Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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

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

Before posting your proposal:

• If the proposal is a change to the software, file a bug at Bugzilla instead. Your proposal is unlikely to be noticed by a developer unless it is placed there.
• If the proposal is a change in policy, be sure to also post the proposal to, say, Wikipedia:Manual of style, and ask people to discuss it there.
• If the proposal is for a new wiki-style project outside of Wikipedia, please go to m:Proposals for new projects and follow the guidelines there. Please do not post it here. These are different from WikiProjects.

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

This talk page is automatically archived by Werdnabot. Any sections older than 7 days are automatically archived to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive. Sections without timestamps are not archived.

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

theoretical Wiki world law

Wiki works really well whereas our law system (Parliament, laws, governing bodies etc...) only works moderately well, It is quite dysfunctional in places, among other things it varies wildly in different countries and tends to go back and forth changing things then charging them back again when a different party is in power. I propose wiki could create a project for a theoretical perfect coherent "theoretical Wiki world law", the systems sounding it and possibly how to get there from where we are now, wiki as a huge intelligent collective can think in such a way that one political party or dictator never could. if wiki was in charge words like "recession" would be a thing of the past.

End the edit war once and for all: Stop using noun phrases for red link examples

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Choosing intentional red links.

Combine proposals & perennial proposals

I don't like the fact that this page and Village pump (perennial proposals) are two separate pages, and that they're both huge. The P.P. page is nearly 300kb and is unmanagebly large; this page is currently around 125kb and is cumbersome. I propose that we combine this page with that page by using subpages to keep older discussions visible (yet out of the way) to help people from reproposing ideas. NEW proposals would be added below the initial list of subpages. Here is what I am imagining:

Archived proposals Feel free to add your comments to these archived proposals. Proposals for the Main ("article") namespace Subject Description Dealing with vandalism Should some editing restrictions be placed on new or unregistered users to help reduce vandalism, or at least be reviewed by others before taking effect? Should high-visibility articles be protected from editing? Search engine How could Wikipedia's search engine be improved? Spell checker on Edit pages Should Edit pages have a built-in spell checker? Always fill the summary field Should the summary field below the edit box be required to be filled or automatically filled? Votes for Creation Should there be a Votes for Creation page to complement the current Votes for Deletion? Proposals for the Talk ("discussion") namespace Subject Description Discussion format Should Talk pages use a wiki interface or a more traditional forum format? ... ... ... ... Proposals for Wikipedia's relationship with the outside world Subject Description ... ... ... ...

Very good idea - anyone up for implementing this should go ahead immediately - It would be a long job though, and the page may have to be locked while it's being done. Wierdy1024 20:04, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree; excellent idea. — Catherine\^talk 19:20, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Sources miscellany

One may come across various facts, references, articles, or bits of information that could be useful to an editor interested in using the information for an article. Some sort of area for taking and leaving this information could exist, allowing others to leave facts, images, or links, and allow others to delete them when they are to be used or found to be bad references. A page with seperators for each general category would be more convenient than several hundred links to subcategories, and it would have a sandbox feel to it at first as others add and remove entries. Sort of a scrapbook of knowledge.

<a name="bottomOfPage">

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask but:

Would it make sense to add <a name="bottomOfPage"> at the bottom of each Wikipedia page? Right where "this page was last modified", "all text is available under..." etc are. That way I could bookmark or link to things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#bottomOfPage and get there without click-wait-scroll. Nice for these long talk pages that are often best followed from the bottom up. Or is there already a way to do this which escapes me at the moment...? Weregerbil 10:12, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

If I want to go to the bottom of the page, I just click on the last item in the Table of Contents. I don't think we need to complicate the page code for a feature that would add very little utility. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 12:26, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

The browser I use interprets the "end" button (on the keyboard) as "scroll to the bottom of this window". -- Rick Block (talk) 14:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Same here. (Mozilla Firefox) --jmeeter 02:18, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposal on Time

Moved to Talk:Time.

Variety

Moved to Wikipedia:Unusual requests

a list of melting points bot request

In the chemical literature there is a lot of information about physical properties of materials e.g. their melting point. In wikipedia quite a bit of that has already been constributed but usually on the page of the pertaining material. What seems to be missing on line (and elsewhere?) is a list of melting points in order of their temperatures. For calibration purposes (just to name an application) such a list could be very useful. Could somebody write a bot, go to the melting point page, use the 'what links here' button to find all these pages, extract the melting points and make a list?

Rob Wilcox, Jaap Folmer NCSU

Exploding whale

Moved to Talk:Exploding whale.

Mass move of football (soccer) club articles

I originally posted this at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves but did not get much response, so I am reposting it here in the hope it will get more attention:

At the moment most football (soccer) club articles have titles with full stops in their abbreviations - e.g. Arsenal F.C. There's a growing consensus on WikiProject Football that it is desirable to remove full stops from the article titles (e.g. Arsenal FC) to fall into line with standard WP practice on abbreviations. But this is a non-trivial problem - there are thousands of articles, templates and categories in the current format. So I have two questions:

• Where should a discussion take place in order to generate a full consensus? As there are so many articles to move it can't really take place on a single page's talk page like normal requested moves.
• If the community decides such a move is desirable, what tools/bots that can help us in performing these renamings?

All help and advice much appreciated. Thanks. Qwghlm 15:40, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Once community consensus is to move those articles, you can post at Wikipedia:Bot requests to ask for a bot to do the task. —Mets501 (talk) 15:58, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Where does community consensus need to be gathered/displayed? aLii 17:15, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Where is this community standard that periods not be used in abbreviations? User:Zoe|(talk) 18:19, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

It seems to be a near-universal practice - cf. NASA, XML, BBC, etc. To be more precise, these are initialisms; perhaps I should have made that a little clearer. Qwghlm 19:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

While knowing absolutely nothing about Football (US or US), I think that usage of periods in abbreviations is different in the UK and the US--most U.S. practice is to leave the periods in; the almost univeral modern UK practice is to leave them out. Have there been any general discussions here on UK vs. US style? or do we need versions of wikipedia in each? ----

It makes sense to me at least that if the teams are based in a location where it's more prevalent to leave the periods out, they should be left out. To Americanize an abbreviation for a European club just seems silly. --fuzzy510 00:34, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

A related essay

In some of my contributions, I have written things that I felt some people might presume to be original research. I describe three cases of these in my essay Wikipedia:These are not Original Research. Comments welcomed. -- llywrch 21:02, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I have made some edits to that page removing the subjective language. I hope this is OK.--Light current 00:30, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I have a question on original research. Let's say I wanted to write an article on a notable book or movie. Would the Plot section be considered original research, since it can't be satisfactorily written without reading the book. An example is an article I wrote, Homerun (film). If I was writing an article on a notable website or online game, would information on the website's internal features or gameplay be considered original research, since it can't be written unless you have been using the website or playing the game? Would screenshots help, in this case? Such a question should be noted in your essay. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:23, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

A book, movie, or game is a legitimate primary source, and reasonable use of primary sources is explicitly permitted by WP:NOR. - SimonP 12:21, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah but hes talking about what is not explicitly written in the book, its just the readers view. So J.L.W.S. The Special One has a good point.--Light current 13:24, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

This question has arisen once or twice -- I don't know how seriously. However, to my knowledge no one has ever listed an article for deletion, arguing that the plot summary was original research. (I'd imagine that doing this would be a violation of WP:POINT.) Details about games or operating systems would be a little trickier -- but having copy-editted several games-related articles, I've seen alot of what I'd consider original research (or statements that badly need sources) but no one has clamped down on them -- yet. As for describing the internal features of a website, how can you guarrantee that these features will persist for more than a day or two? (If I was a webmaster, & I discovered that Wikipedia had information about my website, I'd consider it a security risk & make the appropriate changes.) -- llywrch 22:28, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. Another thing along these lines that has been troubling me can be seen in a number of the games articles, like Hearts (game), Spades, and Euchre. On the one hand, I like these articles and find them interesting, helpful, and, to the best of my knowledge, accurate. On the other, there are no references. When I come across unreferenced and possibly unreferenceable articles about bands, coroporations, or living people, I'm for swift deletion. But I believe those articles on games should be kept, and are fine as is. This apparent double standard bothers me.

It wasn't until looking recently at some of the articles on big cities that I think there's another sort of reliable source: the introspection of large numbers of editors. Looking at San Francisco, for example, I see a number of statements that are unreferenced and that I wouldn't expect to see in a formal reliable source. But any San Francisco resident could judge the truth of them, and there are enough San Franciscans and San Francisco visitors editing Wikipedia that I'm not afraid that the article would be significantly wrong for significantly long.

