Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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

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

Before posting your proposal:

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

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Should we publish a compilation of featured articles?

I've heard a lot about the Wikipedia:Release Version, and I thought, why not release a CD containing all the featured articles? Or maybe a DVD with all the featured content? It could be released as a stand-alone version, or in a double-disk with the currently proposed release version?

Please respond at Wikipedia talk:Featured articles#Should we publish a compilation of featured articles? — Jack · talk · 18:47, Friday, 16 March 2007

Proposals: 1) Dynamic Searchable 'Intelligent' Keyword FAQ & 2) Watch Feature Renamed & 3) Mail & 4) 'Did You Mean' suggestion

1) Wikipedia should have an FAQ which allows a user to literally ask a question, and the site will direct the user to possible FAQ's that may answer their inquiry, based upon keywords in their question. Friendster.com has such an FAQ (when contacting customer service, any inquiry will be filtered through such a system).

2) The 'watch' feature is a great one, but its function is not entirely obvious. I recommend it either be renamed to, 'Watch This Article' or 'Add to Favorites' (or something to that effect).

3) I had new mail and didn't realize it until stumbling upon a small message informing me of this fact. Perhaps there should be a more localized place for new messages, such as "Check Messages", or "Inbox"

4) Before rejecting this suggestion, hear me out. I was told that there would not be enough processor power & servers available to achieve the following suggestion. Please read my suggestions on how to possibly achieve this at the end of this recommendation:

Wikipedia should have a "did you mean" feature when users search for a misspelled term, such as the one dictionary.com offers. If one looks up a word in dictionary.com and it is misspelled, the site offers several suggestions of words that the user may have meant to write. This will not only help people find the articles they are seeking, in an age where spelling is worsening due to computer spell checks, but will also help people find articles they seek that may be worded just a little differently than how they wrote their search term.

For example, 'Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis' is a word in the English language. But if one replaces the last vowel with an 'o' to yield: 'Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosos', then Wikipedia falls short of suggesting any similar terms.

I recommend using 'google' or dictionary.com some how (perhaps an agreement between wikipedia and the aforementioned) to achieve this. If Wikipedia doesn't have the processor power and servers, could it not take advantage of google's vast amount of servers? Could Wikipedia not run the search through a 3rd party? And how much power would it really take to run a search through a dictionary even, to at least check for probably spelling errors?

Sincerely, Danfogel 05:10, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Robots.txt keeps google out of AfD and a number of other places on wikipedia. We need an internal search for those. Search Suggestions are a perennial propose and just too taxing on the servers to implement. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:34, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

A rough equivalent to the FAQ you brought up happily exists at Wikipedia:Reference desk. $\sim$ Lenoxus " * " 09:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• There is a searchable FAQ feature called Nubio somewhere. Also, the "did you mean" search suggestion is encoded in MediaWiki, but disabled for performance reasons. - Mgm|^(talk) 16:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Academics on Wikipedia

I feel that academics should be allowed individual pages of their own on Wikipedia. This is because a lot of the research that they do is publicly funded and so they should be accountable for it. Wikipedia could help a lot in this, as it already exists. Academics working on particular fields could be searched for and their work examined by interested folk. I have noticed that a lot of less well known academicsa get deleted from the site based on their lack of fame. However, these academics tend to be famous in their own field and less well known outside of it. As such it seems strange to allow people to delete these articles just because they are not celebrity characters.
Could anybody explain this to me? If so what is the deletion policy.
Many Thanks. Synthesis for all 14:26, 19 March 2007 (UTC)Curious Gregor

As far as I'm concerned, I will not nominate anyone for deletion if they have a published research document under their belt. That, to me, is their notability. 99% of the world may not have heard of him or her, but that 1% of experts in that field may be more than familiar with the work or could be attempting to track down that very info. I agree with you: academics should be permitted to have their respective articles on Wikipedia per WP:PAPER. --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 17:40, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

"Anyone who has ever published a paper is notable" wouldn't work; we still have to have criteria. —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-03-22 06:23Z

There are already sister projects at WikiScholar and [WikiBooks that are perfect for that kind of activity. Vassyana 04:08, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikischolar is not a sister project.

Wikibooks is not suitable for biographies of academics, nor for attributed articles (though WikiSource: might be suitable for those.) --Quiddity 20:12, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• For the record, this isn't about user pages, right? It's about articles about professors who are well-regarded within their field if not considered notable outside it. Hmm... part of me feels we should stick to the current policy, which means that the subject is still only notable if others have written about her/him. Then again, having pages that link differen topics as person has discussed, partly to establish their credibility in the area (for the sake of other references) would be pretty fine as well. So I'm stuck. $\sim$ Lenoxus " * " 15:02, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

A wiki is a great idea for that plan, but Wikipedia is not. It is not hard to set up the same software Wikipedia uses, such a site could do well. But that site is not Wikipedia. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:15, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• If a scholar wants to find info on a particular person or article, they have databases and journals available to them. Wikipedia wouldn't add anything they don't already have access to. - Mgm|^(talk) 16:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Journalism noticeboard?

Here's another dish that's been simmering on my back burner: a lot of mainstream journalism articles about Wikipedia either contain factual mistakes (such as failure to distinguish between editors, administrators, and arbitrators) or overlook features and developments (such as stories about vandalism that fail to mention semi-protection, anti-vandal bots, and plans to adapt the German Wikipedia's stable versions feature into the English language site). In fairness to those hardworking members of the press, they operate on tight deadlines and may not have sufficient time to learn the knowledge a devoted Wikipedian acquires over months or years.

So would it be practical to implement a journalism noticeboard where they could post factual questions and get answers from Wikipedians? I foresee a couple of pitfalls here: journalists normally ask these questions through private channels and need a contact's full name. Also there's a risk of the page getting abused by disruptive users. But if experienced editors provide verifiable diffs and links, if journalists provide their bona fides, and if some of the discussion follows up via e-mail, then this might be useful. The main advantage is that this could provide more and speedier answers than a query to a particular contact who might not receive it until after press time.

What are your thoughts? Would the benefits be worth it and could we resolve the pitfalls? Durova^Charge! 16:22, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't we have centralized locations for press about wikipedia already? It seems like it would be best integrated there. (a place to go before you write the story, as well as a collection of stories that have been written) Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:07, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Is there any interactive place where they can ask questions and get swift answers? The Help Desk has its own problems and doesn't seem appropriate for that function. I've given my name to the Foundation as someone who's willing to answer questions, but nobody's followed up with me via that route. My only interactive contact with journalists has happened when I initiated it myself. Durova^Charge! 22:21, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Speaking as somebody who has been a journalist, Durova has a point. Journalists often step into a story knowing absolutely nothing about the topic and are faced with the requirement to have a newspaper article written before it's time to put the paper to bed or have a television package edited in time for a given slot. I once worked a story with a reporter who had to interview a colonel and a staff sergeant (Army Reservists) and had to ask during the interview who outranked whom. Some sort of media-friendly spot on Wikipedia that would answer some very basic questions for the uninitiated so that the journalist can do their job properly would probably not be a bad idea. It would have to be very well protected against vandalism, however. --Molon Labe 08:46, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, they're invited to email press@wikimedia.org ... Sandra Ordonez is standing by 5 days a week full time, and about a dozen or more volunteers in all different timezones have access to that email thru Wikimedia's OTRS system. -- Zanimum 16:10, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

End of anon edits

I think it's time to throw in the towel and admit defeat about allowing anonymous users to edit wiki articles. Far too much valuable time is taken up undoing acts of vandalism done by anon edits, especially with the number of articles growing at such a rate as they do. It's far too easy and tempting, and on rarely trafficked entries the changes can sit for months before being noticed. Every time the subject of an article becomes newsworthy the number of vandals skyrockets until the page gets protected. It's a mystery why this is even a point to be debated: registered users are still more or less anonymous. RoyBatty42 00:01, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, even though a huge amount of vandalism comes through anon edits, a huge amount of constructive edits come out from it too. Even if anons are blocked from editing, the determined vandals (the ones that are hard to catch) will stay, while the petty schoolchildren with gay friends and easily reverted vandalism will not. I don't know...it seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me. PTO 00:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, no matter, what, no matter how many people vote yes in a straw poll, no poll on Wikipedia will stop IP editing. At least, not yet. Here's why. Look at m:Foundation issues. You need to propose this on meta. mrholybrain's talk 01:27, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely PTO, there are many constructive edits from anons. Why just earlier I was checking my watchlist and saw one anon revert some vandalism inserted by a completely different anon. Just as there is drive-by vandalism, there are drive-by improvements. And remember that the drive-by stuff is almost always the easiest to fix because it's so blatant. It's sneaky vandals who cause the real problems, and they're not going to be stopped simply by having to register an account. --bainer (talk) 01:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe true, but from what I can tell the good edits are far outweighted by the random "Kyle is gay" edits.

