Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

[[:|WP:VPR]]

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

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

Before posting your proposal:

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

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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]

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]

Which looks like:

File:Bitag medical icon.gifMedical Disclaimer

Wikipedia (including its related projects and mirrors) is Not Intended to Give Medical Advice. 
The contents of articles on medical conditions, treatments and devices, (including text, graphics, and other material) are for informational purposes only, and may not have been reviewed by competent Health Care Professionals. 

This article is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding any medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of Content found on Wikipedia. 

If you have a medical emergency, call your physician or Emergency Response System (eg. 911) immediately. Wikipedia does not recommend or endorse any specific third-party tests, physicians, products, procedures, opinions, or other information found in its articles. Reliance on any information provided by Wikipedia, is solely at your own risk.

The replies I got at templates proposals were:

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

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

WP:NDT. >Radiant< 15:57, 22 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]

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

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

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

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

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

Salted pages

[moved from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard]

It's been proposed that we replace all of our "salted" articles (currently tagged with Template:Deletedpage) with redirects to a page in the project namespace containing similar text (thereby removing salted article pages from the random article pool and total article count). I believe that this would be an improvement, but the main disadvantage would be that users would no longer be able to view useful links unique to the individual pages.

Now that cascading protection has been enabled, it's finally possible to protect a nonexistent page (simply by transcluding it onto a page with cascading protection directly applied, thereby causing it to appear as a red link). I propose that we switch to a system in which a series of project pages (perhaps one for each month) is created and used for this purpose.

I've created a demonstration template and added a couple of transclusions to a demonstration page. The syntax is as follows: {{protected title|page title|optional reason}}
For non-articles, the namespace should be omitted from the page title and appended as the conditional "ns" parameter (ns=[namespace]). To omit the talk page link (handy if it's a likely vandalism target and there's no realistic legitimate use for the page name), append the following parameter: talk=no

I've tweaked some MediaWiki code to display a {{deletedpage}}-style notice (along with advice to check for additional information on the page to which cascading protection has been directly applied) when a non-sysop attempts to edit (or follows a red link to) a nonexistent page with cascading protection applied. If a non-sysop merely attempts to view such a page, he/she sees the standard "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name..." message (which could be modified to reference instances in which "view source" is displayed instead of "edit this page"). Clicking on "view source" displays the aforementioned {{deletedpage}}-style notice and accompanying link/advice.

A bot could be used to convert all of the salted pages to this format (automatically sorting the titles chronologically—likely based on the pre-existing list—and inserting the most recent edit summary as the reason).

Opinions? —David Levy 06:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a very intelligent solution--and certainly we've all agreed for some time that the holy grail would be some way to protect articles in a genuinely deleted state. The only problem I can see is that it will have the same effect if a non-existent page is (for whatever reason) transcluded on to some other page with cascading protection, but perhaps that doesn't matter (it seems like it would be rare). It would also require admins to change their behavior in a more drastic way, which is also always a challenge. :) Chick Bowen 06:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've given this some thought, and I've been unable to come up with another situation in which we'd want to transclude a nonexistent page on a page with cascading protection enabled. —David Levy 17:30, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Typo on mainpage links? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, yeah--it would be from a screwup of some sort. If a template were deleted and the admin forgot to check whatlinkshere, it might appear to another editor that it had been protected against creation. As I say, though, not a big deal. Chick Bowen 18:03, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, okay. I misunderstood your comment to mean that we might actually want to do this for some reason. —David Levy 18:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a way to make the "This page has been deleted and protected to prevent re-creation" message not show if the cascading protection is only semi-protection? That would make eliminate the likeliest circumstances. Chick Bowen 18:15, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised to learn that cascading semi-protection is possible, as this enables anyone with a non-new account to semi-protect pages. That's a far worse problem than the display of that message (which would require developer intervention to change) and I don't believe that cascading semi-protection should ever be applied for any reason. In my opinion, it should be formally prohibited via the protection policy. —David Levy 18:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for noting this. In fact, when semi-protection cascades it becomes full, so the problem is even worse. I've filed bugzilla:8796 about it. Superm401 - Talk 20:19, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yikes, I didn't realize that! I'm going to go ahead and add an explicit prohibition to the protection policy. —David Levy 22:04, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's a really good idea. —Centrx→talk • 17:45, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am not really against it. So, instead of adding the {{deletedpage}} or {{spambot}} templates to the pages, we would include the page in a list. Gives us better control than just a category for sure. -- ReyBrujo 17:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a great idea, but when someone attempts to edit a non-existing, cascading-protected page, I think as well as the message you added, there should also be an empty, disabled text box on there, to make it clear that they are on the edit tab, there is no text on the page and to keep with convention, e.g. with non-existent MediaWiki: pages. Also, the 'edit this page' tab should be replaced with 'view source'. Other than that, yes, this is a great idea. Tra (Talk) 19:00, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

~~There is a "view source" tab instead of an "edit this page" tab.~~ I don't believe that a disabled text box would be of any benefit, and I also see no means of adding one. (We're working within the confines of MediaWiki:Cascadeprotected.) —David Levy 19:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you go to this page (from one of your examples), the title of the page says 'View source' but the tab at the top says 'edit this page'. However, yes, I can see now, you didn't edit any code, you just customised MediaWiki:Cascadeprotected so unless it allows raw HTML, I agree a text box wouldn't be possible. Tra (Talk) 22:29, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see. I'd only viewed the page while logged out (which results in a "view source" tab). —David Levy 22:36, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, wow. This is brilliant. -- Steel 19:06, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I really like this idea. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 20:17, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If this is what I think it is, Wikinews has been doing it for ages with noxiously recreated pages, see n:Wikinews:Protected deletions. 68.39.174.238 22:54, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They're using protected redirects to a project page. (The pages aren't actually in a deleted state.) As noted above, this is something that we've considered doing. —David Levy 01:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I dislike that idea. It decouples the protection from the page, which means that, for instance, the protection will not be recorded in the page's history or logs. It would be a better solution to change the code to allow nonexistent pages to be protected (if it displays a special message in that case, we could simply change it to be identical to the current {{deletedpage}} template). --cesarb 21:57, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The page must be re-deleted before it can be protected. If the sysop includes a comment along the lines of "salting page," why would this (combined with a clear recording in the history of a specific project page) be insufficient?