Similarly for the card-game articles: Even if no researcher had ever written about Hearts (game), I think that there are enough players that we can have a good article about it. Although this could be seen as original research, I think the material is still verified through wide peer review, and so fits the spirit and goals of Wikipedia. Is this reflected in the policies anywhere? And if not, should it be? Thanks, William Pietri 15:38, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Wiki for each country for local info?

Why not have a wiki for each country where local information could be put that is not important enough for an article in the global wiki, and where articles that would be considered 'vanity' in global wiki could justifiably be inserted for local personalities of interest in their own country but not globally? For example, Joe Bloggs of Nowhereville, Country X, is a local headmaster and expert on Country X legends. He doesn't rate an entry in global WP but would look dandy and relevant in the WP for country X and would be referenced there by locals (or even non-locals) who have not found him in global WP. Lgh 03:07, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

There are already Wikipedias for many languages. Your proposal would introduce too many Wikipedias, which would be very difficult to grow and maintain. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:17, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that there would be 'too many Wikipedias' (and indeed I note on your user page you are pushing for a Singapore wikiproject, which is essentially the same thing I'm proposing). The original concept has grown too far and too fast. There is a vast backlog of all sorts of things that should have been sorted out ages ago. I think a local wiki for each country would attract a loyal band of dedicated editors for that country. Maintenance would actually be faster because it would be a local concern. If it were established it would simply double the existing number of wiki's. For example, there would be a general French wiki (as exists now) and a local French wiki for local info and personalities. Indeed the local one could be supported by local advertising, something which is not appropriate to the spirit of the global WP. Lgh 04:35, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I think this could be a good idea if carefully implemented, though off the top of my head I don't see an easy way in which this could be integrated seamlessly into Wikipedia (maybe soft redirects from the main wiki, but that sort of defeats the point). It would fix up a lot of notability problems with local celebrities and schools.--Konstable 04:43, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

It could be as simple as expanding the current sentence in the Wiki default box that reads: 'Wikipedia does not have an article with this name, to start an article'... etc, to read: 'Wikipedia does not have an article with this name, if of global and notable importance, start an article in the box below. Or, try the Wikipedia for your country if the item is of local importance, and if appropriate, start an article there...' Or something. I don't know. As far as links goes, the local wiki could have hot/link words in the colour green, say, as well as in blue. The green would link to other local items and the blue would link to the global WP. Once these local country WP's are established, it would be grand opportunity for global WP to transfer all the articles about high schools and headmasters to the appropriate local WP. I estimate it would reduce the number of articles in English WP by about 25%. I regularly trawl through articles at random and at least 50% of the time I'm thinking - that shouldn't really be in a global encyclopedia. What is to be done? Pravda. Lgh 05:01, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

This seems not a very good idea. If these subjects interesting and significant, and verifiable information is available, they deserve an article, else, if information is unverifiable (OR, POV-only), Wikipedia can't include it even in "local" form. Splitting WP into many wikis would only harm both readers and editors, with no possible benefits. What's the objective reason for splitting, if we can keep it in one database? Problems with deletionism should be faced directly, not by obscure workarounds. I consider obsession with notability a major problem when it goes beyond WP:V requirements, because it will ultimately lead to information being scattered around with extreme redundancy over a large number of sites, deteriorating quality and ruining accessibility. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 13:30, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

On the contrary, quality may be improved by having a second category of WP in which less notable/local information is contained versus the global WP with important and notable information. It seems intuitively correct that information needs to be categorised and ranked in order for efficient sorting and access. However, I concede that this intuition may be wrong given the virtually infinite capacity of the internet and the efficiency of search engines. But the notion of an infinitely expanding morass of non-notable information somehow irks me. Maybe I'm simply too referential in my thinking to an assumption of the need for informational organisation. In the end the internet may prove me wrong and a new paradigm will emerge: a universe in which minutiae can be instantly found: an intelligent haystack which will hand you any needle you like. Instantly. Bring on all the non-notables. I am about to write an article for WP on a small piece of broken tile found in my vegetable garden, so I can't hang around to chat. Lgh 23:29, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

You seemingly don't get what I mean. Wikipedia is a product of the information age. A predictable, obvious one. There is not much, if anything, in idea of creating it; it always lied on the surface, and had a lot of implementations before this digital one. Wikipedia is only as good as it is useful, as supported as it is useful, and it is as useful as it is informative. Potentially, WP or a similar system can be the sum of human knowledge, and I see no RL objections to it.

I wholeheartedly agree that information needs to be sorted, by many categories. Including being sorted by notability. But it should be sorted, not scattered. Sorting is only possible inside a system, so it should be sorted here. There's no need for scattering it around all the web again, and keeping people to make inter-site sorting would be a huge waste.

Yes, feel free to write the article about that tile - but first think: Is it interesting or useful to anyone outside? If not, it will be scrapped everywhere. Is it verifiable? If not, it has nothing to do with WP. But if both questions return 1, you will probably write it anyway, and publish it somewhere. To be interesting or useful to someone outside, your tile piece should be really unique; to be verifiable, it needs media coverage, like some photos and an article in your local newspaper. It would have to contain Elerium-115 to get all that, but suppose it does - then people will be interested, and it will be a worthy piece of encyclopedic info for E-115 article, telling about how it was discovered.

Any artificial separation, not related to usefulness and verifiability, will only lead to scattering the same info across hundreds of sites. Today Wikipedia is repairing the consequences of an error made in its founding, with the Interwiki project. Do we need to make another similar disruption, only to waste time fixing it later? Breaking info into several sites is already a problem; the worst thing that can be done is breaking these sites into even smaller pieces. --CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 00:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

you raise a good point. Maybe each article could be given a notability rating at the top which once given would be very hard to change. This would deter non-notables from writing articles about themselves - if they knew they'd get a prominent "rated 1 out of 10 for notability" at the top. What is potentially happening now is that non-notables could use WP to boost their notoriety be referring people to their article: 'see I am famous, look at the article on me in the wikipedia!' As far as sorting versus scattered; this is a red herring. Hotlinks can instantly take you anywhere in the internet - there is no sorting or scattering as such, or rather it is all both sorted and scattered - so maybe you are operating under the old paradigm I mentioned above. Lgh 00:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

In my opinon, such system, but with 3-5 levels, would be a fine idea. The actual thing about Wikipedia is that it finally implements the next-gen net structure, proposed long ago, in 1960s, by Ted Nelson as Project Xanadu, with two-way links and permanent edit history. Besides that, it has a common categorization system. All this improves accessibility so vastly that other concerns become barely noticeable. Including the concern of misuse - after all, the Verifiability policy can easily deal with the harmful ones, and others are in the worst case no more than some kilobytes on a practically infinite (growing times faster than all humanity can possibly fill it) disk array. So the better way is to keep everything worthy of some notice here. I fully support the idea of notability assessment, and, if you can suggest a way to implement it, it would be very useful. Even more if we can push it ahead enough to become at least minimally accepted; for instance, as a small icon for articles non-notable by general standarts. I'm not sure it wouldn't be hard to accomplish, but it is a far better way. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 01:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC

maybe this process could start with articles about people. All new articles about people (such as vanity articles) could be assessed like the articles for deletion and voted on to either keep or not keep; and if 'keep' then an icon for notable or not-notable could be voted on; then applied in a non-deletable way by an admin. I think the words 'notable' and 'non-notable' need to be used, maybe in a bright colour or accompanying an icon; this is for naive users of wiki - otherwise they won't know what the icon means. If a non-notable subject later becomes notable they can then apply to have the rating changed to 'notable'. They would have to justify their applcation and get the application voted on. if this process works it could be extended to other articles, eg about schools, etc. Lgh 04:35, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Not sure - this is an issue of being a public person. However, we have a few articles about Board of Trustees members, which don't even say anything interesting about their subjects, and don't keep up with the policies. Ironically, their subjects themselves put them on VfD and AfD, but failed. For people it may be a sensitive issue.

For other subjects, "nn" is often a problem, because it's hard to assert notability, and there are people willing to keep only what Britannica would. Maybe you would be interested in the Wikipedia:Non-notability (or WP:NNOT) proposal, which suggests keeping only policy compliance as the barrier, and not extra guidelines. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 02:01, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

sex stub heteronormativity

i think the sex stub pic is heteronormative since it shows a symbol for a male and a female and excludes two men or two women.

any thoughts?

could a man/man and woman/woman symbo, be added in? or somthing else that represents sex like a bunch of flesh of differant people in a collage?Qrc2006 05:32, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Because heterosexuality is the normal state. The typical symbol for human draws him(her) with two legs and two hands, even though there are people with less limbs. The typical hand symbol is drawn with five fingers, even though there's a lot of people with four left and some born with six. The typical symbol for car draws it in normal state, not with smashed hood or three wheels; same for everything. While we try not to discriminate crippled, homosexual, mutated and so on, symbolics is to be simple and use symbols representing the common state. --CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 05:55, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with CPM 1000% Raul654 06:02, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

What about man/woman/woman polyamorous couples? And woman/woman/woman/man/woman couples? To make this stub politically correct, I conclude it will need to include about 700 combinations and be 30 lines long :-) --W.marsh 06:07, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

heterosexuality is not the normal state you biggot, you should be blocked for your homophobic remarks, that implies that gay people are not normal. In fact the normal state in nearly all species studied is 8 to 10% gay and bi and 90 to 92% straight. Who cares about hands, people with lees fingers are gentically defected or mamed, homosexulaity and bisexuality is natural and innate, and why should articles on gay sexuality have to have a male-female symbol on them if they are a stub? I'm not syaing we need a gajilion combinations, but the symbol could be more inclusive by for instance having 6 or 7 sex symbols in a line or circle alternating between male and female, and that way it does not imply any specific combination.