Perpetual proposal. Try a different project? --Kim Bruning 01:31, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with RoyBatty42. I would not have started editing Wikipedia if I had not been able to do so without registering for an account. — Armed Blowfish (talk|mail) 01:37, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Per m:Foundation issues, this is one of the few things we cannot change. Nor would I change it, anons give us good and bad, we revert the bad and keep the good. They benefit us, they often become users later, I too started as an anon for several weeks before making an account. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 01:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I know it's spinning wheels to challenge a foundation issue and a perennial proposal, but I'm in support of requiring registration. Creating a username and logging in is so painless, it takes less than a minute. Sometimes I don't want to bother logging in, and I have mada anonymous edits many times (that's how I got started, like many people did), but it's not such a deterrent to constructive contribution. The concept of username and password in online communities is all over the place: the login screen hasn't chased away that many people from MySpace and FaceBook, last I checked. Wikipedia is more than an online community, but it is not less than that. If you're going to participate in our joint effort, we want to know who you are - and that you are responsible for your edits. This might put an end to the awkward situation where an anonymous IP gets blocked and doesn't know why, because someone else on his IP vandalized. This way, while technically IP blocking will work the same way, fundamentally it will be understood that what really matters is your online identity. YechielMan 02:25, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

That nice happy edit this page link at the top is an invitation. Requiring registration would deter users. Requiring user registration removes no anonymity; you're more anonymous under a user name as it doesn't "stick with you". Users can register a user name, rack up a couple uw-vandalism templates, and move on to a new one. It wouldn't help anything. Users would still be blocked for having the same IP as a vandal, since that's what autoblock is supposed to do. What does it actually fix? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

One of the problems is that for IPs the clock resets quickly. The kids know this. They can come back every day in their 5th-period class and take their warnings up to the wire. Ongoing low-level vandalism is tolerated from IPs but not from named users (see the "uw-longterm" template). Raymond Arritt 03:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Again, user vandals can simply register new username. Autoblocks last, what, 24 hours? That's even less than a lot of IP blocks. On the other hand, school blocks often go around a month or more. If there was no IP editing, we'd never catch those. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 03:53, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

People have demonstrated repeatedly that some good comes from allowing anonymous edits. Nobody has demonstrated that banning anon edits will not just cause people to take the 5 seconds to create a vandal account instead. Thus, there is no point in banning it. -Amarkov moo! 02:28, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The appropriate place for this thread is Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals). Durova^Charge! 03:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Great idea, but it'll never happen. Even if the community got behind it, the bottom line is that Jimbo doesn't want it. Raymond Arritt 03:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The community won't get behind it, though. This has been discussed ad nauseam, and there is no indication that anonymous vandalism is more prevalent than anonymous improvement. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 04:11, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Interesting point. Has the issue ever been systematically studied, e.g., X percent of anon edits are vandalism, as opposed to Y percent of edits from registered users being vandalism? Raymond Arritt 04:18, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I think there was a 30% vandalism thrown the village pump once. However, without something like revision review enabled, it is not that easy. We can get some random estimates, but nothing serious. -- ReyBrujo 04:27, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

If no one justifies why this thread is here I will be bold and move it where it belongs. Durova^Charge! 05:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It was already being discussed at Village Pump anyway. I'll say the same thing as I did there-anyone who thinks registration somehow prevents people from writing garbage should have a look at Special:Newpages, which is 100% registered users. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

• Getting rid of anonymous editing would be a bad thing, as anonymous editors can and do make good edits. Also, not everyone wants to get an account anyway, some people just edit infrequently (I should know, I was one of those infrequent editors in the past). I feel this is a perennial proposal that will not work. --sunstar net^talk 10:18, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oh and yeah, WP:PEREN. >Radiant< 10:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I dislike anons as much as most others, but egads no I would not want to eliminate them. --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 11:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

People who edit from a static IP are in some ways easier to track than those who hide behind pseudonyms. Editors with throwaway accounts are a lot more "anonymous" than those who make their IP address public. Kusma (talk) 12:50, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

People keep claiming that anons don't do that much vandalism. Here is proff that this is not so. I just evaluated the last 100 anonymous edit to theory of relativity going back over four months (into mid-November). Of those 100 edits, 67 were vandalism (included 5 self-reverts), 16 were reverted as inappropriate (misunderstanding, POV, etc), and 17 were retained. Note that TWO-THIRDS OF THE ANONYMOUS EDITS WERE VANDALISM in this case. Two-thirds! I really think that it is time for people to stop sticking their heads in the sand and start realizing that this is actually a serious problem. BTW - Also do note that only 1/6 of the anonymous edits "stuck".

I have suggested having anons confirm their edits through an e-mail interaction. Yes that burdens people, but I suspect that most sincere anonymous editors will be willing to live with it as long as it works efficiently. It is the casual vandals who will be discouraged, and that is the bulk of the problem. If you all don't want to stop anonymous edits, then the least that you can do is put in place something to stop the it from being an open invitation to immature people trying to feel powerful. --EMS | Talk 13:50, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

• That's a statistical fallacy based on overgeneralization of insufficient data. It's not "proff" of anything. >Radiant< 15:00, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

  I have just gone to the trouble of characterizing 100 edits for a page going back over four months! Can this automatically be generalized for the whole of Wikipedia? Of course not. However, the way to refute this is to get samples of numerous other unprotected pages, and show that principle of relativity is an anomaly. I repeat: Two-thirds of all anonymous edits were vandalism, and five-sixths of them were unacceptable. It may well be that a braoder survey involving more pages and a longer time span will produce better numbers, but I first want to see someone actually do such a survey. All that you are doing is chucking my data because you don't like it, and to me that is totally unacceptable, along with the vandalism rate for anonymous editors on that page. --EMS | Talk 16:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with the sumitter, I do a little vandle patrol now and again and I just end up checking anon edits. Its a nightmare. Also, much of the vandlism is kids at schools saying x, y, and z is gay. Since we dont want to go around banning school networks, and contact the school in question is too time consuming, if we could just ban user accounts 9 times out of 10 we wouldnt have to consider blocking 200 pupils from wikipedia for six months. Renski 16:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello folks, this is not our decision: m:Foundation issues. This is not a matter of consensus or discussion, this is imposed on us by the foundation. And it is a dam good thing too, this is one of the good foundation issues. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:45, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Item two reads:

Ability of anyone to edit articles without registering

Even taking this as an immutable given, it does not mean that we cannot take action to discourage vandals and/or limit their impact. The two means to do that I have floated here are:

• reguiring e-mail confirmation for an anonymous edit (so that the editor leaves a personal trail behind) and
• suspend anonymous and new user edits pending approval by an established registered user.

Both admitedly leave an anonymous editor not seeing their edit go "live" immediately, and I have received resistance for that reason. However, the foundation issue only demands that editors not be forced to register. Other solutions such as these are not prohibited by it.

We have a real problem here, and it needs to be dealt with. I for one do not consider the ability of anonymous editos to vandalize Wikipedia with near-impunity to be a "dam[n] good thing". --EMS | Talk 17:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Stable versioning would be a considerably better way than blocking anons to try to cut down vandalism, in my opinion; many anon edits are good-faith (some anons even join because they notice and revert vandalism, I suspect, although this clearly isn't a reason to encourage vandalism!), and I suspect many productive contributors would never have joined without the ability to edit as an anon. Most people contributing here have usernames already, and are aware of how simple obtaining a username is; most anons probably aren't, and obtaining a username is a big step on many websites (there are websites which require registration which I don't use, and might possibly use if they allowed anon viewing, even though the registration is free; Wikipedia, where anons couldn't edit if this proposal was met, might end up the same way with respect to editing). Anons are also somewhat good at noticing some of the most severe problems (things like BLP violations reported to the Help Desk happen as often as not from anons in my experience, although the anons don't normally know to call it that). (By the way, most of the vandalism to the Help Desk is from registered users.) --ais523 17:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The easiest way to counter IP vandalism, is to semi-protect articles that have reached a certain maturity. All changes to those articles consist almost exclusively of vandalism. A harsher application of semi-protection (even if for l week) substantially lowers all vandalism to that article. JoJan 17:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

An idea that I have been meaning to put forward to is show as the "stable" version the most recent one whose text has been present for a majority of time over a 3-day period in the last 10 days. Otherwise there is no stable version, and the current version is shown. (This is an automated solution and so will remove the editor intervention need that makes most statble versioning ideas awkward.) Even in this case, I am not sure of how well it would discourage vandalism, but realizing that your edit will not be seem except by those who watch and/or care to edit the article would diminish the problem somewhat. I figure that having to either leave your e-mail address behind (where an admin can get to it in case of vandalism) or needing some stranger's approval will be much more effective in discouraging vandals. Even so, I very much appreciate your also wanting to deal with this important issue. --EMS | Talk 17:51, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

You might want to see http://stablepedia.org to see what Wikipedia would look like if that change were made to the software. --ais523 17:52, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

So in other words, this is just a pointless discussion seeing that the Wiki foundation and Jimbo Wales both oppose it. RoyBatty42 18:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Suggesting banning anon edits outright is pointless, as the developers will never make that change unless the Foundation change their mind. (See bugzilla:9340 for an example where a wiki had internal consensus, but where the developers refused to prevent anons creating pages without Foundation approval.) --ais523 18:18, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Yup. See also Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#What will it take to ban unregistered editors? for statistics and more discussion. --Quiddity 20:26, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Statistical breakdown

Purely in the interest of statistics, I've gone through recent changes and looked at the 15 IP edits to see if they were vandalism or good faith. My results:

1. Nonsensical statement about "moomoomagee". Probably vandalism.
2. changing album sales from 144,000 to 151,000. Possibly misinformation, but otherwise good faith.
3. copyedit. Good faith.
4. More genres, albeit badly formatted. Good faith.
5. Wikification. Good faith.
6. Removed a sentence. Probably good faith.
7. BLP-violating slander. Vandalism.
8. Clearly bad faith. Vandalism.
9. moving a section for better readability. Good faith.
10. Removing a test wikitable. Good faith.
11. Nonsensical statement about "spirits". Vandalism.
12. Updating elementary school count. Good faith.
13. Racist remarks. Vandalism.
14. Guy coming out of the closet. This needs to go to Friends of gays should not be allowed to edit articles. Who says that gays never proclaim their orientation to the world?
15. Good song, bad faith. Vandalism.

Keep in mind that these are only 15 edits, and they will NOT reflect the whole of IP editing. It would be impractical to do a large scale observation unassisted.