Yes, a function created specifically for this purpose would be preferable, but that isn't available (and it isn't as though we haven't asked the developers to add it). Until it is, we have to choose one of the available methods. —David Levy 22:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That would, assuming the admins specifically say so when deleting (which I doubt; the delete reason is to write the reason for deleting, not what you are going to do next), only record when the page is protected, but not when it's unprotected.

I know it might not be easy to create a function like I described (in particular, it's quite probable that either the database layout would have to be changed or a "phantom" row would have to be used... which would be quite similar to what's currently done with {{deletedpage}}). But it's the right way to fix the real problem, which is that we have a page at the article namespace which should not be counted as an article (the same happens with things like the Main Page and redirects; in fact, something similar to what is done with redirects could be a reasonably elegant solution). --cesarb 23:16, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1. The designated project page would contain a record of both the protection and the unprotection.

2. Again, the fact that it it may be possible to implement a better solution in the future doesn't change the fact that we need to implement something now. We currently have no perfect option, but I believe that the use of unorthodox bookkeeping is an exceedingly minor issue compared to the problems inherent in the available alternatives. —David Levy 23:50, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pending the implementation of a feature to protect nonexistent pages, using cascading protection to create protected redlinks seems like a good idea to me. As for the 'this page has been deleted, and protected to prevent recreation' message, it would be possible to prevent confusion in any other cascaded-redlink case by changing it to something like 'this page has been protected against creation' (which is much the same thing, but slightly more general). --ais523 15:35, 29 January 2007 (U T C)

The one time I landed on a delete-protected page via Special:Random is enough to make me love this proposal, barring future improvements to directly protect non-existent pages. Flyingtoaster1337 02:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent excellent idea. Take a look at Reality. (while logged out if you are an admin) to see this in action. Prodego ^talk 02:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And the final step would be a bot run with admin rights that deletes {{deletedarticle}} and adds the article name transcluded to Wikipedia:Protected titles. Guy (Help!) 14:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. I counted about 1200 transclusions. So next step is to start another bot RfA, say "no, it's not open source" and wait if Werdna comes up with a MediaWiki solution :-) (I'm just kidding, please forgive me). Other options would be to employ a horde of admins with AWB or just ignore the current transclusions and use the new system for new salted pages only. --Ligulem 16:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We should simply run the bot under the owner's sysop account. —David Levy 16:55, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In that case one such bot comes to mind. Flyingtoaster1337 17:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Minor quibble... the deleted title message currently says, "Specific information may be found by... contacting the administrator who protected the page." Since the logs for the page itself may not list any protections, I suggest that "who protected the page" be changed to "who deleted the page". Flyingtoaster1337 16:30, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch! Fixed. :-) —David Levy 16:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I thought the above would be the last "minor quibble" I had but there's another... I notice you removed the link to Special:Undelete. However, if the page has ever been deleted even once there'll be no easy access to deleted versions. For that reason I think the link is worth retaining. (Perhaps change "view the page history and content" to "view any deleted page history and content" so the sentence is ambiguous on whether the page has been deleted before.) Flyingtoaster1337 17:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I removed that line because the message isn't visible to sysops (who are presented with such a link in the text that they see). —David Levy 17:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Activity log link is borked for pages with spaces in the titles but thta is a minor quibble :-) Guy (Help!) 17:50, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Minor indeed. The parameter that gets put into the link just needs to be {{urlencode}}d. Flyingtoaster1337 18:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't aware of this when I created the template (which is why I included a conditional parameter for the page title with underscores in lieu of spaces). I'm working on a better version now. —David Levy 18:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've reworked the template accordingly. The underscored title parameter has been eliminated and the optional reason parameter has been shifted to the second position (which is more intuitive). Thank you, Flyingtoaster1337! —David Levy 19:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Go vote for Bugzilla:2919. I left a pointer there to this discussion here and noted David's cascade protection trick. --Ligulem 17:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in the planning stages a real delete-protect feature, possibly being smarter, and allowing a "title blacklist" that prevents non-admins from creating a page with titles matching a regex, or moving to illegal titles. I'll probably do this after per-page blocking. — Werdna talk 05:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Werdna, you are a god among men. Thanks. Philwelch 05:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Which should stop those spambots creating Talk:Foo/w/w/wiki/index.php/Asdf/index.php style pages once and for all. Yay! Flyingtoaster1337 09:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Are we ready to make the cascading protection-based deletedpages system official? It probably will make it easier to migrate to Werdna's system once that gets rolled out. Neither system needs any boilerplate text in place at the deleted title. IMO, if we delete the {{deletedpage}}s now there won't be any left when we switch to the blacklist system. Flyingtoaster1337 09:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm putting new ones in there and when I find the salt on a vandal magnet deleted I'm adding that as well. Guy (Help!) 10:21, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
They've been doing it on wiktionary, but it there a blacklist page on wikipedia and are page blacklisted permanantly or is there a process to get these page out if their if a legitimate editon is released? BuickCenturyDriver 11:49, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WP:DRV is the process to use if you want to have an article at any of the blacklisted titles. Tra (Talk) 15:21, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Permit personal attacks...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Older"/"Newer" navigation for watchlist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wikipedia Article Podcasts

