Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 21
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213
Proposed shortcuts to WP:EIW sections, using pseudo-space "EIW" redirects
Per the posting at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Creating a bunch of redirects that are shortcuts, I'm proposing to create up to a couple of hundred redirects of the form EIW:Topic. These will be shortcuts (links) to the major sections of the Editor's index to Wikipedia. If you have any concerns about such redirects (specifically, about this pseudo-namespace), please comment at the bot request page. I note that the matter was previously discussed at Wikipedia talk:Namespace#Procedure for creating a new pseudo-namespace?, where (I believe) there was no opposition to the concept, once it was clearly explained.
This proposal is primarily intended to aid editors answering questions at the help desk, but will be useful to any editor wanting to point someone to a particular topic in the index that is relevant to a question or discussion. The EIW pseudo-namespace will make these shortcuts much easier to understand (and shorter). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:13, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Internal links
Really, the way that only some words in an article are linked to other articles seems arbitrary. Couldn't there be a system where clicking on a word automatically links to the article with that name, and manually defining a hyperlink would only be required for multiple-word phrases or relevant articles with different titles? One of Wikipedia's greatest strengths is its linked-ness, but this would improve it greatly. 216.45.231.50 (talk) 20:55, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Build the web#Wikipedia does not use Allwiki -- Wavelength (talk) 01:07, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Discussions
There should be a feature that enables one to discuss with others subjects that are not policy related, like wars, elections, protests, etc. Wikipedia should be more than an encyclopedia, it should be a community that cares about others.
--Tom.mevlie (talk) 07:50, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Wikipedia is not a forum. Equazcion •✗/C • 08:05, 29 Feb 2008 (UTC)
- It is a community that cares about others. I care about others. (Does anybody care about me? :)
- We also have WP:IRC. • Anakin (talk) 14:56, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Besides answering the question, "Is wikidrama bad?" I would also like to introduce the idea of using avatars for each point of view to make debates more amusing, as was suggested at http://www.communitywiki.org/WikiDrama Thespian Seagull (talk) 15:03, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Cute, but I think it might tempt people to "choose a side", who otherwise might not have. Debates, at least the Wikipedia kind, should steer as far from two-sided arguments as possible. Equazcion •✗/C • 19:42, 29 Feb 2008 (UTC)
"Slow Wikipedia": A next step for the encyclopedia
I've been considering this issue for some time, and I believe I have a solution for our Sisyphus problem. Too often quality articles (especially those on popular topics), once they are raised up to a high level, only suffer entropic decay. Vandalism is just the smallest problem; more significant are POV insertions, bad rewordings, and the addition of random facts which maybe "belong somewhere", but don't fit in the article. And it is hard (or even undesirable) to prevent such changes, because we are encouraged to be WP:BOLD, and always up-to-date.
Perhaps, indeed, it is impossible to fully satisfy both "reliable" and "up-to-date". So, I suggest a new namespace as a refuge for articles that have already been found to be of high quality (FA or GA). This would be a complementary process, not a replacement to our current set-up. Changes to such articles would be slow and deliberative, with more of a conservative tilt to this process. And I think elevating and preserving FAs and GAs in this way will only encourage further high quality submissions, as the hard work that is put into these will no longer be in danger of random entropic decay. "Slow Wikipedia" would not be up-to-the-minute; but it would be the most reliable, most readable and most accurate resource out there.
I propose:
- a new namespace for "Slow Wikipedia" articles (any name suggestions?)
- "Slow Wikipedia" is populated by versions of articles that have achieved FA or GA
- "Slow Wikipedia" articles are overseen by the relevant WikiProject
- All "Slow Wikipedia" articles are protected by default
- "Slow Wikipedia" articles are not updated more than once a month (also cuts down on admin load)
- "Slow Wikipedia" are updated by a new positive review of FA or GA status
- All other changes must be specifically proposed and met by a clear consensus on the talk page
So, what do you all think?--Pharos (talk) 22:30, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs will cover this, won't it? Nihiltres{t.l} 22:47, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- FlaggedRevs will only cover blatant vandalism, which is actually the smallest of the problems.--Pharos (talk) 23:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- FlaggedRevs will include both "sighted" (against vandalism) and "quality" (for GAs, FAs, etc.) flags. I think the latter addresses your concern. Nihiltres{t.l} 04:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- "Flagging" is just a method of tagging a static version in the article's history. We already have the capacity to link to the FA or GA version of an article; flagging in this case would just be a technical shortcut. And it will be a good thing when it's implemented. But a purely static version is not what a wiki is all about. What a "Slow Wikipedia" would allow is the continued development of high quality articles in a sheltered but wiki-driven environment, without any significant risk of decay.--Pharos (talk) 10:07, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- FlaggedRevs will include both "sighted" (against vandalism) and "quality" (for GAs, FAs, etc.) flags. I think the latter addresses your concern. Nihiltres{t.l} 04:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- FlaggedRevs will only cover blatant vandalism, which is actually the smallest of the problems.--Pharos (talk) 23:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- Sounds to me very much like Wikipedia 1.0. Kevin Baastalk 23:10, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- Yes, I would actually see this as a practical implementation toward that goal.--Pharos (talk) 23:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- Sounds to me very much like Wikipedia 1.0. Kevin Baastalk 23:10, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- This was very close to my Wikipedia:Stable versions proposal. I think each article should have a "stable" version that only sees small fixes and a "development" version for major refactoring and development, analogous to software forking. But I don't see software support for this happening any time soon. A more modern proposal is meta:Reviewed_article_version. Dcoetzee 00:22, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- I don't think we should wait any longer for software changes that will never come, and that even if they do come, might not be really what we want. I am proposing a process that tries to work within the existing processes of Wikipedia as much as possible.--Pharos (talk) 02:30, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Isn't this idea already taken up by Veropedia? Captain panda 01:08, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Whatever process the Veropedia people are attempting, I wish them well in it. But I do not think we should rely on outsourcing the goal of reliable articles outside of Wikipedia—and certainly, any process that works inside Wikipedia would have the greatest chance of attracting participation and success.--Pharos (talk) 02:30, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Isn't this idea already taken up by Veropedia? Captain panda 01:08, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- I **really** want Flagged revisions to be implemented! Why oh why has it stalled? By the way, "Slow Wikipedia" sounds negative. Alternatively, flip things around so that only FA or GA class articles are in the main namespace, and everything else is considered a draft, in the Draft: namespace. • Anakin (talk) 14:52, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Yeah, I was thinking of an analogy with Slow Food, and trying to look at the issue counterintuitive to our usual perspective. I would agree in regarding uncertified articles as "drafts", though it might be too drastic to consider putting the "regular" articles in the new namespace. Of course, any "regular" article would continue being edited at its breakneck pace, alongside its more placid "Slow Wikipedia" sister article, and I expect a fruitful dialogue would develop between the two.--Pharos (talk) 10:07, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I had proposed the idea of making and "Edu" version of Wikipedia at Wikipedia Suggestions but never got any replies. This is what happened: <snip> It doesn't seem that any significant suggestions will get ever implemented. This has frustrated the heck outta me and I don't think I'll be giving any more ideas. ~RayLast «Talk!» 02:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks Ray, I've removed the large discussion you copy-pasted into this section. You should know that Jimbo's talk page is not the place to make proposals. Instead, you should start a discussion on this page, but under your own section. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 06:07, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Project Korea Entertainment
Korea has made some video games, manwha(their version of manga), animation,movies, etc.. I can't find any articles about Korea's entertainment section. It seems their manwha, video games, and animations are neglected. I think we need a Korea Entertainment Project.71.142.242.233 (talk) 06:14, 29 February 2008 (UTC)Cardinal Raven
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals is probably the place for you. bibliomaniac15 I see no changes 06:11, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Suggest rewording of the Prod template
The current wording in the {{prod}} tag is not very helpful or consistent with the deletion policy, WP:DP. I may not be able to claim newbie ignorance any more, but the first time I was confronted with someone tagging an article that was near and dear to me with a {{prod}} tag, I did what I thought the {{prod}} tag was indicating should be done to avoid deletion. Much to my surprise the article was then AfDd! I reacted rather badly, and accused that editor of bad faith, which I later regretted after being referred to WP:DP.
If the text in the {{prod}} tag was more accurate and consistent with WP:DP this could be avoided. In fact, it would probably be a good idea if the {{prod}} tag contains less text and does include a reference to WP:DP.
See also here: Template_talk:Prod#Proposed_rewording. Thanks. --RenniePet (talk) 08:01, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- Oops, I just noticed that the current template does include a link to WP:DP, although a very small one. So I still think a rewording would be a good idea. --RenniePet (talk) 08:13, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Embeded Google Map Applets
Google Map allows users to embed its navigable maps in the users' webpages, blogs, etc. but it comes with the Google Ads. However, Wikimapia.org (yes a non-profit) is also using Google maps, yet there is absolutely no advertisement running in the page. The only thing (I guess) you can call as advertisement there is the "powered by Google" logo. Maybe Wikipedia may make arrangements with Google to allow embedded Google maps in Wikipedia that comes with no ads. It will be very helpful in some articles, especially those that discuss the terrain and scape (e.g., cityscape) of a place and that no appropriate available free map is available. Wikipedia’s objective is to collect knowledge and make it available to millions of users worldwide. I believe Google maps can help booster Wikipedia’s current knowledge base.
