Jump to content

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by StopCallingMeSurely (talk | contribs) at 00:47, 25 January 2007 (IF THE US GOVERNMENT CAN HIRE AN ARMY TO EDIT WIKIPEDIA, WHY CAN'T MICROSOFT HIRE ONE PERSON? Are you against private enterprise?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 
Shortcut
The proposals section of the village pump is used to discuss new ideas and proposals that are not policy related (see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) for that).

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

Before posting your proposal:

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


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.

Suggestion

Suggesting the change of the first entry to:

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

Reduce the size limit for sigs?

I keep running into huge sigs that take up four lines in the edit box and drown out the user's actual comment in a mess of formatting. Would it be reasonable to cut the size limit for sigs in half? Unless someone has a (blockably) huge username, that should still be enough for a userpage link, a talk page link, contribs, and a reasonable amount of formatting. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd love to see that. I agree with you that sometimes you can't read the other person's comments in the edit box because of the markup from their sig. User:Zoe|(talk) 21:30, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to get rid of custom user names entirely. They aren't necessary and just waste space. --Tango 21:38, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would only go for that if the current sig replacement technology allowed to a link to the User's Talk page as well as their User page. User:Zoe|(talk) 21:39, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, yes and yes, to all above. Reduce and restrict, for clarity and simplicity in talkpages and talkpage wikicode. Please! —Quiddity 21:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I support the prohibition of signature elements that serve purely decorative purposes. Extra links (talk page, contribution history, et cetera) are fine, but it is annoying to deal with several lines of HTML that merely add fancy colors and fonts. —David Levy 21:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I remember finding someone with a 1k (yes, I don't lie) signature. He used to transclude it, so you would not notice how long it was. Or force users to write at least 2x the amount of characters in their signature everytime they write in a talk page. That would make some people realize how awful a long signature is for us "common" people ;-) -- ReyBrujo 04:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is getting perilously close to a perennial proposal: See Wikipedia_talk:Sign_your_posts_on_talk_pages#Propose_banning_non-standard_.2F_raw_signatures. from just a couple of weeks ago. -- nae'blis 05:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not asking for a total ban, just a cap on the length, like two lines in an edit box long. This will cut down on overformatting simply by not allowing space for it, and cut down on the mess they make in edit view. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 07:19, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'll support anything that cuts down on the bloat. I recently had to struggle to find the actual post of someone with nine lines of sig markup. Fortunately he had included edit comment text to mark out its beginning and end... - BanyanTree 20:21, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(Is my sig okay? --> Yuser31415 04:40, 31 December 2006 (UTC) <-- :)) Anyway, I believe per WP:SIG there is a limit on 200 characters in a signature, and, since the edit box is by default 80 characters wide, I make that 2.5 lines allowed in a sig. Is that what you would like? (If not, stating the specific number of characters you would like to be the maximum for a sig could help.) Cheers! Yuser31415 04:40, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely fine! Optimal even. Short and useful.
It's 16 line long monstrosities like this fellow's sig that are the worst offenders; anything more than 2 lines of raw text (which is 200 characters at my resolution/settings) is probably unnecessary, and more than 3 lines begins to get annoying fast. I don't know if there is a hard limit, but I'd like to see a 200 character limit implemented, or even less (150? 100?), or the suggestion from Zoe above. —Quiddity 02:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Giving leeway to userspace type things like sigs is a good idea, but if it gets to the point that it inconveniences other editors, we have a problem. Suggest that it should be under two lines. —Dgiest c 05:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I second the two line limit. Sounds like a good compromise, leaving enough personal freedom while keeping annoyance to a bearable level. This is not MySpace after all, and the hugest sigs tend to be just font/color HTML anyways. --Dschwen 08:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How about making the sig a template in userspace? Then we could just put our sig in preference, and ~~~~ would translate to {{User:Username}} where our sig will be. It would cut the clutter down as we won't see them when editing anymore and we can update all instances of our sig just by changing the template. --antilived T | C | G 09:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
See #Transclusion of templates for why we can't. —Quiddity 09:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I've seen it but I don't think it's entirely valid. How many times are you going to change your sig in a year? IMHO not many people will chnage their sig very often and thus they shouldn't consume too much resource to re-cache. And simply protect the sig so only the user him/herself and maybe admin/sysops can edit should clear the vandalism problem is well. --antilived T | C | G 09:52, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
{{User:Username}} would transclude the userpage, and like that there would be no way to permanently store the date, which is an important part of the sig. Also having a template defies the purpose of a sig as a permanent unchangable mark. Right now any sig manipulation shows up on the history page, with a template much more sneaky things could go on.--Dschwen 13:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Don't forget the 5 tildes that produce the timestamp only. It could be {{User:Username}}~~~~~. NikoSilver 12:03, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's just some random user space link I used to illustrate the point, not that I intend to embed the whole user page onto talk pages.:) And also I meant 3 tildes not four so the date would still be in the page itself, only the sig is changeable. --antilivedT | C | G 20:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Lol, I guess I'll be the first here with a "long" signature.... you should get Why1991 to defend himself here. I really don't feel strongly either way, but I do understand that going though lines of code due to a long signature is pretty annoying. I propose a 5 line (in the edit window) cap for signatures.S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 20:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since most of my opinion has already been said, I'll just say that I agree with the above statements. I like Yuser31415's idea of 200 characters. I don't like the idea of userspace transclusions. I don't think there should be a total removal of custom signatures, as they are one of the few ways to make yourself unique. And now I sign. --Tewy 23:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just a thought, but what about implementing this in steps (500 character limit, 300, 250, etc.). I'm just not sure how else the users with long signatures would be warned (is there a bot that could locate them all?) I'm a little worried that there will be this angry mass of users who all just found out their signatures no longer work. With a gradual system, it wouldn't affect all of them at once. --Tewy 23:37, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's now a bug for this; go vote your support. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:10, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nice signature. -- ReyBrujo 01:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Good grief. That's to the point where I'd edit his sig down myself if he posted it on my page. --tjstrf talk 12:16, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Lucky for you then I've changed my signature now so its far shorter :) RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 12:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think a 250 chars limit would filter out most monstrosities, leaving the 'grey' area sigs for case-by-case evaluation. I also liked proposal above for transcluded userspace sigs that can be edited by the user themselves and admins only. NikoSilver 12:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd prefer just name and talk link per Zoe. A max one line sig would be good, but no more than two. Tyrenius 16:03, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My sig's about 180 characters in the preference box (update: I actually counted, it's 193), but shorter on the edit screen (because I type {{subst:CURRENTMINUTE}}, etc, to mess around with the date/time string). Mine's pretty short, and so I'd support the limit being something like 250 characters (or possibly 200, but I prefer 250 (three lines)). --ais523 16:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Your sig is the most perceptive sig I've ever seen, which is one more reason why our brain activity should not be limited by irrational WP:CREEP-like authoritative extreme measures. I stand by my 250 chars proposal, as the optimum solution that filters out most monstrosities, while it allows people to not feel like members of the Outer Party (and therefore inspires them to produce more)! NikoSilver 23:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Exact same discussion being held at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Signature length.

I proposed that templated sigs at {{User:Username/sig}} be allowed, but treated specially to avoid the server load problems, but at least one developer doesn't like this idea. — Omegatron 15:21, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. But to get to an agreement we need to decide what will be used as criteria for the limit. Here are some diferent options:

  1. bytes (ex: the limit would be xx bytes)
  2. lines taken up in a screen of a chosen size (ex: x lines in a screen of xx by xx pixels)
  3. content (ex: maximum x links and x different colours)
  4. a combo of 2 or 3 of these options

Once we have chosen one (two, or three) criteria, we will be able to choose the actual limits. Chris5897 (T@£k) 13:57, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See a Gallery of the most extreme signatures. Feels like WP:BEANS to me. --Quiddity 21:00, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Email notification of new messages

Following from my posting a few months ago about this subject on the perennial proposals board, As it seems there have been no replies I've come to the conclusion that it may not have been quite as perennial as I had thought. The few responses it's received on the other board have been very positive, and it's apparently already available on Wikipedia Commons. I've posted it here and now to see if it might get a wider response...

...I've been wondering about this for a while now - when a user recieves a new message on his/her talk page, they get that lovely and prominent "you have new messages" banner at the top of each page. Sometimes though, users want some down time away from wikipedia - to be honest I'd be suprised if that statement didn't account for the majority of users.

Given the purpose of talk pages (ie, for the community to get in touch with a user), would it not be to the benefit of both the community and the user if (just like almost every forum out there on the web), each registered user had an option in their preferences to recieve a simple email notification of a new message. Just like every forum out there of course, it would only send a notification for the first message, and not send one again until the user has visited the talk page.

Alternatively, A weekly email could be sent out with a summary of new talk page sections from over the last week, which would be perhaps useful in cases where a user is on an extended leave from wiki. I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, but I haven't seen anything about it. Any thoughts?

{{VPP-bug}}: Please see the notice at the top of the page - when a proposal involves a change to the software, go to the bug tracker (which also does feature requests) and file a new bug there. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I missed that (twice it seems!). One of the reasons I posted about it here though, is that I also wanted to know what the community in general thought about it. Is this OK, or should this be removed? Crimsone 21:23, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect there are a lot of intermittent editors who'd appreciate this feature (though one could question how many of them would actually learn of it). And I suppose that if it were implemented, there might be more demand for other push-type e-mails, such as notification of AfDs of articles where one had recently contributed. So, in general, I (for one) think it's a good idea, and if it didn't take a lot of programming effort, why not? John Broughton | Talk 03:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Spam gateway! Spam gateway! Spam gateway! Anon and newly-registered users can post to User_talk: pages. What mechanism will be put in place to prevent spammers from abusing this as a spam relay? Even if this is solely an "opt-in" feature, couldn't this also get legit Wikipedia emails flagged as collateral damage spam? —Dgiest c 05:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If all it does is say "You got a message, come check it" then you're only going to get one email regardless of how much spam you get, and won't do the spammer any good vs. spamming talk pages now. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 05:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It would be trivial for a developer to enable this, but it would probably place far too much load on the servers (if this is popular, the number of emails sent might be pretty large); the number of emails being sent from Wikipedia might also lead to it being (incorrectly) detected as a spammer and blocked by email services. --ais523 15:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Both Commons and Meta have these notifications
   Dear ReyBrujo,
   
   the Wikimedia Commons page User talk:ReyBrujo has been changed on
   21:47, 14 November 2006 by JeremyA, see
   http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:ReyBrujo for the current
   version.
   
   See
   http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:ReyBrujo&diff=0&oldid=2978670
   for all changes since your last visit.
   
   Editor's summary: Re: Album Covers
   
   Contact the editor:
   mail: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Emailuser/JeremyA
   wiki: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:JeremyA
   
   There will be no other notifications in case of further changes unless
   you visit this page. You could also reset the notification flags for
   all your watched pages on your watchlist.
   
           Your friendly Wikimedia Commons notification system
Personally, I don't like it. -- ReyBrujo 15:40, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I personally can't confirm the calculations, as I don't know the number of changes per day first hand, but in one of the number of bug reports on the issue, a couple of users are saying that the server load is actually far lower than would be at first thought. (here) Crimsone 23:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Being notified of changes to articles on your watchlist and changes to your talk page are two different things. The server load would be much smaller if it only notified you of changes to your talk page. I would really like to see this enabled for talk pages only. — Omegatron 15:08, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely. This is what I'm suggesting (and can be easily done). Enabling it for the watchlist would indeed be a silly proposal if only for the rediculous load on the server - for user talk pages it's (apparently) a different story though. I filed a bug report for this precisely (rather than the bug report I posted above which is slightly different, though it was apparently a duplicate) - here Crimsone 15:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a newbie and can't find a simple footnote button or any kind of instructions on how to create a footnoted link to a web article in plain English for the technically-challenged. Can you post some simple (as in gratingly simple for the utterly stupid) instructions for how to create citation links? Since I can't figure out how to do it, I've been putting the references in the summary of edit line for whoever would like to incorporate the info. But just can't do it myself. The instructions are all Greek to me. Help? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by FirthFan1 (talk • contribs) 18:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC). FirthFan1, 18:40, 12 January 2007[reply]

Here's a real quick example, hope it helps. —Dgiest c 18:46, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

 ==Some paragraph==
 Contrary to popular belief, the sky is not blue.<ref>{{cite web|title=Crackpot Journal|url=http://your.url.com/}}</ref>

 ==References==
 <references/>
Did you discover WP:FOOT? (SEWilco 19:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC))[reply]
Formatting references isn't that difficult. Just enclose the reference's URL in <ref>...</ref> tags. For example, if your reference is http://google.com, you would format the reference like this: <ref>http://google.com</ref>.
Above the "External links" section (if the article has one), add a "References" section consisting solely of the following tag: <references/>
I don't know how to format references that aren't URLs, though. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 09:13, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WP:CITET offers links to several templates that can be used to cite references either inline or in a section at the end. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 09:43, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a few more places to look: Wikipedia:Citations quick reference, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links), and WP:CITE. I'm not sure how "plain English" they are, however. John Broughton | Talk 15:52, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Glad someone else is having trouble with "references" or "footnotes" - whatever. I have discovered:- [1] This should give a small superscript "[1"] which can refer to the list of refs listed near the end. BUT what do I do if the same ref is referred to more than once and therefore given more than one reference number? (Hope I can find this page again to read the answer to this question!!)Osborne 11:24, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you need to cite the same reference twice, use <ref name="...">...</ref> and when you need to refer to it again, use <ref name="..." /> where the name is the same. invincible 15:04, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Holding deletion discussion (of articles) in WikiProject space

See Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Proposal for de-centralization of debates for more detailed arguments. Basically, the idea is creation of a process which puts the encyclopedia before deletion and is improve first and delete only if necessary. Additionally, discussions should be informed by the informed. --Keitei (talk) 01:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh, no. Let's not make it harder to find discussions than it already is. --tjstrf talk 06:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have to concur with tjstrf, this is a bad idea for several reasons:

1.' It's important to have one centralized location for AfD discussions. An article should only get deleted if the topic itself is unverifiable or non-notable so those articles that simply need improvement don't, or at least shouldn't, get deleted anyways.
2. Wikiprojects are going to tend to cling to articles falling within their scope and are less likely to push for deletion of something even if that something should, in fact, be deleted.
3. What about articles that don't fall within the scope of a single Wikiproject? They would get less protection than articles falling within a project if this were implemented.
4. Even worse than articles falling under no Wikiproject are those falling under a number of projects. For example, renewable energy fits within the Wikiproject on energy, the Wikiproject on the Environment and the Wikiproject on International Development. A process like the one above could easily result in problems arising between projects.
5. The notion that this allows the "discussions to be informed by the informed" is not a valid one. Currently, when an article goes up for AfD a notice is placed on the page in question and anyone who normally edits that article and similar articles is likely to see it and get involved anyway; as a regular contributor to AfD discussions I'll say that those rare few AfD's that may actually require some specialized knowledge of the topic do, in fact, draw those individuals into them. And besides, AfD's are procedural and don't actually require this knowledge; the central question in and AfD discussion is whether the article in question meets the Wikipedia's guidelines/policies. It doesn't take an expert to decide whether or not something is notable or has sources. --The Way 04:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Re: " An article should only get deleted if the topic itself is unverifiable or non-notable so those articles that simply need improvement don't, or at least shouldn't, get deleted anyways." --
if only that was the case. Quite a few users (including admins) believe that articles are deleted when they could have just been improved. In most cases an admin will find 2 faults in an article -- like finding a paragraph that reads like a how-to guide and bad referencing -- and instead of putting up a template or two, will put the entire article up for Deletion Review. Then after a week, if it's an infrequently visited article, the problems still exist (because no template was put up) and the article is deleted. That's exactly what happened on the article for Anal Stretching -- an article that should exist but no admins bothered to put up templates.
The deletion of articles instead of amendment of articles seems to be a major issue, and any suggestions to fix such would be welcomed :) Rfwoolf 13:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not convinced that this is a widespread problem. I regularly participate in AfD discussions and very rarely does it appear that an article gets deleted when it shouldn't be, in fact the opposite seems to be the case; more articles are kept than should be. Articles are almost always deleted due to a lack of sources that serve to verify and establish notability. Indeed, I think that allowing Wikiprojects to determine what stays and what gets deleted will result in many articles being kept despite being against policy; Wikiprojects are going to naturally want to keep anything falling within their jurisdiction no matter how trivial. Furthermore, implementing something of this nature would make issues of 'jurisdiction' a major problem, as I've already mentioned. A decentralized AfD and XfD process will make sure that the official policies/guidelines are not evenly applied; some Wikiprojects will be quicker to delete than others. Many Wikiprojects aren't very big and implementing this proposal would give small groups of editors with an 'agenda' more power than they should have. Keeping AfD's and XfD's separate maintains a level of objectivity and the AfD and XfD discussions are currently fully transparent and open to everyone. Decentralizing them would make them less transparent. --The Way 06:58, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Automatic signing

I am new to Wikipedia. One of the first things I noticed was that signatures were not automatically appended to talk pages. I knew nothing about "signing", and assumed my name would be inserted after a paragraph I wrote in a 'talk' page. I later noticed that a bot made some funny signature for me, exclaiming something to the effect of "Danger Will Robinson! Danger! Xerxesnine did not give a signature! Abort, abort! Does not compute!"

This is so completely ridiculous, I can hardly believe the practice of manual signing has gone on this long, even though it's just a few tildes. In the computer world, the term "signature" by definition means something which is automatically appended by software, so it's an abuse of the term. But this is beside the point, because there's just no justification for requiring users to do ANYTHING when software can easily do it for them.

Please don't respond with, "Oh, it's just a few tildes." Arbitrary and useless hoop-jumping is always a bad thing. These things add up. Old-timers get accustomed to such irrationality, but newcomers like me see the silliness for what it is.

The signing instructions above says it all --- obviously, such "instructions" should be entered into the software where they will be executed reliably, rather then attempting to upload them into the brains of users. --Xerxesnine 14:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The bot's text is ok IMO, but feel free to add a proposal.
As for automatic, there are many cases where the signature must be omitted (e.g. in WP:RfA summaries), or preceded (e.g. when placing a quote from a source), or altered (e.g. when only sig, [~~~] or only date [~~~~~] is required), or duplicated (e.g. when intermingling 2-3 responses in different parts with one edit) and the software would not know how to make a distinction. Please try to get used to it. Here goes: NikoSilver 14:39, 15 January 2007 (UTC) :-)[reply]
But the first-pass answer is obvious: automatically append a signature when there is a new unambiguous paragraph. I even forgot about my sig just now, and only noticed it during the preview. Xerxesnine 15:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As for the issue of having the wiki software do what the bot does - there are only a few (two?) full-time (part-time?) paid programmers, and they have a long list of features and problems to work on. If something can be implemented by a bot (that is, without changing the core wiki software), that's one fewer thing for the programmers to do. And one fewer things for the programmers to maintain. Maybe, eventually, when they run out of other things to do, they can look at the various bots and start replacing them with core code, but I wouldn't (personally) hold my breath while waiting for that to happen. John Broughton | ♫ 14:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I did not mean to imply a distinction or a preference between "bot" and other software. I don't care how automatic signing is implemented. My point was that the current signing bot seems to make a big deal about it (large and distracting comment), rather than quietly performing its duty. Xerxesnine 15:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As Niko Silver said, you don't always want something signed in the same way, or at all. The automatic signing bot has already added my signature to one page completely incorrectly, and I can't see any other automatic system getting it right under every circumstance. Trebor 14:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In the case of an unambiguous new paragraph without a signature, it will always be right. There is already a distinction between pages which require a signature and pages which don't, so it's a red herring to say that you don't always want a signature.Xerxesnine 15:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This would not "always be right." There are plenty of instances in which a new paragraph that shouldn't be signed (such as a summary or an advisory) is added to an ordinary talk page.
Furthermore, the {{unsigned}} message is supposed to draw attention to the fact that the user didn't sign the message, thereby encouraging him/her (and others) to do so in the future. The wording, however, actually is rather mild. There is no shame involved. —David Levy 19:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The current signing bot will already sign all such paragraphs, including the ones you mention that should not be signed, so I don't see the relevance of your point --- except that I should have said "almost always" instead of "always". As for your "furthermore" part, my whole argument is that we should do away with the ridiculous manual signing in the first place. Grabbing attention is exactly what the bot should not do; it is needless noise. Did you read my initial post, above? Xerxesnine 16:45, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
1. Indeed, HagermanBot has the same flaw. Personally, I'd prefer that it be retired. (It causes other problems as well.)
2. "Almost always" remains an overstatement. "Usually" is more accurate.
3. Yes, I read your initial post (which is what I alluded to). You claimed that the message "exclaim[ed] something to the effect of 'Danger Will Robinson! Danger! Xerxesnine did not give a signature! Abort, abort! Does not compute!'", which is a silly exaggeration of mild wording that serves a valid purpose under the current setup (irrespective of whether said setup should be changed). —David Levy 00:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, consider when:

  • The user edited a page which requires a signature.
  • The user made edits which are clear and unambiguous additional sections.
  • The user did not add a signature to one or more of said sections.

When all three conditions hold, a bot should quietly add some standard signature to those sections lacking one.

By "quietly," I mean that the bot's diff comment should be very short and non-attention-grabbing, or better yet that there should be no diff at all (which probably means the code runs in the commit hook rather than a separate bot entity).

What do you think? Xerxesnine 15:57, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I concur about automatic signatures. It would be a nice feature to have the Wiki automatically sign my username whenever it is required. I detest seeing the Bot messages which I just to delete. My recommendation would be for the Bot to put the unsigned message on the talkpage written upon and not put a message on the user's talkpage. Ronbo76 16:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And if it doesn't change, I think it might wait 20 seconds before editing. I realized in one talk I didn't sign, then I returned, and I had an edit conflict with HengermanBot, I think it's called.

—Nethac DIU, would never stop to talk here—
18:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This time I noticed.

Add yourself at User:HagermanBot/OptOut. I like the bot, but I wish it could move new talks to the bottom (new users usually post at the top instead of the bottom). -- ReyBrujo 23:05, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

People whining about Hagermanbot is getting really lame really fast. If you don't like the bot, learn to sign manually. It's that simple. If Hagerman bot didn't exist, then the only thing different is that one of us would have to sign your posts for you using {{unsigned}} if it was causing confusion in a topic. --tjstrf talk 22:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Of course this is simply the authoritarian stance on the status quo. "Love it or leave it." It does not address the underlying problem which I stated in my original post; indeed, I anticipated this argument and explained why it is flawed. Xerxesnine 12:53, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So, because you think there's a problem, anyone who disagrees with you is "authoritarian"? Could it not just be that most of us do not think there's a problem? -- Necrothesp 14:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The response is authoritarian, yes. To say "It is right, deal with it" without even addressing the point is called an authoritarian response. To simply respond with "'Tisn't!" is equally weak. You have to make a rational argument to the point. Xerxesnine 16:22, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Going back to the original comment, Xerxesnine said, "In the computer world, the term "signature" by definition means something which is automatically appended by software,..." and says that the Wiki code ~~~~ signature sistem does not fit that definition. However, I must disagree, because, through not having to type out the entire [[User:Nineteenninetyfour|<font color=green>Ninety</font... thingy, and being able to simply type ~~~~, you have an automatic signing mechanism. Ninetywazup? 00:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You are at liberty to disagree by presenting rational counter-arguments, but you are not at liberty to change definitions and pretend that's a counter-argument. "Automatic" as I have used it clearly means "without user intervention", and this includes typing tildes as is clearly stated in my original post. It also appears as though you missed the clause in my original post which states "But this is beside the point". Xerxesnine 12:53, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This would be a nice feature if it were simple, or even possible, for software to determine when an addition needs to be signed, but I don't know that it is. The rules you propose above would inappropriately place signatures when people add templates, etc. that do not need to be signed. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify even further, software should NEVER require needless work on the user's part, and should minimize manual labor wherever it can. It has been argued that sometimes you don't want a signature. Alright. If 99.9% of the time the user DOES want a signature, and 0.1% the user DOES NOT want a signature, then what should the software do? Clearly, there should be a "no signature" tag (say, "!~") instead of a signature tag (tildes). Furthermore, there can be special exceptions where no signature will be added, for example paragraphs which consist solely of certain templates, thereby pushing manual use of "!~" down to 0.0001%. --Xerxesnine 17:06, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1. Your figures are greatly exaggerated.
2. I wouldn't oppose such a setup, but only as an optional, non-default setting. Otherwise, mass confusion would ensue. —David Levy 00:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
1. The use of obvious hypotheticals ("If 99.9% of the time...") in conjunction with obvious hyperbole ("Danger Will Robinson!") are techniques which are meant to illustrate a point. They serve the same purpose as homework problems involving trains moving at 3/5 the speed of light which are given to first-year students in Special Relativity. A train moving at 3/5 the speed of light? Your figures are greatly exaggerated!
2. Right, of course it wouldn't be appropriate to completely change the behavior of the current signing bot. Users would explicitly opt-in to such behavior. Xerxesnine 15:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As this thread comes to a close, I will just express my general lament that poor user interfaces can persist (here and everywhere) due to users perpetuating them out of habit and/or arbitrary attachment to the status quo. I believe my arguments concerning the four tildes, and the reactions to those arguments here, demonstrate this problem well. Xerxesnine 15:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I do not necessarily agree with Xerxesnine that automatic signatures are a good idea but I certainly agree that no real counter-argument has been presented in this discussion. I do not have the experience of wikipedia to come to an educated conclusion on the signature issue - there may be some good reason for not implementing them automatically that I have not thought of - if so I would like to know what it is because it has not been mentioned here yet. Tripper 17:41, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist enhancement

I wondered if it would be possible to introduce some whizzy tec that'll make it possible to remove pages from the Watchlist from the main "my watchlist" page, rather than the alpha order full list?

I do RC patrol and consequently my Watchlist rapidly fills, making it more difficult to really watch the pages I want to keep an eye on. I'd find it easier to prune the list using the recency element of "my watchlist" than the alpha list.

Opinions welcomed. --Dweller 10:05, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I use the "unwatch" feature of popups to unwatch pages directly from my watchlist by opening "unwatch" in a new tab. If your watchlist is getting too long, you might also consider typing up a list of pages you really want to watch and check changes to them with Special:Recentchangeslinked. Hope that helps, Kusma (討論) 10:09, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that. I finally installed popups as a result of your suggestion (something I've been meaning to do for yonks). It does work, but if I'm curmudgeonly about it, it's still quite clumsy, as for each unwatch click, I get taken to a new page telling me I've removed the page from the watchlist, rather than leaving me able to select a bunch of pages simultaneously. I, erm, didn't understand your other suggestion, but it sounds pretty laborious. --Dweller 10:19, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's why I open the new unwatch pages in background tabs, where they don't annoy me. For the other thing, see User:Kusma/Contributions and Special:Recentchangeslinked/User:Kusma/Contributions for what I mean. Best, Kusma (討論) 11:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist enhancement - "temporary watch" feature?

When warning a vandal, you may wish to temporarily "watch" them for further vandalism. Similarly, after reverting vandalism, you may wish to temporarily "watch" the article for further vandalism. You may also wish to "watch" a request for adminship, or a nomination of an article for deletion (such discussions usually last 7 days). Once it's clear that vandalism has stopped, or the discussion has ended, there's no further need to watch the page, and it simply clutters your watchlist.

How about a "temporary watch" feature, which allows you to watch a page for a specified period of time, after which it is removed from your watchlist? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]


I wondered if it would be possible to introduce some whizzy tec that'll make it possible to remove pages from the Watchlist from the main "my watchlist" page

Yep. The one I am using is here, though Quarl had a better version that used AJAX. See User_talk:Ilmari_Karonen#Unwatch_link and Bugzilla:424.

How about a "temporary watch" feature, which allows you to watch a page for a specified period of time, after which it is removed from your watchlist?

I would love this. In the bug report, someone suggested it a little differently:

Perhaps a user could set a "max number of watched items" parameter in his preferences. If he then adds a new watched item that takes him over his limit, the software would drop the oldest watched item from his list.

— Omegatron 14:50, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You would have to be notified about which link was dropped, and there must be some way of sorting by date and not only alphabetical, otherwise you may lose watch links you don't want to. It would be much better if you could "categorize" your watch items in different categories. -- ReyBrujo 12:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikilyrics

I think there should be a site created for the sue of submiting lyrics for songs! This woule be a great addition to the Wikipedia creators!