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

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

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

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

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

part of a spam solution

Articles currently under AFD should temporarily be added to robots.txt to stop them google from giving pigeonrank to their subjects, for the duration of the AFD. A lot of spam is caught quickly, before it is indexed by google, and this will mean that it won't get indexed at all, if it does get deleted. Less candy for spammers. If the article survives AFD, then it comes out of robots.txt and it gets treated normally. It would also be a good idea to temporarily remove the article from the default content-dump, so that answers.com and other mirrors don't grab it, or at least incorporate a flag that stops them from using the content automatically unless they specifically choose to disable such flags. That's getting a little esoteric for me but I trust that others reading this will get the gist of what I'm saying. This should all apply to other content besides articles too; I've seen spam inserted in templates in what appears to be an attempt to escape detection. This proposal would make up one part of a zero tolerance policy. — coelacan talk — 04:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

so what happens when good articles get frivolous AfDs to keep them off the ranking index and content feeds? Also, AfD is currently entirely human based; this would require implementing a significant software change. Further, Zero Tolerance is antithetical to wikipedia's principle of WP:AGF. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good articles would merely not be indexed during the AFD. Unless I misunderstand robots.txt, doesn't it just stop google from making a new copy? So google would still have its older index. AFDs only last five days, google probably doesn't touch every article that often anyway. I don't think this would be a significant software change; I don't know but it doesn't seem like it would be a big deal. It would be invisible to humans anyway. We know for a fact that spammers are using Wikipedia to drive up their ranking, zero tolerance against them is not a violation of AGF. This will have no effect whatsoever on good new articles; anything that passes AFD gets removed from robots.txt and starts getting indexed. So at worst it only amounts to a five day delay before the first indexing, for new articles that are nominated for AFD promptly (this doesn't happen to most good new articles anyway). I see no negative side effects to this, but it would impede the results for spammers and thus reduce their incentive to spam here. — coelacan talk — 06:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

English translation of Italian tv show Don Matteo

I'd like to suggest an English language translation of the Italian television show 'Don Matteo': http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Matteo

As it's just started a run on Australian tv (SBS) this might be of interest to readers. --Robert Fraser 06:39, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Robert. This request would probably be better placed at Wikipedia:Translation/*/Lang/it, specifically set up for translation requests of Italian Wikipedia articles into English.--Fuhghettaboutit 12:07, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

ddafd

thank you

Jeremyp1988 17:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)jeremyp1988[reply]

two proposals: use of wikipedia materials as course material for universities or schools, listing of most visited(say 10) pages on the front page of wikipedia

it would be a good idea to advertise the use of material from wikipedia for schools or universities. I know that such an activity is active for school children, however i dont know of anything similar of higher education. a lot of colleges/university professors, write there own notes, which are then given out to university people, much like mit ocw. so you might have a project where you have various courses which are provided for in the universities. these course materials would be edited only by professors or people of good knowledge of their subject, so that it can be used for course work. it would be very useful for people from backward nations, where there are not enough educated professors, or good professors. also since most universities teaching the same level course have a similar syllabus, it would standardize the courses over the world, so that people in backward nations are at par with the information available to that available to better off countries.

a second proposal would be to have a list of the most accessed topics(say 10) on the front page of wikipedia. this would be mainly for information purposes to the casual visitor. i saw that a proposal for a similar thing might lead to vandalism. however since you are listing the most visited pages not the least visited pages, it shouldnt cause any problem

Most schools do not accept Wikipedia as a reliable source, and rightfully so, since anyone can edit and throw in misinformation. There are statistics listed at Special:Statistics, especially under "Other statistics" that you might find useful. I don't like the term "backward nations" either. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 13:15, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I cant understand why most wouldn't accept a possibly wrong information source, but what I proposed was a expert written text, not something which will be readily edited by every body. so you can have a list of ips of reknowned educational institutes, whose people would be allowed to edit topics. undoubtedly you can never prevent vandalism,(even if you some way to ensure that it is a professor who edits a particular article, his id can also be stolen) but it is definitly a good way to increase the accurate ness of articles which are most necessary for learning. as a student i have seen, almost all of my batchmates using wikipedia for information, it would really be helpful for a lot of people to have a better information source.

also if you look at the number of science or humanities topics that are being accessed by people you will realise that most of them would be from college going students

Yes, it is certainly a good place to start—to get an idea of a topic. However, textbooks and academic journals are more appropriate resources in an academic setting such as a university. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 13:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

what i am saying is to have a mit, ocw version of wikipedia, only that it would contain a much wider variety, of content but related to academics. OCW is a quite a good concept, and the purpose of that is very similar. But the problem is that various universities, (like a stanford ocw, a beijing university ocw etc) have there own versions of ocw, why cant there be a single repository of information. I am not talking of academic journals, anyway if you are doing research academic journals are the best way to go, they are peer reviewed, and you will definitely have a better source of information.

We already have Wikibooks to write textbooks and Wikiversity to do academic stuff like research and writing teaching materials. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:20, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note that many of our "most visited" pages relate to sex. Listing that on the front page is not likely to fly well with schools. >Radiant< 12:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

change the format of this page

i dont understand why the format of this page is like this.

a new topic should always come first. if a new topic is listed at the bottom most people will never read it. why not make it the way it happens in most forums. there is a reason why it is like that in forums. a hotly debated topic will always remain on the top, while a subject in which nobody is interested anyway, will always go down. however every article has an equal chance of being visited by people. if it happens that people become so engrossed in discussing a few topics, they might easily miss any new proposals that come up.

Most people reading this page go to the bottom for the most recent comments. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 13:16, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

i fully understand that, it must be have become a habit for people who have been here longer. but for people who are new, this is the most logical and intuitive way, to have the most recent post at the top, not at the bottom of the page. and the community want new people doesn't it. it would help a lot in the early times.

other than that, do you like scrolling to the bottom of the page to see whats new?

Yes, I just hit the "End" button on my keyboard, and it goes right to the bottom. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 13:33, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In most forums new threads are defaulted to the top of the page (with most forums providing an option to change the default ordering in preferences to reverse this), but the thread itself, where the text appears, is in the format we read in, i.e. top down. The pages on Wikipedia are much closer in form to a forum thread itself than they are to a listing of threads.--Fuhghettaboutit 14:08, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

ok...i havent seen many forums in the way you are mentioning, i do know that there are options to reverse the ordering, but most people dont do that because, the default (i.e. the newest post first) is the most convenient. but maybe I am wrong...it would be good to know what other people think. the other thing is why have all the articles in expanded form in this page. why cant we have the topics in a single link, so that if you are interested you can always visit the particular post, but you dont have to unnecessarily browse through posts you are not interested in.

