some areas of the site, most notable WP:Rfa and WP:Afd. The two most common forms are nominating clearly notable articles for deletion, or nominating one's self or others for adminship with.... novel... motivations.

First, some relevant links:

The AN discussion points seem to involve the following pro and con (this is a rough summary, and are not necessarily my views):

  1. Nominations can disrupt humorless bots, such as those that populate AfD tags
  2. One joke may be fine but many editors feel the need to replicate the same jokes and so the number of disruptions grows each year
  3. Vandalism on April 1 is still vandalism
  4. This is a 9 year+ Wiki tradition and we should be entitled to an annual bit of levity
  5. Mainspace jokes are the bulk of the controversy; few seem concerned about userspace jokes
  6. Some editors did not make just one joke but many
  7. A few, well thought out jokes are unlikely to stir controversy while many, unclever ones, will
  8. A number of editors expressed their concerns as things getting "out of hand" in terms of quantity of jokes

Possible proposals (these were made at the AN discussion; again, not necessarily my view) (some of these were deliberately tongue-in-cheek):

  1. Adopt WP:Pranking for April Fool's day (specifically see this comment)
  2. A single wiki-wide joke that's organized and meets some criteria (no BLPs, etc.)
  3. Change slogan "from saying "anyone can edit" to "no one can edit, ever," full protect the whole project"
  4. "Create an adminbot/cratbot that desysops and blocks everyone on Wikipedia, hard blocks all IPs and fully protects all articles."
  5. "Back up the database on March 31, then restore the backup on April 2."

I'll let others populate the more serious proposals below. Even if this doesn't lead anywhere concrete, we should have at least an organized, recent discussion. Shadowjams (talk) 15:33, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment – Well I don't think we should be adding AfD result notices to the talk pages of articles when the AfD is an obvious April Fool's joke. For example, see: Talk:Mars. Otherwise, I'm not all that concerned about it. Regards, RJH (talk) 20:55, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    That was happening because Snotty's bot applies AfD tags to articles if they are nominated and don't have one. To me that's emblematic of unintended consequences that happen... so it's not as though someone was adding the notices to the pages intentionally. On the other hand, it's almost funnier if the notice is on the page... but I'll digress. Shadowjams (talk) 21:45, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree but if it were up to some people, pranking would be gone fully from wikipedia. What people here are trying to do is meet in the middle for a consensus as this year's april fools got way out of hand, this includes an AfD joke attacking a living person. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:17, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment to all A proposal banning all jokes and pranks the interfere in article mainspace has been made above before this thread. I believe that would make a great in between. The main focus is the encyclopedia articles contained here and as long as those aren't allowed to be disrupted, editors can joke all they want.—cyberpower ChatOffline 00:23, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We don't need to "ban" April Fools' Day pranks from the article namespace. They already violate policy. (Wikipedia:Vandalism is quite clear and contains no "1 April" exception.)
And even if explicit agreement that the article namespace is off-limits were required, our annual discussions have consistently established this. Even among those who enjoy April foolery among Wikipedians, there's longstanding consensus that it shouldn't affect the encyclopedia proper.
We simply need to clarify this fact for the benefit of those who mistakenly believe that they're entitled (and even encouraged) to vandalise articles on 1 April. —David Levy 00:38, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is also why a villagepump/admin policy should be in place reguarding April 1st. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:41, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We don't need to "ban" April Fools' Day pranks from the article namespace. They already violate policy. (Wikipedia:Vandalism is quite clear and contains no "1 April" exception.)
Apparently we do as it still goes on and nothing is done. Mugginsx (talk) 19:04, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't say that nothing is done. But as noted above, we haven't done enough to clarify policy. —David Levy 19:37, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support a ban on all jokes affecting main or portal space (these are simply vandalism) and on joke nominations for things like AfD, RfAr etc., because these are not funny and clutter up the pages intended for actual work.  Sandstein  07:05, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support barring any jokes that disrupt any process, like AfDs and whatnot. While some written jokes might be considered funny, we are now stuck with former AfDs, MfD, bad entries in lists, confused bots, slightly altered statistics, etc. that need fixing. I can appreciate jokes, and frankly don't mind them, but I am strongly against editors who don't consider a long term impact of this seemingly innoxious exercise. A bot being blocked because someone made a "joke" is going a bit too far. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:33, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Apparently I was naively optimistic about this accomplishing something useful. That doesn't seem to be happening. We understand that Levy and Sandstein don't want any April Fools material. However I think the AN discussion and the broader quiet majority, as well as a decade of tradition, mean your interpretation of no jokes ever is a non-starter. I was hoping we'd find useful guidelines here about how to ensure the moderation necessary... but supporting and opposing when there wasn't even a real proposal makes me unoptimistic about reaching a useful guideline. Shadowjams (talk) 17:01, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You appear to have misunderstood, as I'm not arguing that Wikipedia should have "no jokes ever". On the contrary, I support the adoption of "useful guidelines here about how to ensure the moderation necessary". My above comments refer specifically to the article namespace, not the entire site. Opinions on how far to take the April foolery vary, but there's longstanding consensus that the encyclopedia proper is off-limits. —David Levy 19:37, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's true though. The links in my OP indicate a long history of tolerated pranks in the mainspace (I suppose I'm including Rfa and Afd in there, maybe that's the misunderstanding). In recent years there's been a proliferation of these prompting more concern. I don't think many people were changing the pages themselves... those edits were treated as vandalism. The AN issue was all about the AfDs, etc., if I remember correctly. Shadowjams (talk) 23:40, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, that's the misunderstanding. I'm referring strictly to edits to the articles themselves. My apologies for the confusion. —David Levy 04:27, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Compromise proposal on April Fool's pranks

Editors should be able to have fun once a year. However, some pranks are disruptive. I seek to strike a balance between those two aspects. I propose the following:

  1. There should be one April Fool's prank in article space. This should not involve a living person or an article about a living person. It should be clever, well-designed and funny, like Google's pranks. It should not be immediately obvious as a joke, but neither should it be so plausible that it lasts until after April 1 is over.
  2. Other pranks are OK so long as they stay within the community namespaces (project, user, and talk namespaces), do not affect article space and do not involve living people or articles about living people. For example, joke AfDs would be fine, as long as the joke-nominated articles weren't about living people and didn't have deletion templates on them.
  3. Ruining of (legitimate) jokes by exposing them can result in a block after a warning (but only until April 1 is over, as blocks are not supposed to be punitive).
  4. The best April Fool's pranks should be commemorated in an April Fool's Hall of Fame, the worst in an April Fool's Hall of Infamy.
  5. Editors should try to come up with original pranks, rather than repeating the same ones year after year.
  6. Standard vandalism remedies will be applied to violators of item 1 or the BLP clause of item 2.

