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.

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Redirect on Contribution pages, "redirect=no"?

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

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

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

Edit summary usage improvement

I think that new editors that are just starting out here at Wikipedia could be confused about what to put in the edit summary field. I am proposing that we change the text next to the edit summary box to say

• Edit summary (Description of your edits)

instead of just

• Edit summary

What do you think? —Mets501 (talk) 04:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. -Quiddity 06:10, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to see anything more on an edit page. Indeed, I want to see less. Valuable screen real estate is thrown away saying the same things over and over. Don't submit it. Use the sandbox. See policies. Foo. If I haven't read that by now, I won't.

Agree that proper use of edit sums is critical to just about everything here. Do not agree that more boilerplate nagging will help.

Give me a setting in my prefs to remove all the verbiage, leaving only the buttons themselves, and I'll be content no matter what else you do. John Reid ° 06:15, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with John Reid's idea of a setting, so experienced users won't read the instruction creep, but newcomers will. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 06:36, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

As for changing a setting, here's some code that you could put in your monobook.css to trim down the editing page. You can pick and choose which elements you want to hide:

#editpage-copywarn, #editpage-copywarn2, #editpage-copywarn3, .previewnote, #newarticletext {display:none} /* remove the warnings */

#editpage-specialchars {display:none} /* remove special characters list */

#toolbar {display:none} /* remove toolbar */

#wpSummaryLabel, #minoredit_helplink, .editHelp {display:none} /* remove helpful links */

.templatesUsed {display:none} /* remove list of templates */

Unfortunatly, #editpage-copywarn2\.3B doesn't seem to work properly, I think because of the '.' in its id. Tra (Talk) 15:09, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

It's working now. I think the element's id was changed temporarily as I was writing the code. Tra (Talk) 15:38, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

There was a misplaced semicolon (which was transformed into ".3B"). Since removed. :)

And yeah, I hide most of those, and the copyright footers, with User:Quiddity/monobook.css. Makes everything a lot cleaner. --Quiddity 19:27, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Mets501's idea is good. "Edit summary" may be confusing to some, while "description of your changes" should be clear to anybody. Given how large the edit form currently is, I do not see adding 20 bytes to it as a big problem, if that leads to more valid edit summaries from newcomers (and perhaps less valid edits being reverted). Tizio 13:32, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm slightly confused. What exactly is confusing about the phrase "edit summary"? If people are getting confused about what to put in it, then this idea seems good, but I can't see what else "edit summary" could mean, except "summary of your edit". Trebor 14:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll admit: it actually confused me when I first edited Wikipedia last February. I took it to mean "edit the summary of the article" or the like, so I never filled it it at first :-) —Mets501 (talk) 15:37, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh okay, I just wanted to see evidence that some people did get confused by it before changing anything. It sounds good then, so long as there's an option to turn it off. Trebor 20:13, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

To turn it off, put #wpSummaryLabel label small {display:none} in your monobook.css. Tra (Talk) 22:51, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

If edit summaries are so important, why are people complaining about long edit summaries? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Coming from a developer's perspective in terms of SVN/CVS, you get reverted and publically humiliated if you leave a blank or unsatisfactory log entry (the source code equivalent of edit summary). I'd really like to see more people making use of this function, perhaps even encouraging multi-line edit summaries and the ability to edit the edit summaries. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 04:33, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Post-implementation

Has anyone else noticed how "Edit summary (Briefly describe the changes you have made)" is now being fully justified and is now filled with large gaps instead of flush left like it used to be? I tried removing the span tags from MediaWiki:Summary but that didn't fix it. I'm currently see this layout problem in Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060830 Firefox/1.5.0.7 (Debian-1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.7-2). --  Netsnipe  ►  06:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I get the same (with the same browser). It's extremely ugly; if it can't be fixed I think it should be changed back. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 06:54, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Edit summary box

A comment, Help:Edit summary is a pretty dense page to direct people to. If the top half of that page were shorter and clearer (perhaps as concise as the introduction?) perhaps more people would read it? As for the change, I don't really mind it (and the alignment is fine in firefox2/opera9/win98 at least ;) though I have many of the warnings and items in MediaWiki:Edittools hidden via my monobook.css, so it's not quite as overwhelming altogether. -Quiddity 07:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that the alignment issues that I am having, are caused by the setting "Justify text" in the user preferences that I have set. I guess the same is true for Netsnipe. I added a span to MediaWiki:Summary to counteract this, hopefully without causing any other problems. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I use a fairly small browser window and find that the edit summary box is now incredibly small now. Anyone else with that problem? JYolkowski // talk 23:47, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I have aligned it to the left. It looks ugly justified. =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:14, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Geographical Coordinates

Why do geographical coordinates have to be provided in a decimal format with only degrees? The common usage is in degrees, minutes, and seconds (see, e.g., the German wikipedia). Currently, one has to click on the coordinates to get this information. I don't see why that should be necessary. Unless other reasons speak against it, I'd suggest to change the format... --Ibn Battuta 03:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

"Provided" in what sense? In articles you can write them whichever way you want. The handy "coor" template supports degrees-minutes-seconds (e.g. 56°28′58″N 16°34′31″E). (The rendition of the minutes and seconds symbols is buggy on my PC, and spurious white space is inserted, but that's another matter!) Matt 23:06, 13 November 2006 (UTC).

Errr... I'm not sure if we're getting different outputs? Well, at least *I* get the coordinates in a decimal format (e.g., 45.5315° N 11.5600° E of the Villa Capra "La Rotonda" - instead of 45° 31′ 53" N 11° 33′ 36" E, which I only get when I click on the coordinates). If you get a different output, I'd love to find out how to get that myself! --Ibn Battuta 03:52, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

There is more than one template: {{coor d}} renders as 56.1234°N 16.5678°E / 56.1234; 16.5678, and {{coor dms}} as 56°28′58″N 16°34′31″E. There is also a {{coor dm}}. I prefer the dms version myself (where appropriate). See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates. -- Eugène van der Pijll 12:39, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

The format in which coordinates are displayed in an article is the choice of the editor who adds them to the article. Everyone reading the article then sees the same thing - different people shouldn't see different "outputs". For example, at Villa Capra "La Rotonda" the coordinates are in degrees, and at Alby, Sweden they are in degrees-minutes-seconds. This is just because the respective editors chose to do it that way. As an editor you can, if you want, enter coordinates in plain text format, and then you can obviously type whatever characters you like - Wikipedia doesn't know or care that they are coordinates. However, I guess you're probably talking about the handy "coor" template which gives you the auto-formatting and the auto-link to map lookups. In this case you choose whether you want degrees, degrees-minutes or degrees-minutes-seconds with the second parameter. For example:

{{Coor d|45.5315|N|11.5600|E}}     produces     45.5315°N 11.5600°E / 45.5315; 11.5600

{{coor dm|56|28|N|16|34|E}}     produces     56°28′N 16°34′E

{{coor dms|56|28|58|N|16|34|31|E}}     produces     56°28′58″N 16°34′31″E

If you want the coordinates at Villa Capra "La Rotonda" to appear as degrees-minutes-seconds then you will have to do the conversion yourself and edit the article appropriately. Matt 13:06, 14 November 2006 (UTC).