The vast majority of lyrics are copyrighted so the site would either have almost no content or get shut down. A lot of lyrics sites are being shut down or at least being ordered to remove a lot of their lyrics as it is. Koweja 20:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Despite that, there are still some in existence. Trebor 20:47, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There are plenty of sites host copyrighted videos still in existence, but that doesn't mean Youtube should allow people to upload protected works. Koweja 16:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • We also have some on Wikisource. But yes, they tend to be copyvios. The internet is full of copyvios and most of them don't get shut down or anything, but that doesn't mean we should join them; note that we are rather more high-profile than just about anything else on the 'net. >Radiant< 12:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Separate "Fanpedia" for all fancruft

Strangely this is not in the list of perennial proposals, although it seems obvious, and I would guess someone suggested it already. The proposal is to limit articles with many associated specialised articles (of interest to fans only). There would be only one article on The Simpsons, Star Trek, Big Brother (TV series), individual computer games, professional wrestling, and so on. All derived articles, on individual episodes, sequels, characters, tournaments/competitions, scores, league tables, competitors, and so on would be moved to an entirely new project. This is both a policy proposal and a new project proposal, and the policy could only be implemented when such a project starts up.Paul111 12:30, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a problem with it. You don't see it unless you're looking for it. — Omegatron 14:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Various fan wikis exist at Wikia and other Wiki hosting services, for example Wookieepedia. Kusma (討論) 14:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia's not paper; we don't need to remove information because it's only of interest to fans. As an (imperfect) analog, imagine getting rid of General relativity because it's only of interest to scientists. That said, various projects do exist generally for fictional universes, and cover the story in more detail (but tend to include less out-of-universe information). Trebor 15:02, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ever seen Memory Alpha? User:Zoe|(talk) 18:48, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wookieepedia is exactly what I had in mind, but for all fan-interest-only articles. Even if they are not visible without looking for them, they are still a distortion of content. Look at the new page creations, and you will see how many articles fall into this category. The best analogy is with recipes: policy excludes them all, ending all disputes on notability.Paul111 11:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

POV rears its ugly head. You'll be arguing to kingdom come over many of the articles as to whether or not they're fan-related. --Dweller 11:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • I would be all in favor of a guideline asking that when too much unsourced in-universe fancruft, a wikia be created to cope with all the fan protestations during the AFD. Anyone seen the WP:GUNDAM mass deletion dispute recently? It's true we need a solution for these cases.--SidiLemine 13:37, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All articles go to semi-protect mode when WP:WDEFCON reaches two?

I don't know if this is feasible, but it might help editors on Vandal Patrol if all articles could temporarily be automatically semi-protected when the WP:WDEFCON reaches two. It would take an admin to invoke that level. This could help cut down on anonymous IPs attacking articles and enabling the VP to catch with article reversals if need be. Ronbo76 01:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Withdrawn. It looks like WP:SNOW. Ronbo76 05:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, just no. WikiDefcon is an unofficial number set by people who see vandalfighting as a pseudomilitary operation. The last thing we need is giving a person who assumes bad faith and thinks all IPs are vandals the power to block them from editing at will. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:35, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: I'm concerned that this would just give the vandals a target to aim at and thus lead to more vandalism, rather than less. Newyorkbrad 02:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Hey, that would be interesting, like a giant plug of anonymous edits. But that would go against the spirit of Wikipedia. There are enough patrollers and admins around to handle most attacks. -- ReyBrujo 02:42, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) This is possible, but I oppose it definately. It totally takes away the idea of a wiki and is, as Night Gyr said, an unofficial number. It would be totally unfeasible for this to happen whenever we reach "Defcon2". If we somehow reached "Defcon1", a developer would lock the database (something we experienced while I was trying to save the page :)) to try and sort it all out. (as if someone accidentally put something bad in one of the MediaWiki pages, a definite no-no! So, no, I do not agree with it. Cbrown1023 02:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm opposed, not all IPs are bad, it's "unwiki", and there are even some IPs who actually revert vandalism. What is Defcon1 anyway? Willy on Wheels just got a 'cratship and started changing everyone's names to "Username ON WHEELS!!!"? --tjstrf talk 02:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Vandalbot is real and rises up from the deep like r'lyeh from beneath the sea, its tendrils touching thousands of machines across the internet calling them to "SPAM! SPAM! SPAM WIKIPEDIA WITH DISRUPTION!" and lo, the evil washed across the land. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It only feels like that sometimes....... Newyorkbrad 03:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This is preemptive semi-protection, a violation of policy (and for good reasons). Superm401 - Talk 04:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

noinclude pages in the Wikipedia namespace

I have a suggestion: to take all pages in the Wikipedia namespace (policies, essays, guidelines, etc.) and enclose them in the <noinclude> tag. What this will do is prevent transclusion or substitution of pages like WP:MOS, which in nearly no circumstances would require transclusion ({{Wikipedia:Manual of Style}} or substitution ({{subst:Wikipedia:Manual of Style}}) While this need not occur on short essays, or on Wikipedia pages that are meant to behave like templates, it seems good to me, and it will prevent abuse that could cause inconvenience for the page viewer and possibly Wikimedian servers. (Yes, there is WP:PERF for good faith editors, but purposely trying to slow down servers is different.)

Suppose that I write an essay and call it Wikipedia:Drunk driving, and the content is

Don't edit Wikipedia when you're drunk. [...] End of story.

...and suppose that the essay is (somehow) a couple of kilobytes long. There is no reason to transclude or substitute that (just link to it), so make the page content:

<noinclude>Don't edit Wikipedia when you're drunk. [...] End of story.</noinclude>

Or even better,

<noinclude>Don't edit Wikipedia when you're drunk. [...] End of story.</noinclude><includeonly>[[{{subst:NAMESPACE}}:{{subst:PAGENAME}}]]</includeonly>

This seems like a good idea due to recent vandalism to User talk:68.39.174.238, which was met with this course of action, which I suggested to Tuxide on IRC. (The user that did this may need checkuser, but that's my passive opinion.) Doing this for all pages in the Wikipedia namespace (except for, as listed above, pages meant to behave like templates, and maybe short essays) can't hurt; and if it can, please tell me why. Thanks. GracenotesT § 04:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. This could be extended to user pages. Several come to mind. 04:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
P.P.S. Hm, how about User:Tuxide/Sandbox/Do not subst my user talk page? :p 04:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I decided to stuff some WP:BEANS up my nose. check my userpage. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 06:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This won't solve anything. Vandals will just find some way to vandalize wikipedia, including using subst to copy everything over as someone did to my talk page recently. Besides, we don't need to change thousands of pages just because of one instance of vandalism. That would just give the vandal a lot of attention, which we shouldn't be doing. Koweja 13:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The point of this proposal is to counter server/client thrashing (and impersonation in the case of user pages), not necessarily vandalism. This particular user tried to impersonate me by substing my talk page onto his own, and repeatedly added 1.5 megabytes of text to someone else's talk page by transcluding WP:MOS. This resulted in a talk page that took forever to load/generate. Tuxide 22:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
edit: I know there is WP:PERF but the client can also be thrashed as well, as in this case. WP:PERF only addresses possible server concerns and has no regards to the user client. Tuxide 23:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A radical reworking of AfD

A lot of people complain that AfD is in some way "broken". Others disagree but acknowledge serious flaws. One common problem is bad articles on good subjects; people often !vote "keep and clean up", which often results in the article being kept but not cleaned up. So I have an idea:

  • Rename to Articles for discussion (consistent with some other meta discussions)
  • Have three outcomes, not two: keep, expedited cleanup, delete
  • Articles sent to expedited cleanup are tagged as such and dated, and after say 14 days if not cleaned up can be speedily deleted

I believe this will reduce the chances of crap articles on good subjects being deleted by those whose mission is to improve the quality of the encyclopaedia. And crap articles which are not remedied will be deleted, which is also good for the encyclopaedia. Finally, closing admins will have a middle ground between keep and delete in marginal cases, giving those who advocate keep a deadline to remedy the faults identified by others. Guy (Help!) 12:16, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good idea. The German Wikipedia has something like that in de:Wikipedia:Qualitätssicherung (Quality assurance). Articles at AfD can be sent to quality assurance if they are bad (too stubby or poorly written) articles on notable subjects, and will only be deleted after that attempt to improve them has failed. I don't know how well that works, though. Kusma (討論) 14:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea. I've always argued that "keep and rewrite" should be counted as delete !votes on the grounds that if an article needs a major reworking then it is not useful to keep the crap version hanging around anyway. There are FAR too many articles that survive AfD on this basis. Delete without prejudice to recreation should far and away be the most common closure of these AfD's. Sadly they aren't. Your solution offers a good middle ground. Zunaid©® 14:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not bad, but I would shorten the period to 7 days. Users would have 14 in total since the article is sent to AFD until they can be speedy deleted. Note that some AFDs end with "conditional keep", however nobody ever cares about the "conditional" part, since nobody verifies if the condition is fulfilled. -- ReyBrujo 14:59, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A possibly very valuable change, but I have three concerns:
  • I think the present name, albeit not consistent with other XfDs, should be kept. I'm concerned that AfDs could come pouring in from folks saying "well, it's a dicussion, not a delete, so what's the harm of having this article reviewed". AfDs should really be limited (in my opinion) to articles that someone seriously doubts meet WP:V and WP:NOR criteria, and the name does affect how the process is interpreted.
  • Similarly, the instructions need to make perfectly clear that articles that are stubs, need expanding, not major cleanup, etc., are not to be sent to AfD as a way of forcing a quality improvement. Instead, again, only articles with WP:V or WP:NOR qualify for AfDs. (We have way, way, too many stubs to send even a small percentage through AfD.)
  • Third, the most serious concern: How much discretion does this proposal shift to admins? I'd bet that under the three-tiered system, only really bad cruft (almost speedy-delete material) would get a "delete" consensus; after all, why not put anything marginal into the QA (middle) tier and see what happens? What will happen at the end of the 14 days is that an admin will say either "Nope, those references aren't good enough" or "Well, I suppose that's okay", without any further input by anyone. Is that what we want?
So maybe (at the risk of instruction creep), if the decision is "expedited cleanup", then the admin decision at the end of 14 days, if someone disagrees, it goes back to AfD, and this time the expedited cleanup option is not available? John Broughton | ♫♫ 15:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Two Questions... 1) Is WP:NPOV not a criteria for deletion? and 2) You talk about crap articles on good subjects, what about well written articles on crap subjects? 38.112.47.92 16:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Does Coprophilia count? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 16:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'll tell you why this is a problem - the deletion discussions more often than not revolve around the worth of the article as a subject for inclusion. I can see it now: a poorly written article on an important, but little known, historical event gets tagged for "expidited cleanup." Nothing happens because few editors know enough about said event, article gets deleted. Then, major problems and hand-wringing about the resubmission of said article, the quality of the resubmitted article, and on and on and on. Instruction creep is not an issue here, but the amount of changes that will have to be put in place to deal with the fallout are somewhat staggering to me. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
One of my pet peeves at AfD are people who vote for "Keep, but clean up" because they think the article's topic sounds "intresting" or "cool", even when the article may be a mess and they know little or nothing about the subject. I wish there was a way to stop this, but I don't think there is.
That said, I don't have a problem with creating a "Keep, but clean up" decision option. I would, however, put the onus on the editors to enforce this and not the admins. If an article is not cleaned up in a reasonable time, it can always be renominated for a 2nd AfD, and the proposer can point to the previous AfD discussion and comment that no "clean up" was done. The admin who is determining the 2nd AfD will then know that "keep and clean" does not seem to be a realistic option and delete.
I would, however, not support the idea of an "expedited" clean up... it may take more than 14 days for an editor (one who honestly wants to clean the article up) to read up on the subject, research citations, etc. We don't want to undercut an honest good faith effort to clean a poor article up just because an arbitrary deadline has passed.
Finally, the idea of "Delete without prejudice" is the flip side of "Keep, but clean up" - ie, an indication that the topic has potential, but the current article itself is so bad that it needs to be deleted. I would favor adding that to the options as well. Blueboar 18:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Is WP:NPOV not a criteria for deletion? No, it's not - see Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.
BDJ has a point - if there are impassioned defenders of an article, the expedited cleanup basically gives them 14 days to put up or shut up. But for other articles, it's unclear whether there would be a "cleanup corps" that would really work articles to prevent them from being deleted at the end of their 14 days, or if it would be a "someone else will take care of that" sort of falling between the cracks. In some sense, AfD now spurs people to fix articles they think are repairable (I've certainly done that myself a couple of times), because that's the best argument they can make to prevent deletion. John Broughton | ♫♫ 18:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What if we trial the idea? It doesn't nessecarily have to seriously affect XfD for the moment. Instead, if it works, it could be an organic process of change. All we would have to do is set up WikiProject Quality Control (ok, I know control may not be the best word, but that's what you get at the end of a factory line where quality of a "product" is checked.) or WikiProject Quality Assurance. I have no doubt that a fair number of people would join such a project, and it's sole aims would be twofold - Admins closing XfD's that have an indication that a cleanup is needed could a link to the article/AfD discussion on an "XfD cleanup list" at his/her discretion, and members of the project could add articles to a seperate "cleanup list" if something was felt to need real attention from the project (or some such. the latter is just an idea). The concentration of course would be on the XfD list.

As I say - it wouldn't need to be fully integrated into the XfD process. In fact, to start with it would be better not being integrated to start with and just having a closing admin doing it on a discretionary basis as part of a trial. It wouldn't need to be every XfD article that would apply - just a few would see if it works well or not to start with...