As an example, in one of the articles I authored, Policies, activities and history of the Philippines in Spratly Islands, I have to phrase:
Aerial photos of Pagasa Island show that a rectangular portion of the coral base around Pagasa is reclaimed to serve as extension of the airstrip.
just to describe how the airstrip is constructed. Only Google maps can provide the visual information for that. And I tell you, visual informations are way better. I have thought of having a screenshot of the map, edit it, and upload it with a non-free fair use tag (specifically, {{Non-free fair use in|Title of Article}}). However, I have doubts if that is acceptable.
--Estarapapax Talk! Contribs! 12:30, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- While it may be technically legal to have Google Maps embedded in a Wikipedia page, there are various reasons why this can't be done, since the map data is copyrighted and it would need to be released under a free license that covers all reusers, not just Wikipedia. However, it is possible to follow the instructions on Template:Coor which will give you the latitude and longitude of the place you want and lets you click on the globe icon to open a javascript-based map which, although it isn't as good as Google Maps, will provide maps and aerial photos on the page. Tra (Talk) 13:24, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I have patched up my old proposal. Please reconsider! Park Crawler (talk) 02:53, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- The proposal is reworded slightly ([1]), but essentially identical. Problems identified during the last go-round have not been addressed; the proposal remains {rejected}. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:01, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Allow administrators to flag autopatrol for users
Recently I've run into some difficulties with the Special:Newpages page. Users are frequently creating large numbers of articles in a relatively short period of time, clogging up the queue and making it harder to find actual articles in need of patrolling. Normally this isn't a problem in articles, but in the category namespace patrol where I do the bulk of my patrols, where a user can easily create many categories with little difficulty, this has become quite a nuisance.
It's a waste of the time and energy of patrollers to go through users whom we know aren't vandals. There are many examples to choose from:
- Dimadick (talk · contribs) created 219 categories about elections and political parties as well as an early smattering of valid categories I have personally looked through. The majority of these were created within a 48 hour span.
- Good Olfactory (talk · contribs) created 567 total categories, 178 of which are recent and unpatrolled, of religious people by country. All are valid and conform to our naming conventions. Most of them were created within the page two weeks.
- Plasma east (talk · contribs) has created 342 categories relating to transportation, including rail transport and aerospace museums over the month of February alone.
- 16@r (talk · contribs) created 82 categories relating to telecommunications, television and the Internet.
Some are even from mainspace:
- Mangostar (talk · contribs) created 110 articles pertaining to foreign relations in the past week.
- Taivo (talk · contribs) created 58 articles of languages over the past week.
- AlbertHerring (talk · contribs) created 4,805 articles within the past MONTH. If there was ever a need for someone with autopatrol, he exemplifies it.
Giving administrators the power to flag trusted users, like the ones above, so that their creations are automatically patrolled would help reduce the strain on a greatly burdened system. It would allow us to actually evaluate questionable articles instead of developing carpal tunnel syndrome clearing out the backlogs of these users above. Please help us. Thank you. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 21:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
- I tend to disagree. Even the categories, for example, should be checked for typos in the category name. I'd only think we should flag a few things, like the next Rambot - or a bot taking entries from Wikispecies as the basis for stubs here. GRBerry 21:17, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
- Typos would indeed be a possibility and a valid concern, but I disagree that the issue should prevent us from autoflagging worthy users. The ability to clear out massive valid chunks of our backlog is, to me, slightly more important than the rare and easily noticeable category typo. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 21:55, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
- A brief scan of the talk page of at least one of the users mentioned above will demonstrate that 'trustedworthyness' is not necessarily evidence of good sense. Similarly, the user who created 4,805 articles in the space of one month is probably in need of a good talking to. Does that user have permission to run a create-article bot? Judging from the edit history, this is quite obviously what he/she is doing.
- While someone who has a particular interest in television or transportation or whatever will eventually run out of categories to create, and these creations are all part of normal "interest", the other -- and very abnormal -- edit patterns are just the sort of thing that should be seen on Newpages. No one who creates oodles of categories outside his/her sphere of interest is ever going to bother to maintain those categories, and an editor who creates 4800+ one line geo stubs in a month is without question asking to be hit over the head with a non-wp:notable trout. Both editors are gaming the system in that they are counting on it to be too much effort for anyone to bother to clean up their droppings.
- -- Fullstop (talk) 22:20, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
- Articles about cites defined by a government are inherently notable - like the Rambot stubs. Also, IIRC, he is not running a bot, he's just using a standard template for each page, and probably tabbed browsing. Also, how much maintenance do categories need, and since when is it solely the responsibility of the creator to maintain a page? Mr.Z-man 23:06, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
- I don't know which user you're speaking of, but these are just recent examples. And if your concern is that these are just one-time things, which is an understandable one, keep in mind that there are other category creators whose interests are far more diverse. Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk · contribs) has a one-month category creation log (I wish we had ones that went further back) of category creations, all valid, that cover topics such as cinema and health and countries ranging from Kosovo to Korea. My own log is just as diverse. As for the 4800+ article creation, it's hardly different from when we uploaded the U.S. Census data a few years back and created 30,000+ articles on towns in the United States. But that to me is more of a debate over worldliness and systemic bias than my proposal.--Hemlock Martinis (talk) 23:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
- My point was... While there is no question that most established users are inherently trustworthy, which criteria would one employ to flag an editor as such? i.e. Where does trustworthiness begin: Doesn't AGF tell us that all users inherently trustworthy, or is it some arbitrary number of creates that determines the threshold of trustworthiness?
- But isn't someone who is trusted to create new articles without oversight not also trustworthy enough to wield a mop? Or even, to efficiently revert vandalism (read: hold the new rollback bit)?
- In any case, it ought not to be very difficult to have a javascript routine 'hide' Newpage entries that are by editors that have any trusted bit set (rollback, admin, bureaucrat whatever).
- -- Fullstop (talk) 08:37, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- You're reading way too far into this. I'm just proposing this to allow us to more effectively comb through the Newpages backlog by not wasting time on users that we know aren't creating crap. Their ability to wield a mop or fight vandalism is irrelevant. It's a different kind of trust.
- Your questions about criteria are valid though. This ability wouldn't really be something that could be abused, so any criteria should be loose in that regard. I would go personally by more of an "I know it when I see it" philosophy; that is, I weigh each individual's contributions and creations separate from other individuals and go by my own personal judgment, and trust my fellow administrators to do the same. Likewise, if we later determine that a user is probably not suitable for autopatrol, we remove it. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 22:11, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- Would it be possible to have the ability to hide users who have created more than a certain amount of articles (say 1000) in the same way you can hide bot created articles? This would mean that patrollers could concentrate on the articles more likely to be troublesome if they wish, while not bringing in autopatrolling with all the problems that this could bring. JASpencer (talk) 14:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- (unindent) I like that idea a lot, but I would like to see a lower number. Personally I'd love 150, but 300 is probably more reasonable. Would this be sum creations (that is, the number's based off of articles created since the beginning) or monthly? --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 19:47, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Disclaimers-A proposal
When someone is googling for something, he or she probably clicks on the first option without being aware of the contents of the wikipedia disclaimer. Wikipedia disclaimer does not show up anytime in the process and even I, as an editor to wikipedia, was not aware of it before certain issues were brought up. If the main point of wikipedia is to provide information, then what's the point of not telling the readers about what they may see.