Well, no, to me (and I'm sure many others) the most logical and intuitive thing to do is to read the end of the page to see what's new. After all, we read from top to bottom, so logically the last topic comes last, not first. Anyway, haven't you noticed the table of contents, which means you don't have to browse through everything to get to the topic you want? -- Necrothesp 22:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New paragraphs to the infoboxes.

I want to add these paragraphs:

Based on: Link to original media. (Example: In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it is filled by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
Related book(s): Novels, non-fiction books, factual books.
Related comic(s): Comic books, comic strips, graphic novels, Webcomics, manga, light novels
Related film(s): Feature-length films, short films, animated films, direct-to-videos, OVAs, V-cinemas.
Related TV series: TV dramas, animated series, TV anime, TV comedies, sitcoms.
Related video game(s): 2-D games, 3-D games, anime games, all computer and video games.

to:

Comics infoboxes
- {{Infobox Comic strip}}
- {{Graphicnovelbox}}
- {{Supercbbox}}
- {{Infobox Webcomic}}
Book infoboxes
- {{Infobox Book}}
- {{Book Series infobox}}
TV and film infoboxes
- {{Infobox Film}}
- {{Infobox Television Film}}
- {{Infobox Television}}
and {{Infobox CVG}}

to inform related medias.--JSH-alive^{talk to me}_{see my works}^{mail to me} 15:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

These could be added to the infoboxes by putting in the following lines of wikicode into the correct positions:

{{#if:{{{based on|}}}|<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>'''Based on'''</td><td>{{{current}}}</td></tr>}}  
{{#if:{{{related book|}}}|<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>'''Related book(s)'''</td><td>{{{current}}}</td></tr>}}  
{{#if:{{{related comic|}}}|<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>'''Related comic(s)'''</td><td>{{{current}}}</td></tr>}}  
{{#if:{{{related film|}}}|<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>'''Related film(s)'''</td><td>{{{current}}}</td></tr>}}  
{{#if:{{{related TV series|}}}|<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>'''Related TV series'''</td><td>{{{current}}}</td></tr>}}  
{{#if:{{{related video game|}}}|<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>'''Related video game(s)'''</td><td>{{{current}}}</td></tr>}}

They are all optional parameters so they won't break any existing articles with the infobox that have not added the parameters. To specify the values of each of these parameters, you could then add the following to where the infobox is referenced:

| based on =
| related book =
| related comic =
| related film =
| related TV series =
| related video game =

Tra (Talk) 16:08, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This seems unnecessary; doesn't related content generally go at the bottom of the article, with the see also links, rather than at the top? The infoboxes are pretty big as it is. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The "Based on" line sounds good, but otherwise, what Night Gyr said. Infoboxes are meant to be concise summaries, and their size is a point of contention already. "Related" items do belong at the end of a subject's article. --Quiddity 01:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, frankly, I want to disable {{Infobox animanga}}. In my opinion, TV anime should use {{Infobox Television}}, manga should use comics infoboxes, OVA and film should use {{Infobox Film}} and video games should use {{Infobox CVG}}.--JSH-alive^{talk to me}_{see my works}^{mail to me} 02:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Notes Page to go along with discussion and edit and history pages.

The notes page would contain elements that have not yet been incorporated into the actual article, but which have relevance and should probably be incorporated into a later version. This would correspond with an encyclopedia's files related to an article without falling into content discussions and messy archiving.

Examples of where a notes page would be very useful.

pre-editing controversial subjects (keeping flamewars off the main page and allowing a stronger article element to be built and agreed upon in a temporary area where editors can access and refer to it easily)

adding elements in discussion in scientific journals without adding items of questionable but valid veracity to the main page

alternate elements that may not be appropriate for the main page but may come in handy for future edits. (i.e. pictures and stuff that'd be a pain in the butt to dig out of the talk archive.)

interviews/hearsay/relevant but non-encyclopediac data that isn't archived elsewhere on the web.

71.102.28.61 21:58, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is what talk pages are for already. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Except the fourth, which shouldn't be anywhere. -Amarkov moo! 22:37, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If the archives are a pain to dig through you can make a special talk subpage for a particular issue. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:39, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Invert selection" option for watchlist

In Special:Recentchanges, there is an option to "invert" the selected namespace. I think this means it will show edits in all namespaces except the namespace selected, whereas it would normally show only the selected namespace.

If this is correct, I think it would be useful (thought not imperative) to have this option available in our watchlists. Is there a more appropriate place to bring this up? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 11:01, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Any thoughts? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 06:42, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Infinite Ban on all Wiki Abusers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

etymology field to the anatomical entries

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

GFDL image tag depopulation

While stumbling around a few pages, I came upon this, which says that all instances of the (current) {{GFDL}} tag should be migrated to {{GFDL-with-disclaimers}}. Then after the tag is depopulated, the code from {{GFDL-no-disclaimers}} would be copied into the GFDL tag, and then the GFDL tag would be repopulated through transferring the instances of the no disclaimer tag to the new GFDL tag (or simply keep the transclusions in place, either works). I am planning to do this by adding another task to my bot, VixDaemon, but I want to make sure there are no concerns with this before I submit the task for approval. I have compared the current GFDL tag and GFDL-with-disclaimers, and the text matches down to the letter, so there would be no change of license with the migration.