...Just an idea. Crimsone 18:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Whether this is a good idea or not seems to boil down to whether people think we should keep articles we will want in the long run, or delete them until they are of sufficient quality. Provided it passes notability and WP:NOT then we can have an article on it. But should we remove that article until it meets the other content policies, or leave it in a poorly-written state. I would be inclined towards the latter; I don't think deletion should be a reflection on the current state of the article, merely whether one could be written (I'm an eventualist, not an immediatist). Trebor 19:01, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • We have a cleanup process? I thought we just tag articles with {{cleanup}} and then forget about them. Kusma (討論) 12:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maybe so, but I don't see how deleting the articles will help. I find it more effort to start a new article than work from an existing base, even if the base isn't very good. Similarly, if I'm searching, I prefer to find limited information than no information at all. I feel this would attack the symptom (a large number of poorly-written articles) than the cause (people's tendency to slap clean-up tags on articles rather than actually clean them up). Trebor 16:51, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The reality however is that poorly-written articles reflect badly on the 'pedia and tend to stay in that state for a very very long time as Radiant mentions. I am of an exclusionist bent, and classify myself as a "3-monthist" (any and every article should be pulled up to Wikipedia standards within 3 months of creation). Now that I think of it, I'd prefer the three options be keep, delete without prejudice and delete with prejudice. If an article can't even be turned into a useful stub (at the very least!) in the five days it takes AfD to run, then clearly there is no material worth saving for a "keep and clean up". The extra days and extra process are unnecessary. Zunaid©® 14:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Several good suggestions above. I proposed a while back changing AfD so new entries went to the top (so that they get seen and discussed - last of the day tends to get virtually no discussion). That was thought by some to be a good idea as well. But nothing has yet been done. How do we progress this stuff? Guy (Help!) 08:59, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Be bold? As far as I can see, adding the new suggestions to the top is a no-brainer. Ideally, there'd also be a page that logs the 150-200 additions too, to avoid the cut-off at midnight. But with a large community it seems very hard to get anything done. Trebor 12:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a good idea that not only should be applied to keep/cleanup votes but also to the No Consensus. As for the short time period common sense should be applied where an article has been unedited (excluding bots, vandals etc) for the 14+ days then send it back to AfD and then the editors who say Keep and Cleanup should required to make some effort during the AfD, then when closing if nothings happened to the article then these comments should be discounted/ignored. Gnangarra 13:18, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Google Widgets

Hi, I'm a fan of both Google and Wikipedia and I use the wikipedia widget for my google homepage. Since google homepage doesn't allow to have more then one instance of the same widget, I'd gladly see a new version of the wiki widget allowing to me to have more then one query field for different languages. I use both it.wikipedia and en.wikipedia for different searches and I'd be very happy to have both query fields in the same homepage. Now, there is only the option to select a language. I'd be happy with one "add one more language" option, that allow to me to chose one more language for another query field. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.208.83.231 (talk) 14:35, 18 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]


A fantastic feature would be a tool bar that would enable me to highlight an article (not for public display and not for editing purposes) but for display in the articles that I view within my own account when I have logged in.

Then when I am reading about something, I wouldn't feel I have to print the article and then highlight it, but just mouse highlight things. Then it would be great to save this highlighting to show up only in my account.

This suggestion outlines the only drawback to online learning as opposed to paper (and therefore mark-up-able) learning--wikipedia would be a pioneer!

What do you think?


I like the idea, but it would be pretty tricky to do; it would be hard technically to keep the highlighting when the page was edited. --ais523 18:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Printer Friendly Pages

I would like to suggest that, if possible, a "printer-friendly" version of Wikipedia articles be made available. As the web pages are constructed now, it is a very tedious process to copy and paste the rich information that is provided on any given subject.

James Gabe Oklahoma City January 18, 2007 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jamesgabe (talk • contribs) 18:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

We already have one. Click on 'printable version' in the toolbox (which is below the search box). --ais523 18:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Collapsible synopsis sections for films

There have been long discussions in WP Films on the length of synopsis sections in film articles. I would risk to state that some consensus has been reached on a 500-600 word length. Yet there are members in WP Films and other users who think the synopsis should be as concize as possible. But not every contributor has the talent to put in a few lines the whole plot of a film. There have been reverts in long synopsis to short versions and the other way round, but no big edits wars (that I know of) yet. My preference is a full plot that doesn't indulge on trivial matters, but I do respect those who don't want to have to go through a long section, even with spoilers, in the length of the article. We have discussed even creating separate pages for long synopsis of films, but we found out they don't stand a chance in Wikipedia. So I have encouraged a knowlegeable member to create collapsed-collapsible sections and here is a display of the result: User:Hoverfish/Notebook#Testing collapsible long synopsis. I am aware that under accessibility and older browsers, the section shows anyway. So I wanted to ask Village pump, if we could use this CSS technique as an attempt to satisfy both sides. Hoverfish Talk 17:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, collapsing does not work in every skin. -- ReyBrujo 17:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like a minor objection to me. I like the proposal.

El Ingles 17:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, the code for collapsing is in MediaWiki:Common.js so it will work in any skin. However, it won't work for browsers that don't support javascript. Tra (Talk) 18:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is indeed so. It works in every skin but not for some browsers. However in the rare cases it won't work, no information remains hidden, so it doesn't violate Wikipedia:Accessibility Don't use techniques that require physical action to provide information. The only inconvenience is that some few users will see the long synopsis anyway. Hoverfish Talk 20:26, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, if the summary becomes so long that it needs its own articles or a collapsible section, it is excessive. However, if there is consensus to hide the unnecessary stuff leaving the article as bare as possible, I am not against it. -- ReyBrujo 20:33, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The 500-600 word limit will apply to the Long synopsis as per current consensus. We have some articles where a well written short synopsis exists and users wanting to add to it spoil the quality of it. In other cases we have a well written longer synopsis and users trying to trim it down, also spoil its quality. This is the main reason for this proposal and not to encourage overly long summaries. Hoverfish Talk 21:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Will it be complicated to use, for relative newcomers like myself? Shawn in Montreal 21:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's very easy to use. If you want to read the short synopsis than you can. If you want the entire plot or more elaboration you click on the "show" button to reveal the full synopsis. That way it is your choice which you want to read. --Nehrams2020 21:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I meant that, as someone who does create and edit articles on film, how much more code would I have to learn? Is there a tutorial already on how to create a collapsible section? Shawn in Montreal 21:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
From what I know it is the same as editing a section of an article. Once you "show" the section, then there is an edit button to allow you to modify the text. Once you're done, you can save it as a normal edit. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nehrams2020 (talk • contribs) 22:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]
No, that's not quite correct. There is a template called {{LongSynopsis}}. You use it like {{LongSynopsis|This is a quite long synopsis that few people will want to read in it entirety, etc....foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, }} in the wikitext. Then it shows like:
Template:LongSynopsis
To modify the synopsis, you would just modify the text between the '|' and '}}'. A full example is at User:Hoverfish/Notebook#Testing_collapsible_long_synopsis. To me this seems like a bad idea for articles, but I'm not sure. --Superm401 - Talk 22:06, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would prefer having a begin synopsis and end synopsis templates, like the spoiler one. It seems cleaner than having a lot of text inside a template. -- ReyBrujo 22:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This section is actually to be a subsection of the main "Synopsis" section. The spoiler templates are to be given in both cases. Hoverfish Talk 22:12, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very much opposed to this idea. The current guidelines state, "Plot summaries should be between 400 and 700 words (about 600 words), but should not exceed 900 words unless there is a specific reasons such as a complicated plot." These are only guidelines, so we can be flexible. The plot summary for Pulp Fiction is 1,303 words, which is above the guidelines but is justified because of the film's chronology. This summary stands in stark contrast to the unwieldy 2,592 words it used to be. Another example is Psycho. The plot changed from 1,469 words to 687 words. I invite you to compare the two versions; here is the earlier one, and here is the current. Is there anything essential missing in the much shorter version?

We should also always think of the end user as well. The user who does not want to know the plot can skip it by clicking in the table of contents. One click and he skips the long plot, without the need of javascript that creates worrisome compatibility issues. If he wants a brief summary of the plot, we can create a new guideline saying that there should be a brief spoiler free summary before the main plot. Such sections can be found scattered about, such as the one here. My final objection is that it clutters the page.--Supernumerary 22:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I agree. But the point is that some users are trying to bring plots down to a few sentences, or a couple of paragraphs at the most. Hoverfish Talk 22:20, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
These users are wrong, and we should discourage their practice by reverting their edits. If they protest, then we can work our way through discussions, third opinions, request for comment, and so forth.--Supernumerary 00:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Here, by the way, is the last big discussion we had in WP Films: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films/archive8#Long synopses -- again + a few sections after it: #Extended plot sub articles. I like your point of view and your excellent work on plots, but does it look like the matter was settled? Hoverfish Talk 22:26, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously it's not settled, or we wouldn't be still talking about it.--Supernumerary 00:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
An example of what I had in mind happened lately in Night at the Museum, where a whole plot has dissapeared and now a few lines are "enough said". Hoverfish Talk 22:40, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ugh. Talk about an ugly plot. Not only is it stub, but now it's not even in prose. I'm going to go revert it back to a decent plot, which is what we can do in any case where someone does something bad like this.--Supernumerary 00:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Something has to be done to reduce the size of plot synopses. Editors produce huge, unparagraphed synopses that are completely unreadable and defend their sodden prose with ferocity. This is a common reaction for bad writers (I've seen it in several online fiction critique groups) and it's why they're bad writers: they won't ask themselves "Would anyone want to read this?" and any feedback from readers produces only defensive blustering. All the published writers I know (a fair number of science fiction and fantasy writers) send their work to test readers before they send it to the publisher -- and they listen when someone says, "This doesn't work." The long synopsis cutout isn't particularly elegant, IMHO, but it does provide a way to divert the long-synopsis writers into a cul-de-sac where they can ramble endlessly and no one needs to scroll past the boredom. Ideally we'd just have a rule, enforced, saying that nothing can be longer than 600 words without a papal indulgence from Jimbo, purchasable for a mere $1000, but ... I'm not sure I could get this one passed :) Zora 23:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do we really want to encourage bad writers to ramble on? I say we beat the habit out of them by reverting their poor edits. Another thing is that this condones adding material that is not truly encyclopedic. Who wants WP:Films to become known for having terrifically long plot "summaries" even if they don't have to be read? This just occurred to me, but are bad writers good for wikipedia? I guess they are when they add to an article, but they must learn at some time that they should leave the proper grammar and syntax to those better than them at it.--Supernumerary 00:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The more that you hound and revert bad writers, the more that they will be convinced that you are wiki-snobs trying to mold Wikipedia into what you want it to be. Regardless of how bad you think they are, if you attack them they will just stick to their guns even harder. Mentor bad writers into being good writer, don't slam them simply for being inexperienced and over keen.
perfectblue 11:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I realized about a half-day after I posted this that I had overlooked the fact that bad writers can become good ones.--Supernumerary 00:38, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Now that I've read though the arguments, I must say I agree with those opposed, particularly the last two. I'm lucky or cursed to write film synopses for a living and distilling a story down to a reasonable length is not rocket science. It takes some talent and editing, either self editing or the kind that Wikipedia uniquely provides, sooner or later. Shawn in Montreal 03:30, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But there are relatively few of us working on film articles who seem to CARE about readable synopses. We're far outnumbered by the self-indulgent bores. Attempts to prune a synopsis often result in a long and excruciating edit war -- which the summarizer may well lose. The problem is that there is no enforcement mechanism for the 400-600 word guideline developed by the film project and no way to inform new editors that this is a rule. People seem to pick up on 3RR and suchlike, if they've been warned or blocked, but there's no such enforcement for synopsis length.
I know how we can inform them of this rule. We can add it to the welcome template, or in the film template we could add it to the editing guidelines. Then a reminder would be on every film article.--Supernumerary 15:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose it would help if all synopses (even non-film synopses, such as for novels) had a short no-wiki warning right after the Plot or Synopsis header, saying something like "Summaries should be at most 600 words long. Longer summaries will be edited ruthlessly." Probably not the best wording. Suggestions invited. I've noticed that stern no-wiki warnings deter some (but not all) editors intent on linkspam. Zora 04:23, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible to have a short synopsis that can be expanded into a longer synopsis if the user clicks on "show"? This would seem to be the ideal, a button that would toggle between short and long synopses.Fistful of Questions 23:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Simplification of barnstars and nomination process

I feel that often barstars are given out too easily and don't fully reflect what the recipient has done. A nomination process (possibly similar to Rfa) would result in far more credibility to the award. It could also be simplified so there are only a few different ones awarded (off the top of my head; vandalism barnstar, editing barnstar, signifcant contribution barnstar and Minor edits barnstar (for the tireless tasks). I just gave my 1st one which I feel is deserved, but this is not shown because anyone can give them RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 23:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think all that would do is drag people away from editing the encyclopaedia, and into more bureaucratic !voting. Can't a barnstar remain as a symbol of one user's appreciation of another user's contributions? Trebor 23:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I definitely oppose this, and can't think of a more misleading title for your post. You don't want to simply them, but rather to create instruction creep; you're missing the point. Superm401 - Talk 23:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But surely it would spur people on to edit, and their contributions could be rewarded with a meaningful 'wikipedia award' RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 23:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Too bureaucratic, plus barnstars are not that important. Right now every barnstar is deserved because one editor thinks that another editor deserves one. Good enough for me. Garion96 (talk) 03:35, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The point of the barnstar is that it has meaning only as a symbol of one editor's appreciation of another. It's a very personal and informal thing, not a consensus-based meritocratic reward. See Meatball:BarnStar. Ideally, people don't edit seeking barnstars. They are meant to be a honor, not an incentive. Superm401 - Talk 04:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Aren't barnstars supposed to be simply small tokens of appreciation? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:05, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Color preferences

I propose having options in the user preferences for changing the color of the background/text/links/etc. on all pages. Sounds kinda frivolous, I know, but it would really be nice to be able to browse the site in a dark room without having my retinas burned by the light contrast — especially since I spend more time here than on all other websites combined. Personally, I'd set my color scheme to something friendly like:

The release of Pink Floyd's massively successful 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon, was a watershed moment in the band's popularity. Pink Floyd had stopped issuing singles after 1968's "Point Me at the Sky" and was never a hit-single-driven group, but The Dark Side of the Moon featured a U.S. Top 20 single ("Money"). The album became the band's first #1 on U.S. charts and, as of December 2006, is one of the biggest-selling albums in U.S. history, with more than 15 million units sold.