OR as i stated before a collage of pictures of legs and chests and breasts and penises and abdomens or arms intertwined might be an alternative? Qrc2006 08:12, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I think something obvious is being missed here. It's related to sex, it has the symbols for gender. No endorsement of anything is implied by that, and there is no obvious replacement which would be any better. In response to Qrc2006, actually, yes, heterosexuality is the normal state in the sense of the most usual. That does not mean homosexuality is abnormal, just less common. You are assuming bad faith I think. Just zis Guy you know? 11:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Cool. I'm glad to know I'm in fact a homophobic biggot. Should I add myself to the Axis of Evil already?

But you just said the same thing yourself: over 90% people are heterosexual. A symbol doesn't have to reflect all the spectrum of possible sexual behaviors. Just look at the section with ICD 302.0 - ICD 302.89, no sensible symbol could include all this. Everyone understands what the standart symbol means, and it is actually less ambiguious than pictures of intertwined penises, abdomens and breasts (and here hentai fans could also demand inclusion of tentacles). It's true for all symbols - they only need to be unambiguious, not include everything possible.

However, if you are concerned with use of the common symbol in articles on homosexuality, it's fine - just be bold and make an alternate version of that template with corresponding symbols. I think other editors of related articles will have no objections, so you can replace the appearances of the generic template with the more specific one. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 12:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

The symbol in the sex stub is as inclusive as necessary. It has a symbol for each possible participant. It is up to each sex article to describe who participates in what with whom, not the symbol itself. --Dave 12:50, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Ditto! -- Dwheeler 22:23, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Closure of RfCs

It is well-known that RfCs tend to become a cesspit, also that they ramble on for ever without ever reaching a conclusion. They are also unusual among Wikipedia debates in having no defined closure mechanism. A couple of times I've introduced a motion to close and move on, which has usually had broad support, so I'd like to formalise this by proposing that once discussion has run its course, as determined by (a) escalation to ArbCom, (b) deletion of any article which forms the locus of the dispute; (c) agreement of the contributors to the RfC that a satisfactory resolution has been reached; (d) no edits to the RfC or Talk for a defined period, say 14 days (and quite possible e and f, other closures I've not yet thought of), we mark the debate as closed, using a clone of one of the usual "debate closed" template pairs (e.g. {{at}} and {{ab}}).

Where a clear and obvious conclusion has been reached by a significant number of contributors, community sanctions may be applied. If these are not honoured then we can escalate to ArbCom, or if the case is unambiguous simply enact a community ban. Experience in the Gastrich case (Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jason Gastrich -> Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jason Gastrich) the fact of the RfC having reached a conclusion and the problem user failing to abide by that consensus resulted in a rapid turnaround at ArbCom, with less work for all concerned, and (most importantly) a good result for the project, in that much less time was wasted by editors in good standing, admins and ArbCom, than is often the case.

Don't be distracted by this talk about sanctions, mind, because this is not about trying to arrogate ArbCom's role, it's about fixing a problem with one of the dispute resolution mechanisms, one which is currently in my view fundamentally broken in that it offers no form of closure either for the people bringing the RfC or for the editor under discussion. By this method, frivolous disputes which are certified by members of a small group of disgruntled editors can be politely but firmly closed, and substantive disputes can have some kind of endpoint. Just zis Guy you know? 11:50, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: a comment has been made about what to do where there is ongoing problem behaviour. I would clarify: the idea here is to allow closure, not to enforce it. Guy 10:59, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

This is definitely a good idea, and the format (timing, reasons for closure, etc.) look solid. I still feel RfC needs to produce something more than lots of words, however, and would like to see some sort of summary system developed that could then be placed on the talk page of the user in question to ensure that they have seen the comments and get the picture at the end of the process. Tony Fox (arf!) 15:45, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Guy/JzG's concept. I was very surprised recently when I asked on an RfC that had reached consensus whether it was time to close the RfC, only to be told in substance that "RfC's never close." Notwithstanding which, in other instances, someone has written "I think we can deem this page closed" and the talking has stopped.

I am not sure I agree with Tony Fox's suggestion, however. In the case of a user conduct RfC, suppose 20 people say the user has been a difficult user, and the user gets the message and (hopefully) strives to improve. I don't think it's going to be useful for a helpful volunteer to then post on the user's talk page to the effect that "the consensus of your RfC is that you've been a jerk." If anything, the subject will write back, "no, Foo said I was only a semi-jerk, and Groo said I haven't been a jerk in 3 whole weeks, and Hoo said Foo was also a jerk, so we need to modify the wording here...." Newyorkbrad 16:14, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. We don't need more process, we need more Clue. If thirty people all agree, with evidence, that User:Foo has been an idiot and User:Foo admits it and learns, then no more need be done. If, on the other hand, User:Foo continues with his idiocy, the RFC can still be closed with a community sanction or recommendaiton to arbitrate. either way we move on. Guy 20:37, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I was more thinking of having some sort of coordinator who would write a non-judgmental summary of the comments made during the process that would be a way to give the "problem" user a positive bit of feedback at the end - something to refer to, much like one might get at the end of a mediation sometimes. Having an actual concrete result at the end of the RfC would at least give it some closure, in my mind. (Such as it is.) Tony Fox (arf!) 20:43, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that any "motion to close" with any kind of call to action should contain such a summary, and should be endorsed by participants. Queitly closing moribund debates would not need a summary, but I guess it would be good practice to include one. Again, though, I am hoping for a clue-based system not something legalistic. Guy 11:09, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I definetly agree with the above that it is appropriate to bring some formal closure to RfCs after inactivity, escalation, or consensus.-- danntm ^T _C 20:55, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

yeah. Agree as well. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 03:19, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Considering how long RfC has been used on Wikipedia (I believe they antedate the creation of the ArbCom), I'm surprised that there is no procedure to close one! JzG's proposal is straightforward & meets the need adequately: an RfC is closed whenever the participants arrive at an agreement, discussion ends, or the matter is referred to another body (e.g. ArbCom or WP:AN/I). Works for me. -- llywrch 17:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Sanctions may be applied by the Arbitration Committee. Decision of the ArbCom is sufficient and essential for any sanctions besides blocks of obvious vandals. However, note that ArbCom makes decisions after at least a month (usually more) of discussion, listening a lot of people, and only by consensus.

Despite that, the election process for ArbCom has extremely high requirements. They are actually as low as affordable for judges. And now you suggest someone would close RfC, with conclusion and sanctions, unilaterally. Just whom exactly do you suggest to do that? Jimbo is quite busy; and, despite being one of the oldest members of WP (and also one of the founders), his decision is not widely accepted as definitely as ArbCom's. So Jimbo doesn't meet the requirements. Who does? --CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 13:38, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

While I do not know much about RfCs, I agree that there should be a mechanism to close it, to indicate that the dispute has been resolved. CP\M raised a point of who will close RfCs. Perhaps we could appoint an RfC committee, or RfCs may be closed with the consensus of at least (say) three admins, none of which is involved in the dispute. If the parties agree that the RfC should be closed because the dispute has been resolved, then we should close it. Of course, we welcome other ideas of how RfCs will be closed. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:52, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Since RfC is not a formal process, it probably could only be closed by either the case submitter starter or the user case was targeted against, with no enforcement. We have ArbCom to impose sanctions, and I doubt that the community would accept a substitute body, unless it has similar requirements for members and a well thought-out process. Even if we create it, it will just turn into ArbCom-2. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 14:00, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

CP\M, no, ArbCom is not the sole authority allowed to make decisions. Wikipedia is neither a democracy nor a bureacracy. In unambiguous cases the community can decide to block a user, and I see no particular reason why other community sanctions hould not be allowed. ArbCom exists to give binding ruling where community consensus is not repsected or in ambiguous cases (for example, a user with a long history of both good contributions and disruption). I don't think ArbCom is involved in more than a tiny proportion of indefinite blocks. I see several indef-blocks a week (two or three today), and I block people indefinitely at the rate of several a month, in every case because the decision makes itself and involving ArbCom will be a waste of my time and theirs. See Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jason Gastrich and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jason Gastrich; was the ArbCom case really necessary? Guy 22:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree, not always so. But deciding in simple cases (users with less good edits than harmful, or general consensus) doesn't need a special body for that. If the community has no consensus, however, only slightly equal votes - I don't think it is enough for indef sanctions. And this would be the case for some thouroughly selected group, specifically ArbCom, to decide. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 17:07, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Sensitive images: The 'censoring' of Wikipedia for minors (or anyone else)

To my great surprise I didn't find anything about this either here orhere. Maybe if I checked the history links, but I really couldn't be bothered.