That comes up with 40%-46% vandalism (depending on how you count the talk page edit of a guy saying he's gay) and 60%-54% good faith. Even if we did have the power to stop IP edits, we'd eliminate the petty vandals, but the crafty ones will remain with accounts. Besides, any edit that blanks the page and fills it with "omgloldongs" isn't exactly the end of the world for the encyclopedia, as the great RC people will come along in a second and get rid of it. PTO 20:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I am violating WP:BEANS here, but it is often a lot harder to block users then IPs. In my opinion 'positive anons' > 'vandal anons'. In fact I think 1 contruibutor (not 1 contribution!) is worth several vandals. Many people (though not myself) edit as an anon before registering. Prodego ^talk 21:18, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I would have to agree with PTO, as a RC patroller myself, I've noticed the majority of anon edits do seem to be good faith edits (though not always good edits). If we block anon editing, not only will it be seen as giving in to external pressure or "closing" Wikipedia. Also, the vandals we stop will be mainly "test edit" vandals and schools. The ones we really want to stop, the truly persistent "Wiki-hating" vandals, will just register, and then they can vandalize sprotected pages as well. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 21:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I can't recall out of the top of my head but some studies have shown that anonimous editors are significant contributors of valuable content to this project. Plus many editors first start as anons and than convert to registered. Strong oppose to this proposal. Anons should be allowed to edit at will.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  03:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea, but not for wikipedia. It would be a good experiment to try settign up another wiki, with the same goals as wikipedia, that behaved thus. Mathiastck 15:59, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Already done. See Citizendium. PTO 18:15, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Citizendium has other important difference. It's also only a fork of code, not of content. Mathiastck 01:48, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

One problem with preventing anonymous IPs from editing is that this could potentially encourage more people to create new accounts just for vandalism. While registering an account would be an added obstacle for vandals, it's a pretty trivial obstacle. I'm concerned what effect this could have on the number of available user names. Perhaps I'm being silly about it, but it is something I wonder about. I'm not sure if indefinitely blocked usernames ever become available again for other people to use after some time. Just a thought. --Kyoko 20:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Please consider the causation vs correlation falacy. Just because you see vandalism by usernames that are IPs doesn't mean removing the ability to edit with an IP username will cause vandalism to go away. There's probably a large correlation between redlink usernames and vandalism, but that doesn't mean requiring all edits be made by bluelink usernames will make that set of vandalism go away. It'll just make it harder to identify it. —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-03-25 02:09Z

Good point. And consider this: Even if we knew -- either based on sampling or based on the entire lot -- what percentage of edits by anons is vandalism, we don't know ANYTHING unless we also know what percentage of edits by logged-in users is vandalism. If I were doing an analysis, I would want to know the number of edits by anons and the number of their edits that were subsequently reverted. I would also want to know the number of edits by logged-in users and the number of their edits that were reverted. If we learn that both cohorts have a similar proportion of edits reverted, then we don't have a problem. If we find that 80 percent of the revereted edits are posted by 20 percent of the users, then we have a problem. -- Schnaz 19:28, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

It sounds to me like a number of the above commentors might be interested in joining Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vandalism studies. We are trying to develop studies to specifically explore the various levels of contributions, vandalism, and reverts by different types of edits. Feel free to stop by and aid us in our attempt to answer these important questions. Remember 21:07, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

New protection templates, take 2

Have made a set of protection templates now. I think they are the only one needed, and are in line with the protection policy. _→AzaToth 00:03, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Types

Type	Full	Semi
Dispute	{{pp-dispute}}	—
Vandalism	{{pp-vandalism}}	{{pp-semi-vandalism}}
High visible templates	{{pp-template}}	{{pp-semi-template}}
User talk of blocked user	{{pp-usertalk}}	{{pp-semi-usertalk}}
Spambot target	—	{{pp-semi-spambot}}
Generic (other protection)	{{pp-protected}}	{{pp-semi-protected}}
Office	{{pp-office}}	—
Move protection
{{pp-move}}

Examples

{{pp-dispute}}
{{pp-vandalism}}
{{pp-semi-vandalism}}
{{pp-template}}
{{pp-semi-template}}
{{pp-usertalk}}
{{pp-semi-usertalk}}
{{pp-semi-spambot}}	Template:Pp-semi-spambot
{{pp-protected}}
{{pp-semi-protected}}
{{pp-move}}
{{pp-office}}

Discussion about templates

Protection only matters to editors, though. Shouldn't most of these have icon-only versions? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:54, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

They all have, by specifying the parameter small=yes _→AzaToth 03:07, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, do we ever semi-protect talk pages of blocked users? I thought the whole point was full protection so they can't edit it. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 06:00, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Semiprotecting anons' talk pages makes sense. MaxSem 07:44, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

(To Night Gyr): Lots of people semi anon's talk pages in case of unblock abuse or page blanking. – Riana ^ঋ 07:51, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I changed the colors of the protected padlock to skyblue, available padlocks is as follow:

• Standard padlocks
• 
  Ol' standard padlock

• Colored padlocks
• 
  Green
• 
  Red
• 
  Blue
• 
  Silver
• 
  Turquoise
• 
  Violet
• 
  Olive
• 
  Gold
• 
  Pink
• 
  Purple
• 
  Orange
• 
  Skyblue
• 
  Lightolive
• 
  Light-silver
• 
  Silver (light)
• 
  Silver (medium)

_→AzaToth 15:35, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• Since semi move protection is possible, shouldn't there be a template for that too? -Amarkov moo! 16:03, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

  Semi-move-protection is possible but utterly pointless, because anons and non-autoconfirmed users can't move pages anyway. --ais523 17:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

This looks fine to me; I fully support it (and as quickly as possible, because the protection templates are a mess right now) – Qxz 19:35, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I support this proposal as well. Consistency is good for a variety of reasons. For example, it's easier to memorize. It makes the reason more important. It's easier to code regexes to recognize them... Gracenotes^T § 19:50, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

One other (rather important) suggestion: Could each of these templates place pages into an appropriate category specific to that template, not just "Category:Protected" and "Category:semi-protected"? We really need a better categorization system than the incomplete and ambiguous one we currently have. For example, the {{pp-template}} needs to populate Category:Protected templates, {{pp-semi-spambot}} needs to populate Category:Protected against spambots, and I would like to see the introduction of new categories where no equivalent category currently exists – at the moment, for example, all semi-protected pages seem to get lumped together – Qxz 21:48, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Of course, if we did that, we'd have to place them into two categories: the general Category:Protected, and the specific reason category. For convenience. Gracenotes^T § 01:57, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, one of the two categories Category:Protected and Category:Semi-protected and a more specific category. Right now the templates distinguish the two types of protection but that's all they do – Qxz 02:55, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Nice idea, ugly colors. :) How about generic silver and gold? I don't mind the pink for move protected, but the blue, and especially the green are just... Prodego ^talk 19:30, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed on the ugly colours. If they must be colour-coded at all, can we have the normal old Image:Padlock.svg for full and a normal metal looking version (like the silver, only less black) for semi and move-only protection? --tjstrf talk 19:49, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

At a glance, here is the color... erm, matrix:

Type	Full	Semi
Dispute	{{pp-dispute}}	—
Vandalism	{{pp-vandalism}}	{{pp-semi-vandalism}}
High visible templates	{{pp-template}}	{{pp-semi-template}}
User talk of blocked user	{{pp-usertalk}}	{{pp-semi-usertalk}}
Spambot target	—	{{pp-semi-spambot}}
Generic (other protection)	{{pp-protected}}	{{pp-semi-protected}}
Move protection
{{pp-move}}

Pretty predictable, no? So we have three flavors: protected, semi-protected, and move-protected. I suggest these respective images: , , , if the currents ones are disliked. By the way, great job converting the images to svg, AzaToth. My only suggestion is to set vertical-align:middle for the table cell in which the image is located. Gracenotes^T § 02:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

No, if we're going to choose colours, I agree with tjstrf: the current colour for full protection, and a lighter veresion of the silver one for semi-protection. I don't really understand why a move-protected page needs a padlock icon in the corner at all... surely the lack of a "move" tab speaks for itself? – Qxz 02:49, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Here is Image:Padlock-light-silver.svg. A lighter and less shiny version of the silver for you. I recommend for semi-protection, and for full protection. I don't think we need a move protection lock. Prodego ^talk 03:31, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Have made a lighter version of the silver now: Image:Padlock-silver-light.svg. _→AzaToth 05:50, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't that equalize to that the edit tab is missing/replaced with a "source" tab for non-privileged users? _→AzaToth 05:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but as an established user, I have no way of distinguishing a semi-protected article from an unprotected one just by looking at it. I can, however, distinguish full-protected from not protected and move-protected from not protected – Qxz 05:57, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of colored locks. However, I think blue green pink might be too "pastel". I think more aggressive colors (an deeper shade of blue and green maybe, and a red?) might be nicer. That's just my two cents of course :) -- lucasbfr ^talk 09:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• Eww, pastels :) I would prefer Ye Olde Padlocke myself. >Radiant< 12:50, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I felt the the more "pastel" colors fit better as the small icons. _→AzaToth 16:02, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
• I agree with the comments for using for full protection and for semi (I don't really like the pastel colours, they aren't really padlock colours (if you get what I mean)). For move protected, maybe use a different border, move the padlock to the right of the template, or use a slightly different image (if someone can make an image of a moving padlock?). mattbr 14:22, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I also have an idea to add this code {{#ifexpr:{{#if:{{{expiry|}}}|1|0}} and {{#time:U|{{expriy|}}}}} > {{#time:U|today}}|[[Cetegory:Protected pages expiry expired|{{PAGENAME}}}} _→AzaToth 16:02, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Like users above, I agree that standard padlock colors should be used for full and semi, and maybe a more funky color for move would be fine with me. Category:Proposed for deletion for over five days has a PF #time:U cache problem, and this would too... Gracenotes^T § 17:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The category was more as a help to remove tags from pages that has expired, if it's some days after, it's not that much of a deal. _→AzaToth 19:33, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it's very pretty. The King of Rocking 03:06, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

But wait! There is more

I have now added {{pp-office}} and added the code for the expiry category. Following is a mapping of old templates to the new ones.