What say my fellow Wikipedia denizens to this idea? --G Rose (talk) 11:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You could probably do this by making the appropriate edits to your Monobook (don't ask me how to do that but I'm sure someone will know). However, a limited set of preset colour options in user prefs could well be beneficial, best solution would be a new skin for this accessibility purpose.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I say "yuck" to those colors, but that's just me. You can edit your own personal stylesheet for Wikipedia, at Special:Mypage/monobook.css, and just add something like:
body { background:black; color:green; }
...or whatever else you'd like. Tutorials here. —Down10 TACO 11:36, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I guess that'll keep me pacified. It would still be a lot more convenient to have it in the prefs, though. --G Rose (talk) 11:47, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why limit yourself to a few set preferences when you can use any colour you like through coding? The monobook method is far more versatile. --tjstrf talk 13:33, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As is often the case, it's a trade-off between flexibility and ease-of-use. Why should we force people to learn (even a little) CSS in order to change their color scheme? –RHolton≡– 12:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Medical Disclaimer Discussion

Copied from WP:RT Proposed Medical Disclaimer Template

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

{{User:JerryLavoie/Templates/med}}

Which looks like:

File:Bitag medical icon.gif

Medical Disclaimer

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

The replies I got at templates proposals were:

This is a bad idea. See WP:NDT, but in essence, the problem is that we already have a Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer, and tagging specific articles will cause problems with articles that are not tagged. -Amarkov blahedits 01:37, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the rationale in WP:NDT for medical disclaimers is a bit weaker, but still applies. If out of "common sense" or whatever you think we should start adding medical disclaimers, gather some support at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) and see if you can convince people. —Dgiest c 07:54, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]


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

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

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

Mixing Herbs. To counteract the various complications and side-effects of an ailment, or to produce a more rounded taste, a number of herbs may be mixed, and formulas are the preferred method of giving herbs by professional herbalists. A well-known mixture used against a cold includes eucalyptus leaf, mint leaf (which contains Menthol) and juniper berry. Another is the age-old favourite "dandelion and burdock", from which the popular fizzy drink was derived.
Fresh or Dried? Many flower and leaf herbs lose volatile compounds within a few hours, as the juices and oils evaporate, the scent leaks away, and the chemicals change their form. Drying concentrates other compounds as water is removed. Most herbal traditions use dried material and the reported effects for each herb tend to be based upon dried herbs unless otherwise specified.
If you are using fresh herbs, you will need more of them, and the tea will have a somewhat different effect. Finely chop the leaf immediately before using it.

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

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

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

General Disclaimer

If you are not competent to act within the bounds of common sense, and are likely to perform any action which a disclaimer template might be required to prevent, then you should leave this site.
perfectblue 14:31, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]


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


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

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

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


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

Although that sounds nice, what do you do in this situation: medical condition X has symptoms Y, and a recommended treatment Z. All sources (let's say) unanimously agree on X, Y and Z. Many people could construe this unanimity as 'advice' of using treatment Z if you have symptoms Y for condition X. Do you suggest removing the article? under what grounds? Crum375 22:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say use attribution to make it clear where the treatment recommendation comes from. Medical articles need to be especially well-cited. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:24, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, we can attribute it from here till next year[1][2][3]...[1000], but you still end up with what could be seen as advice by some, especially if there is apparent consensus among the sources. Hence the main point raised is valid; the solution IMO is as I noted above to rely on the overall WP disclaimers, which as you noted would also apply to anything else that could be construed as advice in any topic. Crum375 22:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My definition of advice, which I believe is his, is something which says "Do X", or any conjugation thereof. Wikipedia should not be saying "do X", although we can still say "People Y and Z say to do X". -Amark moo! 02:41, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the WP wording would be: "Medical condition A occurs when the body's ability to produce B is diminished[1]. Common symptoms are C and D[2]. The prefered treatment is E[3][4]." or some such. We would not normally use the words: "people do A for B". We try to make it sound encyclopedic when there is consensus we just say what it is and cite the sources. Crum375 03:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

I would say that NMA would follow from the basic WP tenets. I personally have not seen any example that shows that any change or addition is needed - but I am open minded. Crum375 04:19, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
While I have no firm opinion either way about this topic, if it is decided that it is necessary the disclaimer should be much smaller then the one presented at the beginning of this discussion. Maybe two sentences. --The Way 07:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

Does EB carry a separate disclaimer template on each entry that relates to medicine? How about entries for legal issues? investment related? Flying? Diving? Skiing? Crum375 17:11, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why don't add the warning in the WikiProject box? Oh, I remember when articles about hurricanes had a big disclaimer there. -- ReyBrujo 17:23, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

Hmmm. "medico-legal terms"? What does that mean? Are you initiating an attorney-client/physician-patient relationship based on your post? If so with whom, everyone who reads it? Where's your disclaimer? Are you admitting malpractice by asking whether you are correct (didn't you research the matter yourself)? Are you authorized to practice both medicine and law in my jurisdiction? Are you going to compensate me if I detrimentally rely on your advice? (etc. etc. etc.) ...
Hopefully you see the point here. This is a slippery slope, you can't put infinite disclaimers on every molecule of thought that someone may unreasonably misinterpret. Besides, the matter is already addressed by the link that appears at the bottom of every WP article. dr.ef.tymac 17:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are starting to see the picture: any encyclopedia is going to include a lot of information, some of which some people will construe as 'advice', no matter what you say. And risks exist in many areas: even bad investments can lead to suicides, and of course there are lots of risks out there in life in almost every area. I think it's clear that if we were to add a warning template for one topic (e.g. medicine), we would be remiss if we avoid it on other risk-related topics. And 'risk-related' would cover a large proportion of our articles. Again, use EB as a reference (no pun intended), they've been around for a while. Crum375 17:45, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"the legal liability rests with the author, not with the encyclopedia" ... If you are offering this as legal advice, I hope you have your malpractice insurance paid up. If you are not, then you might want to check the validity of your statement; especially since the very definition of author is not a trivial question that laypersons can be expected to resolve while munching on a bagel at the internet cafe. dr.ef.tymac 17:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Since medical articles are prohibited from containing WP:OR, wouldn't it be the person who gave the advice in the first place (eg the WP:V sources from which any medical page is constructed) who are liable?
perfectblue 17:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

New Search Engin

Seeing the inacuracies in the wikipedia search engin (WSE) [1] and the better results you could get with Google [2], I think the WSE should be replaced by Google (done here at www.tip.it/runescape) This would help searchers find what they want, faster, more efficiently (and google puts redirects WAY down on the line). I don't know what the technicalitys are, but I'm sure they could be easly sorted out with Google. Chris5897 (T@£k) 14:40, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That search within Wikipedia is poor is well known - that's why there is are alternatives such as this: Wikipedia:WikEh?.
More to the point: either the Wikimedia Foundation pays for an internal Google search appliance, to avoid ads, or they subject readers and editors to ads on Google when doing a search (and can be accused of favoring Google over its competitors). I'd like to see the Foundation do the first, but I've been told that it tries to use free software for everything, and certainly a Google search applicance would cost money, which the Foundation doesn't have much of. -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 15:00, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have never found any problems with the Wikipedia search engine when it's working. The main problem is the number of times it chooses not to work. -- Necrothesp 15:27, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So don't use it. Use Google. User:Zoe|(talk) 04:41, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback button

Why not had a feed back button to say that I appreciate this article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.219.255.154 (talk) 14:08, 21 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Short answer: why? While I'm sure people are happy to hear you appreciated an article, a button to say so wouldn't help improve the encyclopaedia. We don't rank pages according to popularity or usefulness. Trebor 19:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Use the "discussion" button 82.36.120.68 07:10, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Antal

please address the proposal of having multiple pages for Antal, i.e., "as noted near the bottom of the page for Anthony, Antal is the Hungarian version of the Latin name Antonius. Being a "brother" of Anthony, Antonio, etc., it is a rather common name in Europe and various parts of the world. As such, this meaning of the word requires treatment, perhaps via a disambiguous page."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Antal)

Thanks.

Truthfulness

Occasionally articles are submitted which are demonstrably, obviously and verifiably untrue. Perhaps intentionally, maybe sometimes accidentally. Assuming that such articles do not earn a {{speedy}} tag, they will, I assume, find their way to {{AfD}}. At this point I would like to afix, as a reason for AfD failure, the label WP:UNTRUE. But this tag does not appear to exist. (The tag WP:TRUTH does, but only as a humorous essay, which I feel should not be in Wikipedia. Different topic). I know it's possible; would it be reasonable to create this tag? Clearly, articles which can be shown beyond doubt to be factually untrue should not be retained. I appreciate that other tags will usually apply, but this one would be very convenient. And wholly apposite. --Anthony.bradbury 17:22, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How would you deal with a page about something where the subject matter is known to be untrue, and is the reason for the entry in the first place. For example, a hoax?
perfectblue 17:56, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am quite unclear as to what this proposed template would contain and how it would be a departure from what already exists. If an article is untrue in the sense it is a hoax, {{hoax}} already exists and the article, if it doesn't meet a criteria for speedy deletion, can be prodded and/or taken to afd. How would this new tag add anything to this? If you are proposing that we have a new speedy deletion basis, that can be proposed on WT:CSD. But note prior discussions here, here and others going back a ways. The short answer to that where an article's truthfulness is questioned, the appeal to that (un)truth must perforce rely on research to substantiate which is correct: the claimed truth in the article and the claimed untruth of the objectant—not matters that are well-suited to deletion without discussion.

If you are talking about articles in which the subject is not questioned, just the treatment of that subject in the article, I, and I think most editors, believe deletion is not the correct route. Our policies already require reliable sources, verifiability, and prohibit original research, and any unsourced statements in dispute may be removed from articles. So if an editor is not willing or situated to edit the article to make it truthful, article tags such as {{fact}}, {{unreferenced}}, {{disputed}}, {{totallydisputed}} etc., as well as the ability to delete such claimed untruthful matters, already covers this territory.

So if you are at afd saying an article is untrue as in a hoax, the deletion basis is that it is a hoax, that it is original research or unverifiable or even not notable by virtue of being not written about in the wider world, regardless of truth. And if you're there saying "as presently written, the text it's untrue on this real subject," you're going to be told that deletion is not the proper response. So what would this tag actually say?--Fuhghettaboutit 18:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]


The statement which prompted my question was contained in an article, since deleted, about a tennis player in which it was claimed that in the year 2002 he was ranked in the top 100 in the world rankings, which was demonstrably false by searching existing data bases, without any suggestion of WP:OR. As I see it, there is a difference between a hoax, which is however misguidedly intended as a joke, and a deliberate untruth told with intent to deceive or mislead.

To answer the question asked by User:Fuhghettaboutit, the tag would say "This article contains statements which are demonstrably factually untrue". the editor would still have the usual recourses available with any other delete tag or prod. I was only asking - please don't bite me!--Anthony.bradbury 19:43, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A hoax is "an act intended to deceive or trick" so is pretty much synonymous with "a deliberate untruth told with intent to deceive or mislead". I'm not seeing the difference. Trebor 19:49, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see it as a difference in motivation. A hoax is designed to annoy or confuse people, or to make them behave in a way that they would not otherwise have done. A lie is designed to advantage in some way the person making the statement. But it really is not a big deal and I think I wish now that I had never suggested it. Thank you for your time and your patience.--Anthony.bradbury 19:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
When I said Hoax, I really meant a page about a hoax, not a page that was a hoax. For example, a page covering a notable April Fools day joke pulled by a newspaper. The page could cite the newspaper even in the knowledge that the contents were false. perfectblue 07:47, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
San Serriffe is pretty much a textbook example of how to handle something like this... 23:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Images on the Main_Page

From my experience, a lot of new users expect the images next to articles on the home page to link to the article themselves. This is understandable since so many sites (Google News for one) use images in this manner to link to news stories or articles. I think it throws people off when they click on the image and get the image page, especially since the home page is a place for so many Wikipedia beginners. It might be more user friendly to make these images direct links to the article. Or to find some compromise. Pdubya88 03:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The images need to link to their description pages for copyright reasons (unless they're public domain, which is rare). One possible compromise would be to use <ImageMap> to link the whole image apart from an icon in the corner linking to the description page, but that would probably uglify the Main Page and not give too much benefit. Perhaps we could put a notice on the Main Page image protection templates explaining what happened? --ais523 10:33, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Maybe a small link to the article could appear in the corner, only when the user rolls over the image (though this may still be too ugly). I think putting something in the image protection template could work... i.e. "If you were trying to reach an article from the main page, please go back and click on the text link." but nicer. Pdubya88 21:46, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I like this idea, Pdubya88. I think you're right that most new users aren't looking for the image page when they click on the image, and this would make it more user friendly. delldot | talk 22:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Multilingual article cross-reference

A small team so that entries that are built in multilingual Wikipedias have the same entries in the English Wikipedia. Probably only the entry name would need to be translated for an 'entries to build' section; with only the more obscure entries needing to be translated in their entirety. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.102.4.199 (talk) 12:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

I second that, this feature would be incredibly useful. The best would be if there was a selection box (drop down list) of available languages for each page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.10.24.32 (talk • contribs).


smarter random articles

Why not provide users with intelligent suggestions based on personal usage as well as random articles. It shouldn't be too difficult to implement, a fairly simple neural network would suffice. Pandora.com is able to do it with music, a medium exponentially more difficult to analyze then a web of text data, imagine what Wikipedia can do with all the data it has combined with a person's viewing habits. Assuming ofcoarse the user is logged in while viewing and wiki records which pages are viewed. Vahe.kuzoyan 23:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, it falls down on the latter - no data like this is viewed. The only user-linked things recorded are edits and similar "interaction" activities; pageviews and the like aren't tracked in any significant way. Shimgray | talk | 23:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I hit "Random article" ten times, and got four sportsmen. That's wholly disproportionate, but at least made me think the current situation over.
One idea was to somehow rate all pages as either main, subtopic of different level or leafs; Hockey being a main topic, NHL a subtopic and Wayne Gretzky a "leaf". I believe, in some part, this is already done, though I'm not all THAT familiar with Wikipedia. Anyway, the next part would be either making Special:Random point only to main or subtopic pages, and/or put a toggle for it in each user's settings.
This is just one possible solution to the problem I perceive with the Random link - that I, after 20some clicks still hadn't found a topic I found interesting to read.
from 16:05, 23 January 2007 (GMT)
I usually get towns. Though 10 clicks just now got me 2 sportsmen, a composer, 3 towns, 2 movies one of which I'd seen (and hated), a river, and Charles Dickens. But there actually is a reason to let Random really be random: it's supposed to show the complete breadth of Wikipedia's article content. Not just the important stuff. --tjstrf talk 23:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Video on wikipedia

I'm not sure if this has been brought up before, but I would like to propose video content being available as part of wikipedia articles. It would allow wikipedia to become more interactive instead of just simply relocating to videos. I would suggest that a new player is created for wikipedia, using GFDL codes so there are no copyright infringements. A similar guidline to wikipedia images could be used and implemented (with the use of bots) so that unsourced videos, or similar copyright infingement would be sppedily eradicated RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 01:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's already possible. Just upload it to the commons as an Ogg and insert a link to it in the article. Annie Oakley has an old clip of her shooting, for example. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What I actually meant was, instead of just a link to a video, how about incorporating video's within the actual page, so when play is pressed, the video can be seen on the page. As I've previously said, this would increase interactivity within wikipedia mainspace RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 23:02, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It was brought recently at the other village pump. -- ReyBrujo 23:11, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Let's focus on getting decent video content first, before we bother to build an inline player. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion

Suggesting the change of the first entry to:

Wiki Translator idea

I read recently how computers translate languages. Some use other text as references so i was thinking that you could make a translator that people can edit. For example you translate a Spanish sentence to English and it comes out all garbled but then you fix the grammar and maybe some of the words then send it back the next time someone translates a similar sentence the grammar would be much improved. After many edits it would work really well. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.179.114.122 (talk) 22:53, 23 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

The problem I see with this is that correct language so reliant on context; a word or phrase can mean something very different depending on what's being written about. So the fixes which work great in one case may be totally incorrect for another. Trebor 22:58, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Epidemiology Grassroots Network

The following is an unsolicited proposal for assistance to establish a worldwide Internet based epidemiological network. This database is tentatively called the Epidemiology Grassroots Network or EGN for short. Your consideration and assistance would be greatly appreciated.