• • Incidentally, in the above examples, does everyone else see spurious white space after the seconds and minutes symbols, or is it just me? Matt 13:28, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

It's just you. At least; I don't see it. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 16:27, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's an idea. Could we not extend the "date preferences" type of setting to things like co-ordinates as well? I remember a few weeks ago someone asked about unit conversions (SI, metric, etc.) and at the time I thought this would be a great idea to incorporate as well. Wehere should i request this? Zunaid©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 07:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... automatic unit conversions? So, for instance, the article on Three Mile Island would be displayed, under some user preferences, as 4.828032 Kilometer Island? *Dan T.* 14:21, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

LoL! Obviously not! But seriously, I think auto unit conversion would be great. I edit a lot of car articles so there's plenty of kW, hp, PS figures going around etc etc. A user preference that would display the desired units (and optionally, other units in brackets) would make life much easier for editors (by removing the need for manually populating different unit values) and for readers (by removing potentially annoying units that they may choose not to see). It would also standardise the way units are presented, by always showing the same unit first, second, third etc. e.g. if i set my preferences to kW, then hp, units will ALWAYS be displayed as "100 kW (134 hp)" no matter how they've been entered into the article. There could also be a specific way to bypass these choices for specific cases e.g. for an article on unit conversion itself, or where a certain unit (e.g. light years, parsecs, "miles" in 3 mile island) should not be replaced by the user's default. Zunaid©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 07:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I can envisage all sorts of problems trying to make automatic conversion work reliably with pre-existing text. That sounds like a non-starter. Probably it would be better to provide some new syntax, template or whatever - something like {{units|100 kW}} (except not that because the "units" template already exists!) Matt 10:27, 16 November 2006 (UTC).

Ideas for new Wikiprojects

I have several ideas for new Wikiprojects. One of my ideas is Wikiproject Australian Television Schedules, Which could create schedules for older years in australian TV. Another is Wikiproject Episode status, Which could improve articles by mentioning how many episodes still exist (with older shows). Another idea is wikiproject Daytime United States Television Schedules. The problem is that I dont have the knowledge to do them myself.What do you think?DesignForDreamingFan 07:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this, but i have a feeling TV schedules are not going to go well with copyright laws. I mean, there's not much to write in a TV schedule except to literally type up a schedule - which is copyrighted. Plus, i don't think TV schedules really count as being "encyclopedic" articles.

As for TV episodes, they are covered by two existing wikiproject - Wikipedia:WikiProject Television episodes and Wikipedia:WikiProject List of Television Episodes. Most "list of [tv series] episodes" articles already cover information about future episodes. If you're interested in TV episodes, you're welcome to drop by either of those projects and help out, or make any more specific suggestions about improving our articles to do with TV episodes. --`/aksha 08:21, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not talking about episodes, I'm talking about improving articles On late 40's early 50's Television by mentioning how many episodes still exist.DesignForDreamingFan 08:25, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't quite understand what you mean by "how many episodes still exist". Shouldn't...all episodes still 'exist'? It's not like episodes for old shows are destroyed. Can you clarify? --`/aksha 08:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

WTF! almost the entire Du Mont archive was destoyed, as were hundreds of shows in the 50's. Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiping —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DesignForDreamingFan (talk • contribs) .

It may be obvious to you, but keep in mind what is 'common knowledge' to you is most certainly not nessasarily common knowledge to everyone else. I for one, had no idea what you're talking about. Information regarding something like that would be worth putting into articles. These articles, however, are television articles and are in the domain of Wikipedia:WikiProject Television. Creating a project specifically for this purpose is fine, but it would be a child project of the Television WikiProject. So the best place to ask, especially if you're asking other people to do it, would be at the talk page for Wikipedia:WikiProject Television. The people there would be more knowledgable regarding this area, and would probably be able to help you more. --`/aksha 12:01, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems like this falls on the wrong side of WP:NOT Wikia might be a more appropriate palce for this sort of info. --Salix alba (talk) 12:17, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Just to mention it, TV schedules are routinely deleted over at AfD so a Wikiproject to create them would be futile and quickly get deleted itself. --The Way 10:35, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Number of people "watching" a page

Could a counter displaying the number of people watching articles be included on each page. This would be to see how many people are interested in a particular page. --Mutley 11:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

This is available to admins, problems with vandles using it to find pages which are not watched mean its not availiable to regular users. A pereneal proposal, see the archive for more. --Salix alba (talk) 12:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Technically, admins can only see a list of the first 1000 pages that are unwatched (watched by 0 people). The number of people having a page in their watchlist could be retrived via action=info, but this is disabled for performance reasons. Tizio 13:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• I'll add this to WP:PEREN. (Radiant) 10:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

How about a rule that stops anonymous users from editing pages that no one is watching?

Wouldn't that be too restrictive? Putting together neglected pages and new users should be a goal, rather than something to be avoided, IMHO. – Little Miss Might Be Wrong 00:13, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Unsuitable content

Since wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it contains things such as Sex, Penis etc. Now I agree that it can be allowed onto wikipedia, and suitable pictures are aloud. But still, I have seen on it's talk pages that some people find it offensive, rude etc. And since wikipedia is open to everyone, including young children, do you think there should be some sort of notice at the top of the page saying something like

!Warning, this page contains content that some users may find offensive!

or some sort of stub similar to that?Samaster1991 20:30, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:NDT lays out the reasons this is a bad idea, but let me inform you that I am terribly offended by the TV show "Lost," and must insist that every article about that show be the first tagged. JBKramer 20:34, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I am offended that you are offended by "Lost", and I demand that you be blocked for your unwarranted attacks on Jimbo's favorite series! --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 21:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• No. See also WP:PEREN. (Radiant) 10:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

No. John Reid ° 09:43, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

There's some merit to your idea - albeit Sex and Penis are not the problem, it's the twisted porno stuff - but don't waste your time, it will never happen, ever. Actually I think prominent a one-time disclaimer when you enter the site would be better (although per WP:BEANS would probably do more harm than good), but that's never ever going to happen, either. So don't worry about it. Herostratus 00:14, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Informal Arbitration

I am proposing to create something similar to small claims court. This will eliminate the arbcom load. Geo. 20:48, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea but what you kind of "small claim" disputes will this court deal with? - Tutmosis 21:05, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

And what powers would this court have? Trebor 22:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Avoid Instruction Creep. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:33, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• How about WP:RFC? There were two proposals earlier this year to make it "stronger", Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Enforcement and Wikipedia:Request for solutions. (Radiant) 10:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

We have several of these minor courts. See Dispute resolution. John Reid ° 09:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Third opinion. I just used it for the first time, and it was extremely quick and easy. It's only good for disputes that can be easily summarized in a few sentences, understood fairly easily, and where both parties can generate a neutral description of the issue that they both agree on (and of course both parties have to agree to abide by the third party's decision). There's no back-and-forth; the third party basically looks at the description, looks at the issue, and decides, game over. (I guess it can get a litle more involved than that, but it's supposed to stay really simple.) It's also supposed to be only for disputes where there only two individuals in disagreement, though. Herostratus 00:04, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

What links here

Regarding the namespace drop-down on "Watchlist".

I was wondering if the same thing could be done with the "What links here" page. It would make searching through the links MUCH more bearable.

I'd also like two additional options to the Watchlist (and hopefully elsewhere) drop-down box:

• 1.) all - no talk

  This would list from all non-talk namespaces.

• 2.) all talk

  This would list only from all the talk namespaces.