Since Dragons flight who originally proposed this plan to standardize the usage of the GFDL tag between the projects has "basically abandoned" the plan, I am planning to pick up where he left off. Does anyone have any concerns with, or support for this? Kyra_~(talk) 23:23, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, I'd like to expand this to include the {{GFDL-self}} tag, as it has disclaimers too; those instances would be migrated to {{GFDL-self-with-disclaimers}}, and then it would subsequently be replaced with {{GFDL-self-no-disclaimers}}. A change to MediaWiki:Licenses would be advisable as it would prevent new instances from arising during the time when the templates would be migrated, as well as currently. Kyra_~(talk) 08:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

a better portable wikipedia device

my name is nick church and I am aware of the tomb raider version of wikipedia, however I believe I have a better idea. I have seen many electronic dictionaries which are very popular over in japan. What about a device very similar to the electronic dictionary, yet with wikipedia on it. I realize that wikipedia as a site must take up quite a bit of space, but if you cut out all the user pages, and the talk pages, it could be made to fit on a 30g drive which would definitely fit in something the size of an electronic dictionary. along with this you could include a docking station which will update all the pages automatically, as well as charging it. You could also include basic functions such as a calendar, clock, etc. Also if possible you could consider hooking up with google maps/news to include area maps and news. perhaps an sd card reader would be a good idea so that one may use it to watch videos or play mp3s as well.

you could probably get a good deal on the manufacturing, sell it for about $300 a piece and use the profit for wikipedia expansion...or whatever you want.

Anyone can take a data dump and stick it on such a device. Quality control is an issue, not size. All the text for the current version is only a couple of gigabytes. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the more expensive dictionaries I saw at the E-Mart also doubled as a book reader but I think they were around $350 US. My dictionary was on sale for about $89 but I can't change the contents. I would think one could make a cheap book reader for around $50 that could have just about anything you wanted on it. --Gbleem 03:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You could just browse it from a cell phone with an appropriate skin. If you want a local copy, you run into the trouble of downloading all that data every time you want to update. Unless the servers make up a custom set of diffs for you, you'll need a couple of gigs of data, and that's not going to be done in the time it takes to charge the battery. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unique display format for Wikipedia

E-Book Systems Inc., would like to share with the Wikipedia community - a unique display format for Wikipedia purposes.

Founded in 1998, E-Book Systems’ patented Digital Flip® Technology provides a unique way to organize and view digital information. Our solutions bring life to digital content with its ability to integrate multimedia, and display it in a realistic 3D page flipping interface.

With Digital Flip® Technology, Wikipedia can provide its users a true encyclopedic experience. Users can browse through Wikipedia like they would a hard copy encyclopedia. They can flip individual pages, grab a few pages to flip, lift a page to compare with contents on the proceeding or preceding pages, flip through pages rapidly, zoom in or zoom out on a page, jump to a desired page, click on links to navigate to desired page, search content for a desired search term (where feature is available).

We would like to work with Wikipedia to create Wikipedia FlipBook. This Wikipedia FlipBook should adopt the same concept as the existing Wikipedia site. Please click on the following link to browse through the sample Wikipedia FlipBook created for the editors' evaluations : Sample Wikipedia FlipBook

Please note that the Wikipedia FlipBook is only for demonstration purposes. It contains only an extract of the contents in Wikipedia site. The links (in black underline) included in the demo Wikipedia FlipBook have not been enabled. However, please note that we do have the ability to enable the links and ensure that all links navigate to the relevant pages.

About E-Book Systems E-Book Systems is a private organization, with offices in the U.S, China, Japan, Korea, Europe, and Singapore. Investors in E-Book Systems include Creative Technology Ltd, and SOFTBANK Media & Marketing Corporation, a subsidiary of SOFTBANK Corp.

I'm not speaking officially here, but you're just as welcome as any other of the Mirrors and forks to copy the content under the GFDL and use your interface on it. I doubt it'd catch on here, because it requires downloading addition software, and doesn't sound like it adds enough to be worth it. We try to keep the technical requirements low here. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 09:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We would like to work with Wikipedia to create Wikipedia FlipBook. The Wikimedia Foundation, which controls Wikipedia and a variety of other free-access projects, has a policy of not using commercial (aka "pay-for") software unless absolutely necessary. So if you are proposing some sort of business proposition whereby you would pay the Foundation for a specialized feed, for example, feel free to contact them; otherwise, you're probably wasting your time. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt it'd catch on here, because it requires downloading addition software, and doesn't sound like it adds enough to be worth it. We try to keep the technical requirements low here. E-Book Systems also offers the FlipViewer® BV version which does not require any software download. Please click on the following link to browse through the FlipViewer® BV version of the sample Wikipedia FlipBook: Sample Wikipedia FlipBook - FlipViewer® BV version

Practical jokes in "new message" boxes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Straw poll