Anyway, I wanted to suggest this: User:TRiG/Suggestion for policy on raunchy pictures. Any thoughts?

That page is in two distinct sections, the second of which is not really realted to the title.

If anyone thinks that this comment should be moved elsewhere, please feel free to cut-and-paste it.

I don't really know what I'm doing here yet. I'm a [h2g2] person.

TRiG 19:15, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be on perennial, as there are frequent (at least once a week) proposals to censor content, with the usual objections being Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors, the lack of a universal standard, and the general guideline of avoiding frivolously sexual images (in other words, attempting to confine them to situations where they add obvious value). Deco 04:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Would there actually be any way to limit access to certian pages by minors? If not, we are wasting out time discussing it. How do we know which editors are minors? How do we know which minors are admins who could maybe unlock any locks that are put on.

The book is on the shelf. Children are either:

• allowed by their parents to read it or
• not allowed to read it . 8-|--Light current 04:54, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Also see Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates, which references some of the previous discussions about such ideas. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

The basic question is:

Is information of itself bad (or evil or offensive etc)? I dont think so. If Im right, all we need to do is present pure information without connotation.--Light current 05:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Another objection to this approach is that, since this is an open edit site, Wikipedia cannot guarantee that any page will be free of vandalism at any particular moment. Responsible parents ought to understand that intuitively. Specific disclaimers also make it clear. While such damage usually gets undone very quickly, it's a fact of life on any wiki. Durova 19:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Another variation on the idea: Whilst the concept has been presented in a well-meant manner, the idea that wikipedia should be opt-out-only uncensored runs contrary to many of the core beliefs. However I see no issue with the idea of opt-out uncensorship. By this I mean that above tags should be added as part of a greater meta-tagging scheme (another common suggestion). Then, a user can select on an account-passworded part of their preferences to display or not display certain tagged content (or content that is not tagged, as vandals are unlikely to bother). By default, all content would be allowed, but this would allow parents and those who find material objectionable to prevent it from being seen. Obviously, this is part of a much bigger set of changes, but it's worth remembering. LinaMishima 21:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Most censoring schemes based on tagging are objected to on the basis of the need to establish a universal, culturally-independent standard where one does not exist. Deco 22:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

True, the idea here is that the selection of tags to block is entirely the users', making it a little more flexable. The same can be said about wikipedia in general. Infact... "Most censoring schemes based on tagging are objected to on the basis of the need to establish a universal, culturally-independent standard where one does not exist." is why we don't sensor, and rightly so, really. LinaMishima 22:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

• If parents want to censor websites for their kids, they should install parental control software, not bother us. As was said above, we can't guarantee we're free of vandalism anyway. So we're always a so-called 'risk'. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:08, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Just had an idea: Junior Wikipedia . Same as normal wikipedia with all the 'naughty' stuff removed. ie certain pages would not be available in the junior version. Any thoughts?--Light current 15:24, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Redundancy. Won't work. The only way would be to set a flag for potentially disturbing images and allow a pref flag to display them as links instead of thumbs. Considerable anw worth suggesting further, IMO. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 16:02, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

No it would be a different URL, passing thro a filter then onto main WP site. When a sensitive (flagged) page is requested by this URL, it is not returned by the WP servers. Could that no be done?--Light current 16:29, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

• And who gets to decide what gets left out? Junior Wikipedians who want to study articles on sexuality would have to resort to another less reliable place, because I'm pretty sure it would be considered too naughty for Junior Wikipedia. A parent is responsible for their own child. And some children are more mature than others. Let's not treat them all the same. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:05, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Well of course the decision would have to based on CONSENSUS. Young children wanting to study sex etc can always get thier parents or teacher to log onto the normal uncensored site. In other words we pass the responsibility of what children see right back to whom it belongs-- the parents!--Light current 10:17, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Use of COLLADA format to enable 3D models for exemplification, explanation, and illustration

The .dae extension is for the COLLADA format (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COLLADA ). I would like to contribute some 3D models that I have authored using PD, CC:AT, and/or CC:SA:AT licenses. The first 3D model I'd like to submit is publicly available at http://people.redhat.com/tiemann/unitcube.dae and is licensed "Public Domain" by me. It is the unit cube. I hope this will open the floodgates for other modelers to begin adding their own creative 3D works with appropriate Wikipedia licensing. I hope that this proposal will result in the acceptance of .dae files by the wikipedia site rules.

--Michael Tiemann 11:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

It's up to the devs whether to enable it or not; one important question is whether the file format is a potential vector for malicious attacks (like the scripting capabilities in SVG). — Catherine\^talk 01:39, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

You provided a reference to SVG's definition, which I know, but not the nature of the attack. I serached and found this link: [1]. The problem with the Adobe viewer has nothing to do with SVG per se, but rather a bug in their own code. Any file format sufficiently capable of representing ASCII text can be used as the basis of an attack on a sufficiently weak system (how many users have cluelessly followed instructions to install a trojan horse?). I don't think COLLADA introduces any new probems itself--it's just another form of content that can be consumed.--Michael Tiemann 22:48, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

It's probably too soon for COLLADA; that standard really hasn't been used much yet. And it's not something that most browsers understand. A few years ago, Web3D seemed the way to go. Before that, VRML. Before that, AutoCAD DXF. There are interesting things to do with 3D in an encyclopedia, but they're real work. For example, good anatomy models where you could remove layers and show different systems of the body would be useful. But such things are major efforts. --John Nagle 05:26, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

AutoCAD DXF was a proprietary format with IP issues that have made open source interchange very difficult--not the kind of thing for building a creative commons! Web3D looks like it's commons-friendly, so that would be an alternative. The challenge of servining over a million high-quality articles is a major effort, but when the right pieces are in place, it can be done. What cannot be done, because the Wikipedia rejects it, is to prime the pump with any 3D content. That's a bug in my book.--Michael Tiemann 22:48, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

The use of COLLADA is becoming more and more wide spread due to the availability importers/exproters by Softimage (XSI), Autodesk (3DS Max/Maya), and Blender. The specification itself lends so much more than Web3D, VRML, or DXF ever could (e.g. physics simulation and armature support). Having the open .dae format as a Wikipedia standard is nothing less than the best solution for 3D content. --Eugene Reilly 8 September 2006

COLLADA is in fact gaining popularity and has a number of merits on its behalf including an XML basis, wide 3D product support including Maya, 3dsMax, XSI, Blender, etc., and an open licensing scheme. It would be very useful in the 3D industry as a whole if a single file format became widely supported, perhaps even natively, by every 3d package out there. Such a lingua franca would make interoperability much easier than it is today (think XHTML's portability between IE & FireFox as opposed to Word & WordPerfect's interop). It won't be perfect, but much better than now. The bottom line is that it will take a lot of people committing to COLLADA support to make it into the lingua franca of 3D. I second Michal Tiemann's motion that Wikipedia commit to COLLADA support --Early Ehlinger President, [ResPower, Inc] 10 September 2006

I think everyone agrees that 3d models are very useful at illustrating subjects, for some subjects essential. It's true that there have been a lot of so-called "standard" formats before COLLADA, but in my opinion this is irrelevant. What is more relevant is that the format should be viewable by most people. What the COLLADA group have achieved is amazing. I don't think any other format has found such a huge backing in so little time. With both commercial and free tools available. As to the topic that maybe it is too soon to adopt COLLADA because it hasn't been used much yet. The format originates from Sony Entertainment where they use it for game development. So it's been put to the test. And this arguement is probably why all other formats have failed to find enough backing. The format itself is very sound. I think it would be a good step to take and this is the right time. Wybren van Keulen 18:21, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Well said! --Michael Tiemann 11:18, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Harnessing RSS feeds from quotationsbook to expand WikiQuote

I maintain quotationsbook.com, a highly comprehensive and usable resource of quotations. It's also the only site with freely available | RSS feeds of all content. Seeing that all this content is public, I thought of asking appropriate people at Wikiquote if WikiQuote collections can be extended to include quotes from my site. There are subsets of data available at quotationsbook that don't exist at Wikiquote, especially in stubs. Data can, of course, be formatted as required, since it's delivered as XML.