I know I'm playing the Jimbo card here, but Jimbo said: "That's 100% correct. The idea is not to censor things, but to actually be funny. To actually be funny takes more than cheap sex gags. We should always aim higher." --Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:31, 2 April 2012 (UTC) Apparently, Jimbo is fine with April Fool's pranks in moderation. Also, see above for my main support. "Jimbo said" is just a spare card I've decided to play. Your thoughts? ChromaNebula (talk) 00:56, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that April Fool's pranks in moderation is fine we just need to agree on some guidelines is all. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:57, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Copying/expanding my reply from WP:AN (where this proposal was posted previously):
  • Main Page (on which we feature humor of the "strange but true" variety) is in the article namespace. Apart from that, no, absolutely not. Wikipedia has enough credibility issues already. The idea of designating an article in which vandalism is permitted and encouraged on 1 April is unacceptable. (And as discussed in the AN thread, because anyone can edit a wiki, if we condone the existence of one such article, we'll end up with many more.)
  • I'm okay with #2, provided that article talk pages (important, first-line resources for readers and inexperienced editors) are off-limits.
  • This is an encyclopedia, not a playground. Any amount of fun and games permitted is purely a perk, not an entitlement. Politely asking users to go along with a joke is fine, but threatening them with blocks would be absurd. If a prank fails, oh well, better luck next time.
  • The rest seems fine, provided that it's worded in the context of what April foolery is tolerated (not encouraged). —David Levy 03:43, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: these antics cause no long term damage to the pedia and they are great for morale. The real issue is improving the funny-quotient of the pranks per Jimbo. That's what we should we working on.– Lionel (talk) 05:02, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Whose morale? Mine is fine thanks, without the idiocy. THAT depresses me. HiLo48 (talk) 06:00, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The real problem with April Fools

The real problem with April Fools is that the jokes aren't funny. (Except mine of course. Swapping Obama's pic with a caricature is a classic for the ages. user:LioneltBot is also a great one. My bot helps win edit wars and will create undetectable sickpuppets! One editor who was taken in wrote "is it even legal?!?!?!" [9] Priceless.) We should have a list of the best gags so April Fools revelers know what the standards are. We have FA, what about FG (Featured Gag)? Jimbo says "but to actually be funny...We should always aim higher."– Lionel (talk) 05:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, your defacement of reader-facing material about a living person is not "a classic for the ages". It's vandalism, and it won't be celebrated. —David Levy 05:51, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And did the "editor who was taken in" enjoy it? It obviously didn't make his day more productive. HiLo48 (talk) 06:03, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And this [10] wasn't funny either. Given that LionelT is clearly an opponent of Obama, it's hard to see these two edits as anything but vandalism using April 1st as an excuse. Maybe if he'd done it with someone he supports it might be seen differently. LionelT, try that again and you will probably end up blocked. Dougweller (talk) 10:45, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. (1) You don't know my views regarding Obama and (2) I added eight caricatures of all of the GOP candidates to the conservatism timeline. I think you'll agree that the right wingers got the worst of it. – Lionel (talk) 11:55, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
WP:DEADHORSE. Time to move on, Lionel. —Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 12:25, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal

Task WP:Department of Fun with creating and maintaining a list of exceptional gags, e.g. user:LioneltBot, to establish a benchmark for April Fools Day merrymakers.

  • Support: as proposer.– Lionel (talk) 05:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support provided that it's bound by a policy to prevent things like BLP-violating RfAs.--Jasper Deng (talk) 05:16, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional Support There needs to be a help group for people who are not capable of being funny on April fools day, and I'm quite serious here. I was at a complete loss for the entire day, you look at my editing and it's bland and lifeless for the whole day. Most people are serious everyday of the year except for April fools, but what happens to editors who are goofy everyday of the year like me ? It was awful, how are you supposed to act like an idiot on a day when it's made the fashion ? I mean take my Bot, PALZ9000 he might be considered amusing any other day of the year, so what can you do with it on April fools day ? It's like being emotionally bankrupt and unable to smile or joke for the entire day. Then to make it worse, they give PALZ9000 his official approval as the first order of business on 1st April. That was a crushing blow, to take him seriously on the epitome of stupidity day. I haven't been right since. Next day it's like I'm looking at a vandal who has removed a space from the ISS article, and he is thinking he will destroy wikipedia, I'm not going to fix it, it's stupid, it's even beneath contempt for cluebot, he is too dignified to fix it, and I'm not going to. So I turn to vandalism too, I blast away at wikipedia one space at a time as well thinking I'm some character out of star wars. This is the worst possible thing that can happen, because I'm crap at vandalism, I mean, I'm just one person, I can blast away adding extra spaces at two per day for years and it won't destroy wiki, even if I rallied support in the endeavor, it still sucks mathematically. My vandalism is lame, my editing is lame, even my lamest edit war is not lame enough to be lame.

So what am I supposed to do on April fools day to keep myself together emotionally ? I mean even my bot won't talk to me anymore, he talks to his programmer but not to me. I just don't know what to do. Penyulap ☏ 12:57, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

List of Indian Launch Articles.