Here is my suggestion:
As we have a "Did you know" on the main page that talks about interesting things about the article, we create a box at the top of any article and put up there notable facts about the article. Its content can range from the date of creation of the article, its status, its stability, the expected time to read it, important stuff, or even certain interesting content issues if there is a consensus for that. --Be happy!! (talk) 06:45, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- What would the purpose of that information be? Jmlk17 20:22, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- To provide information about the history of the article on wikipedia. For example if the article has been in DYK, what the content of DYK had been (of course if there is no disagreement that it is POV). Anything notable about the article that worth mentioning. --Be happy!! (talk) 20:31, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- That's not a bad idea. But I think putting it on the top of every article could be annoying, I'd like it in the sidebar. I'd probably include date of creation, Wikiproject rating if available, basically stuff that can be generated automatically. I'd be more sceptical towards a human written box. Puchiko (Talk-email) 20:25, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- Yeah. the side bar format, if noticeable, would be good as well :) --Be happy!! (talk) 20:32, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- {{dyktalk}} is a "This page was listed at DYK" (+date) banner template for talk pages. The template could probably be extended to hold the text of the DYK as well. -- Fullstop (talk) 20:50, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- Yeah, but one can have a short notice at the article's page as well. --Be happy!! (talk) 20:53, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- {{dyktalk}} is a "This page was listed at DYK" (+date) banner template for talk pages. The template could probably be extended to hold the text of the DYK as well. -- Fullstop (talk) 20:50, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- Yeah. the side bar format, if noticeable, would be good as well :) --Be happy!! (talk) 20:32, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- This stuff can be found by looking on the article's talk page anyway, and including information on controversies involving the article would violate WP:ASR. This sounds like another Muhammad image proposal anyway. Hut 8.5 21:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I object to the disingenuous way in which this has been presented - the real agenda here is hidden in "or even certain interesting content issues if there is a consensus for that. ", this is an attempt to create a thin end of the wedge, what this editor is actually interested in is getting religious disclaimer stuck on the Muhammad article, once the disclaimer is in place, the next step will be "well we have the disclaimer in place, so we might as well hide the images". I have no issue with a statistic box making of objective facts about an article but under no circumstances should we start slapping subjective POV content disclaimers on article based upon the perceived offence of sections of our readers. --Fredrick day (talk) 23:21, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- And I've got to wonder why we are bothering with this charade, if the proposer is going to run to Jimbo and make emotional special pleading about "forcing people to sin" and try and get him to overturn our normal policy on disclaimers. If you have that much contempt for the views of your fellow editors, why bother with this? --Fredrick day (talk) 01:59, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
No, I do not support the idea of including disclaimers at the tops of articles, even when tucked away in content that is not a disclaimer. We are not subservient to Google and do not have to engage in any special behavior merely because our articles come up high in the search results. - Chardish (talk) 08:40, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- I concur. Jmlk17 09:12, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- If the idea is good, but some potential applications of the idea are bad, support the original proposal and oppose its being used for the specific purposes to which you object. Addressing the merit of an idea (which may be lacking here, or may not) is usually a more constructive way to approach a discussion than attacking the person. That's called ad hominem circumstantial. Discussions of Good Faith don't enter into it, because this is not a situation in which you MUST trust the person to evaluate the idea. By analogy, if someone you considered a 'problem editor' painstakingly copy-edited a few thosand words in an article, you would not be justified in reverting those edits SIMPLY because you thought the editor might be up to something bad later. Balonkey (talk) 16:27, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- I don't like the idea. - Chardish (talk) 18:02, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- Ditto. Jmlk17 06:25, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- I don't like the idea. - Chardish (talk) 18:02, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- If the idea is good, but some potential applications of the idea are bad, support the original proposal and oppose its being used for the specific purposes to which you object. Addressing the merit of an idea (which may be lacking here, or may not) is usually a more constructive way to approach a discussion than attacking the person. That's called ad hominem circumstantial. Discussions of Good Faith don't enter into it, because this is not a situation in which you MUST trust the person to evaluate the idea. By analogy, if someone you considered a 'problem editor' painstakingly copy-edited a few thosand words in an article, you would not be justified in reverting those edits SIMPLY because you thought the editor might be up to something bad later. Balonkey (talk) 16:27, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
The Wikimorgue
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I think the Wikimorgue (see Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia: Positions) is a great idea and should be implemented ASAP to see what not to rewrite or to argue a point to bring back the article. The deletionists can be a little unreasonable at times (this is just my opinion; I am an inclusionist), and the Wikimorgue could help bring Wikipedia even more coverage on many subjects. It's a great idea and should be put into practice! Rdbrewster (talk) 18:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- What in Jimbo's name is the Wikimorgue? Feedback ☎ 21:25, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Wouldn't this defeat the purpose of most deletions? I'm all for accountability, but the point of deleting something is to get rid of it. Sure, occasionally deletions are made that aren't great, but that's why all revisions are "kept" but made invisible to non-admins. That's why we have deletion review. It seems like making a so-called Wikimorgue (awful name too, IMHO) would simply give more power to trolls who repeatedly repost articles or fight for POV, OR, or spam. If someone has a doubt about a deletion, isn't it easy to ask an admin in the category "Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles", or start a deletion review? I happen to be in that category, and I've fulfilled a few requests without any trouble. Why do we need some system that defeats the point of deletion in the first place? One might as well suggest that we just make some template {{ThisPageIsDeleted}} and use that instead of deletion. Nihiltres{t.l} 00:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- All these arguments have already been raised and addressed at WP:PWD (see specifically Wikipedia:PWD#Material_is_never_actually_deleted) and Wikipedia:Trash namespace. Ron Duvall (talk) 02:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Wouldn't this defeat the purpose of most deletions? I'm all for accountability, but the point of deleting something is to get rid of it. Sure, occasionally deletions are made that aren't great, but that's why all revisions are "kept" but made invisible to non-admins. That's why we have deletion review. It seems like making a so-called Wikimorgue (awful name too, IMHO) would simply give more power to trolls who repeatedly repost articles or fight for POV, OR, or spam. If someone has a doubt about a deletion, isn't it easy to ask an admin in the category "Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles", or start a deletion review? I happen to be in that category, and I've fulfilled a few requests without any trouble. Why do we need some system that defeats the point of deletion in the first place? One might as well suggest that we just make some template {{ThisPageIsDeleted}} and use that instead of deletion. Nihiltres{t.l} 00:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Forgive me for bringing this back from the most recent archival, but I just thought it was interesting to note that this proposal was mentioned in New York Magazine (this very proposal, along with the name "Wikimorgue"): "Someone recently proposed a Wikimorgue—a bin of broken dreams where all rejects could still be read, as long as they weren't libelous or otherwise illegal. Like other middens, it would have much to tell us over time. We could call it the Deletopedia." Words to ponder. I know we're working on Wikipedia:Trash namespace, but maybe this might be a source of some renewed interest. Equazcion •✗/C • 15:36, 2 Mar 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for mentioning this. I will cite that article in Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia. –Pomte 18:19, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Muhammad image controversy, a proposal to revisit
Most of you probably know that there is a strong controversy regarding some images posted on Wikipedia article on Muhammad. More specifically these are the images that show an attempt to draw his face (i.e. this and this ). About one year back, on behalf of the community some editors and admins have decided to retain those images on the article. However, because of the changed circumstances (widespread awareness about the issue and a strong opinion against that decision) we need to revisit that decision. I have the following proposal to make in this regard. I have made this suggestion on designated Article talk page, but I have been told there, unless I get my proposal validated here, it is "hot air". So here I am. I request Wikipedia admins to go through this post and if it sounds reasonable, please request the admins who are deciding the fate of article Muhammad to atleast nullify the erlier concensus and reopen serious discussion.
The earlier consensus evidently still holds. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:42, 24 February 2008 (UTC) | ||
---|---|---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. | ||
Context of the ProposalThere are some arguments to retain the debated images on Muhammad. They are summarized at Talk:Muhammad/FAQ. While some of these arguments have merit, there is a more compelling counterargument for not including the images. And the counterargument can be summrized in short as "the images are misrepresentative". The FAQ page on this subject tries to refute the argument that the "Muhammad images are false" by comparing it with other pages like Homer, and Jesus. First of all, that's not a logic, that's an analogy and secondly, it is a very incorrect analogy indeed. It is a fact that Muhammad did not have any photograph or any painting drawn by any person that actually met him. This is probably the same case as Homer or Jesus. So no currently available image of Homer, Jesus or Muhammad can give a reasonable representation of the subject person. Saying so, the images of Homer or Jesus used on their respective Wikipedia articles have been regarded as the mainstream/popular view of their resemblance by many scholarly and/or popular sources. So these images, statues, etc. though probably have little practical value of exactly depicting the subject, have attained a symbolic value of representing the subject in the mind of modern people. This symbolic value may justify their inclusion in the articles on these subjects. However, this symbolic value is exactly what the images on Muhammad’s article lack. The images used in Muhammad page have seldom been used by any scholarly or popular source as the mainstream or popular view of his resemblance. These are isolated imaginary paintings arbitrarily labeled as "Muhammad", which have never ever received any acceptance as his representation (outside Wikipedia). So, these pictures have no more information value as to depicting Muhammad than a stick-man image that I can draw and label as Homer or Jesus. The fact that these images are old definitely increases their antique value and make them precious collection items for museums, but does not increase their value as a media portraying the subject. The "Fact" with respect to Muhammad's physical depiction is: Since Muhammad strongly discouraged portrayal of living things (including himself) his contemporaries never tried to portray him, or such paintings don't exist. However, throghout history there has been isolated attempts to paint him by both muslim and non-muslim sources, but such imgaes never got widespread acceptance as reasonable representation of Muhammad. And because of this fact, respected encyclopedias like Britannica, Encarta etc. have never used any arbitary image drawn by some historical person on their articles on Prophet Muhammad. By posting these images on the article and locking it permanently, a handful of Wikipedia admins are trying to distort this fact, and trying to give these images some sort of "recognition" of importance as the available pictoral depiction of Muhammad. Wikipedia's task is to establish and present the facts, not to give some arbitary imaginary paintings new value/recognition that they never received before, no matter how old these images be. Let me also clarify that I am not comparing my "straw-man" drawing with the drawings on Muhammad’s article in terms of quality, or historical significance; I am only saying they are comparable in terms of their relevance in illustrating the subject. Of course those images are important and have their place on Wikipedia. They can be good examples of historical works of art. They are even quite relevant for the article on Depiction of Muhammad, because they indeed are early attempts to draw Muhammad. But they should not be placed on the article on Muhammad because historically they have totally failed to establish their value as a representative illustration of Muhammad. Why is Muhammad’s case so unique that it has to be different from that of Homer, Jesus, or Buddha? It is simply because unlike all the others mentioned, it is a historically recorded fact that Muhammad forbid drawing living objects (especially himself). And because of this explicit prohibition, Muhammad’s followers as well as non-muslim scholars while researching on