Can Wikiquote make use of these feeds to fill out stubs and append content to existing collections, etc.? Who would be in charge of thinking this through and deciding to use the feeds?

I think it would contribute very significantly to WikiQuote content, and reveal many more quotes. My feeds are traffic-ready and being used at answers.com. This topic was posted at WikiQuote | here to no response.

Amit 80.47.24.132 19:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Your biggest problem will be licencing - quotationsbook copyright itself, is all rights reserved - which is normally not compatable with the GFDL. And yes, I release that many quotes may technically not be under the GDFL, that's more of an issue for the wikiquote people to try and figure out. LinaMishima 21:18, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Checking, I find that I believe that some of your content is under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License (freely sharable as long as the author is acknowledged). It is unclear if you mean the original person being quoted, the person who added the material, or yourselves. I am seeing a slightly major issue here in general accross all quote sites as to licening problems, especially since the first and foremost licence being attempted is generally that reproduction would be considered fair use. LinaMishima 21:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe all quotes are under fair use provision. A guideline by ProQuest (the major supplier of electronic information to libraries and schools worldwide) is that anything over 150 words might need permission - but that's a mere guideline. I mean from the CC license that all my collections (the way I've put them together by subject and author) are openly shareable, and by RSS feeds too. The individual quotes of course, retain author's rights. We've already crossed the hurdle in terms of reproducing quotes, as many authoritative sites across the web make collections of quotes available. For reasonable use, there's no endemic problems or legal issues at all (otherwise Wikiquote wouldn't exist!). My collections are my copyright, and I've let that "go". Indeed, they're public, in a format anyone can use. Amit 80.47.24.132 06:55, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I previously had this discussion a long time ago here - and there was technical feasibility in doing this. Before this topic dies a death, I think it would be a great idea and fill out many stubs in Wikiquote. Can someone make this? Amit 80.47.24.132 07:07, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Let's Make Wikipedia Easier To Use

I was looking at the ARTICLE's page history, but I wanted to go directly to edit the discussion. So there was no way to do so. The only thing I could do was click on discussion, then edit this page. Well, if you think about there should be separate buttons for talk page history and edit this page, & same goes with article, or user page, you know? That way, if people ever need to switch from article history to talk page edit, or article edit to talk page history, that would be possible.100110100 22:29, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

This is not the place for such proposals. File a feature request on bugzilla. It probably won't be implemented though, because it only saves one click and you can use javascript to add all sorts of extra buttons to do whatever time-saving things you want. —Centrx→talk • 06:51, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe that the cologneblue skin already has something like this.Voice-of-All 06:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

This has come up a number of times before. I'm still confused though: doesn't it make sense to read the Talk page before posting to it? Fagstein 07:00, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

It has come up before mostly because 100110100 keeps reposting the same idea. Despite the good argument for it (I tend to agree that easier navigation is a Good Thing), it's a better idea not to allow blind editing of pages you may not have read, as you note. Gavia immer (u|t|c) 15:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd add that it would mean editing of all the page instead of sections. Not a good thing. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 13:06, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Alerting other users of problem edits one is unable to fix?

I often come across the following on Wikipedia

• An edit or paragraph which looks suspicious, but I'm not sure whether it's wrong.
• An edit or paragraph which contains problems which I cannot fix.

For example, the Freewebs article has a section entitled "Use of a Freewebs website as a reference to Wikipedia". This section looks suspicious, as Wikipedia articles generally avoid self-references. However, I'm not sure whether it should be deleted.

I suggest we have a page for reporting such edits/paragraphs, where they may be double-checked by another editor. The disadvantage of this idea is that the page may eventually have a backlog. Alternatively, we could place a template on the article to alert other editors. The disadvantage is that it would be harder to monitor such a template, and that the editor who fixes the edit must also remove the template.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:12, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

One alternative is to go to Wikipedia:Cleanup resources and select an appropriate template. That automatically categorizes the article with others that need attention and alerts future readers to the possible problem. Durova 21:18, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

These templates are great when a whole article or subsection is suspicious, but they can seem overkill when you just want to query a single statement or paragraph - they're big, in your face, and not very specific about which content is actually being queried and why. What I've done a couple of times is create a section on the article's talk page to explain the perceived problem, and then insert something like ^{&#91;[[<name of talk page>#<title of section>|clarification needed]]&amp#93;} next to the relevant passage. Matt 17:47, 10 September 2006 (UTC).

Actually, further to my comment above, I see there are already some templates, such as Template:Citation_needed, that are much more discreet and specific than the big banners. (I'm not sure if they're listed at Wikipedia:Cleanup resources though, or if any allow you to link to somewhere where you can explain what the problem is.) Matt 18:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC).

The Tildes, and linking to user's talk page

One of the big things about talking to other users is to add 4 tildes (~~~~) to identify yourself in a discussion. However, some users manually (I assume) add a link to their talk page in their signature. Why doesn't adding the 4 tildes (adding a sig) to a comment include a link to your talk page? When I click on a person's sig, I most often am more interested in their talk page than I am their userpage, and (again) assume I am not alone in this. Also, when a user who hasn't set up their userpage is referred to, they come up as a red link, making it difficult to access their talk page. For instance, most anonymous ip 's have a red link, but active talk pages. Can't their be a way to more easily access user's (whether registered or not) talk pages. Autopilots 09:53, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Some users include a link to their talk page by merely modifying their signature in their user preferences. Even for redlink users it's just one extra click though, and I often wish to know a little about someone before posting to them anyway. Deco 12:01, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

• And you could use Wikipedia:Popups to make things easier too. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:56, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Adding users to watchlist

Would it be possible to add other users to our watchlists. I know that we are supposed to WP:AGF, but if a user has been vandalising a lot recently, I think it would be a good idea to be able to keep an eye on them without having to go through to their contribs page every time. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 20:30, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I've frequently wished I could add a User's contributions page to my Watchlist. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

So have I, especially when it comes to vandals. Georgia guy 00:08, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, thought, I could see many people feeling that such a change would be creepy and encourage wikistalking. What I normally do is add their username somewhere and use that to occasionally check their contributions (popups are good for this!). After all, most of the time the RC patrollers will catch the changes, so the most important thing to do is to scan their changes for ones that are still at the top. LinaMishima 00:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Assuming good faith works because there are more good users than bad users. This feature has massive potential for abuse. Besides being used for wikistalking, it could be used to give one an advantage in an edit/revert war. There is little point in watching vandals because they will usually be blocked pretty quickly. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 06:40, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

While there are wikistalking problems, there are also users who need to have any eye kept on them but are not conventional vandals and therefore cannot be blocked, or at least indefinitely blocked. They have some non-vandalistic edits, often fairly insignificant or crummy, but they also do things like adding inappropriate external links to articles (but not spam) or adding a mention of their hometown/state/country or their favorite college, subject, actor, movie or TV show to articles when it is inappropriate or rearranging lists and disambiguation pages so that their favorite things appear at the top (I like to make lists alphabetical to help prevent this). However, I do not know if the help in watching problematic users is outweighed by making stalking easier. -- Kjkolb 07:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Or sometimes people do formally legitimate things, but ones that may need to be countered. For instance, one user added deletion tags to tens of articles at a time, and I have to watch all of them now for repeated actions; however, a contribs watchlist could be an easier way. Not sure if this could be implemented inside current watchlist, though. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 11:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I've made a javascript tool that does this. It's not as good as the real watchlist but it's a start. Tra (Talk) 13:27, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Onomastic pages created by Sheynhertz-Unbayg

I posted a message about this on Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous), but that page seems to be essentially dead, since no one has posted to the page at all for a day and a half. Anyway, I was hoping that I could get some help in fixing the damage done by banned user Sheynhertz-Unbayg. You can check out what happened here. -- Kjkolb 00:43, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

To avoid forking, please follow up at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Onomastic pages created by Sheynhertz-Unbayg. Deco 10:36, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Please help contribute to the See alsos straw poll

Please help contribute to the See alsos straw poll. Wikipedia:See alsos is a straw poll being developed and almost ready for polling. The purpose is to find consensus on good editing technique regarding see alsos--something not listed anywhere. I'd like those interested to help improve it. Anomo 11:15, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Almost ready for polling? I don't see much of a discussion there, or even a suggested guideline. Am I missing something? Fagstein 19:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I can hardly get anyone to contribute. Anomo 19:53, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Template for Animals

Now we have only a taxonomic box, and I think it would very useful to create a additional template for every specie which will included (for males and females):

• Population
• Range
• Life time
• Adults height, height at birth
• Adults weight, weight at birth
• Number of chromosomes
• Gestation period (if it's a mammal)
• Birth to a litter (if it's a mammal)

--Haham hanuka 12:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Couldn't the taxinomy box be expanded with the above useful information? (Although people adding such information must remember to reference it). LinaMishima 14:18, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Consensus polling

"Consensus is a partnership between interested parties working positively for a common goal." -- Jimmy Wales

Consensus can sometimes be hard to achieve in practice, and often harder to measure. Consensus polling is a method of adducing consensus for a given proposal, using a structured polling method which can easily indicate how many people are in support of a proposal, and how many people are not yet in support of a proposal.