Resolvedd͡ʒd͡ʑɸ I am young to the village pump. A few minutes old to the village pump. I propose the making of artcle:List of Indian Launch Vehicles--Monareal (talk) 11:16, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See Indian Space Research Organisation#Launch vehicle fleet and the navbox at the bottom. You can discuss any expansion on the talk page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 11:47, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I demand a separate article with contents in a text.Last year, an article was deleted because a sub article existed. I just don't know why they delete articles in favour of subarticles. Moreover the creator of the article had also made a article about GSLV-D3 which was merged with GSAT-4(Its payload) as a subarticle.--Monareal (talk) 16:08, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To avoid deletion, combine your article with the other if possible. Mugginsx (talk) 18:59, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah but I can't merge the articles. ISRO is about a space organization. I am talking about the making of List of Indian Launch Vehicles which is a list of the launch vehicles the organization has.--Monareal (talk) 06:02, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the articles, I think the proposal has some merit actually. I'll be happy to help. I wrote Chinese space station which has stood the test of time, even though it won't exist for more than a decade yet, and a few others, what a hoot. I'll give you a bit of a hand there Monareal. Use my talkpage initially. Penyulap ☏ 07:12, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My God is the earth being Bombed!--Monareal (talk) 06:26, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

you mean the earthquake ? did u see it a week ahead? Penyulap ☏ 16:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!--Monareal (talk) 16:47, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal in collaboration with WFP (World Food Programme)

Hello,

I think about a new interesting proposal.. Wikipedia/Wikimedia can make a donation project in collaboration with WFP (World Food Programme).

Many people want to help.

I'm sure about that. --Tegra3 (talk) 12:55, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what you're proposing. Are you asking for Wikipedia to do a donation drive for WFP? — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 16:24, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Tegra, stop your useless proposals. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 18:45, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@HandThatFeeds, in up of the page a redirect donation in collaboration with WFP :-) --Tegra3 (talk) 10:59, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@Seb_az86556 for you useless.. for me not. --Tegra3 (talk) 11:02, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Surely food for thought, so to speak. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:08, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A more open-minded response would probably come from proposing that Wikipedia hold regular donation drives for causes outside the project in general, as I think that's the real concern. Equazcion (talk) 16:24, 6 Apr 2012 (UTC)
Which I don't think should be done. Other charitable organizations are perfectly capable of raising their own funds (and those that are not probably don't need to be around...), but more importantly, donation drives for other charities here would almost certainly dilute the ability of the WMF to raise funds for themselves.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:35, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yet another Facebooky suggestion from Tegra3. Oppose this as just another effort to make us less like an encyclopedia and more like Gaia Online. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:06, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

User group rights anomaly

It strikes me as odd that in Special:Listgrouprights, torunblocked is only listed for IP Block Exempt, whereas Admins (and hence those above them) automatically get the rest of those types of privileges. Perhaps this permission ought also be inherited by Admins (and hence Crats etc.)? The move seems to make sense especially given that Admins already have proxyunbannable, which IPBE doesn't have, currently making it unclear just who is being trusted with what. It Is Me Here t / c 15:46, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, that permission isn't part of any other set right now, if it should be you can propose it and then it can be implemented. However there isn't probably need for that. If any administrator needed this flag, they could just give themselves the mentioned flag. Petrb (talk) 11:05, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I am trying to propose it – or am I in the wrong place; do I need to go to VPP for that? It Is Me Here t / c 11:31, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php says:
# groupOverrides2 @{
'groupOverrides2' => array(
    'default' => array(
...
        // Deployed to all wikis by Andrew, 2009-04-28
        'ipblock-exempt' => array(
            'ipblock-exempt' => true,
            'torunblocked' => true,
        ),
Does that mean ipblock-exempt implies torunblocked at Wikimedia wikis? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:02, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly, ipblock-exempt is both used as a group and as a right.
The line with 'ipblock-exempt' => array( contains it as the group, where it prepares to accept the rights for the group. The other two lines ('ipblock-exempt' => true, and 'torunblocked' => true,) define the rights available to the group. As the localized name of the ipblock-exempt usergroup here is "IP block exemptions", we say that IP block exemptions have the ipblock-exempt right. Basically, to answer your last question, yes, but to be specific, ipblock-exempt the group (not the right!!).  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  00:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. So administrators have the ipblock-exempt right which does not give them the torunblocked right, but they can assign them themselves the ipblock-exempt group which does give them the torunblocked right. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:59, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, the members of ipblock-exempt group have the permission, members of sysop group do not. Sysops do have the permission ipblock-exempt but aren't members of that group (permission is names same as group, which is confusing, but correct) Petrb (talk) 08:30, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Nevermind :-) Petrb (talk) 08:38, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I can't remember where this was discussed, but I remember having this conversation a couple years ago. I believe the logic was that some admins will use proxies for a valid reason, but few will use tor for a valid reason. Preventing admins from using tor helps discourage admin socking. They have to paint a red target on their back by giving themselves the right. I believe this was an issue in at least a handful of desysopping cases. MBisanz talk 01:12, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
OK, that makes sense. My main thought was that it was inconsistent for both user groups to imply a higher level of trust than the other one in some sense (I thought it would make more sense that one be a superset of the other), but I suppose that's more frivolous than the reasoning you put forward. It Is Me Here t / c 16:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Explain at account creation time what Wikipedia is NOT for

It will sound like heresy, but I think we are too welcoming. There are some potential users we should discourage.

Many of the new pages that get deleted are not the work of vandals or incompetents, but of good-faith new editors who have not understood, because we have not explained to them, what Wikipedia is and what it is not. A policy of "Welcome everyone in, no barriers" means that hordes of people sign on who think it is another Myspace or LinkedIn or a free advertising noticeboard, and are here only to post their CV or write about themselves, their garage bands, their self-published books, their companies or their school netball teams. We let them go all the way to writing an article, sometimes putting a great deal of effort into making it look good, before deleting it. Only then do we tell them "That is not what Wikipedia is for."

Many of the "unretained" editors, and the people who complain that Wikipedia is unfriendly, are of this type. Fluffy kittens will not make them happy, or keep them. If we want to increase percentage editor retention, we should discourage those who are not here to build an encyclopedia from becoming editors at all: replace the "Everyone welcome, come on in and edit!" sign over the gate with one that says "This is a project to build an encyclopedia. If you would like to help with that, you are very welcome, but if you looking for somewhere to write about yourself, your friends, your band, etc, this is probably not the site for you." That would reduce the NPP/CSD load, and the number of unretained editors.

The new mw:Article Creation Workflow/Landing System is intended to address this problem among others, and it looks good and will certainly help, but in my view it is not enough.