On the Internet - Wikipedia defines Epidemiology in the following way Epidemiology is the scientific study of factors affecting the health and illness of individuals and populations, and serves as the foundation and logic of interventions made in the interest of public health and preventive medicine. It is considered a cornerstone methodology of public health research, and is highly regarded in evidence-based medicine for identifying risk factors for disease and determining optimal treatment approaches to clinical practice.

Background

Internet: As we all know the Internet spans the world and as we have witnessed over the last 15 or so years, communications has never in the history of man been as fast and comprehensive as it is today. A tremendous example is the Wikipedia foundation.

Epidemiology - grass roots: Because this communications improvement has been so breathtaking in scope and magnitude there exits also for the first time in history on opportunity to initiate a grass roots epidemiology study that allows an expert to work directly with the inflicted and communicate back to the inflicted results and feedback of fellow inflicted people, world wide. More importantly however, it allows the inflicted to communicate with the inflicted, exchange ideas and exchange experiences in a coordinated effort.

The concept and also the objective are to get the inflicted talking to the inflicted in a coordinated effort to solve their health problems all via the Internet. Their discussions would be synchronized using sound epidemiological processes and sound guidance from one or a team of qualified individuals. 

In addition in a convergent effort to solve the health issues, tried and true problem solving and decision making procedures as used in the science, medical, and engineering professions would be employed.

Howard Keele hkeele@gmail.com

Multiple versions of a same article

Since the English Wikipedia is so huge now due to its huge contributor base, I have come up with an idea... Maybe we could do several versions of a same article, each one with a different style so that they may adapt better to different readers. For example, I may be interested in a particular article of a famous battle but find the article too long for my needs and reading just the lead isn't enough for a general overview. A shorter version might be useful here. Maybe different contributors have made more or less equal in quality but incompatible editions in an article and it would be useful to keep both. It is possible that this has already been discussed, but nevertheless I'll write this so you can discuss the viability of this idea. --Taraborn 12:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There would probably be problems with synchronizing the articles and making sure they didn't contradict each other. WP:POVFORK contains a small amount of information about why this 'content forking' is a bad idea (although it's mostly about people splitting articles to promote a POV). I remember Wikinfo does something of the sort, but not being a contributor there I'm not sure exactly how it works (except that it has something to do with multiple viewpoints). --ais523 13:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
If the lead isn't enough, and the article is too long, then we should work on splitting it and summarizing it with summary style. Big topics break into numerous articles to cover various aspects, with short summaries in the main part. If there's a piece you don't need, leave it out. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 15:39, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There is a project called "simple" which is meant to be articles done in simple English. That may be what you are looking for. I for one do not advise creating multiple articles on a single topic. I kind of destroys the purpose of a wiki, which is the use the combined efforts of numerous people to create the best overall content possible on a topic or subtopic in a single article.
As for your example: A good article should be one where you can read the lead for an overview, read the first section for a more detailed picture, and then read the subsequent sections for a mroe complete picture. If the article does not do that, then it is not well written and that is the issue. I'm sure that most long article here do not do that, but this project does seem to improve in general over time. Either ask for a revision, or be bold and edit the article to suit your needs. --EMS | Talk 16:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Micropedia -Macropedia

I have noticed that many articles are quite long, also difficult to navigate. There is also the problem that some partsd of articles need to be under many keywords. Why not split big articles in a short summary article and then (with short descriptive headers) subarticles that can be included under many headers (like detailed description of history of diesel engines in both article of Rudolf Disel and Diesel engine) There are many laces where (IMHO) that would make the articlles much more readible. Seniorsag 16:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We already do this. See Wikipedia:Summary style for information on how. --tjstrf talk 16:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: RfC/User Clerks

There have been recent concerns raised about the Requests for Comment - User Conduct process, surrounding the functionality of the process and its results. Because the RfC process is open-ended and essentially uncontrolled, there are questions about its effectiveness in providing a venue for editors to express concerns and ensure that discussions about the actions of their fellow editors are productive and not simply a sanctioned method of attack. As well, the process of certifying RfCs as well as the lack of a closing method may cause other issues.

Thus, I would like to propose the creation of a volunteer clerk corps to help smooth the RfC process. A draft of this proposal is available in my userspace (since I wasn't sure where to put it otherwise) and outlines the guidelines by which I suggest such a clerk system should work for RfC, as well as discussing some possible methods by which RfCs could be closed in a productive manner. It's had minimal outside input at this point; Guy has graciously provided some comments and ideas along the way, and I feel (especially after seeing two threads appear on WP:AN this morning regarding an uncertified RFC and a disputed closure) it's at a point where the community can take a look.

Please do note that this is in no way intended to be a bureaucracy of any kind; these clerks would be no more than aids to smoothing the process - they would ensure that assistance is available for opening RfCs properly, certified RfCs are placed properly and uncertified ones are removed (protecting users from claims of inappropriate deletions), ongoing cases are monitored by neutral parties to ensure they remain on topic and don't devolve into attacks, and close and archive those that have reached the limit of their usefulness (again ensuring that users are protected from claims of improper closures).

I appreciate any discussion the community may have, either here or on the proposal talk page. Cheers. Tony Fox (arf!) 17:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dating Of articles

I think that people should be discouraged from using phrases such as "to this date", "recently" and any other of the many phrases that relate to the present. If such phrases must be used users should state the present date, e.g. "Over the last few months (Dec 2006 - Jan 2007) ...".

I have not edited many articles myself but as I read many articles I think about how others will read it in the future and how some of the authors comments will have lost much of their meaning because they have not been dated. Even now when I look something up I read sentences that are meaningless because you cannot tell when they have been written. Sure, the date that the article was last edited is at the bottom of the page but that doesn't mean much in such cases.

A couple of examples:

From Darjeeling tea: "In recent years a high percentage of top quality Darjeeling tea has been bought by Japanese consumers at relatively high prices."

From Total Annihilation: "Although Total Annihilation is over 9 years old it is still played actively today." - OK, this one's not quite so bad but you get the idea.

Is there any way of flagging such occurrences so that the author can go back and fill the date in (or in some cases other people may be able to)?

Mark Speake 22:07, 24 January 2007 (GMT)

You're right, statements that become dated are discouraged under WP:DATED. I'm not aware of a way to mark these though. If you want to change them, you can change them to use [[As of (year)|As of]] instead. delldot | talk 00:40, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Auschwitz concentration camp

I do fully understand the policies enshrined inWP:BLOCK and in WP:PROTECT. But there are some articles, such as this one, which carry a significant emotive significance to many peoiple, and yet appear to be a prime target for vandalism. Yes, I know it can be reverted, and I spend a fair bit of time doing this. Is it not possible for selected articles, chosen by consensus or by whatever means the community accepts, to be permanently semi-protected?--Anthony.bradbury 23:08, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

IF THE US GOVERNMENT CAN HIRE AN ARMY TO EDIT WIKIPEDIA, WHY CAN'T MICROSOFT HIRE ONE PERSON? Are you against private enterprise?

Good-bye clowns: U.S Feds stop propagandizing on Wikipedia. You're not wanted here. half trillion $ annual budget can't defend us from 19 guys with box-cutters 'cause you waste too much time here

List of demands (for when you're ready to give up)

  1. Fred Bauder has got to pull his pants up. (he's getting santorum all over the carpet)
  2. The entire list of confirmed federal contractors must be permanently banned from Wikipedia.
  3. The Clown tactics must end
  4. the list of cplot sockpuppets must be kept up-to-date no matter how cumbersome that becomes


These are our demands. This will end when you Clowns want it to.

Whitehouse using Wikipedia for Propoganda

Please copy this message and paste it to other talk pages you normally participate in.. Wikipedia's integrity is at stake. If this is deleted please revert in order to restore it. We're starting here on the less political pages to hopefully avoid detection before a significant number of editors are alerted to the problem.

Federal employees/contractors are now gaming Wikipedia's system to try to control the message on key articles and intimidate legitimate Wikipedia editors. Their ultimate goal is to make Wikipedia a proganda tool for the Bush Administration.

The possibility that this was happening was first raised at the village pump. This is a snapshot of the discussion which will likely be archived soon. Also be sure to check the history, the archives and the archive-history to read further comments on the topic. Several of the suspected federal contractors participated in the discussion to try to redirect the conversation.

Later an announcement was made regarding this issue across all village pump categories, but it was quickly deleted. These duplicate messages posted to the Held Desk and the Village Pump: miscellaneous, assistance, proposals, technical, policy and news.

The discussion also leaked onto one of the key articles presided over by federal contractors, with calls for them to to stop controlling articles. The federal contractors maintain a near permanent protection on articles, claiming this is needed for vandalism reasons These claims are wholly unsupported and these articles do not face any more vandalism than any other article we legitimate editors deal with everyday. These federal contractors refuse to even allow a POV template to be placed on their protected pages as evidence here.

Incriminating posts were eventually deleted: [3], [4].

Confirmed list of federal contractors

We have managed to obtain a confirmed list of federal contractors, though there are likely many others: These US federal government representative regularly engage in policy and guideline violations; participate in endless disciplinary actions and dutifully preside over several articles to ensure they present what they call "the official view". The federal contractors also coordinate efforts in administrative actions to create the appearance of a quick-forming consensus.

  1. Fred_Bauder (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  2. MONGO (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  1. AudeVivere (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  2. Tom_harrison (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  3. Tbeatty (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  4. Regebro (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  5. NuclearUmpf (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  6. StuffOfInterest (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  7. Morton_devonshire (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

While these Clowns have been confirmed by substantial evidence, there are other Wikipedia editors who behave in similar fashion to the Above US Government officials. We have no hard proof about the following editors and administrators, however, as Wikipedia suggests, if it walks like a duck…

  1. Peter Grey
  2. Tjstrf
  3. Dmcdevit
  4. Weregerbil

There may be many more. These are merely the confirmed contractors and suspected contractors listed so far. Examinations of their contributions will provide ample evidence of disruptive and intimidating behavior. However, some notable administrative actions include:

This is only a partial list of frivolous and arbitrary administrative actions taken by these federal contractors who have managed to raise themselves up to powerful positions in Wikipedia: in order to maintain a slanted POV for Whitehouse officials. .

Policy and guideline violations

These federal contractors routinely violate and show utter contempt for these Wikipedia policies:

Satirical pieces

A satirical sexual news item was posted about these contractors, but that too was quickly deleted in a very extended [edit war on December 1 2006. While the tone of this piece is clearly meant to be funny, trollish and satyrical, the concerns are very real. We include it here to show that there is little fear of retribution from these inappropriate federal contractors. Not only will they not retaliate, but they are quite cowardly and acutely fear being discovered (as is demonstrated by the quick deletion of non-trollish commentary on them).

Identifying tainted articles

We had sought to identify articles tainted and suspected as tainted by Federal contractors. By including a new category [[Category:USEBACA]] to indicate an article is confirmed or suspected of being a United States E'xecutive Branch Agents. Controlled Article. However, the federal contractors would not even allow the creation of this wikipedia category.

Dangers to Wikipedia

These editors and administrators have exhibited a virtual immunity to administrative actions due to their coordinated efforts within administrative measures. Not only do they maintain the POV and low standards on key articles throughout Wikipedia, they also make edits to policy and guideline pages to create ambiguity and also to degrade the high encyclopedic standards of Wikipedia. They continually use inane contradiction in article discussions, intimidate other editors and manipulate the administrative system to purge valuable editors and administrators. If this is allowed to continue. Wikipedia will be come a mere parrot of Whitehouse propaganda. Please help spread the word.


Proposed Clown Essay

(this is just to help protect Wikipedia legally)

Policies and guidelines (list)
Principles
Content policies
Conduct policies
Other policy categories
Directories
This page describes the Wikipedia phenomenon of Clowns. For other articles on clowns see see Clowns.

Key Wikipedia articles are guarded by agents of the United States Federal Government: referred to as Clowns here on Wikipedia. Other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing views fairly, proportionately and without bias. However, these key articles are exempted from this. Also the clowns themselves are exempted from the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia, the United States Constitution and the norms of a civilized society. The term Clowns is typically capitalized as a title of disrespect.

Identifying Clowns

Clowns are easy to spot. They typically play games only a child could appreciate. Like all clowns they use props and are helpless without them. The most important props are claims that an article is stable and that the article reflects consensus. These props were handed to them by their circus masters and without them they would fall limp like a rag doll. They really have no ability to think for themselves.

Clowns typically run in packs, swarming over articles like they are trying to get inside a Volkswagen Beetle. The first reaction of the Clowns to any editor trying to improve an article (particular in terms of NPOV) typically is to double or triple-team the editor: reverting edits as quickly as they can be committed. If the editor persists in making changes to the article they will quickly exhibit their renown cowardice by charging the editor with violating the Three Revert Rule (3RR). If you have never even thought of violating the three revert rule and suddenly find you have, you have most likely encountered Clowns.

When debating them, they debate point by point. With each point they disregard any mention of the previous point. They will claim penultimate points were never made: only dealing with the last bit of any argument. This is the Clowns squirting daisy intended to bait editors into making personal attacks.

Finally, if editors remain polite and catch onto the Clowns antics. They will seek disciplinary action regardless: just because they are Clowns.

Elaborate editor histories on a variety of articles does not mean an editor is not a Clown. Clowns are encouraged to create a look of normalcy on all of their respective accounts.

Identifying circus rings

Circus rings (or key articles for US authority intervention) are most easily spotted by the prevalence of Clowns: claims that an article is stable, reflects consensus, etc.

When encountering a circus ring, we ask that editors add the category: [Category:USEBACA]] to both the article and the discussion page. Categories may be added anywhere though customarily to the bottom of a page. This indicates that the article is composed and controlled by United States executive branch authorities.