A consensus poll is unlike traditional (evil) votes, which produce winners and losers; in a consensus poll there is only one proposal, which can be edited by the participants in the poll. This method aims to help people achieve a high level of consensus, rather than a low level of consensus (such as a mere majority or supermajority). Having only a single proposal aims to ensure that participants do actually work together to achieve a result which pleases as many people as possible, rather than encouraging them to compete against each other in order for their own proposal to succeed.

More information about consensus polling can be found at consensuspolling.org, and at the MeatballWiki. I encourage people who are interested in this method to try it out; the proposal page already contains a full set of instructions for setting up a new poll. I also encourage people to leave their comments at the talk page. --bainer (talk) 14:39, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Multi-level articles and subpages?

Hi, I'm still a relative newbie, so please forgive me if this topic has come up already. I've been involved with some science/math articles and it's often difficult to find the right level; what some people find obscure and difficult to understand, other people find trivially obvious and belabored. (See Talk:Hamilton-Jacobi equations and Talk:Photon, for example.) Also, it'd be nice sometimes to show a derivation or explain something in more detail than can be covered easily in a footnote, but which might be too short for its own article. So I was thinking of using subpages for these kinds of "extended footnotes". That way, the same topic could be covered in different depths, depending on how many subpages the reader was interested in following. We could even have subpages of subpages for readers who really wanted to delve into a topic. Intuitively, I suspect that this scheme won't work, but I can't exactly say why I think so. I'd appreciate everyone's opinion about the idea, or other suggestions for multi-level articles — thanks muchly! :D Willow 15:35, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

There are two solutions for this. First is creating a simple article and a series of in-depth ones. Second, for topics needing high detail and not as critical to referencing, is Wikibooks, though, admittedly, it is a bit too complex to work. Subpages for footnotes is a good idea, but today we've settled with just using a section main page with extra detail. It has the simplicity advantage. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 15:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia on mobile

i could like to post the suggestion to start wikipedia for mobiles so that mobile users can also use it through wap or other such service.pl reply to my talk page as well.Yousaf465

See Wikipedia:WAP access Tra (Talk) 12:12, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject

The presentation of most WikiProjects isn't very attractive. On fr: there's a standardized presentation for projects which gives results such as this one or that one. Is there anything similar here ? Sigo 16:46, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, we use a very simple text preserntation as default, and most Wikiprojects use it. While a lot of projects are already well used to that, I'm sure many others would like something more complex and attractive, like on the French wiki. It would be nice if you modified that code a bit (just change terms) and uploaded here as a subpage for WikiProject, linking it as an alternate template. I'll assist if needed, I know French a little. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 17:00, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Good idea! LinaMishima 18:20, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

You could also talk about that at the project : Wikipedia:WikiProject Council so that the people who are well versed in creating wikiproject pages can help you and know about this. Lincher 01:56, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the idea. Sigo 19:29, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Currently, at WP:WPSG, we have a beautiful layout that is loved by its members. Other projects could use our layout. Tobyk777 02:24, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Great layout but maybe a bit too elaborated for a project. It nearly looks like a portal :) Sigo 19:29, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, BTW the French one as well. Since many WikiProjects have corresponding portals, maybe it's even good. I've been around on other language WPs, and they usually run with less rules, so I guess they might combine portal and wikiproject functionality. However, the WPSG layout seems more fitting to me - the French one is maybe a little too tight. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 04:04, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:EPISODE

I wrote this page a few weeks ago as the beginning of what I hoped would become a guideline. Not knowing how to propose a guideline, I forgot about the page until today, where the link on {{historical}} led me here. This page simly clarifies that episode summaries need sources like any other article. Reasons I have been given in the past that episode summaries are okay without sources:

• "The episode is the reference!" — from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter's Got Woods
• "That's nonesense. It is cited, and the source is the movie/book/tv show being summarised. And if that's "original research", then every page where something's expressed in the writer's words instead of being copy-pasted from a book or encyclopedia - which is to say, every single page in wikipedia - is guilty of original research" — from the same debate, someone has no idea what OR is.
• see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Death Has a Shadow

Out of frustration that no one seems to notice that episode summariies aren't above un-ignorable WIkipedia policy, I made the page to clarify. -- Chris chat edits essays 17:19, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

And I'm afraid you ultimately missed the point. Summarising and paraphrasing are well-known and acknowledged processes, and in doing them no content is ever produced. WP:NOR allows these to be used as long as no speculative work is performed. Of course, referencing another summary again strengthens the article, however, and should be encouraged. LinaMishima 18:14, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I think a much larger debate needs to happen here, and that is whether wholesale summarizing of fictional plots is appropriate fodder for Wikipedia articles. If so, then you're out of luck. If not, we'll have thousands of articles to delete. Fagstein 19:10, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps a user perspective might clarify this. I myself do not intend to write such articles--many many of the people here have more skill in this than I, with a greater memory for names and places, and a more extensive collection of original material to refer to.

As a user of WP, long before I though of editing, I've found this material enormously useful. For major works of any medium, there are good conventional sources; for fandom, the web has always done adequately. But for an organized system of high-quality articles , this is the place. I see no need to extensively document this, unless the fairness or accuracy of the summary is challenged. The purpose of documentation is so others can check your work. But for these topics, the episode itself is the documentation. Anyone who thinks the editor is careless automatically knows exactly where to check. Otherwise a reference would need to be given for every page of the book or frame of the video. If challenged, then it can be quoted or described. As I understand it, it might even be a copyright violation to give to paraphrase the whole. ----

To respond the original post: Of course such episode summaries need sources, and true, the source is often the work itself, but the work itself must be cited in the usual manner in this case. If I recall correctly we have some guidelines that say something like this (look through Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)). On a technical note, keep in mind that deletion discussion pages cannot be referred to using the syntax WP:AFD/Blah (doesn't work). Deco 05:47, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

The WP:NOR policy clearly states:

Primary sources present information or data, such as

[...]

artistic and fictional works such as poems, scripts, screenplays, novels, motion pictures, videos, and television programs (whether recorded in digital or analogue formats).

[...]

Original research that creates primary sources is not allowed. However, research that consists of collecting and organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary sources is, of course, strongly encouraged. All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources. This is not "original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia.

So use of the primary source is not original research. Original research is what creates primary sources, not what uses them. There are quite frequent cases when WP:NOR is misapplied to articles based on works of fiction and describing them, but the policy in fact directly endorses it, as long as no new fiction is introduced. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:34, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Episodes summaries may not be OR, but surely most of the page is. For example, the "cultural references" section on the Family Guy pages ( i don't know which others include it) is purely primary. The information is not common knowledge, or at least not common enough for the average person to assume. Majorities of sections of most Episode Summaries are OR. Perhaps one could make this cast that one can use the source to write the article, but that's like saying I can write an article on a tree by looking at it (pretending WP:N doesn't exist). Hell no I can't! Can I write about MySpace just by using its service? No. So why is it that I can write about a TV episode just by watching it once? -- Chris chat edits essays 02:33, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

There are long-standing debates amongst the 'truth' policies (NOR, VERIFY) as to what can and cannot be drawn from a primary source. In my opinion, trivially obvious details may be drawn without needing the analysis of a secondary source, as such matters are often overlooked as being obvious by subsequent authors. Episode summaries should be written in a manner becoming of an encyclopedia, and should be devoid of analysis of character motivations over those stated. Trivia and cultural references must be obvious to the general public if no secondary source is used. And yes, you can write about myspace by just using it, just only in such a manner as appropriate for using a primary source (assuming, that is, you're talking about wikipedia). The problem of aspects of a subject being assumed to be purely trivial and obvious by secondary sources is a real one. LinaMishima 03:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

4288

Please support bug 4288 which is an enhancement that allows general tagging of revisions. This will allow user and group defined tags which can then be used for things like this project and possibly other stuff in the future. Thanks. --Gbleem 23:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

emailing articles

okay, i read the news all the time online and when something interesting comes up, or say somthing having to do with the coast guard i click the email this article to a friend and send it to my guardsman brother, similarly i think wikipedia should have an option at the bottom of the page or sidebar where u can click, email to a friend provide your email or wikipedia user name and their name and email and send them the article or the link automatically, i think that would be very cool and it would be a great way of word-of-mouth spreading the visibility of wikipedia and i think it would attract for contributors and editors, whatya think? Qrc2006 01:56, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

It's interesting. Since we're already the number 17 Alexa site our articles usually appear among the top returns at search engines. Has it been hard for your friends to locate our pages? Durova 03:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