As an aside, I just want to say thank you to whomever implemented the new changes to the edit summary. It's great : ) - jc37 14:41, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

• Quite possibly. But you'd have to ask the Devs on Bugzilla, since it requires a modification of the software. (Radiant) 14:57, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
• The first one is Bug #4624. --Interiot 17:34, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link Interiot : )

In order to not duplicate requests, what would be the next step? (I've often read bugzilla, but I don't believe I've ever actually interacted there.) - jc37 04:22, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

template:unreferenced should be a deletion template

I've added a suggestion to the talk page there that unreferenced articles should be classified by month, like {{wikify}}-tagged articles, and should be deleted after three months if no sources are added. It'd light a fire under editors to add sources the way {{nsd}} does for images. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:24, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Not sure if you're already there, but see Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles for a very similar idea, albeit with a shorter time frame. I do think unreferenced could use some timetabling, but trying to add that to {{citation needed}} is probably an uphill fight. I don't agree with timed deletion for reasons given elsewhere; images are a special case due to copyvio concerns. -- nae'blis 17:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't support it for {{cite needed}} because that's usually an individual item within an otherwise acceptable article, but {{unreferenced}} is only supposed to be used on articles that totally lack sources. Anyone writing an article needs to get their information from somewhere, so they should be able to cite at least one source, leaving no good reason for articles eligible for {{unreferenced}} to exist. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:39, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. I wouldn't support this - it's too likely to eventually delete a good article that just needs sources. Nihiltres 18:49, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

You can't tell if an article is good or not unless you have sources to check the information against. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 19:00, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

That depends on who "you" is and what the article is. The eventual goal is to get good references in every article, but except for disputed facts or biographical information there is no reason to rush it. CMummert 19:20, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Keep in mind {{unreferenced}} is also for sections that lack sources, as the template itself clearly says. We should probably wait and see how this new CSD works out before dealing with the templates. Fagstein 05:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Just WP:PRODding things for lack of sources should work equally well, no need for more process creep. --tjstrf talk 05:44, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Deleting articles just because they have no references is IMO a daft idea. They may be very good articles. References are definitely a Good Thing, especially very specific references for contentious or surprising claims, but they are not the panacea that some people seem to think they are. If articles were written, referenced, checked and then set in stone then it would be a different story. What happens in practice is that references are initially added - either general references, or references to specific facts - and then the article goes through numerous edits over a long period of time, such that it's then impossible to know which statements the references support, or whether the statements they once supported have been altered, without painstakingly checking all of them again. This is not an option for the ordinary reader. The only person who would do this would be the serious researcher, who is likely to use Wikipedia only peripherally, if at all, and is likely to look at numerous sources anyway, in which case Wikipedia references have only limited use in alerting them to relevant published material that they may not already know about (sort of like a "further reading" list). Matt 11:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC).

• For certain templates such as "unreferenced", it's quite useful to prod any articles that have had that template for, say, a month and were not improved. (Radiant) 11:47, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Good lord. This would result in the deletion of well over half our articles, I think. I don't think that's a good idea, although maybe such Urk, this is a pretty drastic proposal. Unreferenced doesn't mean the same as unreferanceable. Articles that cannot be referenced violate WP:V and should be put up for deletion as soon as one finds them. But articles that just happen to lack references do not violate WP:V. If a user comes across an unreferenced article, he's free to take it at face value, take it with a grain of salt, ignore it, or go down the library and look up the references himself, whatever suits him. Herostratus 23:57, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

• Nobody's advocating indiscriminate deletion of articles that are presently unreferenced. (Radiant) 12:01, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I, for one, think that this goes against WP's idea at the moment for the sole fact that most of the current articles are a beginning place to look up information and later to take a better book on said subject and perfect your knowledge. Also, people who come to WP normally want facts that don'T really need to be conforted with citations and thus removing these articles means letting these people look up the internet for articles that will for sure be POV, unreferenced and written by the layman (not many laymen like WP).

On another point, there are people like me, that go through articles and references them which is a painstaking thing to do but in any case needs to be done with any article on WP. Since I have access to top nutch information (online magazine archives, online encyclopedia, PD-stuff from old libraries) it is less tough than using the internet by itself. Anyway, removing these articles that are unreferenced will render my job on WP less enjoyable as I like to peruse the encyclopedia and reference it with great references or just plainly render unverified material, verified. Lincher 04:40, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

WikiPedia is secular, right?

Im not an agnostic (or secular myself), but i will not express my belief here. But what really annoys me is when browsing WikiPedia, it seems that anything other than Christianity, Judaism or Islam is considered "mythology" here at WikiPedia, to a non-religious website, i think that WikiPedia should not label any religions as mythology, because its not the right way for a secularly written encyclopedia to go, to a non-religious person, Christianity is just as believeable as Paganism of any kind (including for example, Ancient Egyptian Religion). I hope my proposal and opinion is not taken lightly. Brenton.eccles 08:54, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't secular, it's neutral. In my experience we give a relatively full coverage of the opinions of dead religions, and other non-Western religions such as Buddhism get fair treatment as well. --tjstrf talk 09:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

It's not up to Wikipedia to decide if a particular religion is "mythology" or not; we merely report on what others say, and if a large weight of information from reliable sources generally agree that something is considered "mythology", then that's how we present the information. Our policies really don't give us much leeway on the matter. Remember: we are monks, not philosophers... -/- Warren 10:45, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

If a Wipedia is really going to operate with NPOV, I would endorse referring policies against referring to any religions as "mythological" as this term could be taken in the pejorative sense. On a related theme, I do think it helpful if editors of articles on religious subjects can express their religion on the usserpage, so that we can check reasons for a particular bias a particular editor might have had. ACEO 19:47, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

As noted above "we" (as editors) shouldn't be saying anything about any religion because that would be original research. Rather, we should be reporting what reliable sources have said about said religion. It is possible for current scholarship to be split on whether to categorize a faith as a "mythology" or something else and both views should be included. If you have a particular article in mind that provoked this post, my recommendation would be to find some reliable sources that categorizes the faith apart from "mythology" and include comments about that scholarship view in the article. Be Bold. Agne 19:53, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

(1) "Mythology" is not necessarily a pejorative term; myths can be true. Betsy Ross is part of the American mythology that isn't true; Paul Revere is part of the American mythology that is true (basically), and so on. Same with religions, the Battle of Jericho is a mythology that is (probably) more or less true, the parting of the Red Sea is part of the mythology that isn't true. (2) It isn't true that all religions are the same; there's been a tremendous advance in religious thought over the last three millenia or so. Beliefs like (say) that God (or the gods) lives in a particular geographical place on the earth have pretty much been superseded by more subtle thinking, and there's no point in pretending otherwise. (3) Most every religion has a crust of arrant nonsense along with the cool stuff, but we live in a political world, and Wikipedia is part of that world. So if your religion has lots of adherents, you can expect to get the kid-gloves treatment else the Great Screaming will begin; but if you let your religion die out, well, it's pretty much fair game. Don't worry about it, that's just how people are. (4) I think Wikipedia is secular, or at any rate should be; an encyclopedia is hella more part of the world of science than of religion. Diderot's original enycyclopedia was specifically written partly to combat superstition and parasitic priestly class who fed off it, and all proper encyclopedia's are basically in that vein. Herostratus 23:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I just think that in general, the word should be antiquity rather than mythology, eg: "a religion of antiquity. Because a lot of the antique religions are not dead.Brenton.eccles 00:53, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Ressurected Wiccan traditions based on ancient mythology can be treated seperately in those cases where they make a significant enough minority to be included, which is to say those articles which are actually about neo-paganism. There's no reason to go messing about with the Egyptology articles when "mythology" is the proper academic term used by the fields of cultural and archaelogical study. --tjstrf talk 01:00, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Taxobox

Click for a larger image...