From	To	From	To	From	To
{{protected}}	{{pp-dispute}}	{{vprotected}}	{{pp-vandalism}}	{{P-protected}}	{{pp-semi-vandalism}}
{{protected template}}	{{pp-template}}	data-sort-value="" style="background: var(--background-color-interactive, #ececec); color: var(--color-base, #2C2C2C); vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="table-na" | —	{{pp-semi-template}}	{{usertalk-vprotect}}	{{pp-usertalk}}
{{usertalk-sprotect}}	{{pp-semi-usertalk}}	{{IPtalkblanking}}	{{pp-semi-usertalk}}	{{unblockabuse}}	{{pp-usertalk}}
{{sprotected}}	{{pp-semi-protected}}	data-sort-value="" style="background: var(--background-color-interactive, #ececec); color: var(--color-base, #2C2C2C); vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="table-na" | —	{{pp-protected}}	{{privacy protection}}	—
{{moveprotected}}	{{pp-move}}	{{Spambot}}	{{pp-semi-spambot}}	{{Uprotected}}	{{pp-usertalk}}
{{Tprotected}}	—	{{Mprotected}}	TfD	{{C-uploaded}}	TfD
{{M-cropped}}	TfD	{{protected2}}	{{pp-dispute|small=yes}}	{{sprotected2}}	{{pp-semi-protected|small=yes}}
{{SprotectedTalk}}	{{pp-semi-vandalism}}	{{Sprotect-banneduser}}	{{pp-semi-vandalism}}	{{protected image}}	{{pp-vandalism}}
{{Protected-blocked}}	{{pp-usertalk}}

I think we could now move on to replacing the old templates. _→AzaToth 15:24, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Have updated the template {{Protection templates}}, I will not deprecate the old protection templates unless you object to that. _→AzaToth 18:48, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Four complaints have I:

1. Don't includeonly the templates. That's rather annoying. Have the template, then an hr ----, then {{pp-template}}, then the documentation.

    Done _→AzaToth 20:37, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

2. User talk pages are often fully protected or semiprotected so that IPs, or even autoconfirmed users, won't vandalize the page, rather than the person that owns the page.

   If that's just normal vandalism then the normal vandalism protection template could be used, pp-usertalk is more for the event when the userpage's user vandalises the page, for example unblockabuse etc... (I have merged five usertalk templates into two) _→AzaToth 20:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

3. For those pp-(semi-)usertalk templates, then, have a parameter that displays the information that the user has been blocked, and also a link to the block log next to the protection log.

   could you give an example for naming of the parameters and how they should look like? _→AzaToth 20:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

   To this and above: it may be useful to have a block log link, if applicable. I'll work on a proposed draft for the two. Gracenotes^T § 02:32, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

4. Add a space after "(protection log)" to {{pp-template}}.

    Done _→AzaToth 20:39, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Gracenotes^T § 19:58, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

How about allocating a 24 bit unique code, compatible with many 24 bit colour cards, for each different type of lock, so then no mortal could possibly remember what each one means.

GregInCanada 02:15, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Setting up a talk page for a future but not yet created article?

For awhile there, I was using a talk page template and whenever I found an article that needed creation, but which I couldn't justify creating while at work, I would create the talk page first, and use said template. It worked great for months, I would periodically go back, and then create the article, sometimes after getting the feedback I needed to create a proper article. This happy experiment of mine was brought to an end when the talk page template, the category, and every talk page that used this template, (but hadn't yet had the article itself created), were deleted.

So I spent some time looking at related wikipolicy, and I got the impression it now frowned more strongly on this practice then when I began the experiment. It also seemed that wikipolicy was gray in this area, and subject to various interpretations.

Anyway, I highly support the idea of lowering the barrier to entry for new users, trying to create worthy new articles, or simply trying to suggest the creation of a worthy article. The current method of putting in a request for article creation is abominable.

I suggest, that if talk pages are created for the purpose of assisting in the creation of the article, and they are used such properly, then they should be left up for a period of months. If it is found after suitable period of time that the talk page has not lead to the creation of a good entry, then it would be appropriate to delete.

Anyway, this is my request for comment. Thanks. For your reference:

Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#Setting up a talk page for a future but not yet created article?

Template:Future_article_talk_page

Template_talk:Future_article_talk_page

Template_talk:Futureart

Template_talk:Db-talk

Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#G8:_Talk_pages

Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Extend_G8_to_include_.22needed.22_articles

Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Scope_of_G4

Wikipedia_talk:Talk_page_guidelines#Setting_up_a_talk_page_for_a_future_but_not_yet_created_article.3F

User_talk:Mathiastck#Template_moved

User_talk:RyanGerbil10#Deletion_of_Template:Future_article_talk_page

User_talk:BigNate37/TM/Future_article_talk_page

User_talk:Nae'blis#Template:Future_article_talk_page

Category_talk:Candidates_for_speedy_deletion#Talk_pages

Mathiastck 15:57, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Have you considered just making a subpage in your userspace and then transferring that content when you're satisfied with it? --Kyoko 20:54, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

This is similar to the thing about whether this should be allowed for tagging uncreated pages with talk page tags for WikiProjects, saying that this page should be created. I would definitely say that this should be allowed, because it would definitely help WikiProjects better sense where they need to put their efforts. _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐  21:12, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

That is a very good point, though it might be better to make even a brief article and preferably tag it with the appropriate stub notice, so that other people can contribute too. --Kyoko 21:21, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Some good ideas here

• Setting up a page start and tag as a stub, add early ideas in talk page.

I like this idea best. I think the lack of any article at all existing was the main reason the talk page was discouraged. So what's a good generic stub I should use? I plan to drop that, and then fill the talk page with content, but not in proper wiki format. How does that sound as a general strategy when time is short, but I want to enable others users to finish the job as well? Perhaps I'd make a new stub, which specifically encourages discussion of the notability of the article in the discussion page. I never understood why the articles talk page wasn't used as a place to discuss it's deletion. Mathiastck 02:08, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• If time is an issue, use a user page that is what I do, see the user page Kidsheaven, I use it to keep track of what I would like to do and update it to link to what I have done.Kidsheaven 21:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Time demands were one justification some ignore above, which I perfectly understand. I'd used the talk page creation myself here and there, though without a template. Also understand not wanting a user page all the time. Submit creation of the article name as an appropriate redirect using also the {{R with possibilities}} template, then creating a talk page with a link to your to-do list user page (So shows on whatlinkshere) would be a good way to tag such work needed without any 'unique' template. When you can ethically take the time and care to properly stub in an article, or have the time to begin it in earnest, you're well begun, and there is nothing to stop you from tagging the redirect page with a stub tag at the same time. I do that quite a bit for such titles... someone may get there first that way, vice the other. // FrankB 17:11, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I like the redirect idea as well :) I've tried that one recently. Mathiastck 02:08, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

New version of {coor} templates

Relevant discussion at

→ Template talk:Coor dms#Geo microformat

We have come up with a new template {{coor/new}} which would replace {{coor d}}, {{coor dm}}, {{coor dms}}. It allows inputing coordinates in any format and displays it in a consistent D M S notation, and also outputs computer-readable data in decimal notation. If there are any objections to replacing the old templates, please comment at Template talk:Coor dms. —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-03-25 02:13Z

Stub categories still don't "count"; this needs to be official

Right now, a page with no categories except stub categories is automatically tagged by Alaibot (and perhaps other bots as well) for being uncategorized. Based on the point made at this talkpage, I have raised the question of whether this is how things should be done, most recently on the Stub types talkpage.

The mixed responses to this question have tended towards the feeling that yes, a stub category is still not sufficient categorization, largely because when the stub template is removed, the page will have no categories left. So, for example, it's not only an OK but a necessary redundancy for a basketball player stub to have both Category:Basketball biography stubs and Category:Basketball players. (Yeah, I know that such articles are technically organized by team and nationality, etc, but this is for argument's sake.)