  • The advice and warnings it provides are only given to logged-in editors - IPs are taken straight to the account creation screen. I believe that someone who has actually set up an account is more likely to persist with an unsuitable article despite the warnings.
  • Nowhere does it actually break the news to the hopeful newbie who plans to write about his garage band that there are some articles we simply don't want: he is funnelled into the Article Creation Wizard, and although that does contain discouragement from writing COI or NN articles, plenty of them get through it, or the authors bomb out of it and write them anyway..

My suggestion is that we should explain before account creation what Wikipedia is not for.

Under the ACW scheme, an IP would be taken to this screen. Presently, if you click on "Don't have an account? Create one." you get something similar. In each case, all that is asked for is a username and password. This is the point where more is needed.

Too many words will not be read, so we have to keep it simple. I would like the first screen to say something like:

Wikipedia is a project to build a free encyclopedia. In order to be a useful encyclopedia, there are many things that Wikipedia is not. It is not a social-networking site, it is not a free noticeboard, it is not a platform for any kind of advertising or promotion.

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, but if you have come here because you are looking for somewhere to write about yourself, your band, your company, your client, or anything you are closely associated with, this is probably not the site for you. For more explanation, click here (1)

If you would like to help build the encyclopedia, welcome! Click here (2) to create an account.

To leave account creation, click here (3)

Clicking on (1) would go to a single screen which would explain, briefly, the messages in WP:Wikipedia is not about YOU, WP:N and WP:COI. From there, buttons would lead back to the first screen or out. Clicking on (2) would go to the present account creation screen. Button (2) should say "I have read and understood the above", or perhaps there could be a "Terms and Conditions" type check-box for that.

Possible objections:

  • It goes against "Anyone can edit". But "anyone can edit" has never meant "anyone can put in whatever they like"; better to explain that early.
  • It is elitist, exclusionary and unfriendly. I think it is actually friendlier to turn the Myspacer and the garage-band fan away at the gate than to let them write their articles and then delete them, or even to let them in and then turn them away at the ACW/Article Wizard stage.
  • It would turn away people who, after their first attempt is deleted, might learn from that and become productive editors. That is possible, but I think unlikely. Some time ago, while doing NPP, I kept a list of new accounts whose brief autobiographies I had "userfied" - moved to their user pages - while giving them a "Welcome" message and template {{userfy}} or equivalent. Some time later I went back and checked the contributions for 50 of them: none had become long-term editors, and only 3 had made edits on any subject but themselves. A "Myspace" type newbie who is also interested in becoming an encyclopedia editor may become a long-term contributor after submitting his garage-band article and seeing it deleted, but I think he is just as likely to become one if, reading my screen, he decides to drop the idea and sign on anyway.

This could be trialled on an experimental basis - say half of new applicants get the present account creation screen, and half this new one, and we keep track of the results. Note that if fewer people sign on with the new system, that is NOT an indication of failure: the right measures are the percentage of those that sign on who submit acceptable articles, and the percentage who are still editing say three months later.

It may be suggested that we should wait for the results of the ACW. I don't think that is necessary; that is mainly about what happens after account creation, and an IP passing through that gets passed straight to account creation.

Comments and suggestions welcome. If there seems to be support here, I will start an RFC on the idea. We shall have to think carefully how to present this to the WMF; I fear that, like ACTRIAL, it will be seen by them as heresy against "anyone can edit" and the drive to maximise the number of users. As Scottywong suggested above, we should perhaps try to enlist Jimbo's support, and go in at the top.

JohnCD (talk) 22:27, 7 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I sure agree with the sentiment (well, I did write an essay to that effect) and I do agree that it is friendlier to say "Sorry, wrong address." sooner rather than later, but the actual wording seems to be a little too unwelcoming...
First of all, it is not just "writers" that register. I know - I registered, because I wanted an option "Justify paragraphs" (yes, in Special:Preferences). Thus building the encyclopedia is not the only reason to register.
Second, I'd say that all five pillars could be mentioned. It's not just the ones who are not interested in encyclopedia that should probably go elsewhere - what about the ones "allergic" to NPOV?
Third, in a sense, this text is (for the lack of a better word) written from the project's point of view. I'd say we should write it more like this: "Nice to see you are interested in registering! But before you register, we would like to make sure you are in the right place. Wikipedia is a project to produce a free encyclopedia under 'Five pillars'. It is meant to do little else, but there are many alternative projects. For example, if you are interested in free textbooks, check out Wikibooks, and if you are interested in free news reports, check out Wikinews. But if you are sure you are in the right place, proceed to register.". That is, there is nothing wrong with wanting to participate in a different project and we should emphasise that. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 11:32, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the idea please rewrite text, it doesn't sound friendly even a bit. Also linking users to complicated rules and guidelines would quickly discourage them from contributing. I think we should do our best to avoid feeding newbies with dozen of hardcore rules. If they do something wrong, fix it Petrb (talk) 11:10, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
my idea for text:

Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. In order to be a useful encyclopedia, there are few things editors should avoid doing. Please keep in mind that the Wikipedia is not a public noticeboard neither a platform for any kind of advertising or promotion.

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, including you, and you are definitely welcome to do that! But please keep in mind that you should avoid writing about yourself, your band, your company, or anything you are closely related to, in order to keep the information neutral. In case you really need to have an article about that here, you are welcome to request it and someone else will write it for you. For more explanation, click here (1)

Welcome to Wikipedia! Click here (2) to create an account.