Hello! , I am faelomx and I have much style. Already in serious, Is not taxobox something sober with that color plain? … Because something does not have life that is “on the life”? … then it can here have a visual improvement and dynamic in taxobox… and… improving what there is it can be taxobox but beautiful of all wikis! :) OK? …. what seems to them? You hope that you like,… will like…

Faelomx 09:59, 16 November 2006 (UTC) - [talk me]

• This is probably best discussed on the talk page of the template you wish to improve. Also, if you want, you can add color definitions to your personal style sheet, and the template will appear colorful to you. (Radiant) 11:49, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I wiki in spanish do not understand that webpages has evolved and that they have remained in the past with respect to the style, english-wiki, is much colorful and much style, it is for that reason that my style in spanish-wiki seems that they do not like… that it suffers! :)
Faelomx 13:06, 16 November 2006 (UTC) - [talk me]

There has been some discussion of redesigning taxoboxes on Template talk:Taxobox recently; not as radical as this proposal, though. I'll copy this discussion there, and will comment there as well. -- Eugène van der Pijll 17:15, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

"Search" Button on the left-hand side of the page

We have two buttons (Go and Search) on the left hand side of the page. This "Search" button can be removed, because, if you have the exact page you are going to show the page otherwise, you can show the available search results.

I am not sure with this. "Disambiguation" button can be more useful (?!) and it can be considered here. When one knows there can be more than one document for sure, then he may want to the disambiguation page directly. V4vijayakumar 16:08, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. The Search button can be the only way to find pages referring to a phrase that haven't linked to it. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 16:38, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

If you want to find all articles that contain a given word or words then the distinction is important. For example, if you type Quasimodo and click "Go" (or hit Enter) then you get taken to the article of that name. If you type Quasimodo and click "Search" then you get a list of all articles that contain the word, which may sometimes be useful. (Of course, you could just use Google's site-specific search facility...) Matt 20:52, 16 November 2006 (UTC).

New Wiki Project for Data or Results?

I think I have read here a policy that Wikipedia should not be the archive or database. However, quite a lot of articles here - like sports or elections - now become used more often for full lists of results (I did it sometimes, too, as it looks like the usage now). Would anyone be interested in idea of starting some new WikiResults or WikiData project, which could include sport results, elections results, artistic awards nominees and winners, demographic statistics etc., which could change Wikipedia itself really into an encyclopedia, that would concentrate on writing well-balanced articles instead of cumulating of data? Okino 20:57, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

It's being worked on, see m:Wikidata. --Quiddity 21:29, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, as I read the linked page m:Wikidataand its Talk page, I found it really useful, but different to what I was talking before. Maybe the name of the project was the thing that made the confusion. Wikidata look like an engine-project used under the surface of current or other Wiki-projects. My proposal is for project made on the current (or any more modern) basis of Wiki-projects, but with different (or better more specialized) content - like Wikitravel is for travelling information and Wikispecies is for biological species, this one could be for statistics (so maybe some WikiStats is another possible name besides WikiResults?). Anyone interested? Okino 23:57, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Curious about date links

Can anyone explain why so many people feel it's worthwhile to link from dates? One of trillions of examples: "On 1 January 2006 at 10:00 Gazprom ended the delivery of gas for the Ukrainian market..." Clicking on 1 January takes you to a disparate list of hundreds of events that happened on January 1 in all different years, and clicking on 2006 takes you to an equally disparate list of hundreds of events in 2006. What possible relevance does this have to the Gazprom article? This is not something that bothers me one way or another, you understand ... I just don't get why anyone bothers to create the links. Am I missing something? Matt 02:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC).

• Please see WP:MOSDATE (manual of style). This is a perennial issue, some people feel that all dates must always be linked, others feel this is irrelevant. (Radiant) 11:57, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe that the disagreement is over related, but slightly different, matters. The Manual of Style states that only relevant or notable dates should be linked, & that multiple links to the same article are usually unnecessary and should be avoided. What the words "relevant" & "notable" mean in this instance, & if there are instances where multiple links are justified -- these are perennial issues, & I don't know if a consensus will ever be reached about them. -- llywrch 22:01, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• Probably what you're missing is that dates are linked for the dual purpose of wikilinking, but it also allows the software to format dates according to your user preferences. There's been discussion in the past of making the UP section work differently, but it's never gotten anywhere. -- nae'blis 15:36, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
• See (old) Wikipedia:Date debate, (more recent) WP:MOSDATE archives 42-46, and many many shorter threads both before and after, and the technical end at Mediawiki Bug #4582. -Quiddity 01:06, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Edit summaries when not logged in

If I'm wrong here, please correct me. When I'm not logged in, I cannot use an edit summary when I make a change to a page. Shouldn't users who are not logged in be able to use edit summaries, as when surveying recent edits on WP:RCP, it would be much easier to filter out good faith edits if they had summaries with them? Thanks, 0L1 Talk Contribs 12:04 17/11/2006 (UTC)

You cannot mark them as minor, but on Wikipedia at least, anon editors can (and should) make edit summaries. Other MediaWiki sites may disable this, I'm not sure. -- nae'blis 15:39, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Correct. If other sites have crippled summaries for anonymous editors, then they've applied some hack in order to do that, since MediaWiki contains no such option out of the box. 164.11.204.56 20:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Overhaul of Userpages, userboxes and user signatures

In response to a number of landmark deletions, I think there needs to be a review of how userpages, userboxes and signatures are used in Wikipedia.

Userpages

The majority of pages I am seeing now are becoming nothing more than social networking pages (which violates WP:NOT), which make no relevance for inclusion into helping Wikipedia. By this I mean pages full of photographs, use of code designed for other pages (ie. picture of the day or the featured article of the day) which bear no relevance for that user or helps that user to contribute, vandalism boxes which encourage vandals to vandalise, lists of personal information and pranks on user pages.

Also included in this proposed overhaul is the use of complex code within userpages, to which I am gulity as charged! A number of comments made to the Esperanza user page award speedy deletion stated that people spending hours designing and redesigning their user pages distracts them from making valuable contributions to the article. At the very least guidance needs to be given regarding the appearance of user pages. Some are turning into mini websites to say the least and less about the main aim of the user pages, which I quote:

“ Your userpage is for anything that is compatible with the Wikipedia project. ”

--tgheretford (talk) 12:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Specific comments

I am inclined to agree with some of the conerns voiced here about uesrpages, especially with respects to categorisation of users. I am not against a little humour going into userpages every now and then - but some of the Wikipedian self-categorisations do seem rather frivolous. I have left details about myself on my userpage which either (a) help to explain my academic credentials (for example, the fact that I teach at a university, have access to a university library and intranet site, have an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. (b) clarify my interests (that I am interested in psychology and belong to the British Psychological Society); (c) give indications of my reasons for interests in particular areas (the fact I am left-handed, suffer from Type One diabetes and have low bone density explains why, for example, I may wish to consult the articles on osteoporosis or hypoglycemia; give indications of my likely bias in editing papers (for example, that I belong to the categories of "Christian Wikipedians" and "Interdenominational Wikipedians" should indicate a fairly liberal Christian perspective which will give Wikipedia readers an indication of my particular bias when editing articles on religion). I thought that categorisation of users was to serve useful functions such as these - all right, I know that on my userpage, one can see I do not smoke and drink tea, but at least the latter would explain my interests in the article on tea. ACEO 20:11, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Social networking is, like it or not, an essential part of community formation, without which we are not a community at all but only a number of individuals who do not work together. I agree that I've seen many user pages that seem nothing but a waste of time but we don't have a minimum ratio of work vs humor edits to which all must conform. If an editor spends essentially all his time in userspace and never does any work, then NOT MySpace/blog comes into play; such editors should be very gently moved in the direction of article editing -- or out. I object to userpages which break my browser; otherwise, I do not endorse the extreme position taken against elaborate userpages.