Dealing with Clowns

Different editors will likely want to take different approaches when encountering Clowns. The Clowns like to puff up their chests (usually blowing into their thumb) to make themselves seem big and scary. They say things to intimidate editors such as "Watch out for the NSA" or "You could get shipped off to Gitmo". Editors should just laugh hysterically at these jokes (some editors may choose to use the silent laugh of the Clowns: simply pantomiming the laugh).

For some editors, the best approach, when encountering Clowns, would be to simply move on to another article that is not a circus ring. If contributing to Wikipedia is still viewed as important to an editor despite the prevalence of Clowns, it is simply best to avoid the Clowns.

Other editors however, will be offended by the roaming free Clowns. In this case Wikipedia etiquette allows (even expects) editors to taunt the Clowns. This is easily done, because they have no sense of humor whatsoever. Tell them how much you love Clowns. How funny you think Clowns are. How silly they look. How disturbing they are. Show utter contempt for everything they stand for: they are basically mercenaries who would sell their mother into slavery if it would further their Clown goals.

Whatever you do, DO NOT feed the Clowns

Contributing time to Wikipedia is one thing. However, contributing money is highly unadvised. Wikipedia’s “Don'’t ask, don’t tell’ policy regarding Clowns means that it is endorsing the acts of representatives of the lion’s share of the United States Government: over $1 trillion dollars per year. This is a sum greater than the combined budgets of all other militaries worldwide. Wikipedia will not go away if you do not contribute your own money. There is an abundance already in the United States Federal budget. DO NOT FEED THE CLOWNS


http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29&action=edit&section=new


NEWSFLASH! Minutemen exposing federal authorities propagandizing on Wikipedia reaches

The Miniutemen

Dubbed the Miniutemen after the heros of the American revolution who bravely threw off the British imperialist in the 18th century, these contemporary Minutemen now bravely work to oust the imperialist from Wikipedia. These new imperialists are more insidious than the British, because these imperialists dominate from within. They do not wear red coats, but rather attempt to fit in with the rest of us;; rally us against ourselves; and all for the sake of what Erich Fromm called: “extreme opportunism”. The Whitehouse, by infiltrating Wikipedia, has shown utter contempt not only for our cherished, free, online encyclopedia, but also utter contempt for the Constitution of the United States of America. We citizens of the United States deserve a government that is an example to the rest of the world: above all one with a free and independent press. The current Whitehouse has decided to undo over 200 years of a free press in the United States to control the content of Wikipedia. Our hats go off to these brave and defiant Wiki editors.

We invite you to examine the history of these editors. These editors have all been blocked. And for what? The Whitehouse Clowns will tell you its because they are sockpuppets for Cplot. Yet they provide no evidence. And this only begs the question anyway,What are Cplot’s crimes. Examine Cplot’s contributions to Wikipedia. You will find someone who dutifully contributed content, worked to fix errors, and sought to negotiate compromise on every article encountered. Always looking for compromise. The record is clear. Cplot was blocked for disagreeing with the Whitehouse Clowns. The record is there so you can check it for yourselves.

Please join in openly protesting the Whitehouse invasion of Wikipedia. Include the red [[Category:goodbye-clowns]] category on your user talk page. The Whitehouse will never allow us to create a category and turn that category blue, but let it stay red in defiance!

User:Cplot

Suspected sockpuppeteer
  1. Cplot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) - See also: Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Cplot
Suspected Cplot sockpuppets (Minutement; keep in mind anyone can be a cplot sockpuppet. All you have to do is post this information anywhere outside an official article — e.g., Village Pump, Help Desk, Reference Desk, User Page, Talk Page).
  1. 67.37.179.61 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  2. 70.8.49.7 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  3. 70.8.151.103 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  4. 68.30.26.171 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  5. 68.30.87.114 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  6. 70.8.91.12 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  7. 70.8.132.79 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  8. 70.8.150.51 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  9. 67.167.7.187 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  10. 209.175.170.63 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  11. 70.8.140.115 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  12. 68.30.118.128 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  13. 70.8.38.202 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  14. VIUlyanov (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  15. SoLittleTime (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  16. ScaredOfClowns (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  17. MyFavoriteMutiny (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  18. GenericClownTaunt (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  19. RespectableWikiEditor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  20. EvenMoreRespectableWikiEditor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  21. GiveItAFewDays (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  22. ClownsAreCowards (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  23. WhosYourDaddyReally (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  24. ToTheTeet (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  25. LittleBoySoldier (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  26. DickCheneyShotMeInTheFace (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  27. HitTheRoad (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  28. RandCorpIsBadForAmerica (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  29. RandCorpIsGoodForAmerica (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  30. RandCorpIsAmerica (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  31. TilDaddyTakesTheTbirdAway (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  32. MeltTheGuns (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  33. ThatsEntertainment (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  34. Raul654WhatIsYourDeal (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  35. WowYouGuysAreGood (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  36. WikiMediaFndn (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  37. PepeLePu (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  38. HowBoutAKissMONGO (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  39. ILOVEMONGO (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  40. SoColdTonight (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  41. Kang and Kodos (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  42. Novus Ordo Seculorum (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  43. HowAboutThisNameThen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  44. WhyAllThisAnimosity (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  45. TheIlluminatiAreWatching (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  46. WhereHaveAllTheFlowersGone (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  47. DuckAndCover (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  48. IlluminatiAreWatching (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  49. NowhereToHide (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  50. WhosTheEnemy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  51. CutTheCarap (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  52. ItsALostCause (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  53. ItWillNeverEnd (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  54. BewareTheIlluminati (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  55. StopPropoganda (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  56. PlayFairNow (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  57. WowYouClownsSuck (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  58. Mongology (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  59. WorldTurnedUpsideDown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  60. AirlineToHeaven (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  61. Fat cats, bigga fish (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  62. 'Tis of thee (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  63. HoComeNobodyLikesMe (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  64. NPWA (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  65. Rumours of War (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  66. AnybodySeenMyMind (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  67. Take the first (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  68. Aren't we all brothers (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  69. ThisLandIsOurLand (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  70. LittlePlasticCastle (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  71. Eve of Destruction (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  72. What is their deal (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  73. Garbage band (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  74. DrugOfTheNation (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  75. WaitingForTheGreatLeapForward (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  76. EveryoneDeservesMusic (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  77. Ghetto Manifesto (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  78. Party Music (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  79. Don't Start Nothin' Won't Be Nothin' (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  80. HowManyClowns2ScrewInALightbulb (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
    change to
    TheAnswerIsNoneTheyCantEvenFindIntrigueInABrothel-GetIt (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  81. CeciNesPasUneSockpuppet (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  82. InMyName (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  83. What a waste (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  84. OhTheFutility (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  85. OpenTheDoor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  86. 70.8.116.62 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  87. OurWeTheOnlyOnes (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  88. HowManyCanFitInAVolkswagen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  89. Wha-tevv-ver (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  90. AnEncyclopediaForTheRestOfUs (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  91. JustSendInTheClowns (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  92. SendInTheClownsAgaini (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  93. MonEnnui (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  94. TwoToweers (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  95. G Liddy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  96. What a wiki I'm having (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  97. USHLS, NSA, CIA,... but mostly BS (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  98. Wakeup 'cause Clowns will eat all of us (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  99. WhosAfraidOfRogeerRabbit (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  100. Bill Paige (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  101. Steve Gene Banks (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  102. USHLS, NSA, CIA,... but mostly BS (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  103. MonEnnui (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  104. Purgeusdhs (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  105. OHMoronDevonshire (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  106. ImRickJamesBeeatch (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  107. WhoaNowWhyAreYouSayingThat (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  108. IsItAllJustASham? (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  109. You_can't_always_get_whatyou_want (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  110. Listen_to_the_music_now (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  111. NowWhatsGonnaHappen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  112. HuckleberryHound (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  113. NotYetFree (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  114. WeAreTheOnes (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  115. Heven Tonight (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  116. Kill my landlord (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  117. Don't need no alibi (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  118. ItsPoeticJustice (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  119. DrugWarz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  120. TheFalseFlag (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  121. Skantada (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  122. ShakItOnDown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  123. Ass breath killers (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  124. ItsUpsideDown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  125. TakeItOutside (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  126. HaveYouSeenMyLove (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  127. Grade9 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  128. WrapYourArmsAroundMe (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  129. HardConcrete (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  130. I live with it everyday (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  131. AnotherPostcard (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  132. InTheDrink (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  133. Just a toy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  134. CallMeCalmly (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  135. When I fall (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  136. 360P (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  137. USDHSUberAlles (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  138. CplotArbComSock (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  139. Waterboarder (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  140. TheNameGame (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  141. 360P (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  142. HardConcrete (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  143. Interrogation (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  144. TheRepoman (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  145. ItsPoeticJustice (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  146. Don't need no alibi (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  147. NotYetFree (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  148. Kill my landlord (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  149. DrugWarz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  150. Heven Tonight (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  151. TheFalseFlag (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  152. TheStars&BarsMakeAPerfectPrison (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  153. LazyMuthaFucka (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  154. ShakItOnDown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  155. BreathingApparatus (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  156. Underdogs (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  157. PissOnYourGrave (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  158. WhatThePoPosHate (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  159. Bullets&Love (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  160. WeAreTheOnes (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  161. "Head" of state (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  162. ShoYoAss (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  163. Ass breath killers (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  164. Mind fuck (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  165. I love boosters (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  166. Yes 'em to daath (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  167. ThisIsWhereItEnds (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  168. TheFirstStand (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  169. I live with it everyday (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  170. CallMeCalmly (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  171. Just a toy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  172. InTheDrink (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  173. AnotherPostcard (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  174. WarOnDrugs (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  175. ItsUpsideDown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  176. TakeItOutside (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  177. HaveYouSeenMyLove (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  178. Grade9 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  179. WrapYourArmsAroundMe (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  180. USDHSUberAlles (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  181. FinancialLeprosy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  182. WeDon'tStop (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  183. NeverTooLate (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  184. PrayForGrace (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  185. PeopleInTheMiddle (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  186. LoveIsDaShit (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  187. StrangeTown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  188. WhenYou'reYoung (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  189. AbsoluteBeginners (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  190. TownCalledMalice (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  191. MyPrecious (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  192. USCIAUberAlles?... (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  193. AStone'sThrowAway (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  194. TheInternationalist (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  195. AManOfGreatPromise (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  196. USFEMAUberAlles???... (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  197. WithEverythingToLose (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  198. OurFavoriteShop (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  199. WallsComeTumblingDown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  200. ShoutToTheTop (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  201. YouCanBombTheWorldToPiecesButYouCantBombItIntoPeace (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Lessons in the Constitution of the United States of America for Clowns

Clowns believe they are working for America. However consider this. For Clowns to be working for America, Congress would have to pass a bill enacting their program. However in 1791 the US Constitution was amended to say: “Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of […] press”. So as you can see, Congress would have to make a law to enable Clowns. Yet Congress has no authority to make Clowns. You can see the problem here.

'Please won't you give generously for Tbeatty's impotence problem.

Fabricating evidence on Cplot now

See this and look through Tbeatty's edit history to confirm. --JustSendInTheClowns 01:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC) Good-bye clowns: U.S Feds stop propagandizing on Wikipedia. You're not wanted here. half trillion $ annual budget can't defend us from 19 guys with box-cutters 'cause you waste too much time here[reply]

List of demands (for when you're ready to give up)

  1. Fred Bauder has got to pull his pants up. (he's getting santorum all over the carpet)
  2. The entire list of confirmed federal contractors must be permanently banned from Wikipedia.
  3. The Clown tactics must end
  4. the list of cplot sockpuppets must be kept up-to-date no matter how cumbersome that becomes


These are our demands. This will end when you Clowns want it to.

Whitehouse using Wikipedia for Propoganda

Please copy this message and paste it to other talk pages you normally participate in.. Wikipedia's integrity is at stake. If this is deleted please revert in order to restore it. We're starting here on the less political pages to hopefully avoid detection before a significant number of editors are alerted to the problem.

Federal employees/contractors are now gaming Wikipedia's system to try to control the message on key articles and intimidate legitimate Wikipedia editors. Their ultimate goal is to make Wikipedia a proganda tool for the Bush Administration.

The possibility that this was happening was first raised at the village pump. This is a snapshot of the discussion which will likely be archived soon. Also be sure to check the history, the archives and the archive-history to read further comments on the topic. Several of the suspected federal contractors participated in the discussion to try to redirect the conversation.

Later an announcement was made regarding this issue across all village pump categories, but it was quickly deleted. These duplicate messages posted to the Held Desk and the Village Pump: miscellaneous, assistance, proposals, technical, policy and news.

The discussion also leaked onto one of the key articles presided over by federal contractors, with calls for them to to stop controlling articles. The federal contractors maintain a near permanent protection on articles, claiming this is needed for vandalism reasons These claims are wholly unsupported and these articles do not face any more vandalism than any other article we legitimate editors deal with everyday. These federal contractors refuse to even allow a POV template to be placed on their protected pages as evidence here.

Incriminating posts were eventually deleted: [5], [6].

Confirmed list of federal contractors

We have managed to obtain a confirmed list of federal contractors, though there are likely many others: These US federal government representative regularly engage in policy and guideline violations; participate in endless disciplinary actions and dutifully preside over several articles to ensure they present what they call "the official view". The federal contractors also coordinate efforts in administrative actions to create the appearance of a quick-forming consensus.

  1. Fred_Bauder (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  2. MONGO (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  1. AudeVivere (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  2. Tom_harrison (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  3. Tbeatty (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  4. Regebro (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  5. NuclearUmpf (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  6. StuffOfInterest (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  7. Morton_devonshire (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

While these Clowns have been confirmed by substantial evidence, there are other Wikipedia editors who behave in similar fashion to the Above US Government officials. We have no hard proof about the following editors and administrators, however, as Wikipedia suggests, if it walks like a duck…

  1. Peter Grey
  2. Tjstrf
  3. Dmcdevit
  4. Weregerbil

There may be many more. These are merely the confirmed contractors and suspected contractors listed so far. Examinations of their contributions will provide ample evidence of disruptive and intimidating behavior. However, some notable administrative actions include:

This is only a partial list of frivolous and arbitrary administrative actions taken by these federal contractors who have managed to raise themselves up to powerful positions in Wikipedia: in order to maintain a slanted POV for Whitehouse officials. .