Therefore, my proposal is to make this notion "official" by having it stated overtly on all relevant project pages, including Category:Uncategorized (and subcats), Template:Uncategorized, Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting, and its stub types subpage, in addition to any other pages people feel make sense for this. $\sim$ Lenoxus " * " 05:49, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• Sounds commonsensical, go for it. >Radiant< 12:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• This seems to be based on an incorrect assumption about what Alaibot is doing, which I've already attempted to clarify elsewhere, which see for further details. But very briefly:
  • No, that not what it's doing;
  • It is generally agreed that a stub category is not "full categorisation" as such;
  • In the past, when at least one bot was tagging topic-sorted stubs with "uncat", there were disagreements -- and indeed complaints -- about this, as a result of which that bot stopped doing so, and Category:Uncategorized stubs was created.
• I would strongly suggest care be taken when adding "overt statements" that we not get into a mass recapitulation of previous to-ings and fro-ings on this (e.g. people being led to believe that adding {{uncat}} to the 60,000+ articles with only a stub category is a great idea). Alai 16:47, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• General practice at WP:WikiProject Stub sorting is to add a permanent category to any otherwise uncategorised stubs sorted. The important word is "permanent". The main categorisation scheme is permanent for the benefit of readers. The stub categorisation of any article for the benefit of editors is temporary and will be removed once an article is expanded beyond stub size. The simple removal of a stub tag by an editor will return an article to an uncategorised state unless it is also marked with a permcat. As such, it makes sense that stub categories "don't count" as far as categorisation is concerned, in exactly the same way as other cleanup categories do not count for the purposes of article categorisation. Having said all that, I'd also advise caution for exactly the reasons Alai notes. Grutness...wha? 23:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• I am not sure, if something is categorized {{stub}} then I would call it uncategorized, but if it is {{BritishColumbia-geo-stub}} then it has been categorized a bit. If the stub category is removed them it becomes uncategorized, but that does not mean it was uncategorized before. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 23:39, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• • This all depends on what problem it is we're trying to solve. (Or cause? I've lost track.) If anyone is removing Category:Xs from articles on the basis that it's redundant with it having a {{X-stub}}, which categorises into Category:X stubs, then the logic of this should be explained to them. If this happens on a somewhat frequent basis, then it should be made (more) explicit someplace. Iterate as necessary. (I'm personally not aware of it happening at all, but please enlighten me.) There's already regular complaints about how large and crufty WP:STUB is, so I'd hesitate to add it there. (Some sort of general refactoring of that material is probably called for at some point.) If the point is to suggest that we should be mass-adding {{uncat}} to articles with a sorted stub type (and bear in mind that Category:Stubs is relatively empty for most of the time), then I'd urge we avoid this, for the reasons already alluded to. Come to that, even mass-tagging with {{uncatstub}}, while it would probably be fairly uncontroversial, would in the short-to-medium term be fairly ineffective, given the size of the existing categorisation backlog. Indeed, might be less than great for morale...
  • Perhaps this would be a good time to mention those people plugging away at Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/uncategorized, chipping away at a backlog of 11,000+ articles... Alai 05:11, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
• Wow, this has grown a lot faster than I would expect, insane. Is it just because I linked it from my page...? Anyway, good points all, to which I have nothing to say at the moment... $\sim$ Lenoxus " * " 15:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, OK, for starters: WikiProject Uncategorized is precisely why I started this proposal: because I would love to just dive right into it, but it appears that a near-majority of the tagged articles are in stub categories, and not knowing which way to go about it is driving me insane. We don't want redundant categories, right? (Like, say, the same article being in Writers and Finnish writers). So is having same-meaning stubcats and permanant cats "bad" or "okay"? The real conondrum is that it's not even clear what should be the "default" in the case of no consensus -- some sort of decision needs to be reached one way or the other. Maybe I should have rephrased the proposal, and if this conversation gets big enough, I will start a new one on a blank slate. $\sim$ Lenoxus " * " 15:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
    • It seems to me we've already had at least one do-over too many, as I answered this in detail when you raised it at WSS -- which, incidentally, would be my guess as to why the decision has now moved (or been recapitulated) here, it seems to me. (And I've addressed it again, above.) A Finnish writer stub should be in Category:Finnish writer stubs and Category:Finnish writers (or some more specific sub-category, as will often be the cases), as well as whatever other cats apply (most obviously DoB and DoD/living people cats). Each of those follow from the corresponding guidelines (stubs and categorisation), and nothing exists to suggest any conflict between the two. It strikes me as not a good idea to try to write guidelines in such a way as to anticipate every possible interaction with other guidelines: we'd end up with massive bloat of same. If there's some actual need to document this non-conflict, let's do so with as light a touch as possible, and not on dozens of projectspace pages. Perhaps add something to WP:OVERCAT, to the effect of "a permcat and a stubcat with the same effect aren't overcategorisation". (Or to whichever (one) policy or guideline people feel it is that suggests such a conflict, if people really do feel that, and can identify exactly what guideline or that is.)
    • If it's only in Category:Finnish writer stubs, it shouldn't be tagged with {{uncat}}, however. (Likewise {{uncat}} isn't applied in the case of partially categorised articles, with some (permanent) categories, but missing some others it should also have.) This is a matter of allowing a reasonable amount of prioritisation, so as to make the whole process manageable: category triage, if you will. (In my opinion, detailed work on categories with some missing categories is much better done in a more "distributed" manner, say at WikiProject level, but very few subjects seem to be on top of that in any systematic manner.)
    • As to this "near-majority of the tagged articles are in stub categories": once again, this isn't my bot's doing (unless it's developed unexpected behaviour that hasn't been brought to my attention). If people are adding stub tags after the articles have been identified as uncategorised (without permcats also having been added), I'll be able to get an accurate idea of how common this after the next db dump. If this really is very large, I can split those off with the parallel {{uncatstub}} tag, as was done previously. Mainly that would seem like an indication that the threshold for what's an "(uncategorised) stub" vs. just an "uncategorised article" is currently too low, though, which is a topic I've already raised at WSS. Alai 05:15, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
      • On a side topic, Alai, your "There's already regular complaints about how large and crufty WP:STUB is, so I'd hesitate to add it there. (Some sort of general refactoring of that material is probably called for at some point.)" - you might want to look at comments I've made at Wikipedia_talk:Stub#request_simpler_instructions. Grutness...wha? 08:48, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• While in principle, I don't think there's any reason for a non-robot user to tag something as uncategorized instead of finding the appropriate category, I suppose I understand why this might happen anyway. Therefore, perhaps what's really needed is an "insufficient categorization" template explaining that while the article in question has at least one category, it needs at least one more, either an appropriate stub category or (more likely) an appropriate specific category (e.g., Finnish writers). Would that make any sense? $\sim$ Lenoxus " * " 18:55, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Live

My mom and I were thinking about the Library of Alexandria, and saying how it wasn't like a modern Library because it was filled with the people who knew things. It was more like Wikipedia Live. To both of us the idea seemed fantastic. Is there such a thing? Could there be such a thing? What would it be like?

FLF — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fiveline5 (talk • contribs) 00:17, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

There's Wikipedia's Reference Desk, which goes some way towards what you're describing. --ais523 11:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

But do you think it would be fun/useful for people to gather together - perhaps in large auditoriums - one weekend a year - to ask experts questions about anything?

This page isn't the place to discuss matters not related to Wikipedia. And this isn't, since Wikipedia isn't about either experts or asking questions. You need to take the discussion elsewhere - perhaps Wikipedia:Alternative outlets will give you some ideas. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:08, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Well no, it could be related to Wikipedia. She's essentially taking the Antiques Roadshow concept (where experts in various areas of antiques) congregate to lend their expertise for free. It's quite possible, though I'm unsure how it would be funded. -- Zanimum 16:13, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Anyone who wants to translate this article into English?

Siento no saber hablar inglés.

Como en la Wikipedia en español, algunos wikipedistas están más interesados en lo que borran que en lo que redactan, es decir les interesa más destruir que construir, el artículo "Teoría de la conspiración electrónica" [1] (entre muchos otros), casi con toda seguridad, va a ser borrado próximamente. ¿Hay algún alma caritativa que lo quiera traducir al inglés? Cabe decir que en esta Wikipedia en inglés sí que se respira un aire de auténtica libertad y totalmente constructivo.

El artículo no es un ensayo original: su contenido está sacado de partes de la bibliografía que en él aparece.

Saludos cordiales a todos. El filóloco (The Mad Philologist) - Talk to me 08:18, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Si :) --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 16:05, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much for translating the article. El filóloco (The Mad Philologist) - Talk to me (in Spanish, please) 15:08, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Pinhead

I would like to see a page Wikipedia:Pinhead. That way, when someone is being overtly obstinate, and recalcitrant in the face of reason, you can ask them to stop being a pinhead. -Just call me zippy 03:31, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

That's somewhat uncivil, and in any case there's already Don't be dense. —dgies^t_c 04:13, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Except as a politically correct alternative to Wikipedia:Don't be a dick, this would be pretty useless. WP:PIN is already taken anyway. --tjstrf talk 04:34, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:DICK does cover this quite well... plus it also covers the fact that calling someone a DICK, or refering them to the WP:DICK page is "something of a dick-move in itself" and thus, is nicely and somewhat ironically a self-defeating proposition. Seriously, if someone is disruptive, there are ways to deal with it. If they are just annoying, but not causing any damage or disruption, ignore them. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:15, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

• There is a reference to this discussion on the commons. I think that it would be a funny alternative to WP:DICK, and since Don't be dense is on meta, maybe we can create a soft redirect like Wikipedia:Don't be dense? --evrik ^(talk) 15:03, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Referring a person to Wikipedia:Don't Be a(n) ''X'' in reference in reference to their present behaviour amounts to saying “You are a(n) X right now.” Given that X is something such as dick or pinhead, this is simply a personal attract thinly disguised as a reference to quasi-policy. The only legitimate use of WP:DICK — on any Wikipedia page — is in contexts where no identifiable editor is being thereby described. Given that Wikipedia:Pinhead is proposed as a way of slapping “someone [who] is being overtly obstinate, and recalcitrant in the face of reason”, I'd say that it should be seen as fruit of a very poisoned tree. —SlamDiego 18:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Block Turnitin spider with robot.txt

We should consider adding a robots.txt entry denying the Turnitin spider. Turnitin is a service that some schools use to detect plagiarism. Student papers are submitted to their site and compared against a database of previously submitted papers and other content that includes sites like wikipedia. Many of our best articles are from editors who re-work their school papers. By allowing turnitin to spider our site, we discourage editors from turning their schoolwork into wikipedia articles not only because they find turnitin distasteful (as I do) but also because their homework may be flagged as plagiarism just because it also appears on wikipedia. Leafyplant 15:34, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be easy enough for them to prove that they wrote the allegedly plagiarized content through the history feature? --tjstrf talk 23:55, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

The site is GFDL, we should not be denying access to it without a good reason, such as server load. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 23:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Many of our best articles are from editors who re-work their school papers.' I doubt that. How in the world would you know?

Also, an editor who is knowledgeable about Turnitin should be also be smart enough to wait until after getting a grade on a paper before using the information on the paper to improve a Wikipedia article. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:38, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. No need for this change. -- nae'blis 19:11, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Condensed cleanup template

I have an idea for a condensed article cleanup template. Instead of putting 5 or 6 tags on an article, with this, we could just put one and have it display the necessary text. Right now, the cleanup templates have a lot of redundant text, if multiple are used on the smae article. This works similar to {{articlehistory}} but without the show/hide function. I only have the text for "cleanup" and "NPOV" now, but more could be added easily. What I have is just a very rough draft. If anyone has any tips on appearance or on simplifying the code, please tell me. (It uses #if and #switch parser functions now). {{User:Mr.Z-man/Sandbox|npov|cleanup}} gives:

-- Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 16:44, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Very interesting. I'll look into this.... _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐  00:42, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The main discussion on this seems to be here. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 17:29, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Making Wikipedia a reliable source: while still retaining free speech.

A long while ago (many many months ago) I posted an idea to protect the validity of Wikipedia articles which many of you took as a communist like approach to the problem. Looking back on it, I kind of agree.

Anyway, I have a much better idea that will still allow everyone to use Wikipedia just as it is being used now, but will make it become a reliable source. (I know, it sounds too good to be true)

My idea, is that Wikipedia initiates a quality and sound article system. It works similarly to the way quality articles are put up for nomination for the CD version of Wikipedia.