Userboxes

Specifically the ones in userspace. Although Jimbo Wales on the May 27, 2006 quoted:

“ The middle ground is to let people do as they will in the user space, and merely use reason and argument to teach people over time why one ought not use Wikipedia userpages for political or other campaigns.... while at the same time saying, no, really, the template namespace is not for that, that we do not endorse this behavior. This is the solution that the Germans have put into effect with great results. ”

The number of userboxes that are appearing in userspace which do not help contribute to Wikipedia are now starting to get numerous, and again, I am gulity as charged. For example, having a userbox which says that I have a girlfriend or have a dog or post in a certain forum don't make any contribution to the encyclopedia and in all respect, should be deleted. As I quoted above, userpages should be for anything compatible with Wikipedia, having a userbox that says you have a cat doesn't. Again, a review (but not a mass deletion) into the boxes which have migrated into personal userspace may be required.

--tgheretford (talk) 12:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Specific comments

Sorry to be blunt but where were you during the last year of debate on this subject? Jimbo has been quoted over and over, to indeterminate effect. Almost our entire community has weighed in on the subject of userboxes, sometimes at enormous length. You are not going to settle the issue here by starting all over.

Userbox migration is, for better or worse, in full swing and contents many editors. I've spoken against the idea since we generally agree that userspace enjoys much greater latitude than other namespaces; thus it's more difficult to "review" userspace content. Now that the boxes are there, though, we have to deal with them there. The entire point of the former-German solution was to escape delete-warring over UBX.

Userbox policy has been heavily edited by those on all sides of the issue. It has been taken around and around, run through the wringer, and beaten into a semblance of consensus. I suggest you take your UBX concerns there, preferably by editing that page. John Reid ° 09:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

User signatures

I am coming across more and more fancy signatures across the talk pages of this project. Now, creativity is a good thing, but where does it stop? More and more fancy signatures are coming along, which although are given guidelines at Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages I don't think go far enough. I myself was thinking of a fancy signature myself, but held back a bit thinking that it would be distracting.

What I am noticing a lot of is messages and even a case of someone providing a link to a category for deletion and asking people to delete the category. I don't think this is necessary of helpful to Wikipedia in the slightest and would suggest myself that messages be deleted from signatures altogether. Again, a review and tighter controls need to be implemented to stop the ever growing complexity and messages appearing into signatures.

So, to summarise, what I am asking is a review into the use of non Wikipedia relevant information, code and userboxes userpages and the design of user signatures on talk pages as outlined above. --tgheretford (talk) 12:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Specific comments

This should, of course, be discussed at Wikipedia talk:Sign your posts on talk pages, where similar proposals have come up in the past. Fagstein 06:59, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I added a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Sign your posts on talk pages#Proposal to discourage changing the background color.

This is a perennial issue. I agree with the general position taken; overelaborate sigs are an annoyance and, in some cases, disrupt the editing process. I don't agree that policy needs to change.

I don't know all the editors in our community -- I wish I did but I can't; there are too many and more coming in daily. When someone I don't know makes a comment, it's useful for me to try to understand who he is. That goes past knowing his username; I want to know if he's an adult, a child, an expert, a crank. If he's stated a fact or proposition this is irrelevant but if he's rendering an opinion, it's crucial. To get an accurate "read", I need to check out his userpage, go through his contribs, and see what he's done. A light scan usually isn't enough; most edits are trivial. It may take quite a lot of digging to learn what I want to know: Who are you?

Sigs -- created freely by each editor -- are a wonderful shortcut. I've learned that editors who use bright colors think they're more special than other people; those who use dark colors, especially white or yellow reversed out of a dark background, imagine themselves as subversives. Editors with a number of self-referential links have insecurity issues, especially those with visible text that reads how'm i doin? or equivalent. Those who provide links to their own talk pages are open to discussion; those who omit a link to their own user pages are secretive; those who pipelink their usernames to some obscure alias are deceptive. Cleverly technical sigs are a sign that someone a) is real smart and b) wants me to know it -- not a sign of maturity. Images in sigs always indicate a confrontational person -- oddly enough, not always a partisan of any particular position but simply a trollish type who likes to get in one's face. He who links to pages outside of userspace is telling me what he thinks is so important that everybody needs to know about it -- and I'm happy to know what that is; if I follow the proffered link I'll learn a lot about who he is. Finally, those who use special characters that require me to have another language font installed to read them are people who just don't care about anybody else.

Any editor who has an elaborate sig does me a service by telling me more about himself and by giving me a visual handle by which to recognize him the next time he surfaces. It's probably of secondary interest that most such editors lose much of my respect, having declared themselves unsuitable to participate in mature discussion.

The only addition to SIG I'd endorse would be a specific caution that talk pages are routinely refactored and managed by other editors and that some sigs may interfere with some templates, word processors, and bots. If somebody or something munges your overelaborate sig or simply replaces it with your username, you don't get to complain. This is the standard at AN. John Reid ° 09:48, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

I don't think it's harmful to let people express some personality on their userpages, userboxes or signiture. I'm personally in the belief that as long as the amount of "socializing information" and "for fun boxes" are balanced by decent genuine contributions to wikipedia as an encyclopedia, then it's fine. A gallary of pictures from someone who hardly contributes anything to wikipedia as an encyclopedia is probably a violation of WP:NOT, where as a dozen "favourite pictures" or "pictures i've contributed" on the userpage of someone who's done a lot of work in the image namespace of wikipedia would probably be fine. --`/aksha 12:12, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

About the signature part: If there is a violation of the signature policies, then shouldn't we enable admins to change your signature preferences?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 16:37, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

So what if we have userpages and userboxes that violate some policy? As long as it doesn't get out of hand. That really doesn't matter; what does matter are our contributions. I particularly agree with Yaksha. About the signatures, Ed has a point too. This is getting way to out of hand. Does everyhting that is fun to help Wikipedia grow have to be deleted? It's much too strict. --Kyo cat^(T)•(C) 18:35, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I've just visited Tgheretford's userpage, and it seems to violate the WP:NOT as much as the other's do. Marital status? Favorite music? A picture of yourself? I really don't see why you brought up this proposal when your page is as violating as what you just proposed up there. My apologies if I sound rude, but I just don't get it! Kyo cat^(T)•(C) 19:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Just pointing out that hypocrisy does not in itself invalidate an argument. The speaker shouldn't matter so much as the content of the speech. (See ad hominem) --tjstrf talk 19:06, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

If you believe it violates WP:NOT, please feel free to edit or nominate the pages for Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. One of the beauties of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit, and that includes my userpages. --tgheretford (talk) 20:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