Muhammad have not recognized these images as an acceptable representation of the person. When I say, the images of Homer or Jesus are the mainstream view of the resemblance of these subjects, what I mean is these are iconic images that have helped serve as the representation of these people. For example The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints represents a group of people who have used those specific images of Jesus as a faithful representation of the person. Even if they don't qualify as mainstream, there is still a group that believed those images are good representation of Jesus. If the number of people believing they are good representation of Jesus is absolutely minimum, then those images have no place in Jesus’s article either. The point that I am trying to establish is, when we add an imaginary painting to a biography, it should meet a minimum test: does a significant number of people believe this is the available representative depiction of the person? Or in more “Wikipedia-like” words, can it be shown that independent reliable third party sources have reproduced these images or their likeness as a means to depict the subject in question. This is the test that Muhammad’s images fail. The references that have been provided in the article, include, University of Edinburgh and Ali, Wijdan. Both these scholalrly sources analyze these images as a part of analysis of histrory of art, not as part of their commentry on Muhammad. When it came to discussion of Muhammad, all respectable scholarly sources (including mainstream encyclopedias) have refrained from reproducing these images, because no matter how valuable they be in the study of art history, these images have not recieved any notable acceptance as good representation of Muhammad. Furthermore, by refraining from inserting these paintings in their respective articles, all these scholarly sources have tried to respect the fact that there is no widely accepted pictoral depiction of Muhammad. By going against this tradition, Wikipedia (or more specifically a handful of editors from Wikipedia, who have decided to establish censorship – in terms of limiting people’s edit right on article) is distorting the long established fact, trying to establish these handful of images as the “best available pictoral depiction of Muhammad”, which they are not, and perhaps least importantly have offended millions of people. The ProposalIn view of my argument above, I am proposing: since Wikipedia’s task is to faithfully reproduce facts and information as they are available in scholarly sources, these images should be removed from Muhammad article, placed on other relevant articles, where they are appropriate (Depiction of Muhammad for example), and the article on Muhammad can mention:
This is not a request to compromise, or impose cencorship; neither is this Islamic law – this is simply a request to follow the scholalry tradition and stick to the facts, refraining from misrepresentation, which not only goes against Wikipedia values, but also destroys its credibility and acceptibility to millions of people. The request here is to stop distorting a long established fact that there is no acceptable pictoral depiction of Muhammad, because distorting fact goes against the fundamental value of any scholarly work. The request is to the Wikipedia admins to follow the tradition of majority of scholarly sources of not including such images while discussing life of Muhammad, than going its own way and setting a precedence not acceptable to a high number of people. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and its goal is to present facts as they are, not starting new trends. Thank you. Arman (Talk) 04:47, 7 February 2008 (UTC) DiscussionYahel Guhan
Lor
Nihiltres
SP-KP
Rmosler
gren
Therefore
AecisA lot has been said about this subject already. I will probably repeat most of it, but I will say what I have to say nonetheless. Several users have brought forward the argument of non-representation, that it hasn't been established that Muhammad looked anything like the images. To be blunt: that is irrelevant. It has been established that these images were made as portraits of Muhammad. The artists clearly intended the main figure to be Muhammad. Whether they succeeded in doing this, whether they remained true to the original, is not relevant. They could have painted him with blond hair and braces; if that was what Muhammad looked like to them, we add such pictures. I don't see any reason not to include these significant historical sources. AecisBrievenbus 01:35, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
Anakin101Wholehearted support. I've never previously given an opinion on the issue of the Muhammad images, because I'm not Muslim, I've never really looked into it, and always assumed that WP:NOT#CENSORED adequately answered the question. Having read Arman's proposal, I think I've changed my mind for the reason he explains, and also some other reasons, and here's why (forgive the length of this, I beg):
Now, please tell me your opinions on that, everybody. If I am completely misguided please correct me, or if you more or less agree with me please say so! • Anakin (talk) 14:53, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Thw1309I understand and respect your position. For you, a devote Muslim, there is a problem to read an article with pictures of your prophet. For me, an average user of Wikipedia, the picture above can give me a much better impression of the unique position, this man Muhammad has in your islamic value system, than ten or twenty sentences would give me. Therefore, it's important for me to see images within the context of the article. If you can only follow the special interests of a special group by denying the interests of the whole community, then it's not the way of wikipedia, to give you the right to deny these other interests. We do not make improvements for some users, if this means a change for the worse for other users. Every removal of useful images or relocation to another article is such a change for the worse. I think, there is a possibility, to give you access to the article, without any violations of your religious instructions. If you open the article, you will see, there are no images of Muhammad to be seen. They all are in the lower parts of the article. On top of the article, we could place a disambiguation to a subpage of the article. There, the content of the article can be repeated without the images. This would improve Wikipedia for you and other Muslims, without reducing it's usefulness for me and other average users. If we can produce all these Introduction-to-versions of existing scientific articles for readers with lower knowledge on a subject, Wikipedia will survive a second version without pictures too.--Thw1309 (talk) 11:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Support removing. So, I think we should not have an argument regarding why they should be deleted, but rather-like every single picture on WP- we should think why they should stay. The topic is controversial, and I think no fair compromise can be reached to satisfy both parties. Thus, we might start a whole separate article for them, and remove them from this particular article. Λua∫Wise (Operibus anteire) 19:18, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
agrSupport. While I strongly oppose censorship of Wikipedia, considerations of good taste and respect for the views of different cultures can influence how and where information is presented. Moving the images in question to an article devoted to them, with a link from the main article, would not materially diminish the main article. On the contrary, keeping them there is likely more damaging since, in practice, it will deprive us of input from many Muslim editors. I believe that would be a great loss. I also think there are parallels in the way we treat other religions on Wikipedia. We use CE/BCE for dates in articles on Judaism and AD/BC in articles on Christianity, for example. But before the Wiki-lawyers start to explain why those accommodations are somehow different, I will acknowledge that there are unique aspects to this situation. Conflicts involving Islam are a major source of tension in the world today. There are those on both sides who seem intent on exacerbating those tensions, generally citing their deeply held principles. Wikipedia can serve an important calming role by serving as a meeting place where ideas are exchanged. Keeping images of the prophet in this article sends an exclusionary message, whether we like it or not. If moving the images to their own article makes Muslims feel more welcome here, I'm all for doing so.--agr (talk) 17:05, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
WolfkeeperSupport removing from Mohammad. It's not about censorship (the images would be in Depiction of Muhammad still anyway), it's not about being offensive to Moslems, they can still be offended in depictions, but it's just that there's no evidence whatsoever of notable sources linking articles on Mohammad to these kinds pictures, and thus their inclusion is either OR or overemphasis or both. If that evidence can be found in a reasonable number of notable sources then my position will change; for example what does EB do here? What do other encyclopedias do? I see no evidence that anybody else has even bothered to check, they haven't done the work; given that, and given the fact that most of the articles on Mohammad are extremely likely to be Moslem, and absent images like these, I vote to remove right now.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 03:11, 15 February 2008 (UTC) High on a treeOppose I have already responded to Talk:Muhammad/images. but I have to say that I find it quite unfortunate that this debate has to be duplicated in yet another venue. But okay, here we go again:
Regards, High on a tree (talk) 05:39, 15 February 2008 (UTC) LankiveilOppose. Many have already covered the points that I would like to cover above, and far more eloquently than I could. I would however like to add that I find the notion and suggestion that we should only depict the subjects of biographies according to the cultural norms of the culture that they come from to be bizarre. Wikipedia's goal is to provide information to the reader, and having these images in the article facilitates that. I think that having respectful antique images of Islamic Persian and Turkish origin is certainly appropriate for the Muhammad article. With that said, I am not opposed at all to providing a gadget to hide the images for Muslims that might be offended by them, and placing a large prominent notice at the top of the article instructing interested readers on how they can activate or use said gadget. Such an informational message would not be a "disclaimer" in my mind, which is what has so far sunk previous attempts to do something like that. Lankiveil (speak to me) 11:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC). Jmlk17Strong Oppose Since I am quite involved in the issue as a whole, I'll keep my comments short and sweet. I believe that a disclaimer, hidden image template, or anything of the sort would be a dangerous precedent, and would only allow further issues to bypass our views on censorship, among other concrete policies. For instance, there are some who object to curse words, some who object to photos on sexual intercourse, and those who can find offense out of any one of our 2 million+ articles. If we truly do value our open encyclopedia, as well as our views on never censoring anything as it could hinder our core, then this article should and must be no different. Jmlk17 01:55, 21 February 2008 (UTC) Ron DuvallComment Can we please relist? I don't think this has gotten enough discussion. This issue is extremely important to the future of mankind. Ron Duvall (talk) 06:46, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
AbdComment There are no images of Muhammad that have any reliability at all; various substreams of Islamic culture did allow certain kinds of images, but these were all later inventions. There are descriptions of his appearance in words that can be used to generate some speculative image, but, of course, these are highly unreliable. In articles on this subject, serious authors may show historical images as such, not as being actual "images of Muhammad." There are no images of Muhammad, there are images taken from various people's imaginations. None of them have sufficient currency to be notable in an article on Muhammad; where they are notable is in specialized articles, such as those on the famous or infamous cartoons. However, having said all that, it's a fact that certain actions, legitimate under personal freedom, can be highly dangerous due to fanaticism in the world. One may wish to take the risk on oneself, but what if gratuitous insult causes injury to one's neighbors? Don't tease the dogs when you are taking your children for a walk; in fact, don't tease them at any time. It's disruptive, even if you have a "right" to do it. --Abd (talk) 16:57, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Dbachmannoppose per (*stifles a yawn*) nearly everyone else over the past months, see Talk:Muhammad/images. There is no way we can implement any "no images of X" guideline. Any concerns regarding the encyclopedic value of any given image need to be raised on a case-by-case basis. dab (𒁳) 17:16, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
GnangarraOppose removal of images. Any removal images will be seen as censorship by supporters of Anti-Islamic groups. And be seen as a Victory by Islamic groups in censoring Wikipedia content. All other issues for the removal of content will then be argued on the basis that a precendent was set in complying with the requirements of Islam. As they are now claimed to be false, then there's no offense to the laws of Islam and no reason to be concerned about them being there in the first place. Gnangarra 12:56, 23 February 2008 (UTC) SpinningsparkOppose removal. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (Pillar 1 of the Five Pillars). The pictures are of genuine academic interest, showing a depiction in Ottoman Empire times and therefore belong here whoever it upsets. MCB
Fredrick Day
SeraphimbladeAbsolutely no removal. Even if the pictures don't depict exactly what Muhammad looked like, they are historic and educational, as to what a culture thought Muhammad looked like. And we do not remove things because they offend someone. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:03, 24 February 2008 (UTC) |
- Maybe this should be added to WP:Perennial proposals. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:42, 4 Mar 2008 (UTC)
- The broader 'content warnings' section of that page seems to already touch on the matter (though only slightly). Perhaps it could be expanded a bit, so as to cover things like this. AlexiusHoratius (talk) 04:00, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia Suggestions
I have posted the suggestions in the help desk but all I get is people telling me to post them here or in Bugzilla. I've done that but have gotten nothing back. I just want someone to tell me no were not doing that or yes we want to do that.