Nominations Anyone can nominate an article as quality and sound. There could be a button or something to that effect as well as an option for the person to put some comments on why they think it has quality and is sound.

Then, a staff or board of some sort that is well qualified (possibly the Wikipedia staff), or even just people who have proven themselves to be people who improve Wikipedia's quality; will judge the article and do any other minor clean up.

Putting an article into place

If they approve, then that version of the article will be saved as the qualified and sound version of the article. But this is not permanent.

Firstly, I suggest Wikipedia adds a new tab between the main tab and the discussion tab that is labeled 'Complete' or something to that effect. This tab allows the user to access the unaffected version of the article that was nominated and judged as a sound article with quality. This version, without going through the process of nomination and judging again, cannot be changed - making that version a reliable source.

Everything else will stay the same, everyone can still edit articles, view them, and access the most recent version as they are now. Though I do also suggest there be an option that allows users to open the 'complete' articles on default, just to make it a little smoother.

Updating the 'complete' version

Information changes over time, and new findings can make old information invalid. Thus, an article that already has a quality and sound version can be renominated when the normal version is edited and updated. If the new version is judged to be better and have more information, the 'complete' version is simply changed to that one. Its as simple as that.

Conclusion

This still allows Wikipedia to be "The Free Encyclopedia" while making it a reliable source for academic citation, reference, and research. I can't imagine it would be very difficult to add this feature into the system, and it would certainly be a worthwhile function. 23:46, 30 March 2007 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.36.84.119 (talk • contribs)

I just read through this page and realized a similar idea was posted... This one is a bit different, but I wanted to be the first to say it. Teehehe 23:46, 30 March 2007 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.36.84.119 (talk • contribs)

It's kind of hard to take seriously someone who doesn't even know enough to sign his/her talk page postings, and says Teehehe. In any case, saying, as you did, Then, a staff or board of some sort that is well qualified (possibly the Wikipedia staff), or even just people who have proven themselves to be people who improve Wikipedia's quality; will judge the article and do any other minor clean up is pretty much conclusive proof that you are clueless about much of how Wikipedia works.

Please feel free to post again here when you (a) understand what is absolutely wrong with suggesting that a major function be done by the Wikipedia staff and (b) why you can suggest a reasonably practical system for identifying and flagging people who have proven themselves to be people who improve Wikipedia's quality. And don't worry about taking your time - we'll still be here, working away. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

My ignorance as to the etiquette related to signing my name has no effect on the value of the content of my suggestion. I know enough about Wikipedia, programming, and computer science to understand that adding a new tab to the system will require work, but is not as complicated as the prior system I suggested. (A complex security system involving the validation of users through a warning, reporting, and appraisal system; restricting what they can edit and how much they are able to edit) I admit that I do not fully comprehend the mechanics of Wikipedia, but that doesn't make my comments invalid.

In response to (a). I am not sure what you mean by 'absolutely wrong with suggesting that a major function be done by the wikipedia staff '. Unless I am mistaken, the village pump is a board for suggesting such things. I note that you do not cite any of the other sections in the village pump for the same ' transgression ' and many of the sections suggest things vastly more complicated than simply adding a tab that links to a specific version of the article as well as a few other programming and functionality adjustments which are not absurdly difficult. (Note that there are already similar functions enacted)

In response to (b). I have previously suggested such a thing, and the system was more or less a communist-esque system that was vastly complicated. But that minor is irrelevant to my point, it really doesn't matter who looks over the nominations as long as they are qualified - I was merely offering up some possibilities for people to consider. Since you seem keen on this point, however, I will offer up a simplified version of that suggestion. Wikipedia keeps track of user contributions, yes? Every time a user posts, points are added to that contributor's validity score. Whenever a contribution is cited as vandalism or invalid, points are subtracted. Whenever a user's contributions are noted as especially useful or well written, the validity score would increase by a substantial amount of points. In order to keep people from abusing this system, various checks and balances could be put into play that limit the number of times a person could vote, and would limit people from voting for a certain person in multiplicity. There would then be a page that would deal with the nominations of articles that users, that meet a benchmark set by Wikipedia, could go to evaluate the nominated articles. Either way, it really does not matter who and it is not detrimental that I point out specifically who it should be. All that matters is that they are knowledgeable qualified, and accredited individuals.

Whether or not this suggestion was completely thought through, has the proper statistics to back it up, or even whether I know the source code of Wikipedia does not make my suggestion a bad one. The idea behind my suggestion is extremely simple and effective. It does not reduce the abilities of the user, (unlike my prior suggestion), and it makes Wikipedia a reliable source. (as I have already stated). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Red revell infusion (talk • contribs) 19:42, 1 April 2007 (UTC).

One last note, I forgot to defend my teehee. I have a sense of humor, I apologize if that offends you. Red revell infusion 19:52, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem here isn't with the complexity of the software changes needed. it is the size of the change in how Wikipedia operates. The first key point is Wikipedia has no staff. None, nada, noone. All editors are unpaid volunteers. The second key point is that there is no easy way to tell who is who. (See Essjay controversy.) The third key point is that few enough editors here can be reliably identified as "people who have proven themselves to be people who improve Wikipedia's quality". Running the featured article system is a major task -- your proposal would be orders of magnitude larger. Various proposals for stable versions have been made in the past -- all have floundered over these sorts of issues. DES ^(talk) 20:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Last time I checked, Wikipedia had next to no staff. John Broughton is probably in contravention of WP:BITE. Last time I checked, there was, supposedly, a system to mark "verified" or "quality and whatever-you-said" articles (I suggested a similar idea a while ago)... here is a pertinent reply that I received:

Reviewed article version and Article validation feature give some overview, although there isn't a lot of ongoing discussion at the moment. It's a MediaWiki feature currently in development, and the plan last I heard was to test it out on the German Wikipedia once it was ready to go live. If you're interested in this and other "behind-the-scenes" things, a good thing to do would be to join the mailing lists, where a lot of such discussion takes place. You'll probably also find more discussion if you dredge through the archives of some of the major lists, such as foundation-l, wikipedia-l, and wikiEN-l. --Slowking Man 20:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Hope this is of use. :) --Seans Potato Business 23:27, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up, I didn't realize that. However, the basic idea behind this still seems applicable. Wikipedia managed to put together a cd, yes? I know it was distribute and funded by another foundation, but it was still done. I am just saying that it is possible. 71.213.88.31 21:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Editor assistance

As it seems that the AMA has generated quite a bit of controversy, and is currently on MfD, I've proposed an alternative to it at WP:ASSIST. Whether or not AMA ends up being kept or disbanded, I think it may prove helpful, and would like feedback and comments. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:13, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

New deletion system proposed.

According to the oft-cited guideline WP:NOVOTE and the policy WP:NOT, Wikipedia is not a democracy. This means that votes should be deleted to prevent these policies from being violated.

To facilitate this, I am hereby proposing the new Votes for deletion system, in which votes can be proposed for deletion. Please comment here or on the talk page! —Dark•Shikari^[T] 00:30, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Not to bash this without fully reading the proposal, but why do you think it's appropriate to negate comments that a user wrote on an XfD/FXC page? It seems anti-anything-Wikipedia-should-stand-for. _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐  00:41, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I was about to say "It's not quite time for things like that yet...", but I guess I'm in the wrong timezone. --Interiot 01:25, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposal concerning Userbox issues & Template Namespace Clutter

Hello Wikipedians,

I have a proposal to make conserning the Userbox issues. Since Userboxes are used by everyone, I do not think they should be put in User Spaces, per the userbox migration policy. Also, the template location does not work well, because they are not really templates. What I propose is to make a different section of Wikipedia for them. We have the template section for templates, wikipedia things are in the wikipedia section, user spaces are in the user section. I believe userboxes would be well organized and more easily used in a section called "Userboxes"; thus, in order to go to a userbox you would put in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Userbox:{{{Userbox Name}}}. Having them in both the Template section and the User section is a bit confusing and not well organized. Also, this would work well with the different kinds of templates. All different types are cluttering the Template section. There are over 50000 in the template section. I believe the ones that are for inside articles (such as ones showing other related articles and showing detailed information on the chemical or animal that the article is about) should be moved to new sections, rather than confusing the sections with all kinds of templates. What do you think?

Someone from the Help Desk said that you don't create new namespaces for "things not related to the project". However, if something is not related to the project, then it shouldn't be here. This has started the Userbox Wars. However, what would it hurt to do this? Would it hurt the project? The Babel Userboxes would have a place to be put that is outside the other templates area. It would increase organization. As it is, your templates need serious organizational help (along with the rest of this site). Bots could easily move all these things and reduce clutter. I originaly thought of this idea because I was trying to compile a tool containing all templates that could be put on a user page and would just be a small line that expands to show all templates and codes that could be needed. New people edit without tools, and even the people who have been here a while have to make their own toolboxes to be equiped to easily do jobs. I searched for all pages in the template section of Wikipedia and found a whole bunch of clutter. The same with the catagories and such that are suppose to contain all this. It's a mess that needs cleaning. This bookshelf of tools clearly needs more shelves installed to reduce clutter and increase organization. There are too many types of templates. It's a lot of work, but bots could do a lot of it, and it would put the tools of editing, catagorization, and all other needed abilities of the average user into the hands of the average user. Well... so what do you all think of this? For, or against? I haven't worked out details, but this is the problem, and proposals on how to posibly fix it. I ask for input from all. Thank you for your time. SadanYagci 03:44, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there's anything wrong with userboxes. Those who say that userboxes should not stay because they are not project related are probably too uptight. So what's next? I can't have customized color theme in my user space? Now, where do we put userboxes? I can understand the rationale of "we don't create a new name space just for ...". But if there are so many userboxes, and there isn't a good place to put them, then maybe it's ok to create a new name space. We just need to rationalize this with the cost and benefit, and if there is other stuff that deserves "upgrade". --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 08:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The longer it goes on, the more templates, the greater the cost of doing this. What would happen if all articles got their own template inside their page? That would be over a million new templates. Good articles usualy have them. Add to that the creation of new templates for maintaining Wikipedia and you have an even greater mess. SadanYagci 15:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