No,no, I won't edit it. I never edit userpages, with fear of being grudged or hated by that user. I'm sorry if I offended you or anyhting. I was just confused. Kyo cat^(T)•(C) 20:44, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion none of these things does significant harm. Fancy userpages may not aid the project directly, but some users enjoy decorating things and it provides them practice with templates and coding if nothing else. Joke userboxes make me ill personally, but I think banning them is unnecessary. As for user signatures, unless you're doing something insane like adding categories(possible [1]), AfD vote canvassing, or adding 12-layer colour gradients I think those should be allowed as well. My own userpage features a brief personal description but everything else is project-related, btw. (1 WikiProject userbox) --tjstrf talk 19:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I would amend that to say "for the most part none of these things does significant harm". The problem I see is that there appears to be an increasing trend towards doing many of the these things, and there are certainly a number of cases where it has crossed "the line". The problem is with trying to define the line too sharply, but I agree that this needs to be reigned in, or at least discouraged. Where I might be a little stronger is with the language regarding signatures. Since these get populated all over the place, an annoying or disruptive signature is much harder to ignore than an gratuitously decorated user page—although I wouldn't complain if those were reigned in somewhat also. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 23:30, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

• "use of code designed for other pages (ie. picture of the day" correct if I'm wrong here but wasn't the POTD template originally created for userpages. The template predates its front page usage when user pages was practically all it was used for  YDAM TALK 20:31, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

"then shouldn't we enable admins to change your signature preferences?" <<no, i think it's way too much room for abuse (or pranks). However, something like allowing admins to just reset someone's signiture (so it turns your signiture into the default one that everyone has before they change their preferences) may not be such a bad idea. But letting admins change other people's preferences is going too far IMO --`/aksha 07:09, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• We have in a few extreme cases blocked a user for having an outrageous signature. There have been occasional calls to the developers to disallow images in signatures, or reduce the maximum length in bytes, which have not so far led to an implementation thereof. (Radiant) 10:53, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The developers are unwilling to use technical enforcement on issues such as this unless it's required. For example, disabling transclusion in signatures was done because users were ignoring the various problems these presented. Images and HTML in signatures don't constitute those sorts of problems, although they can piss people right off. :) There is a statement somewhere to the effect that if users commit egregious abuse of the fact that one can make one's signature look a bit nicer, then such abilities will be revoked. 164.11.204.56 20:57, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Even if the signature setting in the preferences was changed/locked/reset etc, there's nothing to stop a user from just pasting in their (inappropriate) signature manually at the end of each comment. Tra (Talk) 21:09, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• Yes, but that would be WP:POINT. We do not take kindly to gaming the system. (Radiant) 10:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Exporting pages

When clicking on Special pages in the left margin and then selecting Export pages the name of the current or last article is not automatically inserted by default. After manually entering the name of the page to be exported and then clicking on Export, viewing getting the xml listing of the page in text format in the browser window and then clicking on the browser's save command (save in the file menu of Internet Explorer) the default title of the page in the File name box is Export.xml instead of the name of the article. The name of the current or last article should be automatically inserted in the Export page article name box window as well as in the save File name box of the browser as the default name followed by Export.xml such that the name of the article on Nickel metal hydride battery would appear as Nickel metal hydride battery export.xml. Doing this would greatly reduce the possibility of the wrong article being save when a composite of articles must be saved in a limited amount of time. Adaptron 21:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org 164.11.204.56 20:59, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Nowrap for links in navboxes

I would like to propose the usage of white-space: nowrap; on the links in navboxes; as many navboxes use &nbsp; or link-breaks to keep title together. I was thinking of something like (which should work on Firefox, IE5.5+, Opera):

table.toccolours a, .NavContent a {
  white-space: nowrap;
}

-Dispenser 23:56, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Email notification of talk page changes

I think it would be a good idea if we implemented the option of receiving email notifications when you have new messages on your talk page. Users would receive messages quicker and it would help a lot with communication. This is already in place at commons. Does anyone else agree? —Mets501 (talk) 17:11, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• I believe it is disabled for reasons of server load (given that enwiki is WAY bigger than commons); you'd have to ask Brion for details. (Radiant) 10:49, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Ug! Some people get several new messages on their talk page every day. I don't check the e-mail address that's linked to my Wikipedia account every day - I'm lucky to check it once a week. It gets enough spam as it is, it doesn't need more telling me I've got a message that I've probably already read. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 21:39, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Users will only check their talk page when they have time to go on Wikipedia, anyway, so emails seem somewhat redundant, despite the idea being neat. In my opinion, it only makes sense for a few cases, and all of those can be dealt with manually using the Emailuser function if it's really urgent. What I'd suggest: a user template - "Please email me about important issues using the emailuser function." Nihiltres 03:05, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

references text box when creating a new page

Why not create a second text box for references when creating a new page. Like when editing a Non-existant red link page, we can have a second text box below the main one with a title of something like "Enter sources used here". It's not a requirement to fill the box out but atleast the creator will be easily exposed to such an option, good example: new user. All the information entered in this box could automatically be put into a software-pasted "Reference" section. How does that sound? - Tutmosis 18:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• I'm not sure that would actually help; "casual" contributors are likely to ignore it as they do now. The 'edit' screen already shows some warnings about sourcing and not making copyvios, but people still do that anyway. (Radiant) 10:51, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
• As far as I am aware it isn't possible for when one follows dangling hyperlinks, such as the aforemented, but one can set things up so that new articles come pre-supplied with text when one clicks on the "Start the article" link on MediaWiki:Noarticletext. It's the same mechanism that is used at Wikipedia:Articles for creation. I've created Template:Noarticletext preload that pre-supplies a "References" section. It would look, and work, something like this:
  • Start the Project:Sandbox/Village Pump Demo article
• Please discuss at MediaWiki talk:Noarticletext#Preload.Uncle G 17:46, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikilyrics

I thought it'd be sweet to have a lyrics section. I can never find the lyrics to my music, so I could just post it! So everyone will eventually make the biggest lyrics site around.

Try http://www.azlyrics.com. —Mets501 (talk) 19:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikisource does lyrics but many song lyrics are copyrighted, so they cannot be included. Tra (Talk) 20:16, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Why does this keep coming up every week? Durova^Charge! 02:06, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• Another task for WP:PEREN? (Radiant) 10:48, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Creating redirect from RIC codes to company articles

Basically, redirects of the form, e.g. redirecting HSBA.L and 0005.HK to HSBC. Any comments on this -- good idea, bad idea, been discussed before? Thanks. cab 06:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• I don't see the harm, go for it. (Radiant) 10:47, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works)

(reposting because of very little feedback)

I've overhauled Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works) based on a 2nd round of feedback. This guideline is intended to bring a minimal consistency to the basic formatting style of bibliographies, filmographies, and discographies.