This has been proposed a number of times, often with strong support. It has not been implemented. Meanwhile, it's really not much more difficult to e-mail the URL (or the permalink, by first click Permalink in the Toolbox). Deco 00:47, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

If this excellent idea is implemented, we will have more ways to encourage our friends to contribute to Wikipedia. For example, after I write an article, I could e-mail it to my friends, asking them to give feedback, and sign up and improve my article. I am a manager in a 1000-member RuneScape community: I could e-mail the RuneScape article and suggest they create accounts and work on the article to improve it to Good Article status. The possibilities are endless. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:53, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

That's why e-mails shouldn't be sent out from Wikipedia itself. They'll be spam. We have enough trouble with self-promotion via Wikipedia. If Wikipedia will generate spam on demand, it will be used that way. --John Nagle 16:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

what the hell are you talking about nagle? limit emaiol articles to registered users then, or 10 per hour per IP address or include a identify the charicters image thingy its a great idea your very pessamistic, why should we be denied this great feature bcuz of what some spamholes might do with it, i also fail to see a problem with self promoting wikipedia, do you think promoting this project is a bad thing, that we shoudnt tell people about it? generate spam on demand it will be used that way, what does that even mean? and no they wont be spam, theyll be cool informative and attract people to wikipedia and actually i dont see how its self promotional at all i mean you could send the article about your Virginia if your doing a state report or if u write an article about unagi sushi to your chef friend or an article on Xena to your brother whos a astronomy buff or the article on britney spears or tom brady to a pop or patriots fan. that just makes wikipedia able to be more widely distributed and helps the learning processQrc2006 00:11, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

if the consensus seems to be do it is there an appropriate discussion page to continue this dialogoue, or what can be done to implement this?Qrc2006 00:11, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't your browser have an "email this page" function? I don't really see how adding this functionality into Wikipedia adds much unless you're using it from a public kiosk (or something) rather than your own PC. And, even if it were a feature, where do the addresses come from? Are you suggesting typing them in by hand, or do you also want Wikipedia to keep some sort of address book for you? Wikipedia is not Gmail. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

... and directly answering your question. Requests to change the software (bugs or enhancements) are entered using bugzilla. Unless it's a critical problem, the way it works is bugzilla users vote for bugs and the bugs with the most votes tend to get implemented first. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:47, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Page accessed counter

As a way to gauge interest in a page, I'd like to propose adding a "page accessed counter" to the bottom of each Wikipedia page. For example, I've noticed some wikis that use MediaWiki, e.g., ICANNWiki, have a statement at the bottom of each page like, "This page has been accessed 61,648 times." I believe such an indicator would be another way to help editors decide where the biggest bang for the buck could be gained from various types of article improvement drives. I expect similar insights could be gained from counting pages accessed in other "official" namespaces. Counting userspace page hits probably would be frowned upon by some, so it might be better to not implement counting there if that doesn't complicate implementation too much. Rfrisbie^talk 17:40, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Very Frequently Asked Questions#Are page hit counters available? -- Lost^(talk) 17:44, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Rats! I still think it's a good idea. ;-) Rfrisbie^talk 17:52, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

WikiCharts might help; it gives approximate hit counts for the top 1000 pages. Tra (Talk) 18:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Compiling a list of most-viewed pages has another use: encouraging editors/admins to monitor these pages for vandalism. If an anonymous vandal attacks a highly-viewed page, there is a higher chance that a passing reader will see the vandalism before it is reverted. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Conversely, vandalism to a page less often viewed is less likely to be quickly reverted, making it a good target for sneaky vandalism. This is why we don't allow people to see how many people are watching an article. Deco 21:15, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not suggesting a list sorting articles based on how many people watch them (registered editors adding the articles to their watchlist), but how many people read them (most readers are not editors). If many people read an article, vandalism to it is more likely to be spotted by a reader before it is reverted by someone watching it. Therefore, articles which are read by many should also be watched by many. However, if we make the list publicly available, it will encourage vandals to attack articless which many read, so it should be available only to registered users. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:00, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

• On a related point, there seem to be a lot of sites that replicate Wikipedia content - if these download the content periodically and cache it (as many seem to?), rather than going back to the Wikipedia server for each page view, then I guess a Wikipedia page hit counter would not pick up page hits on those up sites? Just my curiosity, but does anyone have any idea what sort of proportion of Wikipedia page views are via these "replication" sites? Matt 01:09, 16 September 2006 (UTC).

Fact Finders International

What i'd like to propose is a list of people, spread across the globe cooperating to get and check facts and spread the news of newly ermerged ones, each member working within his/her own country, speaking the local language and having easy access to monuments, musea and websites in their respective languages. This group of volunteers take requests from a list detailing the request.

The full proposal and rationale can be found here and i'd very much appreciate your input.

Kleuske 19:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC) (nl:Gebruiker:Kleuske)

You might be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check Tra (Talk) 21:12, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Interesting... What bothers me about it is that it seems to be strictly an en.wiki affair. I can't really find any referenced to any other wiki's, which would make things a lot better for all. What use is having internet if we all retreat onto our national language islands and 'do not cooperate internationally especially for purposes like this?

What a waste of time and effort to check out things on en.wiki, de.wiki, nl.wiki and it.wiki (and all the others) _separately_ if proper cites and sources are a mere translation away? What a waste of effort to correct something on one place and then failing to correct it in all the others (or rather, waiting for them to find out by themselves). So i think Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check] is a good initiative, but too limited in it's scope. Kleuske 08:38, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree! This is a great idea! FreddyE 10:44, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

What is a fact?--Light current 21:21, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Verifiability. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:06, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Funding Wikipedia through the Advertisement Model

Wikipedia is a massive compendium of knowledge, I feel that it could use some security (staff, hardware, finances) and I also think the easiest an best way to secure stable funds is through adbertisement...with monies coming in, THE ENYCLOPEDIA could pay the writers and editors of the most widely viewed articles, or create a prize for the wierdest of articles...on a more serious note, Wikipedia could offer its own Nobel Prize of Wikipedian Literature, it could push the community to produce that which will change society, or societies.

Perhaps, with more cash, Wikipedia could upgrade its site, it could offer ways of implanting software (interactive charts, graphic organizers)...Wikipedia could even afford to stream video into the site, this could transform the encyclopedia into a firsthand, immediate, journalistic tool...Wikipedia could make an addition adding audiobooks of each of the articles, or even full voice animated site that could ease the burden of ignorance from the visually impaired.

I know the greatness that is Wikipedia the free encyclopedia, yet I can also imagine the death of Wikopedia from the current plague or epidemic of apathy (perhaps from the threat of terrorism? I certainly hope not, but noney can supply multiple hard backups of the data). I hope that this is taken in good faith, as it was sent...long live Wikipedia!

Perhaps a seperate wikipedian site could be made and would act as a review site? I am just throwing out ideas, and I hope that you all can add to my whimsical interests in keeping alive human interest in human matters, through the use of Wikipedia.

---

The above was contributed by User:Cementkilla. I am just copying it here. Melchoir 05:12, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Most of Wikipedia's editors contribute for the enjoyment, and would balk at receiving monetary rewards for their work. However, I agree that Wikipedia should seek alternative methods of funding and not rely solely on donations, so they can be more finanically secure and buy more servers. Many Wikipedians oppose having ads on Wikipedia, but I support having Google AdSense ads on pages, as such relevant ads are non-obstrusive and may actually help readers. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 09:42, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, monetary rewarding for editors would create some problems greatly outweighing benefits. Salaries would be better left to people doing more technical work, like technicians, lawyers and other full-time employees. Also, the community would not support ads on Wikipedia

However, it would be a good idea to create a new Wikimedia project, named, for instance, Wikiextras, which would serve as supplementary and include many of the useful things Wikipedia could be, but can't because of encyclopedic restrictions. Something closer to most wikis and to Wikipedia in its earlier days. It could have no notability requirements and only minimal guidelines about NOR and verifiability (some wikipedias work well without these policies, correctness being sufficient). For community it could as well allow discussion on subjects themselves and more essay writing. Transwikification there would quickly solve the problem with many useful, but not encyclopedic articles, satisfying both deletionists and inclusionists ideals (assuming linking to articles there would be allowed in navigation templates).