So basically you only want something like MediaWiki:Signupend? --Nemo 17:18, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I absolutely support this idea and initiative - in fact, it's something that comes up fairly often in conversations around the office. What we have, ultimately, is a failure to communicate in clear terms what is most important and we (most importantly, perhaps) fail to do so in a way that will actually be read by anyone.
The text suggestions above are good starts but are still too long by a great degree, I think. Consider working within word budgets: what can you say in 200 words? What can be excised from the text as it sits? "Anyone can edit Wikipedia, including you, and you are definitely welcome to do that!" could easily be rewritten as "Please! Edit Wikipedia!" (which becomes a much stronger call-to-action). "But please keep in mind that you should avoid writing about yourself, your band, your company, or anything you are closely related to, in order to keep the information neutral" could become "Bear in mind that you really can't write about yourself or anything you might have a conflict of interest about", etc. Language can be finessed and A/B tested as well.
I have been working on designs for a help/tutorial system that is centered around two things: being entertaining (you want to read it) and being concise (it's not boring to read). To that end, I've been playing around with various Scott McCloud style "comic strips". (You can see a similar idea with the UploadWizard's copyright comic strip, which has a similar idea but also suffers from what I call "Spock-itis" - over explanation. I've just not had the time or resources to really set down and work on it properly. --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 00:02, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You know, it is rather strange that we started with idea to send undesirable users away, and ended up with desperate-sounding "Please! Edit Wikipedia!"... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 18:05, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support, as long as it's moderately terse, somewhat blunt, and retains summary versions of the Five Pillars. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:04, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Policy and guideline classification

We currently organize our policy and guideline pages into categories that indicate the character of the document, by classifying them as "Policy", "Guideline", or "Essay". I'd like to propose adding an additional classification to those, which would work to indicate the scope of the page. These could be "Core", "General", and "Specialty". Doing this would allow us to differentiate policies and guidelines a bit more than we currently do, so that we could have "Core Policy", "Core Guideline"; "General Policy", "General Guideline"; and "Specialty Policy", "Specialty Guideline" (essays could use it too, of course). I'd be interested in hearing anyone's thoughts and concerns on this subject.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How would you define the scope of "Core", "General", and "Specialty"? Regards, RJH (talk) 14:50, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus, like most everything else, I assume. In my mind I'd think that "Core" stick fairly close to the pillars though, whereas "Specialty" would be things such as specific naming conventions guidelines. I think that people already do this to a certain extent, but there's quite a bit of conflation between the idea of "importance" with "character". People talk about "promotion" or "demotion" to or from "policy" and "guideline" status all of the time, which... isn't really the way things are supposed to be. Rather than continuing to fight that, the idea here is to give it an outlet. If we explicitly mark things as being "very important" or "important only in specific instances", then that should help I would think.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:13, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I'm still unclear about how this would be beneficial. Unless it allows me to readily filter out inapplicable material, the net cost seems to be the same. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:31, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know that it would reduce the amount of conflict necessarily, but it should at least clarify things. We see discussions (to be charitable) breaking out on policy and guideline talk pages fairly consistently, talking about changing the classification to or from a policy or guideline. It's just something that I've noticed, that there is a lot of... judgements about importance and reach associated with the "policy" and "guideline" tags themselves. It's not supposed to be that way (things such as "policy 'trumps' guidelines", for example), but that's out there, and this is intended to deal with such thinking.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:56, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If we have so many policies that they need categorizing, we should get rid of some. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 22:26, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hah! Not laughing at you, as I tend to agree with the sentiment, but that ship has long since sailed.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:45, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(What I find funny is that most Wikipedians agree that we have too many policies and guidelines, and if you ask them whether we should get rid of some, the answer will be "Yes"... but... ask them if a specific policy or guideline should be cut, the answer will be "No".... just saying.) Blueboar (talk) 20:01, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yea, no kidding. Actually, there aren't many that I would get rid of completely, but if I could play "King of Wikipedia" for any length of time I would severely cut a lot of policy and guideline pages. There's just too much clutter, to most of them.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:23, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Part of the issue with the guidelines seems to be bloat caused by examples and special cases. For example, can a particular guideline be elucidated in one or two clearly written sentences, with additional material below in an expandable box? Take MOS:FULLSTOP as an example of guideline bloat. Can this be written as 1–2 clear sentences followed by an expandable box? Regards, RJH (talk) 17:31, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Travel Guide

The core group of editors at Wikitravel are interested in moving to a WMF hosted project and being involved with a WMF run "Wiki Travel Guide" as discussed here. Per the process of creating a new project open discussion is required regarding the merits of such a proposal. Have outlined some of the positive aspects of taking on such a project to the Wikimedia movement as a whole. Comments would be appreciated. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:43, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect tagging

Would it be possible to tag redirects as you make a move? For example, when moving a species article to conform with the guidelines on their naming, a way to automatically have {{R from other capitalisation}} on the Redirect page would simplify things (saves a whole new edit process). CMD (talk) 04:45, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it could be done easily without using JavaScript or a bot.  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  00:18, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I was just thinking that as the software automatically creates a redirect, if there was the possibility of placing text in the move request that would automatically be added to it as well. CMD (talk) 11:52, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gadget for opening search results and suggestions in new tabs

I, the original poster, moved this to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). --Timeshifter (talk) 10:12, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for Bot Approvals Group membership

Rcsprinter123 has nominated for membership of the Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group, implementers of Wikipedia:Bot Policy. The community is invited to join the discussion of the nomination at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Rcsprinter123 2. Josh Parris 06:13, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Transfer polling templates from commons

To aid in FPC(and in other discussions) for easy identification of support and oppose(while counting opinions), I propose to transfer some polling templates from Wikimedia Commons.
Currently, voters to FPC have to type Support/Oppose/Comment and bold it. Using templates would

  • reduce time required to type.
  • easily identify votes(due to the green + / red -) symbols


Major templates are {{Abstain}}, {{Support}}(shortened to {{s}}), {{Oppose}} (shortened to {{o}}), {{Neutral}}(could be changed to {{vote neutral}}, {{Comment}}, {{Info}}, {{Question}}, {{Fixed}}, {{withdraw}}.

Minor templates would be {{strong support}}, {{weak support}}, {{strong oppose}}, {{weak oppose}}. {{Vote keep}}/{{keep}} and {{delist}} could be used for delist candidates of FPC.