Possibly it's complete, and ready for {{style-guideline}} status? Feedback (at it's talkpage) or improvements welcome :) --Quiddity 03:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Closing deletion debates

I'm currently working on a new way to archive deletion review debates, which if it works could eventually replace the archiving system at all XfD's. I'm soliciting feedback, both technical and procedural, on the idea. An example is here; User:Trialsanderrors/DRV, discussion at User talk:Trialsanderrors/DRV. Thanks, trialsanderrors 08:37, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Nice. Very stylish, and it would be a lot easier on your eyes in the list-closed processes. I'm not sure how this would work for AfD and MfD, since they use subpages which don't require list viewing. --tjstrf talk 09:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

They're still transcluded on the daily log, and slogging through the logs to find XfD's to comment on (as I assume most regulars do) can become a bit easier when the closed debates are moved out of the way. One problem I see is that the load time might increase. ~ trialsanderrors 20:24, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Hatnotes inactive? (continued)

Old discussion copied out of archives for further discussion. Carcharoth 13:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Radient placed inactive tags at Wikipedia:Hatnotes, and his comment on my user talk page reveals that he feels the page is an inactive proposal. I disagree (I thought it was an active guideline), but the page hasn't been updated in a while; should this page be rejuvinated and/or perhaps integrated into the MoS? —AySz88\^-^ 15:28, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Note that the page was never marked "guideline". I would have no objection to it becoming part of the MOS, but must point out that the last serious discussion was in July. (Radiant) 15:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

End of copied section.

I think this is more a case of a proposal being written to reflect practice at the time, and to help prevent diverging practices. It seems that either people started following it, or they always did follow it (from what I can tell, the hatnote templates are widely used). I suspect the proposal just never got tidied up and pushed forward to being a guideline or merged into the Manual of Style. The absence of anything on hatnotes in the MoS is rather a glaring omission. I would support this loose end being tidied up and accepted, rather than just tagged "inactive" - which struck me at the time as very strange - people add hatnotes all the time - the practice of using hatnotes is not inactive, which is what some people might have thought when they saw the page tagged as inactive (I realise that Radiant was probably tagging the proposal, not the activity, but not everyone clearly understands this difference). Ditto for the recent tagging of the Wikipedia:Death threats proposal as inactive (by me, not Radiant) - some people might interpret this to mean that they can get away with death threats! I think we need to be careful with these "inactive" tags. Carcharoth 13:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• The obvious solution against death threats would be redirecting it to NPA, which already has a clause on it. I have, of course, no objection to a MOS page about hatnotes, but I have not had sufficient experience with hatnotes to write it myself. Hence, until someone can be found to write it, we don't actually have such a MOS page, and this proposal is presently inactive. (Radiant) 15:19, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Actually, the rewritten tag I had there was my initial attempt to avoid this, but the redirect you did for 'Wikipedia:Death threats' looks good. I've moved the tag to the talk page to prevent people adding discussion to that talk page, but still leaving the talk there for people to read, plus a link directing people to the talk page of WP:NPA. I've also updated the archives box at the top of WT:NPA to link to the talk page when a subpage has been turned into a redirect. Hopefully people following old links to Wikipedia:Death threats will work out what has happened here! As for the hatnotes, I'll wait a bit to see if anyone else wants to volunteer, and then I'll see about setting up something in the MoS. I'll add a note over there. Carcharoth 15:36, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Agree that Hatnotes does summarize current practices and is a useful guideline. older ≠ wiser 16:19, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Helping Wikipedia editors see purpose of Discussion pages

I shall plead guilty, but I have to admit that I have used the Discussion page to discuss a topic, rather than - as Wikipedia discussion pages are meant to be - discussion of the article as it appears in Wikipedia. Would it be an idea to include, heading the occasional article, examples of what would be and what would not be acceptable commentary on the "Discussion" page, so that new Wikipedia editors can learn? ACEO 20:07, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Some of the more well known articles have templates such as {{talkheader}} at the top which give the information you're looking for. This uses a parser function to only tell you not to discuss its subject if it's in Talk: space, as opposed to Wikipedia talk: space etc. Tra (Talk) 22:50, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Pay no attention to any of that. You can discuss anything you like on talk and many editors do. It's good to stay on track and relevant to the matter at hand but the only thing I really care about is that you remain rational, polite, and fairly respectful of your fellow editors' status as human beings. John Reid ° 02:24, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with John. Talkheader and those types should only be introduced when there is a huge problem with that or, like let's say on a Soap Opera, the article is a stub yet there are hundreds of comments on the discussion page talking about "how hot he was" "did you see what she was wearing?" "can you wait till next week?" "can you believe they did that".... In instances like that, it is okay to introduce those templates to get the ball rolling. Cbrown1023 02:27, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Article Improvement Drive 2

We have WP:ACID, which chooses an article to collaborate on once a week. I propose (although it is likely to get rejected, as my proposals always do) that we start a second Drive that, unlike its sister, collaborates on the chosen article until it is featured. --Gray Porpoise 22:33, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I actually like that idea but if you have an "until FA" approach, then focusing on a single article does not appear reasonnable. We all have different areas of expertise and it would make sense to have a project that picks, one article in science, one in history, one on technology and so on and only replaces them when they have reached FA status. One problem with the collaboration of the week is that there are many weeks where I don't feel like I can bring much except picking up typos and adding {{fact}} here and there. Pascal.Tesson 22:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• You may be interested in this: Wikipedia:100,000 feature-quality articles. (Radiant) 11:52, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikicite program - proposed name change

Wikicite is a .NET program that helps people to properly reference their Wikipedia articles. Recently User:CyberAnth attempted to create an article about it, but the article was rapidly deleted. CyberAnth created the article because he felt Wikicite was a valuable tool but it is very difficult to find without an article on Wikipedia that shows up in a search.

One of the issues contributing to the difficulty in searching is that Wikicite is also the name of a template, and a (unrelated) project. Some people have suggested a name change for the Wikicite program to avoid such confusion. But what should the new name be?

As the author of the Wikicite program I will go with a reasonable consensus. So its over to Wikipedians to decide on a new name, or to keep it as Wikicite. To find out more about the Wikicite program, take a look at User:Dmoss/Wikicite. To follow the discussion so far, take a look at User talk:Dmoss/Wikicite. Over to you. What should we call it? --Dave 23:23, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

From your dscription it sounds more like something that should be mentioned in Wikipedia: name space. How about wikiref or wikireference? ~ trialsanderrors 01:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Names mentioned at User_talk:Dmoss/Wikicite include WikeRef, WikiCitator, WikiBiblio, EasyCite, SimpleCite and QuickCite. I favor keeping it as Wiki[Something]--keeping "Wiki" in the name. CyberAnth 07:34, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

If the desire is to keep "Wiki" in the name, I'd go with "WikiRef", "Wikiref", or "wikiref". Reference is synonymous with citation. The citation templates use the <ref> and </ref> codes so there is a parallel there and a memory "hook". "WikiReference" or "Wikireference" are too long, in my opinion. The name also needs to be a generic "umbrella" name; the tool already handles three varieties of citation templates for web, book, and journal, and I believe Dmoss would like to expand its capabilites in the future.