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

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

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

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

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

Agree

—Doug Bell ^talk 08:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 08:25, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's room for harmless fun (including silly jokes) on user pages, but using forged software messages to deliberately confuse and mislead fellow editors is not harmless. —David Levy 08:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This has the potential for serious abuse, and doesn't help build the encyclopedia. -Will Beback · † · 08:33, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- This is overbroad, why not just ban the "serious abuse" (I'd even support a blanket ban on containing external links in these) rather than everything? --Random832(t c) 17:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It should be glaringly obvious to anybody who respects wikipedia and its encyclopedic purpose. Tyrenius 10:04, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
These false messages confuse new users and disrupt the activity of established editors who are trying to perform batch tasks. —Psychonaut 10:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Editors should carry on with the business of editing. The Wikimedia servers are provided for the sake of creating an encyclopedia, not for engaging in practical jokes and other tangential activities. Zunaid©® 10:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- If people feel that wikipedia is "no fun anymore", some might not contribute at all. Time is not a fungible resource to the extent you are suggesting it is. --Random832(t c) 17:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agree totally with the suggestion — MrDolomite • Talk 10:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agree very strongly - it's deliberately disruptive, a potential security hazard for the unwary, confusing for new editors, and not funny anyway. I believe any kind of UI spoofing should be strictly prohibited by policy, but this is a good start. CiaranG 10:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- How is a link to Practical joke a security hazard? The stance you are supporting is too broad for your arguments, why not just ban external links in them? --Random832(t c) 17:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Total agreement here. -- Qarnos 10:55, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's my opinion that the opinions in the discussion above are mostly in favour of this change. --ais523 11:17, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
- So, what's _your_ opinion about whether this change should be made? Summarizing the opinions in this discussion are the straw poll's job, not yours. --Random832(t c) 17:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, as long as it doesn't say "Fake MediaWiki UI elements may be removed without warning and should not be replaced once removed" which was in a previous edit on that page. Garion96 (talk) 12:50, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely Pea ceNT 13:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agree completely...and a bit surprised that there's any dispute about this. This juvenile nonsense serves no legitimate purpose, and is annoying to the point of being disruptive. Spoofing mediawiki interface elements does not fall under the umbrella of legitimate self-expression. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 16:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I used to have it, but I'm convinced of it's inappropriateness after reading the above. · AndonicO ^{Talk · Sign Here} 16:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Of course you should not be able to fake part of the software interface to trick someone into clicking. It is a waste of time. It is not about power tripping, not about a failure to take a joke, it is about wasting my time by trying to fool me into thinking I have a message when I don't. It is disruptive. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 18:17, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
These things are easier to ignore after you've fallen for them once or twice, but that doesn't excuse the first two times being irritating and (now that further dangers have been outlined) dangerous. It's a good joke in theory, lousy in practice, and should go. UI is UI, not your playground. -- nae'blis 20:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Very much agreed, if only for the precedent it sets. I will concede that many of the users who indulge in this do so with no malice, but nonetheless I feel it is a bad idea and a waste of time. DS 21:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Definite 'agree; its annoying, disruptive, and the general idea of 'spoofing' part of the MediaWiki interface - this is by no means the only source of fun, but lets not even get started on signature books. :/ RHB ^{Talk - Edits} 01:31, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Per Jimbo. – Chacor 01:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you're waiting for something really important, you shouldn't have to deal with this.--C J King 02:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe on April Fools' Day. PT O 02:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agree the wording is a bit soft ("please"), but if it is explained to people that this is community concensus, then they should observe if as if policy, methinks. Jerry lavoie 02:36, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am pro user page freedom in general, but aiming to mislead/fool others is generally childish and should be discouraged. Dragons flight 02:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. Might be a good April Fool's day prank though. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 03:37, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agree completely. -- KirinX 03:52, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly endorse such a proposal. Now to get tough on non encyclopedic user pages. Jorcoga ^(Hi!/Review)08:49, Thursday, 15 February '07
Per the as yet unwritten WP:NOT#A PLAYGROUND. Moreschi ^{Request a recording?} 19:13, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agree Wiki user pages have room for fun, but tricking editors decreases the quality of wikipedia, and is highly annoying -- feb^talk 02:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse ~ Arjun 22:56, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree

While I didn't have that bar on my page before, I have it on now. Jeffpw 08:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, David Levy, why do you care so much? Mike H. I did "That's hot" first! 10:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
you never hear their standard issue kicking in your door, you can relax on both sides of the tracks Pink Floyd, Gunners Dream. Sums it up. ALR 11:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Malicious instances should be removed. However, a fake new messages bar that links to "practical joke" is not malicious, and fake categories are certainly not a problem. Most importantly, these are in userspace, hence almost invisible to the vast majority of users of Wikipedia. Policing userspace does not help us build an encyclopedia, it just annoys people. Draconian measures against userspace silliness are disrupting Wikipedia far more than userspace silliness does. Kusma (討論) 11:47, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree strongly, don't make "rules" based on WP:ITANNOYSME, don't bully users. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bishonen (talk • contribs)
How lame can you get? Honestly people, don't you have actual articles to edit? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 12:47, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Lamest, dumbest proposal ever existed. 'nuff said.--Certified.Gangsta 13:03, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Whoa, everyone. Be civil, even if others aren't. That said, "deliberately mislead and confuse" is a gross overstatement of the matter, and as long as it doesn't link to an external link or an offensive article, I don't see the problem. We are not faceless content-generating robots, and trying to force us to act like we are does not help to build an encyclopedia. --Random832(t c) 13:25, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In particular that it specifically mentions the "new message" joke is draconian. I agree with User:Bishonen this change is coming about as an application of WP:ITANNOYSME which is wrong. As I've said before, where MediaWiki spoofing is occuring for nefarious purposes then of course something needs to be done. If the wording were to more specifically target this then I would change my view and support additional wording. (→Netscott) 15:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can't you take a joke?! Reywas92^Talk 16:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why are we polling? There's obviously no consensus here. IMO, those that think these things need to be barred by policy from user and user talk pages are on a power-trip high. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 16:06, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be fine with it being mentioned in a "some people don't like it, you should consider not having it" sense, but an out-right declaration that you can't have it is, as many others have said, draconian. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:07, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't see how the word draconian can be applied, we are asking that people not spoof parts of the Wikipedia interface, we aren't asking them not to make jokes. I cannot think of any website that would allow users to spoof the interface of their software. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 19:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Well, I can't actually think of any other websites where a user can spoof the interface... EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:24, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Practical jokes are funny. They may not be the first time they get you or the 100th time you see it, but somewhere between #5 and #90 you thought about someone else clicking that link the way you did that first time and thought it was pretty cute. I wonder how some of you pushing "deliberate disruption and malicious intent" make it through April 1st every year. ju66l3r 19:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't think the rule prohibits jokes, just spoofing the software, jokes are fine. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 19:52, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- No, the rule does prohibit practical jokes because they require some semblance of normal function in order to get you to use them in normal practice...to then show you the error of your assumption of normality. There are many ways of determining whether the item is content or not and some of these are not even disruptive (e.g. navigate a page or two as you would have been doing normally and see if the message persists before clicking on it). ju66l3r 20:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why should users be forced to jump through hoops to determine whether the message notification is real or phony? Why can't we simply have a rule against deliberately tricking people in this manner? There are so many truly harmless jokes. Why should deliberate disruption be permitted? Simply because some people find it amusing? —David Levy 20:45, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