- User Talk Pages Suggestion
- I have a suggestion which would be a pretty big overhaul of the user talk pages system used by Wikipedia. I have noticed that users always struggle with this when commenting and replying in user talk pages. When someone leaves a comment, do you reply on their talk page or on your own? If you do it on your own, will they see the reply? Have they set your talk page for watching? The result of this is almost always having half a conversation on one page and the other half on another page. Sometimes they even duplicate messages on both talk pages.
- My suggestion is to have each comment section in a type of "template" in some Wikipedia Comments database, while only adding tags to all user talk pages of those who have participated (left a comment) in the section. Whenever someone edits the comment, they can do it on their own talk page, and even when it seems thay are editing their talk page, they are actually editing the template, so the changes will appear in all pages who have the tag. This way the full conversation will be visible in all user talk pages, and will never be duplicated. Every comment would have an ID (e.g. 00215468) and its template page has everything including the title, all messages and a list of all users who have commented on the section. When a user chooses to add a section to any user talk page nothing will be apparently different since the interface would remain the same, but they will be creating or editing a "template" without openly realizing it.
- An example tag that would be included in user talk pages could be something like this:
{{Comment:00215468|title=Suggestion}}
- Everytime the comment is edited, all users listed for the comment will receive the "new message" notice.
- This would not apply for article discussion pages since it is better to keep those attached to their articles like they are now.
- Some users have implemented it manually (e.g. User_talk:Alphax/Threads) but I would like to see if it is possible for Wikipedia officials to implement this natively into Wikipedia.
- Delayed Educational Wikipedia Suggestion
- I'd also like to see an Educational version of Wikipedia. Let me explain myself. I know Wikipedia is very educational at the moment. The problem is that I have seen so many complaints about users searching for information on Wikipedia just to find a blanked page with streams of nasty curse words splattered all over (which I know don't last very long). Still, many children use Wikipedia for school/educational purposes and are vulnerable to sudden bursts of strong language, profanity and even adult content. My suggestion is to create a "filter domain" which is an "edu" Wikipedia address, that schools and parents can add to their "safe sites" list that would filter Wikipedia pages. The filtering can be fairly simple that would only allow pages with certain properties:
- 1) Locked pages
- 2) Special pages
- 3) Exclude pages with certain key words (profanity) in their content even if informative
- 4) Pages that have been unchanged by x minutes (x being a statistical number derived from the maximum amount of minutes a vandalized article stays unfixed)
- These are just examples. Other rules can also be included.
- Wikipedia has highly reliable information which can be stained by very short vandalism periods. A "delayed" version of Wikipedia would be priceless.
- Please let me know! Thanks! ~RayLast «Talk!» 18:49, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- I don't think a "delayed" Wikipedia would be very good provided the delay time was set too short. Rather I think the first thing that should happen for Educational Wikipedia should be that we set up a series of anti-vandalism bots (~50 of them should be good) here on English Wiki, and set the new article delay for 1 day. After that, a page becomes semi-locked after diasppearing from the New Articles log. Strenuous, but possible, and maybe even neccesary if the site is set up. --Gp75motorsports REV LIMITER 19:06, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- The anti-vandalism bots are doing a pretty good job at the moment. Only a delay must be added. A day could be a possible delay time. Semi-locking or locking the articles, in my opinion, would not be beneficial. Remember that it should be only a filter, not an overhaul of the articles system. The filter should not intervene with current editing, meaning that Wikipedians should not see any change. The suggestion is not about building and copying the whole encyclopedia with safe content either. It's just a tiny little filter. I feel safe to say that a significant delay would ensure the integrity of the articles practically 100% of the time. For new articles, for example, a rule could be that a {{safe-article|user1|user2|user3|user4|user5}} tag with 5 registered user's "votes" must be included before it can appear in the Educational Wikipedia.
- Also note that the current Wikipedia pages such as http://en.wikipedia.org will see no change. People visiting the original site will see unfiltered content such as how it is now. Only those that visit the filter page (e.g. http://edu.en.wikipedia.org) will see filtered content. ~RayLast «Talk!» 19:27, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oh, okay. That sounds better. I presonally think it should be 10-15 uses signing the template (20 if possible). This would allow more of the community to comment. --Gp75motorsports REV LIMITER 23:55, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- I thought I heard there was something being considered or worked on where new versions of pages would not be displayed immediately to most users, so a more stable, more trusted version would tend to be displayed. I forget where I heard about that -- maybe it's in Bugzilla somewhere or something.
- Re talk pages: It's good that you're thinking about that. Maybe someday we'll get a better system. I wouldn't like the system you describe because people would either have to be able to unsubscribe from those threads, or not. If they can, then when you post you wouldn't know whether a certain user was going to see it or not. If not, even worse: people would be subjected to seeing long threads on topics they're no longer interested in.
- I think pretty good solutions are: Usually reply on the same talk page where the conversation started; and if you want to make sure the other person gets the message, use the {{Talkback}} template on their talk page. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:53, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- For the "delayed" proposal, it sounds a little like Wikipedia:Flagged revisions, an extension to MediaWiki which has not yet been activated on en.Wikipedia, partially because it's still in testing and partially because no-one's worked out exactly how to implement it here (and after the kerfuffle that happened when the developers introduced non-admin rollback, it may take a bit longer). Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 03:45, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- As for the talk page suggestion, I think we're waiting on another MediaWiki extension, called LiquidThreads. So your ideas are good, the thing is that there's already some development on related solutions (although with the number of things the developers are working on, any kind of change to the status quo will be some time in the making). Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 03:48, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- I don't think a "delayed" Wikipedia would be very good provided the delay time was set too short. Rather I think the first thing that should happen for Educational Wikipedia should be that we set up a series of anti-vandalism bots (~50 of them should be good) here on English Wiki, and set the new article delay for 1 day. After that, a page becomes semi-locked after diasppearing from the New Articles log. Strenuous, but possible, and maybe even neccesary if the site is set up. --Gp75motorsports REV LIMITER 19:06, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- There's a Wikipedia for schools. Basically what they did was choose the most important articles (it's based around the UK National curriculum), checked them for factual accuracy, and age-appropriateness. The Wikipedia for schools is available for free download (torrent or direct) or viewing in your browser without downloading anything. What I think is important is for schools to know about this resource and use it. It's been there for over 10 months, but it isn't used much because parents and teachers know nothing about it. Puchiko (Talk-email) 13:19, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- And because it obviously does not have the extensive content available at Wikipedia itself. Creating another website, selecting, fixing and copying Wikipedia articles is too much, since it is not maintained by the whole Wikipedia community. The idea is to use the same content, from the same source, only automatically filtered a bit. ~RayLast «Talk!» 13:43, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Bureaucrat promotion consensus
As the community anticipates a few closures of current RfBs as unsuccessful, I would like to bring to the community's attention that the traditional threshold for bureaucrat promotion still does not comply with WP:Consensus. Bureaucrats should be called to lower the approval threshold for new bureaucrats to that of a regular request for adminship. There is no plausible justification for such an extreme 90% threshold for new bureaucrats. It makes the whole process unfair for the candidate and unfair for the participants who'll have a slim minority of 10% decide for all. As a Wikipedian who believes in process, I think it's quite frustrating to see some great candidates be turned down despite clear consensus from the community for them to be approved and become new bureaucrats. Húsönd 00:05, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
- This is already being discussed at WT:RFA. Davewild (talk) 07:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
It would seem best to keep discussion about this in one central place - it may even be time to create a separate location for this discussion, which is attracting quite a bit of support from participants at WT:RFA but would need a wider consensus should bureaucrats adjust their approach to RfB closures. WjBscribe 10:00, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks, I hadn't noticed that a discussion about this was already happening there. Húsönd 10:31, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
increase text size
it may be useless, but could you add built-in increase text button? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.34.37.64 (talk) 11:13, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
- This is built-in on most browsers. On Firefox and IE ctrl-shift-+ works. Algebraist 14:09, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
- Yep, every browser has text-size increase/decrease capabilities.
- * Firefox: As Algebraist notes, or Ctrl-+ and Ctrl-- (and Ctrl-0 to reset), or Menu::"View"->"Text size"
- * Opera: '+' to increase , '-' to decrease, '*' to reset; or Menu::"View"->"Zoom"
- * Safari: same keyboard accelerators as Firefox, or Menu->"View"->"Make text bigger" etc
- * Konqueror: keyboard accelerators and menu as in Firefox
- * IE and AOL Browser: Menu::"View"->"Text size", but don't count on it working correctly.