Since the citation templates are in all lower-case ({{cite web}}, {{cite book}}, etc.), perhaps keeping the name in all lower-case as well—"wikiref"—would be appropriate.—Chidom ^talk  12:53, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Change The Deletion Policy

I think we should shange the deltion policy to where if follows all sensiable rules and if it does not hurt anything we should keep it. A article was recently deleted because it did not have importance on the subject, and that was the only reason it ws deleted.The topic did have importance to some people-just not the administrator that saw- so there was no reason to delete it. The people of that fourm created it to have a quick helpers guide and overview for members on it. The article helped some and hurt nobody so there was no real reason to delete it, and this is why i think we should change the deletion policy to where as long the article follows all other rules than the importance rule and it is not spam it should stay. Spartan 7 04:33, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Even though anyone is free to edit wikipedia, the project is about building an encyclopedia. In the course of this, we've had to develop certain standards and policies. An important one helps us define not what WP is, but what wikipedia is not. Among other things, it is not a how-to guide. Please don't be discouraged by a bad experience, there are many ways you could help contribute to wikipedia; writing a whole article from the ground up is a tough one; maybe it would be better to start small and work a little bit on other articles while you get to know the ropes. --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 09:18, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Why does the forum need to use Wikipedia space for their forum-specific information? Why can't it be stored on the forum's webpage? User:Zoe|(talk) 22:52, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I think some people are wa-a-a-a-a-y too overzealous to delete, and adhere to all sorts of letters of policies that get in the way of building a unique and reliable encyclopedia. I am completely in favor of revisiting the subject on many fronts. CyberAnth 22:58, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Policy: Television

I propose we get a policy going on television personalities, because WP:BIO isn't really enough and there is a bit of controvery in some AfD debates. Atlantis Hawk 07:47, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

• What, specifically, do you suggest? Are we too quick to delete TV personalities? Or too quick to keep them? It might help if you link to some of the relevant AFD debates. (Radiant) 11:50, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
• I agree with Radiant, how specifically would it be differerent than WP:BIO? BIO criteria seems quite approriate and relevant for TV personalities to me... - Tutmosis 17:12, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  • WP:BIO currently isn't being applied properly to reality contestants. There is a decided lack of discussion regarding it at WP:BIO, to boot. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:17, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Can you give an example of that? The primary notability criterion would seem to be pretty simple to apply to !reality show contestants; the major problem people have in applying it is confusion over the difference between the topic of the article being the subject of the source or merely mentioned there. JChap2007 18:24, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Badlydrawnjeff said the magic word himself: contestants. A contestant is just that. That the contest was televised makes no difference unless we want to hand out articles to everyone who was ever a contestant on Match Game and Wheel of Fortune. Contestants, be they on game shows or reality shows, are not actors and actresses. They are not emcees, hosts or personalities. They are simply... contestants. And that doesn't automatically imbue notability. wikipediatrix 18:43, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
      • I agree...articles for every contestant from every game show is by no means neccesary, but some (Michael Larson, Ken Jennings) are probably exceptions. But then that brings up the question of where to draw the line. Paragon12321 00:33, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
        • It seems that particular line would be if the contestant is ever mentioned (in reliable sources) in a different context than the show itself. If not, all sources are really talking about the show as a whole, and the contestant should redirect there. (Radiant) 09:38, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

"For other uses" of what?

We have this template {{otheruses}}. It's very convenient for linking to a disambiguation page, printing out:

For other uses, see Pagename (disambiguation).

But imagine yourself as a first-time visitor, new user, or someone whose first language is not English. In many contexts, it reads as if it's saying "For other uses of this article's subject", instead of "For articles on different subjects that have the same name as this one".

When someone sees "For other uses, see Woman (disambiguation).", do they think "For other uses of women", or do they think "For other uses of the term 'woman'"? It doesn't even make sense in certain contexts, like "For other uses, see William Herschel (disambiguation)."

I and several other people think it needs to be worded better. There have been several suggestions, but none have stuck. Either they aren't "inaccurate" to the purpose of disambiguation pages ("not all the articles on a disambig have 'similar names'!") or people just want things to be done the way they always have been. But I bet someone can come up with a clear, concise, accurate phrase. Some of the ideas so far:

• For other meanings, see...
• For other senses, see...
• For other articles with similar names, see...
• Not what you were looking for? Try...
• There are other articles with similar names. See PageName (disambiguation) if this isn't what you were looking for.
• Disambiguation: for other uses, see...
• For other uses of this term, see...

Please suggest alternatives. See Template talk:otheruses and Talk:Disambiguation. — Omegatron 04:44, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Haven't been to those talk pages yet, but a quick fix might be a new otheruses template:

For {{{1|other uses}}}, see [[{{PAGENAME}} (disambiguation)]]

or

For {{{1|other uses}}}, see [[{{{2}}}|{{{3}}}]]

Individualizing the treatment of articles with regard to the wording of the template might help resolve the ambiguity inherent in the template and its wide use. Nihiltres 05:00, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think making the template more complicated helps anything. Why must it be a variation on "For other x"? — Omegatron 08:29, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

AFAIC, {{Otheruses}} is just fine most of the time. Where some variation is appropriate, just use {{dablink}}. I don't see much point to constructed an elaborate array of templates -- but then there are a lot of things on WP that I don't really see the point of (like stub-sorting, or overly specific categorization). older ≠ wiser 14:11, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

No offense but anyone who reads "for other uses, see Woman (disambiguation)" and thinks "other uses of women" needs to get their head examined. I personally think that on the long run, uniformity in the presentation is more important than avoiding problems with the occasional idiot. That being said, I don't mind tweaking the wording of the template but I'd rather have a single template that we use in all situations, for the sake of uniformity of presentation. Pascal.Tesson 01:05, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Haven't been to those talk pages yet, but... That is where you should take up this discussion. That's where all the previous discussion is stored and that's where all the dab experts hang out. Read first, read deep, then comment. Thank you. John Reid ° 09:54, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (comedy)

Could some editors take a look at Wikipedia:Notability (comedy)? It has already been used six times in AfD discussions:

1. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/All Sorts of Trouble for the Boy in the Bubble Sketch Comedy
2. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Swami X
3. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Foe Pa
4. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Women Fully Clothed
5. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Memphis Improvisational Theatre
6. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Wiseguys: Comedy You Can't Refuse

The most recent discussions, for the Wiseguys, highlighted some area of the guideline that possibly might be improved/clarified, so I will take a look at doing that. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 07:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Flagging blocked users

At the moment there is a mechanism that allows a user or an IP to see when they have new messages; this box appears at the top of every page until the message is read. I propose that we have something similar for blocked users: to have a message, at the top of each and every page they look at, reminding them they have been blocked for bad behaviour - including the blocking time, date and reason.

• Most useful in schools - if someone is blocked, it is immediately obvious to teachers in which class a block was raised, and that can possibly be pinned straight onto a person. Accountability increases, and hopefully reduces the rate of vandalism. More visible to a non-WPer than finding the talk page and then searching down it to find the reason.
• Marginally useful for dynamic IPs - same reason of visibility, though this time to innocent parties who arrive on the back end of someone else's ban.
• Deterrent - being blocked from WP does not affect the ability of the user to research content; I don't believe that ability should be restricted, but it at least makes printing the page more difficult without flagging the vandal student.
• Deterrent - for those who never found the talk page, and the warnings on it. I thought the talk page was obvious, until I saw someone blithely researching pages with a new-messages box at the top of his screen, who simply determinedly checked his email more often.
• May be clearer to innocents who want to edit a page? If the message begins "This (IP, machine, computer?) was blocked from editing Wikipedia on..." it may be more informative than the current message recieved when a blocked user hits edit - not sure how true this is, haven't been banned!

Negatives:

• May aggravate the problem of people going round on multiple machines and getting banned in as many places as possible?

It should hopefully be simple to implement since the mechanism is already present from the new-message dialog. I want to propose the inclusion of latest-warning at the top of the page instead, but I think that's probably too complicated for now and would really be a second version of this proposal. Please add +ve/-ve to the list above if you think of any! --Firien § 10:35, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Overcategorization

This is a list of kinds of inappropriate categorization, as extracted from existing policy/guideline as well as CFD precedent. Comments wanted. (Radiant) 14:49, 23 November 2006 (UTC)