3. Would you care to address the bot issue? —David Levy 22:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
David Levy, I don't recall reading anyone saying "the harm is minor"... who's saying that? I'm saying it is harmless (and that's what I'm seeing others say) (→Netscott) 22:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Plenty of people have said they find it annoying and do not want to be subected to it. Annoying people is not harmless. It's disruptive. Tyrenius 22:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Tyrenius, I disagree that if something is annoying be default is is not harmless. I have found the new message jokes very annoying yet completely harmless. (→Netscott) 22:39, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Those were scare quotes. Yes, some are literally arguing that the messages are harmless, but others claim that the harm is too minor to justify spoiling people's fun. —David Levy 22:44, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The rule does not forbid practical jokes, it only forbids practical jokes that impersonate features of the Wikipedia software. I see a lot of attempts to make this rule look like more than it is, it is a rule against impersonating technical features of Wikipedia, that is all. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 20:48, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm actually swayed by ju66l3r's comment, which is the most insightful thing I've heard on this subject yet. Since UI spoofing is possible, it might be better that people are exposed to it via practical jokes and know they should question the validity of what they see. CiaranG 20:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I ask that you try applying that logic to other disruptive acts. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 20:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If someone found a way to replace my "Special pages" link in the toolbox with a wiki-link to the article on Mental retardation (with no way of using the real "Special pages" link then I would agree that impersonation impedes my ability to use a function on the page. When I have gotten new messages on a page that has one of these practical joke links, I have seen them both. One is not overwritten by the other (and in any cases where it is coded to do so, I would agree with you that it needs to be changed to a flatter more-joke, less-impersonation version). I have seen user page and user talk page items that "impersonate" real templates and warnings. Of course, those usually have text changes and not just link changes. Are you looking to strike all of those too? It's deliberately disruptive to make me read the entire template to determine if there's a serious warning on their user page or not. Where is the line drawn for impersonation of Official Wiki-business? ju66l3r 21:21, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As long as it isn't malicious, I don't see the harm in this. I came across this once, and thought it to be quite entertaining. Rarelibra 21:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that the person wasting my time does not feel malicious, does not change that fact that it is wasting my time. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 21:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ironically draconian and disruptive measures such as this waste more time and frustrate more editors than a million fake message bars ever could. — MichaelLinnear 00:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
First things first, I don't oppose this proposal. This is a "neutral" comment that's being posted here to make sure it's read by the supporters. Apparently there's a script at User:GeorgeMoney/UserScripts that removes those fake new messages boxes on userpages. I think installing a script like this is preferable to blocking people for something so petty and generating a lot of hot air on somewhere like ANI. -- Steel 00:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some of these banners are generated using raw code instead of the "usermessage" class that the script replies on. Regardless, I don't see why it should be anyone's responsibility to install special scripts to block other users' deliberate disruption. —David Levy 00:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Damn you David, why do you have to say something that I actually agree with? Regardless of which way this goes, I fully agree that forcing everyone to install a script is unreasonable. EVula // talk // ☯ // 07:06, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree, per Bishonen. Let it go. riana_dzasta 01:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree. The panties-in-a-wad brigade should be stopped. Kyaa the Catlord 05:59, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I wholeheartedly disagree with adding the above statement to WP:USER. —King Ivan 07:27, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Come on. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, this isn't a vote, do you have a reason to oppose banning spoofing the user interface? I see a lot of votes here with no explanation. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 00:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I think people are seeing this as a poll on that particular message box joke, rather than a pool on UI spoofing. -- Qarnos 01:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Avoid instruction creep. I think the boxes are very annoying, but I don't think we should tell people not to put them there. If you see one, just remove it. ~a (user • talk • contribs) 19:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So you'd rather people edit war over them, than clarify existing guidelines/policies? -- nae'blis 19:42, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's an indefinite number of things that people could argue about. I don't think we need to "clarify" everything that could possibly need clarification. We'd have too many policies for people too learn. Oh wait, that already happened. That's why WP:CREEP is there: this is a trivial issue. ~a (user • talk • contribs) 07:59, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This poll has new messages - I oppose it. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 22:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
User pages are not articles and we shouldn't crush jokes just because some people might find them irritating. Kingjeff 03:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone who thinks there is the need for some new rule here needs to chill and buy a sense of humor. If someone tricks users into clicking offsite links, that's disruptive, but a gag is not. Are we seriously going to block a user because his user page is a waste of time?— Randall Bart 21:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Per what I said on the AN/I thread, this is utterly senseless. Titoxd^(?!?) 02:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral

I didn't want to make a clothespin vote, so I going with ~~no opinion~~ neutral. It's a balance between freedom of expression and potential for abuse. Jumping cheese ^Cont@ct 11:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Abuse? How can a joke banner on a userpage do any abuse?--Certified.Gangsta 13:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly, I voted for "neutral" because of the time of the voting, it was like 12 agree/4 disagree. I was swayed by the bandwagon pressure...had I voted now, I would have cast a disagree ballot. But, I don't want to change my vote, since it'll probably not pass anyways and settle on no consensus. =) Jumping cheese ^Cont@ct 20:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I hate those silly boxes, but I'm completely against harassing users over something that really isn't doing any harm. If we want to edit the userpage page to discourage practical jokes, fine. It's probably a good idea. But PLEASE, no more edit warring with users over what they have on or remove from their pages unless it involves personal attacks, copyrighted images, or material designed to shock. And no more blocks of users for doing something that may be annoying but that doesn't violate policy. Musical L inguist 00:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It violated a guideline at the time. Despite knowing this, the user repeatedly restored the banner (mostly without summaries and sometimes with the edits labeled "minor") and removed a warning from his talk page. He later indicated that he was under no obligation to follow the rule because "it's not a policy, it's a guideline." —David Levy 00:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It still violates a guideline. See WP:USER below. It's there for the person's entertainment (at the expense of other users who don't appreciate it), not in any way constructive to building an encyclopedia. Tyrenius 02:23, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Tyrenius, I respect you as an editor but honestly your interpretation of that aspect of WP:UP is too large of a stretch. Its essentially a strawman argument to liken the "new message" joke alert to that line. That line is referring to info like what level you've achieved and how many armour points (etc.) you have on a particular roleplaying game, etc. (→Netscott) 02:35, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I essentially agree with Musical Linguist. Asking someone to remove it is fine; but if they refuse, so be it. I'm not sure adding another !rule is worth it. I have a pretty low opinion of editors who have it on their page (I mean come on... it's so old at this point it isn't even funny; not that it was particularly so in the first place), but there is no reason to block and a !rule would just be used as a block reason. The only situation I would have a big problem with is if it was being used to feed editors out to an external link (particularly one to a site with malicious code) and at that point a block would be justified under existing conventions.--Isotope23 19:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(End of straw poll)