- -- Fullstop (talk) 20:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
- And in IE (newer versions) there is a "zoom" (in the right bottom corner) affecting the whole page, including text. −Woodstone (talk) 21:26, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
- Incidentally, Opera has the same kind of full-page-zoom feature as well. —Remember the dot (talk) 21:30, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
- Use Ctrl-mouse wheel to increase or decrease the size. bibliomaniac15 I see no changes 23:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
This is my new proposal. Please consider! Park Crawler (talk) 02:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Please! :-D Park Crawler (talk) 03:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
{{Wikipedia ads}} on frequently-visited pages
My suggestion is that we place these templates on frequently used pages, such as WP:AIV, WP:ANI, and so forth. Many users mill around these pages at any point in time; in my opinion, having the Wiki-ads there would boost WikiProject participation considerably and be a boon to article writing and so forth. However, I'm pretty sure that many editors are opposed to the idea, as they may think it too distracting. Just wanted to gain some consensus. Cheers, Master of Puppets Call me MoP!☺ 06:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- Why not have a variant of that, which would be a template for unobtrusive text ads for WikiProjects? More users might be inclined to add it to their userpages, and there might be better chances of getting it added to Wikipedia namespace pages. I'm not a big fan of banner ads, although they're fine for userspace. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 15:05, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- Of course, what would be really awesome would be to have context-based ads. For instance, if you are at an AfD for an article on the endangered Austrian seagull/owl transmutation whose population is down to 30, the ad might invite you to join WikiProject Birds. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Obuibo Mbstpo (talk • contribs) 15:09, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- Your heart's in the right place, but I don't think it's a good idea.
- These are already large pages to download. They don't need more stuff on them. (There still exist in this world dial-up modem users.)
- I suspect few regulars actually even look at the top of WP:AN or AN/I on anything approaching a regular basis. New posts are at the bottom, and our watchlists usually link to text anchors well into the page.
- Animated banner ads are annoying and evil. Period. People will be irritated by them soon after the ads appear; after a few days to get used to the banner placement people won't even see them—it will be a piece of dead real estate at the top of the page. Sorry.
- Let people put whatever they want in their userspace, but please try to keep the highly-used pages as uncluttered as possible. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Proposal to make article "Hobo Bashing"
I wanted to ask permission to make the article "Hobo Bashing". I think it is somewhat important and currently increasing particulary in the U.S. I would like someone's opinion on making this article! Thanks- Letter 7/Caleb (talk) 22:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- You don't really need "permission" for it. What you should do is write the article in your user space (aka Hobo bashing), then find a Wikiproject that you believe is related to the topic. Ask folks on that project to look it over and offer improvements, and when you feel it's ready, you can Move it to main article space. Just be sure to provide verifiable reliable sources and I think it would work. -- 68.156.149.62 (talk) 00:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- The previous comment is right that you don't need permission to make a new article; you can even simply be bold and create the article directly in main article space, if you like. However, with a "delicate" subject like "Hobo Bashing" you should take care to follow wikipedia's policies on verification, notability and neutral point of view. You may also want to read the wp:naming conventions; something like Homeless discrimination would be more encyclopedic than Hobo bashing. --jwandersTalk 06:20, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- Just did a quick search; You might find that you can expand on the information in this article: Homelessness_in_the_United_States#Crimes_against_homeless_people.--jwandersTalk 06:24, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- Ok, thanks for the tips. I'll try to make a quality article using some research and my own knowledge on the subject. Thanks Letter 7/Caleb (talk) 14:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Tag to prevent plotbloat
I propose that a tag is introduced for when a plot summary in an article reaches an optimum length. At the moment some articles e.g Goodfellas, No Country for Old Men are subject to constant revisions with users placing uneccessary detail, speculation or their own interpretations of what happened.
When a consensus has been agreed upon the tag would be placed before the article which could read The plot summary below is considered to be a suitable length for the article. Please read discussion on talk pages before editing it. Obviously the wording would have to be discussed but I think you get the idea. Users would of course still be able to edit the plot summaries but would hopefully give them pause for thought before firing in. Yorkshiresky (talk) 12:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Lightweight thanking mechanism in article histories
We should consider adding a lightweight, easy-to-use mechanism by which readers can quickly thank other editors for their edits. I envision a new button in article histories, diff pages, watchlists, etc.:
- (cur) (last) 20:03, 2 March 2008 EditorFoo (Talk | contribs | thank | block) (60,782 bytes) (→Historical rivalries) (rollback | undo)
which alerts the recipient in a manner similar to a new user talk message:
Of course, the actual box would be far less ugly.
Suggested details:
- A thank-you does not become part of the recipient's talk page, the article history, or any other public record; it is visible only to recipient, and it is displayed only once.
- A thank-you does not come with an additional comment. It must not turn into a private messaging service. Custom messages will have to be left on user talk pages, as usual.
- There should not be a button to thank all editors of an article for the article's existence. Thanking for a given edit is more personal.
- There should be no published guideline instructing editors when to use the feature; editors should understand that it is left to personal preference, so not being thanked for an edit doesn't necessarily mean anything.
- IP addresses may give or receive thanks just like users with accounts.
- The frequency with which thank-yous are delivered may need to be throttled to a maximum of once per hour or so, in order to avoid intrusive floods of messages, originating from edits to a particularly widely-read article.
Motivation: for various reasons, my recent editing pattern is such that most of my interactions with other users involve offering criticism or responding to it. I try to be civil and constructive, and there's no replacement for that, but the fact is that I'm passing on a lot of opportunities for strictly positive interaction. It feels awkward to leave a note on another user's talk page just to thank them for an edit to some article on my watchlist. Perhaps this makes me a terrible community member, but let's stipulate for a moment that it is an understandable affliction that probably happens to other editors as well. I would like to provide more positive feedback and encouragement, so if this proposal were implemented, I for one would use it all the time.
Obviously this proposal, if agreed upon, would require a software change. Melchoir (talk) 20:39, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Messages left at Wikipedia talk:Kindness Campaign and Wikipedia talk:Harmonious editing club. Melchoir (talk) 20:44, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- I think it's a good idea, if users would be able to opt out from receiving thank-yous or limit them to a certain number per hour/day (kinda like what you suggested but customisable). Users should also be able to hide the "thank you" button in page histories and diffs.
I might still prefer to just leave a note, but it's up to each Wikipedian whether to use the feature or not. Puchiko (Talk-email) 22:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- I think this is the worst idea I've seen here in a while. Requires major technical changes, no suggested opt-out mechanism and is absolutely and utterly useless at building an encyclopedia. IMO, if you want to thank somebody, do it by hand and don't use stupid templates. -Halo (talk) 23:53, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- An opt-out mechanism is easy to design; just put it in user preferences. And the technical changes would be worth it. The whole point of improving software is to make it easier for the user to accomplish some worthwhile task.
- I agree that building an encyclopedia is our goal. But let's think hard about the opportunity cost imposed against that goal by the restrictions of cyberspace. There is no such thing as a smile, nod, or wave here, and no intonation or body language; every communication must be explicit. This is unnatural and unhealthy, and it isn't the way we are trained from birth to collaborate with each other. It may cost us immeasurably in terms of frustrated contributors who leave the project and even direct their energies against us. Melchoir (talk) 00:29, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- No, it's not unnatural or unhealthy for a site to spend time on a focused goal rather than adding social networking-esque features that push pointless pleasantries on people and saying it's "unnatural or unhealthy" to not do so is basically an ad hominem argument.
- Whatsmore, I'm sure any thanks you wish to give would be heartily received and much more appreciated given by a hand-written message on a talk page rather than in an impersonal template that's only a click a way. In my experience, one-click generic impersonal 'thank you's are largely pointless, useless, and are likely to be spammy (especially if defaulted to "on" for IP users) and rather than fostering any community they do the opposite. -Halo (talk) 03:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- It's probably not unusual for a website to eschew pleasantries, no. By "unnatural" I mean that it's far outside the norm in everyday life. Imagine your favorite workplace or real-life charity organization. Now take away the personal contact. How effective will it be in accomplishing its goals? We may think that we don't miss those little things here at Wikipedia, but I strongly doubt that human psychology is that flexible, hence "unhealthy".
- Your point about hand-written messages is well taken. All I can say is that this mechanism is underutilized, and it may help to supplement it.
- I'm curious about your experience. What community have you seen where a similar approach has backfired? Melchoir (talk) 07:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- But the Internet very much isn't everyday life, and trying to make it so is doomed to failure and I also think trying to find a technical solution to a social problem is inherently misguided. Imagine the 7th most popular website in the world all written voluntarily by strangers who don't need pleasantries - wait, that's what we already have. I'm also wondering if there should be Wikistalking concerns, and 'facetious' thankyous that could ruin the indented message.
- For the record, the websites I'm talking about are general forum-based websites since 'thank' modules addon are avaliable for vBulletin. On these sites, it's hardly used and really serves no real benefit to anybody.
- Oh, btw, implementation should be relatively trivial - user_newtalk is similar, you'd just need a new table with user_id/user_ip (both incoming and outgoing), rev_id and a timestamp, and a page to send/receive. An ideal implementation that uses AJAX to send "thankyous" might make things a little bit more fiddly, but still nothing too difficult. I do think you'd face an uphill battle trying to get it included into Mediawiki proper though. -Halo (talk) 11:59, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- Interesting... I can certainly imagine the feature going unused in a forum environment, where if you're involved in a thread, you're more likely to respond directly anyway.