You left a message on WT:UW about this, but I cannot see how this applies to user warning templates. As you put it there are 50,000 templates in the 'root' of Templates: but there are 1,500,000 articles in the root of Wikipedia. This is not clutter as you call it. All that is required is a well organised entry point for these various pages and templates. For wikipedia it is the main page and the search facility, for templates it's WP:TEMP, for user boxes it should be WP:BOX. I would suggest if there is a fault with clutter or organisation it is a fault of the focal entry point and not the structure. ^Khukri 10:00, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I was calling attention to all those I could find conserning the subject of the templates namespace. Also, the main reason this came to my attention is when I was trying to compile a tool that would also help with the UW Templates. Anyway, it is clutter. The main namespace is cluttered, but this cannot be helped. They are all articles. They cannot be organized by subject or anything like that (at least with their locations). But this namespace contains anything that could be considered a template. If someone creates a new template and forgets to organize it into proper catagories (which I found done many times) then it's not as good. There are a lot of templates for many different uses. The ones for inside articles should be in their own location. Userboxes would be better in their own namespace, but that is not the source of the clutter, just another catagory of "templates" that seem to need more organization. Userboxes are in existance and need a place to be put. It's not easy to find all the userboxes, even with all the main pages and stuff that link things together. New namespaces clear clutter. What is wrong with them? Do you really want to just keep trying to organize different kinds of things that are in the same directory by making catagory pages for them? Certainly catagory pages are harder to organize. However, when you want a template there they all are, right in the template namespace. Main pages should catagorize what cannot be easily catagorized by namespaces. Articles aren't even easily catagorized by all these catagories and pages. Pages get lost (specificly new ones). Do you see my point? However, articles cannot be catagorized like that. They are all articles and they cannot be catagorized easily any further without falling into multiple catagories. However, templates can. There are a few different types of templates. Maintinence templates, Inside-Article templates, and Userboxes and templates like them for the purpose of just going on userpages or user talk pages. Three types in the same space. Images already have their section, and though they are a bit difficult to look through they cannot be seperated into different catagories easily (unless it was into JPG, GIF, BMP, etc..., which would be a bit pointless). SadanYagci 15:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think creating a separate namespace for just userboxes is a good idea. I was not involved in the original discussion that led to the userboxes being moved out of template-space so I do not agree 100% with it (then again, since I wasn't involved in the discussion, I am not aware of all the reasoning). However, the current solution seems more than adequate for me. I think it would be a waste of developer resources to creates an entire new namespace just for userboxes.↔NMajdan•talk 13:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Question: How hard is it to create a new namespace? How many developer resources are used to do it? SadanYagci 15:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

None whatsoever. Creating a namespace is a piece of cake. However, the community has to be strongly for it. Gracenotes^T § 17:24, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Userboxes are not so important that they need to be found more easily by searching Userbox:I like pizza. As long as WP:UBX and categories attempt to list them all, it doesn't really matter where they are. I don't think the template namespace is confusing: Templates are things that get transcluded so they all get dumped in there. Any cluttering is a deep organizational issue with no apparent effects as long as templates (the ones used in articles) look standardized and function how they should, which is the main problem that should be tackled. –Pomte 11:49, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

How can they be standardized easily if they are not well organized? This is not something that would help the look of wikipedia directly. I agree with that. However, it is something that would be good for Wikipedians. Something that should speed up their jobs. I always have to keep looking for templates and such. Their organization is not good at all. Now, you could just temporarily solve the problem by going through them all and catagorizing them properly... but then in a few months you would have more mess to clean up. Do you not see all the backlog on this site? Organization tends to be a big backlog. Creating a namespace would be a permanent solution. File location helps organization a lot. You don't see articles getting mixed up with templates much, do you? You don't see articles catagorized as templates, or the other way around, do you? This organization would not help the look of wikipedia... it would help the editors of wikipedia edit faster, making it look better. SadanYagci 18:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Today's Featured Picture aesthetics

The violet colour of the TFP infobox is quite dark, and sometimes also clashes with the colours of the TFP itself. So my proposal is that the colour of the infobox be changed to any lighter, neutral colour like steel-grey, silver or even white. --WoodElf 08:24, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Improving referencing efforts

As a result of several very long discussions on the mailing list, I've launched a proposal that should promote the addition and maintainance of references and make it easier to find articles to reference in a specific field of interest. I invite you to share any thoughts and additional ideas on the proposal's talk page. - Mgm|^(talk) 15:08, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Wording of otheruses template

Template:Otheruses is used on thousands of pages to direct readers to disambiguation pages. But its wording has been in contention for a long time for good reasons: it is unclear and confusing. All proposals to remedy it have failed, so the only option is to revert to the traditional wording. I propose a new wording which makes no claim to perfection but, in my view, is at least an improvement over the traditional wording.

Please discuss at Template talk:Otheruses#"For other articles, see X (disambiguation)." Thanks. Punctured Bicycle 18:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Pinpoint Supporting Text In Large References

I was about to add a reference to an article from a 40 page paper when I realised and remembered back to the last time that I saw a "suspect" reference. I had to read through a lot of tripe just to determine that the reference did in-fact, not support the fact it had been used support (judging from the summary, the editor hadn't read it (thoroughly) which is what incited me to check). Checking the veracity of a reference could be made a lot easier if a page number of even a page and line number could be provided. Alternatively, if such a practice wouldn't voilate copyright laws, a character string could be provided in the form "modular character of transcription factors allows natural" (<< this is an actual snippet from the 40 page paper I just mentioned) which would allow a fast computer-powered search to the correct point in the text. It would of course be as voluntary as any of the other referencing paramters but would be helpful in a few obvious and considerable ways. --Seans Potato Business 23:42, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The {{cite web}} template certainly has pages and quote parameters that do what you suggest. Not sure if any of the other Citation templates have these. --TheParanoidOne 05:38, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Poll on transparency chessboard pattern

Should a chessboard pattern be used to indicate image transparency on all image description pages?

There has been some back and forth on whether image description pages should show a checkered background image (repeated over the dimensions of the picture) by default to indicate transparency (the alpha channel of the image). A poll is being prepared on MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Poll on transparency issue; I would appreciate all comments there. The poll will likely not begin before April 10.--Eloquence* 03:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Replaceable fair use images

I am proposing a Wikipedia:Replaceable fair use image debates area - a place to move the informal deletion debates about replaceable fair use pictures. Currently, if people object, they create an image talk page, and it goes back and forth until the admin either decides to keep or delete. The remaining debates are either deleted by that said admin or are later getting speedied via G8 (despite the fact that they contain deletion discussion that hasn'b been logged elsewhere). The new area will prevent this loss of deletion debates. Hbdragon88 04:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

There is currently no formalized process for debating the deletion of replaceable fair use images. There's no good basis for this, but it turns out that most contests take on a simple, ad-hoc nature and the vast majority of pleas are unsubstantiated and quickly get overruled by WP:FUC. Editors who contest deletion often add {{Replaceable fair use disputed}} without even including a reason or posting on the talk page, requiring all debates to be cataloged would create a largely blank listing of deletions. There are occasions where substantial back-and-forth discussions occur, and almost all such instances are preserved on the talk page. Perhaps an exclusion to G8 is in order, but it should be made clear that the proposed archive would exist only to preserve substantive debates, not as an alternative to WP:IFD or WP:PUI. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 04:22, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

There are GFDL concerns in copypasting content destined for deletion, aren't there? The correct solution seems obviously to be to NOT delete the talk page. If you find a situation where a talk page containing deletion discussion not logged elsewhere is deleted, undelete it (obviously you should talk to the deleting admin first, etc - i don't want to encourage wheel warring). --Random832 19:17, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

A Suggestion to improve Wikipedia and prevent vandalism

Recently, I sent an email to info-en@wikimedia.org of a suggestion to improve Wikipedia. I received the reply and according to the advice, I decided to post my suggstion here.

This is what I have written in my email:

I am STM. I would like to make a suggestion on Wikipedia because I'm quite upset about the fact that I cannot view certain pages. The reason is said to be because of my IP. I read the FAQs on the matter but I would like to make a suggestion to make Wikipedia a better site.

I suggest that Wikipedia articles, although edittable, it has to go through certain members of Wikipedia, preferrably one of the staff. If the article contains no spam, the staff would then allow it to be posted up. This is so that the edits made by the public are properly done and not filled with spam. Then, IP Bans would not be neccessary, because IP Bans would also annoy innocent users who need to research on important things with wikipedia.

I hope you would consider this suggestion and tell me what you think of it. Thank you. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 218.186.8.10 (talk) 07:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC).