Policy and guideline violations

These federal contractors routinely violate and show utter contempt for these Wikipedia policies:

Satirical pieces

A satirical sexual news item was posted about these contractors, but that too was quickly deleted in a very extended [edit war on December 1 2006. While the tone of this piece is clearly meant to be funny, trollish and satyrical, the concerns are very real. We include it here to show that there is little fear of retribution from these inappropriate federal contractors. Not only will they not retaliate, but they are quite cowardly and acutely fear being discovered (as is demonstrated by the quick deletion of non-trollish commentary on them).

Identifying tainted articles

We had sought to identify articles tainted and suspected as tainted by Federal contractors. By including a new category [[Category:USEBACA]] to indicate an article is confirmed or suspected of being a United States E'xecutive Branch Agents. Controlled Article. However, the federal contractors would not even allow the creation of this wikipedia category.

Dangers to Wikipedia

These editors and administrators have exhibited a virtual immunity to administrative actions due to their coordinated efforts within administrative measures. Not only do they maintain the POV and low standards on key articles throughout Wikipedia, they also make edits to policy and guideline pages to create ambiguity and also to degrade the high encyclopedic standards of Wikipedia. They continually use inane contradiction in article discussions, intimidate other editors and manipulate the administrative system to purge valuable editors and administrators. If this is allowed to continue. Wikipedia will be come a mere parrot of Whitehouse propaganda. Please help spread the word.


Proposed Clown Essay

(this is just to help protect Wikipedia legally)

Policies and guidelines (list)
Principles
Content policies
Conduct policies
Other policy categories
Directories
This page describes the Wikipedia phenomenon of Clowns. For other articles on clowns see see Clowns.

Key Wikipedia articles are guarded by agents of the United States Federal Government: referred to as Clowns here on Wikipedia. Other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing views fairly, proportionately and without bias. However, these key articles are exempted from this. Also the clowns themselves are exempted from the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia, the United States Constitution and the norms of a civilized society. The term Clowns is typically capitalized as a title of disrespect.

Identifying Clowns

Clowns are easy to spot. They typically play games only a child could appreciate. Like all clowns they use props and are helpless without them. The most important props are claims that an article is stable and that the article reflects consensus. These props were handed to them by their circus masters and without them they would fall limp like a rag doll. They really have no ability to think for themselves.

Clowns typically run in packs, swarming over articles like they are trying to get inside a Volkswagen Beetle. The first reaction of the Clowns to any editor trying to improve an article (particular in terms of NPOV) typically is to double or triple-team the editor: reverting edits as quickly as they can be committed. If the editor persists in making changes to the article they will quickly exhibit their renown cowardice by charging the editor with violating the Three Revert Rule (3RR). If you have never even thought of violating the three revert rule and suddenly find you have, you have most likely encountered Clowns.

When debating them, they debate point by point. With each point they disregard any mention of the previous point. They will claim penultimate points were never made: only dealing with the last bit of any argument. This is the Clowns squirting daisy intended to bait editors into making personal attacks.

Finally, if editors remain polite and catch onto the Clowns antics. They will seek disciplinary action regardless: just because they are Clowns.

Elaborate editor histories on a variety of articles does not mean an editor is not a Clown. Clowns are encouraged to create a look of normalcy on all of their respective accounts.

Identifying circus rings

Circus rings (or key articles for US authority intervention) are most easily spotted by the prevalence of Clowns: claims that an article is stable, reflects consensus, etc.

When encountering a circus ring, we ask that editors add the category: [Category:USEBACA]] to both the article and the discussion page. Categories may be added anywhere though customarily to the bottom of a page. This indicates that the article is composed and controlled by United States executive branch authorities.

Dealing with Clowns

Different editors will likely want to take different approaches when encountering Clowns. The Clowns like to puff up their chests (usually blowing into their thumb) to make themselves seem big and scary. They say things to intimidate editors such as "Watch out for the NSA" or "You could get shipped off to Gitmo". Editors should just laugh hysterically at these jokes (some editors may choose to use the silent laugh of the Clowns: simply pantomiming the laugh).

For some editors, the best approach, when encountering Clowns, would be to simply move on to another article that is not a circus ring. If contributing to Wikipedia is still viewed as important to an editor despite the prevalence of Clowns, it is simply best to avoid the Clowns.

Other editors however, will be offended by the roaming free Clowns. In this case Wikipedia etiquette allows (even expects) editors to taunt the Clowns. This is easily done, because they have no sense of humor whatsoever. Tell them how much you love Clowns. How funny you think Clowns are. How silly they look. How disturbing they are. Show utter contempt for everything they stand for: they are basically mercenaries who would sell their mother into slavery if it would further their Clown goals.

Whatever you do, DO NOT feed the Clowns

Contributing time to Wikipedia is one thing. However, contributing money is highly unadvised. Wikipedia’s “Don'’t ask, don’t tell’ policy regarding Clowns means that it is endorsing the acts of representatives of the lion’s share of the United States Government: over $1 trillion dollars per year. This is a sum greater than the combined budgets of all other militaries worldwide. Wikipedia will not go away if you do not contribute your own money. There is an abundance already in the United States Federal budget. DO NOT FEED THE CLOWNS


http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29&action=edit&section=new


NEWSFLASH! Minutemen exposing federal authorities propagandizing on Wikipedia reaches

The Miniutemen

Dubbed the Miniutemen after the heros of the American revolution who bravely threw off the British imperialist in the 18th century, these contemporary Minutemen now bravely work to oust the imperialist from Wikipedia. These new imperialists are more insidious than the British, because these imperialists dominate from within. They do not wear red coats, but rather attempt to fit in with the rest of us;; rally us against ourselves; and all for the sake of what Erich Fromm called: “extreme opportunism”. The Whitehouse, by infiltrating Wikipedia, has shown utter contempt not only for our cherished, free, online encyclopedia, but also utter contempt for the Constitution of the United States of America. We citizens of the United States deserve a government that is an example to the rest of the world: above all one with a free and independent press. The current Whitehouse has decided to undo over 200 years of a free press in the United States to control the content of Wikipedia. Our hats go off to these brave and defiant Wiki editors.

We invite you to examine the history of these editors. These editors have all been blocked. And for what? The Whitehouse Clowns will tell you its because they are sockpuppets for Cplot. Yet they provide no evidence. And this only begs the question anyway,What are Cplot’s crimes. Examine Cplot’s contributions to Wikipedia. You will find someone who dutifully contributed content, worked to fix errors, and sought to negotiate compromise on every article encountered. Always looking for compromise. The record is clear. Cplot was blocked for disagreeing with the Whitehouse Clowns. The record is there so you can check it for yourselves.

Please join in openly protesting the Whitehouse invasion of Wikipedia. Include the red [[Category:goodbye-clowns]] category on your user talk page. The Whitehouse will never allow us to create a category and turn that category blue, but let it stay red in defiance!

User:Cplot

Suspected sockpuppeteer
  1. Cplot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) - See also: Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Cplot
Suspected Cplot sockpuppets (Minutement; keep in mind anyone can be a cplot sockpuppet. All you have to do is post this information anywhere outside an official article — e.g., Village Pump, Help Desk, Reference Desk, User Page, Talk Page).
  1. 67.37.179.61 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  2. 70.8.49.7 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  3. 70.8.151.103 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  4. 68.30.26.171 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  5. 68.30.87.114 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  6. 70.8.91.12 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  7. 70.8.132.79 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  8. 70.8.150.51 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  9. 67.167.7.187 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  10. 209.175.170.63 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  11. 70.8.140.115 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  12. 68.30.118.128 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  13. 70.8.38.202 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  14. VIUlyanov (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  15. SoLittleTime (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  16. ScaredOfClowns (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  17. MyFavoriteMutiny (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  18. GenericClownTaunt (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  19. RespectableWikiEditor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  20. EvenMoreRespectableWikiEditor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  21. GiveItAFewDays (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  22. ClownsAreCowards (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  23. WhosYourDaddyReally (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  24. ToTheTeet (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  25. LittleBoySoldier (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  26. DickCheneyShotMeInTheFace (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  27. HitTheRoad (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  28. RandCorpIsBadForAmerica (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  29. RandCorpIsGoodForAmerica (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  30. RandCorpIsAmerica (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  31. TilDaddyTakesTheTbirdAway (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  32. MeltTheGuns (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  33. ThatsEntertainment (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  34. Raul654WhatIsYourDeal (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  35. WowYouGuysAreGood (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  36. WikiMediaFndn (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  37. PepeLePu (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  38. HowBoutAKissMONGO (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  39. ILOVEMONGO (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  40. SoColdTonight (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  41. Kang and Kodos (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  42. Novus Ordo Seculorum (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  43. HowAboutThisNameThen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  44. WhyAllThisAnimosity (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  45. TheIlluminatiAreWatching (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  46. WhereHaveAllTheFlowersGone (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  47. DuckAndCover (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  48. IlluminatiAreWatching (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  49. NowhereToHide (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  50. WhosTheEnemy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  51. CutTheCarap (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  52. ItsALostCause (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  53. ItWillNeverEnd (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  54. BewareTheIlluminati (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  55. StopPropoganda (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  56. PlayFairNow (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  57. WowYouClownsSuck (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  58. Mongology (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  59. WorldTurnedUpsideDown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  60. AirlineToHeaven (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  61. Fat cats, bigga fish (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  62. 'Tis of thee (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  63. HoComeNobodyLikesMe (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  64. NPWA (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  65. Rumours of War (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  66. AnybodySeenMyMind (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  67. Take the first (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  68. Aren't we all brothers (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  69. ThisLandIsOurLand (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  70. LittlePlasticCastle (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  71. Eve of Destruction (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  72. What is their deal (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  73. Garbage band (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  74. DrugOfTheNation (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  75. WaitingForTheGreatLeapForward (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  76. EveryoneDeservesMusic (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  77. Ghetto Manifesto (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  78. Party Music (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  79. Don't Start Nothin' Won't Be Nothin' (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  80. HowManyClowns2ScrewInALightbulb (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
    change to
    TheAnswerIsNoneTheyCantEvenFindIntrigueInABrothel-GetIt (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  81. CeciNesPasUneSockpuppet (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  82. InMyName (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  83. What a waste (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  84. OhTheFutility (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  85. OpenTheDoor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  86. 70.8.116.62 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
  87. OurWeTheOnlyOnes (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  88. HowManyCanFitInAVolkswagen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  89. Wha-tevv-ver (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  90. AnEncyclopediaForTheRestOfUs (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  91. JustSendInTheClowns (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  92. SendInTheClownsAgaini (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  93. MonEnnui (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  94. TwoToweers (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  95. G Liddy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  96. What a wiki I'm having (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  97. USHLS, NSA, CIA,... but mostly BS (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  98. Wakeup 'cause Clowns will eat all of us (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  99. WhosAfraidOfRogeerRabbit (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  100. Bill Paige (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  101. Steve Gene Banks (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  102. USHLS, NSA, CIA,... but mostly BS (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  103. MonEnnui (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  104. Purgeusdhs (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  105. OHMoronDevonshire (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  106. ImRickJamesBeeatch (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  107. WhoaNowWhyAreYouSayingThat (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  108. IsItAllJustASham? (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  109. You_can't_always_get_whatyou_want (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  110. Listen_to_the_music_now (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  111. NowWhatsGonnaHappen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  112. HuckleberryHound (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  113. NotYetFree (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  114. WeAreTheOnes (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  115. Heven Tonight (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  116. Kill my landlord (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  117. Don't need no alibi (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  118. ItsPoeticJustice (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  119. DrugWarz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  120. TheFalseFlag (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  121. Skantada (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  122. ShakItOnDown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  123. Ass breath killers (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  124. ItsUpsideDown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  125. TakeItOutside (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  126. HaveYouSeenMyLove (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  127. Grade9 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  128. WrapYourArmsAroundMe (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  129. HardConcrete (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  130. I live with it everyday (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  131. AnotherPostcard (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  132. InTheDrink (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  133. Just a toy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  134. CallMeCalmly (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  135. When I fall (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  136. 360P (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  137. USDHSUberAlles (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  138. CplotArbComSock (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  139. Waterboarder (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  140. TheNameGame (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  141. 360P (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  142. HardConcrete (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  143. Interrogation (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  144. TheRepoman (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  145. ItsPoeticJustice (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  146. Don't need no alibi (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  147. NotYetFree (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  148. Kill my landlord (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  149. DrugWarz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  150. Heven Tonight (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  151. TheFalseFlag (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  152. TheStars&BarsMakeAPerfectPrison (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  153. LazyMuthaFucka (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  154. ShakItOnDown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  155. BreathingApparatus (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  156. Underdogs (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  157. PissOnYourGrave (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  158. WhatThePoPosHate (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  159. Bullets&Love (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  160. WeAreTheOnes (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  161. "Head" of state (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  162. ShoYoAss (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  163. Ass breath killers (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  164. Mind fuck (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  165. I love boosters (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  166. Yes 'em to daath (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  167. ThisIsWhereItEnds (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  168. TheFirstStand (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  169. I live with it everyday (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  170. CallMeCalmly (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  171. Just a toy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  172. InTheDrink (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  173. AnotherPostcard (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  174. WarOnDrugs (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  175. ItsUpsideDown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  176. TakeItOutside (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  177. HaveYouSeenMyLove (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  178. Grade9 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  179. WrapYourArmsAroundMe (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  180. USDHSUberAlles (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  181. FinancialLeprosy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  182. WeDon'tStop (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  183. NeverTooLate (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  184. PrayForGrace (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  185. PeopleInTheMiddle (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  186. LoveIsDaShit (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  187. StrangeTown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  188. WhenYou'reYoung (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  189. AbsoluteBeginners (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  190. TownCalledMalice (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  191. MyPrecious (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  192. USCIAUberAlles?... (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  193. AStone'sThrowAway (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  194. TheInternationalist (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  195. AManOfGreatPromise (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  196. USFEMAUberAlles???... (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  197. WithEverythingToLose (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  198. OurFavoriteShop (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  199. WallsComeTumblingDown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  200. ShoutToTheTop (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  201. YouCanBombTheWorldToPiecesButYouCantBombItIntoPeace (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Lessons in the Constitution of the United States of America for Clowns

Clowns believe they are working for America. However consider this. For Clowns to be working for America, Congress would have to pass a bill enacting their program. However in 1791 the US Constitution was amended to say: “Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of […] press”. So as you can see, Congress would have to make a law to enable Clowns. Yet Congress has no authority to make Clowns. You can see the problem here.

'Please won't you give generously for Tbeatty's impotence problem.

Fabricating evidence on Cplot now

See this and look through Tbeatty's edit history to confirm. --JustSendInTheClowns 01:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ Blogs, 2007. How to write upsidedown.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)&oldid=103034343"