- Possibly by restricting thank-yous to be given once per day or something, they would increase in perceived value, so they don't seem facetious, while also making stalking and other abuse much more difficult? Melchoir (talk) 18:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- I hereby thank all edits made with good intentions. –Pomte 01:59, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- I feel like there are already so many ways to thank people...Barnstars, smilies, talk page messages, A Cup of Tea and a Sit Down, other awards...and that adding another, easier and more obvious ones wouldn't make a difference in how often people thank other users. If you can think of a rationale for why we need a specific way to thank people for specific edits, I'd love to hear it.Bardofcornish (talk) 20:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
- I wouldn't say that we need a feature like this. I just think it could help, the reason being that I perceive a sort of band gap, if you will, at the low end of the spectrum of possible ways to thank people, a gap that isn't nearly so wide out in real life. Surely offering the feature would make some kind of a difference in how often people thank other users. There's a real danger that it would be a negative difference in terms of quality of communication, and I concede that the risk might well outweigh the reward. But come along with me on the principle! Melchoir (talk) 08:09, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- Barnstars, {{smile}}s and the like are great, but they're not something that needs to be built into the wiki. I'd say that a monobook.js script that added a smile to a user's talk page on a single click (that you could tweak to deliver it the way you want it) would be a better outlet than a one-size-fits-all hard-coded tool that would either be under- or over-used. But hey, thanks for the suggestion -- RoninBK T C 09:42, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- Thank you, Melchoir, for thinking creatively about ways to thank people. Maybe somebody could create a userscript (as a new feature of Popups, for example) that would provide a "thank" button and would automatically create a talk page message containing a link to the edit, a few words ("Thank you for..."), your signature, and allow you to add a few personal words to the message ("best edit I've seen all day" or "I love statistics" or whatever) to make the message meaningful. Actually, maybe just a message containing a link to the edit, and then it could be used not only for thank messages but for any kind of message about the edit. I think the personalized words, individual for each thank message, are important.
- Alternatively, it could be a "rate this edit" type of feature, such as some websites have, where the edit will have four-and-a-half stars displayed next to it or something to show what proportion of readers have indicated that they like it. People could generate statistics about the ratings of their edits. People could become overly obsessed about numbers, though.
- I agree that opt-out is essential for a proposal like Melchoir's: people may enjoy the first few thank messages but soon might not want to spend any time on them, not even a second. I wouldn't want them to be necessarily limited to only appearing once, though. That should be configurable by the recipient. Some of us like to read thank messages more than once. --Coppertwig (talk) 03:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- I oppose the proposal on principle; my anti-social side will show much more prominently if people start thanking others and I simple go on with my business. I cannot allow this to happen, no siree. It's too bad for my public image. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 04:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Hah! Well, anyway, it looks like this is one of those things where everyone has an honestly good idea to contribute, the sum of which implies no change. Such is software, I suppose? Melchoir (talk) 08:00, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia mobile
Hello everyone! I spent a few weeks at the hospital and I realized how Wikipedia mobile was important. There are several initiatives started everywhere, but nothing concrete and nothing multilingual. I wondered if it was appropriate to start a central page at m:Wikipedia mobile, to consolidate these discussions and pages.
- en:Wapedia
- http://en.wap.wikipedia.org
- m:Mobile subdomain
- en:Wikipedia:WAP access
- de:Wikipedia:Unterwegs
- fr:Wikipédia:Mobile
Thanks for guiding me! Antaya (talk) 16:32, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- I suggest you just go ahead and do so; you'll need a Meta login, of course. Do note that Meta rules are different than en.Wikipedia rules (I'm sure you know that); in some sense, the better place to ask is really m:Babel, the equivalent of the village pump here.
- I also suggest that you not attempt to "consolidate" the information on other pages by doing a merge and setting up redirects, but rather create a page that points to, and summarizes, existing options and discussions. That would mean using summary style sections in some cases. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:34, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Why do we have bureaucrats...
...when Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.9.4 (talk) 12:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- What a perfectly formed rhetorical question, I would feel like I am spoiling it by trying to answer. If only we still had BJAODN... -- RoninBK T C 12:59, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- The bureaucrats here do not really fit their name. They just have a few special buttons that allow them to give special permissions to users such as adminship and bureaucratship. They also can flag users as bots and rename users. They are not bureaucrats in the way that one usually thinks of a bureaucrat as being. Captain panda 04:01, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- When we say Wikipedia isn't a bureaucracy, we're talking about the Wikipedia environment as far as its users are concerned. The wiki itself, however, on the technical end, does have a structure with clear rules and hierarchy. That's required in order to keep everything working correctly -- Without it/them, anyone could rename their account and assign permissions. Bureaucrats maintain that technical structure, so the name is accurate. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:50, 8 Mar 2008 (UTC)
U.S. Supreme Court
Do you think that a category for Unanimous Supreme court decisions would be cool? I mean, Wikipedia is a learning environment at the same time as a research environment, and it would foster a lot of learning. And that's good for society. What do you think? --Heero Kirashami (talk) 02:03, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- To me it sounds like an odd thing to categorize by. Maybe you would be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases. You can make suggestions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:56, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- The category is really "Notable U.S. Supreme Court decisions that were unanimous", since non-notable cases don't have articles. Probably a pretty small number of cases. (My first reaction was to consider this a WP:NOT violation - indiscriminate collection of information - but upon reflection it's actually an interesting question as to how many of these cases were unanimous.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Category:United States Supreme Court cases is large. I'm sure many of them were unanimous. I just don't think it sounds suited for a category. But Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases would be a better place to discuss this. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Trivia proposal: Move to talk page
Some articles have various edit wars over the length of trivia dedicated to a given subject. One policy could be implemented to have trivia appear in its own box in the discussion page. This would remove long lists from the article body.
- It would be a really, REALLY bad idea to codify this into policy directly, without at least spending some time as a guideline. -- RoninBK T C 03:37, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
- The "length" of trivia sections shouldn't be a concern (ie. they shouldn't be shortened just because someone thinks they're too long). We have some pretty descriptive guidance already as to which items should be kept, integrated into other sections, or removed. Each individual item should be decided on its own merits. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:42, 8 Mar 2008 (UTC)
Lightweight thanking mechanism in article histories
We should consider adding a lightweight, easy-to-use mechanism by which readers can quickly thank other editors for their edits. I envision a new button in article histories, diff pages, watchlists, etc.:
- (cur) (last) 20:03, 2 March 2008 EditorFoo (Talk | contribs | thank | block) (60,782 bytes) (→Historical rivalries) (rollback | undo)
which alerts the recipient in a manner similar to a new user talk message:
Of course, the actual box would be far less ugly.
Suggested details:
- A thank-you does not become part of the recipient's talk page, the article history, or any other public record; it is visible only to recipient, and it is displayed only once.
- A thank-you does not come with an additional comment. It must not turn into a private messaging service. Custom messages will have to be left on user talk pages, as usual.
- There should not be a button to thank all editors of an article for the article's existence. Thanking for a given edit is more personal.
- There should be no published guideline instructing editors when to use the feature; editors should understand that it is left to personal preference, so not being thanked for an edit doesn't necessarily mean anything.
- IP addresses may give or receive thanks just like users with accounts.
- The frequency with which thank-yous are delivered may need to be throttled to a maximum of once per hour or so, in order to avoid intrusive floods of messages, originating from edits to a particularly widely-read article.
Motivation: for various reasons, my recent editing pattern is such that most of my interactions with other users involve offering criticism or responding to it. I try to be civil and constructive, and there's no replacement for that, but the fact is that I'm passing on a lot of opportunities for strictly positive interaction. It feels awkward to leave a note on another user's talk page just to thank them for an edit to some article on my watchlist. Perhaps this makes me a terrible community member, but let's stipulate for a moment that it is an understandable affliction that probably happens to other editors as well. I would like to provide more positive feedback and encouragement, so if this proposal were implemented, I for one would use it all the time.
Obviously this proposal, if agreed upon, would require a software change. Melchoir (talk) 20:39, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Messages left at Wikipedia talk:Kindness Campaign and Wikipedia talk:Harmonious editing club. Melchoir (talk) 20:44, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- I think it's a good idea, if users would be able to opt out from receiving thank-yous or limit them to a certain number per hour/day (kinda like what you suggested but customisable). Users should also be able to hide the "thank you" button in page histories and diffs.
I might still prefer to just leave a note, but it's up to each Wikipedian whether to use the feature or not. Puchiko (Talk-email) 22:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- I think this is the worst idea I've seen here in a while. Requires major technical changes, no suggested opt-out mechanism and is absolutely and utterly useless at building an encyclopedia. IMO, if you want to thank somebody, do it by hand and don't use stupid templates. -Halo (talk) 23:53, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- An opt-out mechanism is easy to design; just put it in user preferences. And the technical changes would be worth it. The whole point of improving software is to make it easier for the user to accomplish some worthwhile task.
- I agree that building an encyclopedia is our goal. But let's think hard about the opportunity cost imposed against that goal by the restrictions of cyberspace. There is no such thing as a smile, nod, or wave here, and no intonation or body language; every communication must be explicit. This is unnatural and unhealthy, and it isn't the way we are trained from birth to collaborate with each other. It may cost us immeasurably in terms of frustrated contributors who leave the project and even direct their energies against us. Melchoir (talk) 00:29, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- No, it's not unnatural or unhealthy for a site to spend time on a focused goal rather than adding social networking-esque features that push pointless pleasantries on people and saying it's "unnatural or unhealthy" to not do so is basically an ad hominem argument.