Such a project could be funded by google text ads (as usually, under the sidebar, practically unintrusive), and, due to high popularity it will quickly gain (being just what originally made Wikipedia polular), it alone could easily fund all Wikimedia Foundation's projects. I think it should seriously be considered as a solution which would not harm in any way the existing projects, but provide income, which could be used to extending hardware and software capabilities, at the same time inviting new editors and readers with more different interests. Of course, it doesn't have to be ad-funded. Such funding would resolve the problem of server load increase which is a frequent objection to hosting such wiki. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 17:20, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I generally agree with the add funded Wikiextras idea. There is a lot of good but non notable stuff which I find does not suvive AfD. I guess this is partially the role of Wikia. --Salix alba (talk) 18:03, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Conch shell uses of it's carectoristics

…9-15-2005 3:47 searched conch first to show wikipedia, early this month i read something of the 17th century about indianc and albany congress and the use of string from a conch shell i beleive all i read in two dealing's of string making are from the conch shell though i heard that the color purple is from the cowhog oops had to find correct spelling two vercions quahaug or quahog so i was just curiuos for the relatively respect of 'atoa bbs'artists talk on art wanted the write repect thank you David George DeLancey 3:56 P.m.216.195.1.16 19:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Categorisation of username

Dear Fellow Wikipedians,

Can I please make a plea for instructions to how to add one's username to a list of Wikipedians in a certain category to be clear, or else have a simpler method of doing this? Several times now, I have tried to add my username to the category Category: Wikipedians in England. I have tried to type the following at the end of my username page:

[[Category: Wikipedians in England: Template:ACEO]]

but it does not seem to work. I believe the reason is that I am suppposed to add something prior to my username, but can some one please explain what text I have to type immediately prior to my username? I thought that, once one had done this correctly, one would automatically see one's name added to the Wikipedians in that category list, so that there was no need to edit the category page. ACEO 11:03, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

If you just want the category, add [[Category: Wikipedians in England]] to your user page. If you want a userbox, add {{User England}}. If you see something on a page anywhere within WIkipedia you'd like to copy, probably the easiest way to figure out how to do it is to edit the page and look at how it was done. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:53, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I fixed it for you. Garion96 (talk) 16:02, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for Resolution of Catholic Church/Roman Catholic Church debate

We have just recently ended yet another dispute about what the name of the page of the religious organization headed by the Pope should be, and what should be the contents of the page entitled "Catholic Church". If you look in the archives, you will also see that there are at least six archived pages of discussion dealing with this subject exclusively. Considering that somewhere over one-sixth of the population of the planet consider themselves members of this organization/group (possibly much more, depending on the specific definition given the term), I think it can reasonably be argued that this is a question of significant importance to the wikipedia. On that basis, I would suggest that we try to find some way to resolve the matter in such a way that these seemingly endless revert wars, which all seem to be based on the same arguments, end once and for all, at least in regards to the specific arguments put forward to date and allowing for change given significant changes in the "real-world" status quo of these organizations in the future.

One suggestion (mine) is as follows: We are currently in an election to determine who will take a seat on the Board of Trustees of wikipedia. We could allow those parties who have a position on the issue to put forward their reasons for their positions and rationally and civilly discuss them. Then, all those individuals who have voted in the Board of Trustees election could be allowed to indicate their opinions on what article or page should be under which title. Alternately, some other way of selecting these virtual "voters" might be chosen. However, by doing so, we would allow all those individuals who are informed on issues relating to wikipedia to indicate their opinions, not only those who are members of the various Projects involved. For this to be workable, we would probably have to create at least a stub for every disparate organization or church which has the words "Catholic" and "Church" in their names and links to all of them, as well as to a central discussion page. I could probably do create the various pages myself, so that wouldn't cause any additional work for anyone else. I am aware that approval voting is the approved method on wikipedia, for good reason, but I have a feeling that it might not be the right answer here, given the variety of opinions and options. Maybe something like preference voting or some form of run-off voting would be most effective here. Unfortunately, it seems to me that, given the history, some sort of extreme measure of this type may be the only way to end the argument on these issues. Also, as similar revert controversies probably exist in other fields, it might provide a basis for similar actions in the future in other areas. I know I blather on, so I'll shut up here and await any and all responses. Badbilltucker 19:16, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Extend WP searches to Wiktionary when not found?

Hi. There are a few slang and jargon glossaries on WP, and occasionally we hear they shouldn't be in WP but in Wiktionary (if at all). I found there is http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Appendices which seems to be rapidly becoming the repository for these. (OTOH, many "lists of" seem to appear on WP, so a "glossary" might qualify as a "list.")

The appealing thing about, say, "U.S. Navy slang" is it is a fast-moving and popular page which is not so much about the words and definitions themselves, but an intriguing and up-to-date view of the culture. Not a blog (though it has some elements of that), but a very dynamic article on a segment of our society a couple million people work and live in. (I mean, if there's room in WP for pages and pages about computer games from the '80s, why not for what people are saying in daily life today?)

I fear if all glossaries shuffle off to the obscure appendix, they will be overlooked, and these sorts of things (which some might even argue should be made into some kind of non-pedia Wiki of its own) won't continue to grow.

A solution occurred to me in that if one searches for a term that does not match a WP article but is in Wiktionary, one could be immediately taken there, or at least offered the choice of going to view it.

This way, a casual user (not terribly familiar with WP) would find their way to the right place by means of entering a term from their jargon and being led to the appropriate location. This would keep WP "glossary-free," but still make them easily accessible via the main search box.

(Yes, I know there's a "Wiktionary button" on the bottom of Main, but fear it may be overlooked by most.)

Stubs for glossaries could be maintained in WP pointing to the appropriate Wiktionary appendix, as well; these could grow into proper articles describing the slang/jargon or the culture/population using them, but without the clutter of a same-page list of words.

Thank you. Jeffreykopp 08:54, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Here's a proposal

I would like to propose that someone else besides myself help clean up the massive year and a half 1500+ article backlog in Wikipedia:Transwiki log. --Xyzzyplugh 14:49, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

• I'd say that 1500 articles needing attention is an underestimate by several orders of magnitude! Matt 10:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC).

Dictionary Tag-ons

• I think that it would be useful for readers if, at the beginning of some articles, there was a short "dictionary definition" of the subject. Obviously, the regular extended encyclopedia article would be shown below.

--Oddmartian 16:50, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Articles are meant to begin with a Wikipedia:Lead section, providing a concise introduction to the topic. Also see Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:36, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

You might also like to read the policy about how Wikipedia is not a dictionary. We already have the separate Wiktionary project that is a dictionary. You can already add links from Wikipedia articles to Wiktionary articles, see Wikipedia:Sister_projects#Wiktionary. Best, Gwernol 15:34, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Past costs in terms of today's dollars (Inflation)

Is there a function out there that can be added to pages that will turn prices in, say, 1880 and note the price in today's dollars on the side? I'm suspecting it would be easy to code given a standard interest rate. I just would like to see if it cost $20 for such and such to buy land at some point in time, how much that would come out in terms of today's dollars. Grazie! Pat 16:00, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that there's about four or five different ways to correct old values, which will give wildly differing results - it really depends what you're trying to measure. There's not even much agreement on what the best way to do such calculations is - consumer price index or GDP deflation? ("Cost in hours of unskilled labour" is one you see occasionally, which is rather clever IMO)

Calculations that hold true for small values (how much was a cup of coffee then?) break horribly for big ones (how much did fighting a war cost?) For example... take Alaska. The US paid $7.2m for Alaska in 1867; a simple inflation adjustment would tell you this is about ninety million dollars in current money. But in 1867, $7.2m was a nontrivial fraction of government income, whilst today $90m is - on a governmental scale - pocket change. It's clear that the calculation doesn't hold for large sums - the amount the US paid for Alaska can't in any real way be "ninety million dollars today". (As a fraction of GDP, it's probably closer to ten billion dollars)

As such, I'm worried putting in a calculator function like this would just lead to it being used (albeit in good faith) to generate somewhat meaningless numbers... Shimgray | talk | 17:02, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Another problem is that costs rise at different rates. As a fraction of income, for instance, travel is considerably less expensive now than in 1880. Durova 18:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Install m:DynamicPageList

I suggest that the extension DynamicPageList should be installed into wikipedia. Of course it has no use on articles, but it could be a god-giving help for maintenance. _→AzaToth 18:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree. —Mets501 (talk) 18:56, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Can we have a non-technical explanation of what this is? Newyorkbrad 18:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

It can create lists based on different categories (intersections etc...) and sort them for example by the date they where added to the category. _→AzaToth 19:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Making links to discussions more specific

There are a lot of links, especially from templates, where you are invited to "discuss this" or "comment on this", or similar. Unfortunately the links often throw you into a massive page that contains dozens or even hundreds of different topics, and it can be tiresome to try to find the particular discussion you are wanting, or even to establish whether that discussion already exists. Some way to make these links more specific would be good. Matt 13:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC).

User To-do Lists

Since all registered Wikipedia users have their own user page,talk page, and watchlist, I think that it would make sense if we are each allowed to have our own personal "User To-do List". This way, we could keep track of all of our editing plans, and further. A list would especially be helpful for a frequent, busy Wikipedian. --Oddmartian 14:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC) Please, respond to this idea on my Talk Page.