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

Fourth option

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

--Random832(t c) 17:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
While it seems sensible this "solution" is not very practical because the reality is that with CSS code virtually anything is "spoofable" with regards to how a page is displayed on the Wiki. (→Netscott) 17:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
wikicode CSS can only apply styles to its own content. You can move the fake box up, but you CAN NOT move the title down to where it would be if it were naturally placed above it. --Random832(t c) 04:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure that most anyone competent in CSS could find a way to spoof it. I think this user page is fairly illustrative of what I'm talking about (notice the Wikipedia icon in the upper left hand corner). (→Netscott) 04:10, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This page is an example of how nearly anything can be spoofed. If I wanted, I could put everything in a div and move margin-top up, and change the title, so that it looks completely like the diff page. Gracenotes^T § 16:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fifth option

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

Crafting intial guidelines about "new message" joke banners

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

New Wikipedia:User page addition

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

WP:USER

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

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

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

Tyrenius 08:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

Tyrenius 09:13, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Um, thanks, but this was a section for a reason. I give you, {{insanity}}. Steve block Talk 11:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oaky-dokey. —Doug Bell ^talk 12:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
pig in a pokey! Steve block Talk 17:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Question

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

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

New Page form to fill before publication?

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

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

_{add more}

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

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

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

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

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

google-like spell check

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

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

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

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

~~How do I find firefox built-in spellcheck?~~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Return To Ido Should Also Have, Return To Talk:Ido, Return To Articlehistory:Ido, And Return to Talkhistory:Ido

For example.100110100 08:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of Articlehistory:Ido, shouldn't it just be History:Ido? —Doug Bell ^talk 10:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First link on page ought to be changed

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

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

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

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

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

He's talking about

<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="/w/opensearch_desc.php" title="Wikipedia (English)" />

- most browsers don't display this, and some can presumably use it to add search box abilities. --Random832(t c) 19:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

Template:Taxobox - Authorisation

As far as I can see, there is no complete consensus here regarding the format of the taxonomist's name ("authorisation") in the template:taxobox. There are articles with Linnaeus's name abbreviated, whereas others state his full family name.

I think the taxonomist's name should appear in the abbreviated form, common in the scientific literature, and without parentheses, which should only include the year of description. The abbreviated format should link to the article regarding the specific taxonomist. Reasoning:

Such a format, together with the binomial name, gives the complete and exact scientific format, to designate a species. The template is the best place to expose the readers to this standard way of writing, common among all scientists and scientific literature. This way there is also a match between the format in the article and in scientific articles.
Readers who will be confused by the abbreviations, can clarify the matter immediately by clicking on the abbreviation and reaching the article regarding the taxonomist.

Parallel message posted on the template's discussion page.

Gidip 13:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted Revisions

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article evaluation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TfD structure to match AfD

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

The reason it's set up like this is because the mailflow on AFD is an order of magnitude larger than on TFD. >Radiant< 17:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed that the volume on AfD is larger. But, what do we lose by changing the process? I can think of plenty of advantages to the change, however. - grubber 17:35, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- What we lose is that both nominating and closing become more complex and less efficient. Note that TFD is already "in line" with CFD, SFD, RFD and DRV, so bringing it "in line" with AFD for standardization is not such a useful argument. >Radiant< 17:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  Opening an AfD isn't that hard, or there wouldn't be a hundred of them every day. I don't know how difficult it is to close an AfD as opposed to a TfD, since I haven't ever done it. But in any case, assuming you're right: We would make two edits harder, but make the actual process of voting, watching, debating, and stating easier on all the other editors who participate. It seems like a useful tradeoff. Further, I would argue that making the whole XfD more uniform would be a good thing. Clearly, because of volume, we can't change AfD. Let's change the others to match it instead. We lose so little and gain so much. - grubber 18:45, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't think we need to migrate to the AfD procedure unless another Userbox War comes along. Even then, at its peak with the current procedure I could still close up to a hundred TfDs per day. - Mailer Diablo 20:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My concern is that TfD's are less editor-friendly. It may be more admin-friendly, but it appears to me that the difference is negligible. - grubber 20:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Don't think there's really a need for subpages on TfD, just increases workload, and it's just really not needed....only when the number of daily TfDs multiplies by about five, then consider. Doubt that'll ever happen , however. Alex43223^{Talk | Contribs | E-mail | C} 11:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism link on religion navigational boxes

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

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

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

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

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

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

That I should be what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wikipedia:Places of local interest

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

Main Page - "On This Day" Improvement Suggestion

Hi,

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

Thanks for considering my suggestion.

Regards, Matthew Blair Wellington New Zealand.

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

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

Redirects of BCE# to BC#

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cut-off point change to {{Wikipedialang}}

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

This Wikipedia is written in English. Started in 2001, it currently contains 6,838,427 articles. Many other Wikipedias are available; the largest are listed below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IP Userpages

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

That information's added to the talk page at the moment, when known. There are a lot of IP userpages around at the moment as well (see Special:Prefixindex/User:68. (to take a common IP first number), for instance). --ais523 18:18, 16 February 2007 (U T C)

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

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

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

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

Proposal / RfC: Donation appeal ideas

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

Wikiproject namespace

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

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

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

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

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

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

Merge FA and GA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wikipedia:Articles about ongoing enterprises should be official policy

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

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

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

Tagging articles without interwiki links

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

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

[[Category:Articles lacking interwiki links]]

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

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

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

User Statistics

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

For example it could look at very basic like this.

Section	Edits	Views
Medicine	25	260
Computer Games	60	4920

Viewcounts aren't kept due to performance reasons. Edit counting is not encouraged. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 10:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edit endmatter link?

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

<nowiki>

...

This Austrian biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

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

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