- Whatsmore, I'm sure any thanks you wish to give would be heartily received and much more appreciated given by a hand-written message on a talk page rather than in an impersonal template that's only a click a way. In my experience, one-click generic impersonal 'thank you's are largely pointless, useless, and are likely to be spammy (especially if defaulted to "on" for IP users) and rather than fostering any community they do the opposite. -Halo (talk) 03:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- It's probably not unusual for a website to eschew pleasantries, no. By "unnatural" I mean that it's far outside the norm in everyday life. Imagine your favorite workplace or real-life charity organization. Now take away the personal contact. How effective will it be in accomplishing its goals? We may think that we don't miss those little things here at Wikipedia, but I strongly doubt that human psychology is that flexible, hence "unhealthy".
- Your point about hand-written messages is well taken. All I can say is that this mechanism is underutilized, and it may help to supplement it.
- I'm curious about your experience. What community have you seen where a similar approach has backfired? Melchoir (talk) 07:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- But the Internet very much isn't everyday life, and trying to make it so is doomed to failure and I also think trying to find a technical solution to a social problem is inherently misguided. Imagine the 7th most popular website in the world all written voluntarily by strangers who don't need pleasantries - wait, that's what we already have. I'm also wondering if there should be Wikistalking concerns, and 'facetious' thankyous that could ruin the indented message.
- For the record, the websites I'm talking about are general forum-based websites since 'thank' modules addon are avaliable for vBulletin. On these sites, it's hardly used and really serves no real benefit to anybody.
- Oh, btw, implementation should be relatively trivial - user_newtalk is similar, you'd just need a new table with user_id/user_ip (both incoming and outgoing), rev_id and a timestamp, and a page to send/receive. An ideal implementation that uses AJAX to send "thankyous" might make things a little bit more fiddly, but still nothing too difficult. I do think you'd face an uphill battle trying to get it included into Mediawiki proper though. -Halo (talk) 11:59, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- Interesting... I can certainly imagine the feature going unused in a forum environment, where if you're involved in a thread, you're more likely to respond directly anyway.
- Possibly by restricting thank-yous to be given once per day or something, they would increase in perceived value, so they don't seem facetious, while also making stalking and other abuse much more difficult? Melchoir (talk) 18:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- I hereby thank all edits made with good intentions. –Pomte 01:59, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- I feel like there are already so many ways to thank people...Barnstars, smilies, talk page messages, A Cup of Tea and a Sit Down, other awards...and that adding another, easier and more obvious ones wouldn't make a difference in how often people thank other users. If you can think of a rationale for why we need a specific way to thank people for specific edits, I'd love to hear it.Bardofcornish (talk) 20:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
- I wouldn't say that we need a feature like this. I just think it could help, the reason being that I perceive a sort of band gap, if you will, at the low end of the spectrum of possible ways to thank people, a gap that isn't nearly so wide out in real life. Surely offering the feature would make some kind of a difference in how often people thank other users. There's a real danger that it would be a negative difference in terms of quality of communication, and I concede that the risk might well outweigh the reward. But come along with me on the principle! Melchoir (talk) 08:09, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- Barnstars, {{smile}}s and the like are great, but they're not something that needs to be built into the wiki. I'd say that a monobook.js script that added a smile to a user's talk page on a single click (that you could tweak to deliver it the way you want it) would be a better outlet than a one-size-fits-all hard-coded tool that would either be under- or over-used. But hey, thanks for the suggestion -- RoninBK T C 09:42, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- Thank you, Melchoir, for thinking creatively about ways to thank people. Maybe somebody could create a userscript (as a new feature of Popups, for example) that would provide a "thank" button and would automatically create a talk page message containing a link to the edit, a few words ("Thank you for..."), your signature, and allow you to add a few personal words to the message ("best edit I've seen all day" or "I love statistics" or whatever) to make the message meaningful. Actually, maybe just a message containing a link to the edit, and then it could be used not only for thank messages but for any kind of message about the edit. I think the personalized words, individual for each thank message, are important.
- Alternatively, it could be a "rate this edit" type of feature, such as some websites have, where the edit will have four-and-a-half stars displayed next to it or something to show what proportion of readers have indicated that they like it. People could generate statistics about the ratings of their edits. People could become overly obsessed about numbers, though.
- I agree that opt-out is essential for a proposal like Melchoir's: people may enjoy the first few thank messages but soon might not want to spend any time on them, not even a second. I wouldn't want them to be necessarily limited to only appearing once, though. That should be configurable by the recipient. Some of us like to read thank messages more than once. --Coppertwig (talk) 03:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- I oppose the proposal on principle; my anti-social side will show much more prominently if people start thanking others and I simple go on with my business. I cannot allow this to happen, no siree. It's too bad for my public image. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 04:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Hah! Well, anyway, it looks like this is one of those things where everyone has an honestly good idea to contribute, the sum of which implies no change. Such is software, I suppose? Melchoir (talk) 08:00, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia mobile
Hello everyone! I spent a few weeks at the hospital and I realized how Wikipedia mobile was important. There are several initiatives started everywhere, but nothing concrete and nothing multilingual. I wondered if it was appropriate to start a central page at m:Wikipedia mobile, to consolidate these discussions and pages.
- en:Wapedia
- http://en.wap.wikipedia.org
- m:Mobile subdomain
- en:Wikipedia:WAP access
- de:Wikipedia:Unterwegs
- fr:Wikipédia:Mobile
Thanks for guiding me! Antaya (talk) 16:32, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- I suggest you just go ahead and do so; you'll need a Meta login, of course. Do note that Meta rules are different than en.Wikipedia rules (I'm sure you know that); in some sense, the better place to ask is really m:Babel, the equivalent of the village pump here.
- I also suggest that you not attempt to "consolidate" the information on other pages by doing a merge and setting up redirects, but rather create a page that points to, and summarizes, existing options and discussions. That would mean using summary style sections in some cases. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:34, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Adding a noindex magic word
I propose adding an extra magic word that will give the author(s) the option to have a page not indexed (anymore) by searchbots. I think this is useful especially for userpages, where people add information about themselves, sometimes with a username that is their actual name, or a name closely related to them. Often this userpage will be very high in the search results. Because of the overall pagerank of Wikipedia and the optimalisation for searchengines it will sometimes even come above someone's personal homepage or blog. To give these people an option to maintain their userpage and username but not have the page indexed I propose a __ (or something like this) magic word (note that Google will also remove a page from its search results when it encounters a robots noindex tag). Also this might be used for administrative pages that have explicitely no use of being indexed or found by searchengines. Another example: Someone writes an article about a new company, it gets deleted. What remains is the page where deletion is discussed, also these pages do very well in search results, which might be very unlucky for the owner of this company, but has not much use for Wikipedia. I could give many more examples where this could be useful, but I think you get the point. Freestyle 08:44, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- I strongly support the ability to turn off indexing for selected pages, or simply adding noindex to the entire User: and User talk: namespaces. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- This might create another opportunity for edit warring in contentious situations. Wouldn't it be better to use noindex on all User, User talk, Wikipedia, and Wikipedia talk spaces? Jehochman Talk 12:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- I don't think this would cause too much edit warring, because either it's just plain obvious not to have a certain page indexed, or in case of ones userpage the user is the only one to decide it. Freestyle 13:52, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- I don't know about adding it to the WP/WT namespaces. I've used google before to find a policy page when i couldn't find the exact page through wiki searching. --Evan ¤ Seeds 15:46, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- I don't think this would cause too much edit warring, because either it's just plain obvious not to have a certain page indexed, or in case of ones userpage the user is the only one to decide it. Freestyle 13:52, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- Deletion discussions should already be excluded by our robots.txt at http://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:00, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- User and user talk sounds good, at the discretion of the user themselves. Wouldn't recommend extending it to WP. It could be off by default, but if this is so users should probably be given the option to switch it back on if they wish to (maybe they want to be found?). Richard001 (talk) 07:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- The problem with putting noindex on an entire namespace altogether (e.g. User: or User talk:) is that it makes it harder for when you do want to search it for administrative purposes, since the built in search engine isn't that good. What I would support though, is being able to noindex individual pages. However, this should not be done with a magic word, since there is too much potential for abuse - if a vandal noindexed an obscure mainspace article, this would damage the encyclopedia and there is likely to be some delay in getting it indexed by search engines again. I think this should be done as a separate database field that is restricted to, say, admins and/or the user associated with the user page. Tra (Talk) 20:27, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Um, someone writing cruft in an obscure mainspace article is less likely to be reverted than someone writing "", which is machine readable and any bot can sniff out. Besides, the phase3 parser could choose to not turn it into a <meta> when the page is in mainspace. -- Fullstop (talk) 21:08, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
A related idea: I normally create articles in a user sandbox, then when they are ready create them in mainspace. I sometimes do the same when editing an existing page. It would be useful in such a case to turn off Categories while in the sandbox. I could add the categories but not have them show up in a category. Yes, I know that I can add a leading colon but that doesn't work when a transcluded template adds a category. If the NOINDEX word meant don't index, don't categorize, etc. that would be helpful. Sbowers3 (talk) 13:43, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
- This has been raised before, of course, and nothing ever came from it. I was in favour then and I'm still in favour now. Tra's suggestion makes the most sense. Adrian M. H. 14:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)