Additionally {{Vote Delete}} could be used along with {{vote keep}} in deletion discussions.--Gauravjuvekar (talk) 10:23, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's already an easier way to deal with this. Go into Special:MyPage/skin.js and add: importScript('User:Ais523/votesymbols.js');
That translates all the bolded !votes and gives them symbols to make it easier to pick out. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 12:45, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I find those templates very visually jarring. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:34, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not at home right now, so I don't really have the time to dig up the specific TFD's, but this has been done in the past (I'm almost positive that the templates on Commons were originally copied from here). Every time one of these templates pops up it ends up being deleted though. There's nothing stopping anyone from recreating one of these (I don't think that any of the template pages are salted, currently), but there's been a fairly consistent history of them being deleted. I know that if I happen to see a template like one of these come up at TFD, that I'll throw my support behind getting it deleted, at least.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 15:51, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Motivational badges and user profile tab

I would like to resurrect a discussion about an automatic badge and profile system to keep users motivated to contribute and editors informed about user activity. This is not a barnstar system of editor to editor recognition, but rather a recognition of the users commitment from the site itself, used only to motivate users and keep them contributing. For example, when a new user decides to register an account, they could be automatically welcomed with a new user badge. Users who create their first article that wasn't deleted in x time would also receive a badge thanking them for their contribution. Badges based on milestone edit counts could also be distributed, as well as badges based on areas of participation. This is a system designed to recognize the work of individual contributors, and it can be designed to automatically notify users on their talk page as well as add the badges to an activity feed in a new user page tab called "Profile". This feed would allow users to view badges, edit counts, summaries of contribution histories, and general activity data about each user. Instead of combing through long contribution histories or performing tedious queries on external sites, the badge and profile system would keep a user motivated through site recognition and easily informed about their activity, and allow other editors to quickly view their site statistics and performance. Viriditas (talk) 03:06, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose current terminology - the terms "profile" and "badge" can easily entice new users into thinking this is Facebook, and I also need more specifics about what would be the badges.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:10, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • That's like opposing a search function because this isn't Google. Yes, Facebook made it popular, but it has become standardized and users expect it. There are also unique opportunities to use it as a powerful motivational force for new users (who have grown up with Facebook) and with retaining older users. Personally, I would like to see it used to strengthen relationships between editors and encourage research and collaboration. Viriditas (talk) 03:14, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • No, we also have to balance it with a focus on the content too. Or, you could start an RfC to change WP:NOTSOCIAL.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:19, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • Content is written by editors often working in collaboration with other editors. We're not machines here. In any case, this is all about viewing the activity of other editors and seeing what type of content area they are active in at the time of the snapshot. This is all about content. Viriditas (talk) 03:27, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • Collaboration alone != content. After all, Wikipedia is supposed to be a volunteer community, so things like awards sorta go against that...--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:34, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
            • The badges are motivational tools, not awards. They serve as editor retention tools and reinforce confidence. They also allow other users to briefly review the profile of the user in visual form. We already use them throughout this site in other forms, such as userboxes, user categories, and barnstars. This is a proposal for a coordinated, automated delivery system that would notify a user and update a new profile tab for other users to view. Everything I'm talking about is already in place, it's just a matter of changing the way we deliver and view the data. Viriditas (talk) 09:56, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I get an achievement for completing a quest in World of Warcraft. That doesn't make it meaningful, nor would handing achievements out for trivial things like registering an account be of value either. Wikipedia is not a social networking site, nor is it a video game. Resolute 03:22, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • What is meaningful about barnstars? What is meaningful about welcoming new users and editor retention? What is meaningful about viewing activity feeds and knowing which content area an editor is currently working in? Note, none of those things turn it into a social networking site. Just because we can search Wikipedia for topics, doesn't make it a search index. And just because I can contact a user on their talk page, doesn't make it an e-mail or IM client. You can incorporate useful applications into every area of the site without calling it a social network just because Facebook might use the same functions but for different reasons. Baby, bathwater, forest, trees... Viriditas (talk) 03:27, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yeah, but our features are primitive enough so as to not distract.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:34, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • Actually, that is not true. We need to take the data feeds we already have and make them more efficient. As a user, I want a way to compose and edit articles and consult other interested editors during the process. Wikipedia has no unified, coordinated system for allowing this to happen. When you review the site, you find these features exist independently, but they aren't connected together in a useful way. If I want to find a user in real-time, the only recourse I have is to use a noticeboard and watch paint dry, or add a template like {{help me}} to my talk page and pray to the spaghetti monster that somebody is monitoring Category:Wikipedians looking for help, or I can fire up IRC, which isn't part of this site, or finally, I can browse through Wikipedia:Highly Active Users and waste another five minutes. This is highly inefficient and slows down my job as an editor. If we use the popular activity feed model, we can not only view what users are doing in real-time, we can connect those users together and allow them to work more efficiently by categorizing users by feeds. That's how many editors currently use the recent changes and watchlist model, but the data output in any watchlist page view is highly distracting, as it doesn't allow us to simplify the view and extract what we are looking for in the first place. And every user should have a profile page that gives us contribution statistics; instead, we have to use external sites to even find this data. The whole thing is distracting. Think about how much time it takes to pour through the contributions of an editor looking for something when a profile page will show you the last 20 edits, the most edited pages and projects, and any GA/FA/DYK's they have worked on. That we don't already have this is ridiculous. Viriditas (talk) 09:56, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
            • I disagree - people shouldn't be wasting time going through another user's contribs, they should be working on content.--Jasper Deng (talk) 19:46, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
              • In other words, you've ignored everything I've said because YOUDONTLIKEIT. The contribution statistics tell us about the interests of an editor and allow us to collaborate in real time. Let's say I'm working on formatting a reference section for GA. I run into a little snag with double quotes; it appears that the title of a book uses quotes, but so does the template, making the title appear with quotes within quotes. With the system in place that I'm talking about, all I have to do is right-click on the "References" heading, and a drop-down menu appears, "Request help with references"? I click it, and a list of users categorized as specialists in references floats in front of me, all of them active, online, and waiting to respond. Without switching to a talk page or outside the window, I click on a user and a box opens up, starting a messaging window that, depending on how the user configures it, will automatically post a request for help on their talk page, or start a real-time chat using an external program. This is just an example of what I'm talking about. One could also assign rights to users to use this app, so that anyone who abuses it could be easily dealt with. This doesn't turn Wikipedia into Facebook, it merely brings it into 2012, where we already should be. With such a system in place, we could churn out dozens of GA/FA's a day, with editors from multiple projects drawing on special talents and expertise that they would otherwise have to wait hours to days to get a response about on talk pages and noticeboards. The bottom line for me, is that there is a lot of underutilized talent and resources that can be used more efficiently, allowing us to work on creating and adding new projects and new ideas. Viriditas (talk) 09:50, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 83#Awarding new users for trivial behavior, Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 7#Implement an incentive mechanism for prolific editors and Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Award bot ([11]) for something similar. It would be a good idea to answer all the counterarguments given there...
Oh, and one more thing: when do you "want to find a user in real-time"? What are you trying to do, that requires such "speedy help"? Maybe, if we knew that, we would come up with something..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 17:58, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Adding a badge (or achievement or trophy or whatever you want to call it) system merely guarantees you are going to create gaming of that system. As a relatively apposite example, Little Big Planet instituted a series of trophies on release, many of which were based on how many ratings you'd get from other people for your created levels, how many people played them, etc. This led to an unrelenting shit-flood of levels that were created not in order to try things out or create something good, but in order to hit the absolute bare minimum required to get the relevant trophy. On top of that the system is gamed by people specifically saying "you give me a heart and I'll give you one" in order to get those trophies, thus devaluing the achievements of those who actually worked hard to get trophies. The various baubles which already exist--GA, FA, etc--are more than enough recognition, as they focus solely on content and are the result of processes that are hard--though not impossible, as we have seen--to game. → ROUX ₪ 19:54, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • While gaming and game theory are popular paradigms with youth culture and certain disciplines, they are not the only ones used to explain how Wikipedia works. Many users do not treat Wikipedia as a game at all, and are here to share and learn, not accumulate trophies or user rights. Media and educational paradigms are far more relevant to Wikipedia than gaming. Already existing recognition would be merged into this automatic system based on certain criteria, allowing people who view your profile to see which GA/FA/DYK's you've been active in. Viriditas (talk) 09:37, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Under the badge system, if I see a page with two spelling mistakes, you can bet that will be two separate edits. Kiltpin (talk) 00:43, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose - "User profile tab"? We aren't a social network. "Badges"? Aren't barnstars good enough? We probably even have too many barnstars :/  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  03:36, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • "We aren't a social network" is a thought-terminating cliché and entirely false. Wikis are classified as a social networking technology, and that's a fact. However, that doesn't mean Wikipedia is Facebook. That you can't tell the difference between the two statements is your problem. Viriditas (talk) 09:37, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • No. We are a free encyclopedia-developing group that is currently using a wiki. We didn't start with a Wiki and may later migrate away from using one (or just completely change the meaning of wiki). The wiki is only the means to the end. Rmhermen (talk) 14:23, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • In my opinion, you've got it backwards. It is not the meaning of a wiki that will change but the very old concept of a static print encyclopedia that has changed. Wikipedia is being used in entirely novel ways, as a locative media delivery system for AR devices to primitive adaptive learning engines that are still in their infancy. Trying to force Wikipedia to remain within the antiquated paradigm of an ancient print encyclopedia is like hitching an airplane to a horse and wagon to get from New York to Los Angeles. Viriditas (talk) 21:41, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – I don't think that having a system of motivations is necessarily bad. But perhaps they shouldn't be easy to come by. Maybe a simple system of award points leading up to a meaningful recognition status? I've seen systems where the "title" of an editor changes as they make contributions, going from equivalent of newbie up to experienced veteran and beyond. The distributed proofreaders site lists the rank of a page proofer relative to their peers, which can provide some motivation for the competitive among us. Maybe one could even win belts in wiki-fu? But at some point it might make sense to reach an ultimate limit where one has "mastered" the art and no longer needs automated awards.
Automating the process seems feasible, but it would need to be somewhat proofed against attempts to "game" the system merely to increase ones perceived prestige. The drawback is that developing this system would draw away from other efforts to improve and automate Wikipedia. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:26, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Progress-Mir collision

I propose two articles, the first one about Progress M-24 collision with Mir and the second about the Progress M-34 collision with Mir 1997 which resulted in 70% depressurization of the Spektr Module

These are the name for the proposed articles

Article No 1: 1994 Progress-Mir collision Article No 2: 1997 Mir Depressurization collision

Hope you support the proposals. Regards--Monareal (talk) 16:46, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Display a diff of the text near the list of edits in watchlists and RCP

I have a sneaky feeling that this is already implemented somewhere or that it was proposed and shot down some time back, but here goes... When a user or RC patroller has to examine an edit, each page has to be loaded individually. For the vast majority of the edits,around 500-1000 bytes of the text containing the "improved diff" (the one that comes in wiki-ed with the color coding of deleted text) will be sufficient to determine if the edit is good or not. Here is an example of what I imagined in the list of recent changes/watchlist.

12:59 Climate of Mumbai‎ (diff | hist) . . (+7)‎ . . 117.204.168.105 (talk) (→‎May: )(===May=== May is the hottest month of the year for Mumbai with the cool sea breezes providing some relief. This means daily maximum hovers around 33.358412542485 °C and also means that the daily low is 26.1 °C.<ref name="IMD" />)

This could be cached for 48 hrs (<1GB taking 1KB/diff and <500,000 edts per day) if generating the diff is expensive. Might greatly speedup rc patrol. Thanks. Staticd (talk) 09:46, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist notice guideline

The watchlist notice facility is very useful, but in recent times has become utterly cluttered. The one that has just popped up on my watchlist is just pure spam;

The annual Wakefield Show invites you to share your knowledge of Acorn Computers and RISC OS with Wikipedia (entrance fee £5)

This is advertising. What is it doing on Wikipedia? And why can't I see it at MediaWiki:Watchlist-details? Why is there no discussion on the talk page? I think it is time that there was a guideline in place for this facility. SpinningSpark 11:26, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a watchlist-notice, it's in MediaWiki:Geonotice.js. I'm guessing you're in the UK... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 11:33, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The other geonotices seem fairly innocuous. This one though, appears to be advertising in nature. Was there a discussion of adding this someplace?--Wehwalt (talk) 12:04, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(ecx2)Ah...thank you. In that case, I propose that there should be a guideline covering both watchlist and geonotices, possibly could be generalised to all Software notice. PS, I have now removed the item. SpinningSpark 12:10, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support creating a guideline. A technology show shouldn't have been placed there (diff). Looking at the talk page, most of these things don't seem to be discussed before adding. Not that I think they should be, but in that case, there should be a guideline in place. Equazcion (talk) 12:09, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)
  • Support - from the very small discussion, this actually seems to relate to a proposed Wikimeet at the Wakefield Show. Trouble is, it sounds like it's advertising the Wakefield Show, which is unconnected to WMF. Guidance on how to write copy would probably fix this. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:58, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please move this discussion to WT:Geonotice because the initial scope of this discussion was ill-defined, and so that admins handling geonotices will actually read the discussion. Deryck C. 16:08, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • I dropped a notice there linking here. This page has more eyes, and the watchlist notices affect everyone, not just those who post them. Equazcion (talk) 16:27, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)

There already are informal guidelines at Wikipedia:Geonotice and there is a history of rather limited use of geonotices, almost exclusively for meetups or major events. It's not watched by a huge number of admins, though, and maybe that would help. It appears that you received a message that you felt was irrelevant to you. The best response would have been to raise your complaint to the Wikipedian who requested the notice or to the admin who added it or at the request itself, not to complain on a noticeboard that it is "spam" ("pure spam," no less!) and call for some undefined new policy.

On Wikipedia, "spam" is unsolicited commercial advertising, not a message targeted to your geographical area by an editor who believed in good faith that it was relevant. The editor even gave a detailed rationale for the message; what we have here is a difference of opinion. It's probably worth discussing that specific message further. Maybe the message is indeed irrelevant—mistakes happen!—but I don't see what is worth getting so worked up over. Dominic·t 01:49, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Editor notifications are rather broken at the moment. There isn't a good way to subscribe or unsubscribe from "feeds" (WikiProject notices, geonotices about meetups, fundraising messages). The Wikimedia Foundation is working on this, maybe. mw:Echo is the page describing it. Same basic problem applies to Wikimedia-wide notices (CentrallNotice), site-wide messages (Sitenotice), and watchlist notices.
In the meantime there should be an opt-out mechanism for geonotices (or perhaps all geo detection/collection). Work toward that. It's a better use of time than trying to police usage. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 01:59, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with what Dom said. I don't see what the fuss is about. Killiondude (talk) 03:49, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think most of us were unaware of WP:Geonotice, and that these notices were proposed/discussed/approved prior to posting, since MediaWiki Talk:Geonotice.js doesn't contain that stuff (at least that was my issue). However rarely it becomes an issue, though, I think it might be a good idea to propose and approve wording as well in the future. Equazcion (talk) 04:05, 16 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Limit number of watchers to those active in the last ?? days

This is regarding User:MZMcBride's "watcher" tool, which shows the number of people watching a page. The tool is currently linked from all page histories. In this discussion, MZMcBride notes the following:

  • "The Toolserver masks the necessary field to look up which users are viewing a particular page. So it's impossible to assess whether a page is being watched by all active, inactive, or even bot users. A proper solution could possibly be coded into MediaWiki, though you'd have to find someone willing and get developer consensus that it's a good idea."

I'd like to propose that the necessary MediaWiki changes be made that would allow this tool (or a similar one) to show us a number based on the number of active watchers. Currently the number includes inactive users and bots -- even those who haven't edited or even logged in in years. Limiting to active editors would provide a better picture of how many eyes are actually on a page.

I think "edited within the last 60 days" is a decent figure -- but before even choosing a limit, the MediaWiki changes need to be made. Of course, whatever changes are made, the toolserver should still be blocked from seeing which particular users are watching. Equazcion (talk) 16:51, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I like, I expect centijimbinarians like, I expect peasocking centijimbinarians don't like it. I extrapolate anitpeasockingcentinjimbinarians would like it too. I suggest I should round down my extrapolationdefiningjargon vocabulary to a less significant number of decimal phrases. Penyulap ☏ 18:50, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is it difficult to give us a choice?

  • Total watchers
  • Watchers active in the past ^ days
  • Watchers who have ever edited this article
  • Watchers who have edited this article in the past ^ days

Jim.henderson (talk) 19:00, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The easiest way to add this functionality would be to allow Toolserver users to see who is watching a particular page. Then you would just need to look at the individual users' last edit date and determine their activity level (or look at whatever other metric you wanted). Because you're proposing a specific time period (and masking it), I'm not sure it'll be very easy to get implemented (if not impossible). The MediaWiki and the Toolserver folks will both buck. Maybe it could be implemented in a MediaWiki extension? That's the only hope, I think. If you can convince someone at the Wikimedia Foundation that it relates to editor retention, you'll have much better luck at getting resources devoted to the idea.
Dispenser has been doing some work using an anonymized "active" users table (I think it relies on a masked copy of user.user_touched), but you'd have to ask him for details. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:39, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
tools:~dispenser/view/Watcher is my version of a watcher tool after Template:Jira was implemented. Active users are those have logged in or performed an action in the past 30 days (to match $wgRCMaxAge). — Dispenser 20:27, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be a bad idea to allow users to see who is watching a page. People watch each other's talk pages, often because they are not friendly. Think of the conversations which will start "Why are you watching my talk page?" and degenerate from there.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:53, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Looks like that does the trick, Dispenser, awesome. Question, is it be possible to have the definition of "active" accepted as a URL token, like 60 days instead of 30? Or is your tool working off a pre-built table? Equazcion (talk) 20:54, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)
Brilliant stuff Dispenser, that needs to go on the history page, bump off the fossils. Penyulap ☏
In the meantime I made a script to insert this. It doesn't replace MZMcBride's, just adds a new link after his: User:Equazcion/ActiveWatchers.js. Equazcion (talk) 22:43, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Request to add tag

Hello. I have proposed MediaWiki:Tag-changing height or weight-description for creation at User talk:99.70.103.243/Proposed for creation/MediaWiki:Tag-changing height or weight-description. This proposed creation is for the description of a tag, which I do not have the user privilege level to create. Can I request that an administrator move the page to create it if (s)he approves my request? Thanks in advance. 99.70.103.243 (talk) 04:11, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That seems like tag overkill. Why not just revert unsourced changes to a person's height/weight? Equazcion (talk) 04:16, 16 Apr 2012 (UTC)
Sorry for miswording this. I meant to say that this is a description for a tag, which you can see at Special:Tags. Almost all of them have descriptions which clarify the meaning of the tag, therefore, I am requesting the addition of this for clarification on it. You can see the page which I have created in my userspace, and, if it is approved, please move it into the MediaWiki space. Thanks. 99.70.103.243 (talk) 04:25, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)&oldid=487615031"