Unfortunately that would add a enormous level of bureaucracy and admin work to Wikipedia and would go against everything Wikipedia stands for. If you just continually click refresh on the recent changes page, you will get an idea of how many fruitful edits are made by anonymous IPs; and if each one of these were to be verified for spam or vandalism content it would bring the encyclopedia and those that work on it to it's knees. Fortunately I believe the positive edits currently far outweigh the negative edits. Have you created a login, read Wikipedia:Why create an account? gives a better explanation than I can, and should solve all your problems. Cheers ^Khukri 11:23, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

As an alternative suggestion: why not require that users EARN the right to post external links? Say no anonymous accounts can post external links, and only accounts with a preponderance of several hundred non-reverted edits gets to post external links. This would cut out 90% or more of the link spam. Vandalism is another problem that needs to be attacked with a better set of policies, but I'm not sure how yet. Dicklyon 01:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

That would make things more complicated: Way too much unneccessary work for admins. How can you prevent users from a certain type of edit, but not from others? Anyway, I don't find linkspam to be very prevalent at all, blatant vandalism is what really needs to be stopped. Reywas92^Talk 02:15, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

You don't find link spam prevalent? You haven't been around long enough. It's completely possible for us to detect edits which add new external links to a page; the captcha extension does it. 86.136.31.149 23:31, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Limiting external links would put a strong kibosh on our ever-increasing requirement that assertions be sourced. Corvus cornix 21:02, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Why not adopt a user rating system similar to that of E-Bay? New accounts could be put on a probationary period for a set amount of time (e.g. 3 months) and can contribute to discussion pages only. After the probationary period, they would gain normal editing rights, but their account would then have a multi-star rating. People who maintain a good star rating could then vote to prop up other well-behaving members' ratings. Bad edits and vandalism would mean bad votes, and if a user's rating drops below a certain point, his or her account goes back on probation just as if it were a new account, either for a set time period or until the account owner behaves well enough to get his or her rating back up. Additionally, bad ratings could be tied to IP addresses so that people just don't spring up with new accounts to circumvent the system. E-Bay showed some real genius in devising this sort of system of mutually-based user policing as a means to keep people honest and from their administrators having the headache of policing all the users. Foofighter20x 12:16, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

That will work for about a day, until someone finds out that they can get a club of POV pushers and give everyone who disagrees with them bad votes so they can't edit articles anymore. -Amarkov moo! 14:54, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

False new messages links

We should remove all of the false new messages links from pages. You know, the ones that go to pages that say "Fooled You!", etc. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 12:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

For what reason would you delete them, other than they're a pain in the proverbial? Problem is they're in the user pages and I can't think of any ligitimate reasoning you would use to nuke them. This comes up continually 1, 2 for just a couple, and even though it's one of the oldest and now unfunniest jokes on Wikipedia, it doesn't do any harm. It should be in the perennial questions section, I might do a bit of ground work for all the times it's been raised and add it there. Cheers ^Khukri 14:01, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The current compromise is that WP:USER asks that editors avoid them, but if editors ignore this then the fake messages shouldn't be removed unless they are particularly fraudulent, or link to external sites, etc. CMummert · talk 14:36, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have just read WP:USER but these are nonsense. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 14:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I'm all for conditioning people not to trust that which is untrustworthy. In previous discussion, someone attempting to argue against these links noted that spoofing the user interface could perhaps be done in ways that collected passwords and so forth. What needs to be recognized, however, is that the user interface will not be made safe by banning this joke, and the joke serves to educate users that the interface can be spoofed. (I've not thought long nor experimented to discern whether the the password-collection scenario — or something like it — can in fact be effected.) —SlamDiego 14:21, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm quite confident it could be; it's no different than any other password-collecting fake webpage hack. I don't encourage experimenting with it, however. CMummert · talk 14:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I often add the word fake to the message box. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 19:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Get rid of tallies on RfAs

Please participate in the discussion. Thanks. Xiner (talk) 18:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Snap Previews

We just added Snap previews to all external links on ValueWiki. Now when you mouse over the external link icon, you can see a preview of the link.

I think this could be good added functionality for Wikipedia. It took our mediawiki developer about 5 minutes to implement (basically, adding a script tag to the monobook.php). To see how it looks, mouseover any external link icon on ValueWiki.com.

If there is any interest in adding this functionality to Wikipedia, I'm happy to paste a tutorial for how to add Snap to MediaWiki. Cheers, Jonathan Stokes 18:44, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

• My 2cents, Snaps annoy me as they block they text, plus not keen to propietarize WP. -Reagle 20:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Just a note, I get similar functionality on internal links by using Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups. -- Chuq 22:40, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Snap previews also drive me crazy, I don't see any benefit in them. - cohesion 23:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

They make me want to throw my computer out the window.--ragesoss 01:17, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely not.--Eloquence* 01:53, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

• I work with Jon on ValueWiki. We made the decision to implement Snap to enable users to preview link destinations before they click. I agree that the "full-link" previews (a la wordpress) are obnoxious, but implementing the "icon-only" method that does not interfere with link performance works really well. Does this type of implementation make anybody reconsider? Zgreenberger 03:03, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's pretty strict about using only open-source tools -- which means no flash, etc. If they're not implementing flash, they're definitely not going to implement Snap. Plus, the development team tends to focus on performance issues, and this sounds like it would add workload without increasing performance (possibly even decrease it). Snaps is also a controversial technology: some people like it, a lot of people are really annoyed by it. There are any number of other reasons this wouldn't be implemented, but it's late. Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 04:57, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

That's an interesting point about open source technology. Of course any code used to implement Snap would be open source, but the service itself is not OS. Snap does not have any server-side performance issues, so I don't think that would be a factor. It can even be deployed as off for users by default. They would have to activate the function to view the preview at all. Zgreenberger 19:54, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

• Maybe it could be implemented independently by someone as an addition to Monobook.js, similar to the Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups, and that way people who want snap preview functionality can have it, and those who don't would not be affected? -- All the best, Nickj (t) 05:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

This is a great idea. I will work on this and release something soon. I've also decided to write an extension that would enable users to activate Snap previews on a per-article basis by adding a magic word to the article. If it ever gets deployed, that will give the community the ability to decide for itself where Snap should go. For example, I may want it on my user page. Or maybe it should go on the Snap article page. Zgreenberger 19:54, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks to Nickj's suggestion, I've implemented Snap Preview Anywhere in a similar way to Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups. To install, just add {{subst:snap}} to your monobook.js. I know the value of this feature is controversal, but at least now Wikipedians have the option to implement. I gotta say, I like the feature and will keep it active on my account. I would appreciate any constructive feedback on how I implemented and documented this new feature. While I do manage the ValueWiki installation, I'm not as active here as I should be. Zgreenberger 05:16, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Very unlikely proposal regarding Citizendium

At this point, Citizendium is basically the enemy of Wikipedia. It steals our users and somewhat undermines our free online encyclopedia authority. Due to it still being a wiki, run by Mediawiki, would it theoretically be possible to simply delete the opposition? Due to bad media coverage, prospective users could turn there instead, due to the "inaccuracy" of Wikipedia, and the "expertise" of Citizendium (I trust this). I know that Wikipedia supporters may like this idea, though it is rather unplausable. (Should this be moved to a different discussion place?) This may seem crazy, and it has a long way to go, but I don't wan't Wikipedia to ever succumb to Citizendium. Reywas92^Talk 23:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

NO We can both learn from each other. If you think that we have bad publicity now, imagine what we would get if we did that. And I haven't even thought about whether it was possible or not. The Placebo Effect 23:29, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Users could turn there, but it looks like it will be a while before they'll go there and stay there. At least it depends on how long it takes them to get articles on things like say, George W. Bush. They're not immune from bad media coverage either. Users will go to either site depending on how they like the encyclopedia and the policies. Besides that, I don't think there's anything wrong with a little healthy competition - my bigger concern is copyright/license violation on their part. --Minderbinder 23:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Wait, did he seriously suggest that we go delete their website? That do more to hurt our reputation and help Citizendium than anything else I can think of. The ideas some people have... --tjstrf talk 23:38, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Egads no... I can't even think of where to begin with expressing the many reasons why I'd be against such a thought. You hit it right on with "very unlikely"! :) --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 23:48, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Making an act of war like that makes an already tense situation worse. I wrote an essay regarding this at User:PullToOpen/Citizendium and Wikipedia. There isn't a way that Citizendium will undermine us completely. PTO 00:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Reywas92, I'd recommend withdrawing this "proposal" ASAP. --Minderbinder 00:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I realize this is crazy, I was just wondering about some opinions. I withdraw my proposal. Reywas92^Talk 00:25, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Please explain, for the curious among us, how you would go about "deleting the opposition"? 86.136.31.149 23:25, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

1) I've already closed this; It really doesn't matter. 2) I have no clue. Someone at MediaWiki could do it. Reywas92^Talk 23:36, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

"MediaWiki" isn't a hosting provider or organization; it's the software used by Wikipedia, Citizendium, and many other wikis, some hosted by Wikimedia (the parent organization of Wikipedia) and many by others. It's open-source, free software, so anybody is allowed to use it, and there is no legal way anybody can retroactively revoke anybody's right to use it simply because they're judged an "enemy". *Dan T.* 23:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

A review process for administrators

I am making this proposal because I believe the indefinite tenure of administratorship is a long-term threat to the quality of Wikipedia. Before anything else I think I should make clear that I am not arguing for a time limit for administrators. Thus I am not arguing that valuable administrators should simply be forced to renounce their powers after a defined period of time. Rather, I am arguing that there should be an automatic review process for all administrators every so often (every year? every couple of years? something like that).

We should not forget that Wikipedia is still only a few years old, and problems which appear minor today may become major in ten or twenty years. It is often stated that there are a small number of administrators when compared to the number of overall users. Nevertheless, there are risks associated with an increasing number of administrators, regardless of the ratio to users. These risks include: that gangs of likeminded administrators may form and act in a concerted way to achieve counterproductive goals; that the longer administrators hold on to their powers, the longer they have to forget how to be a good Wikipedian, but the more entrenched their "status" may become; that when a certain threshold of poor administrators is reached, it will become virtually impossible, with the processes presently in place, to remove them.

If one day there are several thousand active administrators, which seems eminently possible, it will only take a very small percentage of these to be poor administrators for Wikipedia to have a very large problem. It might be thought that administrators will drop off at more or less the same rate they join Wikipedia, however I do not believe this to be the case. Those who gain administrative status enjoy its rewards, and it does not appear that they drop out of Wikipedia very quickly. There is no reason to doubt that a great many present administrators will continue to be active in ten or more years.

If the rate of drop-out is slow, there is another factor contributing to the growth in the number of administrators. Processes as they currently stand make it far easier to gain the status of administrator than to lose it. It might be objected that gaining the status of administrator can only be the outcome of diligent editorial practice garnering the approval of fellow editors. I must make clear that I am not criticising the process of appointing administrators, nor am I claiming that the appointment process is too easy. But what I am saying is that it is very difficult to strip administrators of their powers. I am, in fact, saying that it is currently too difficult for administrators to lose their powers.

My proposal is thus that after a definite period of time administrators should be obliged to undergo a review process to determine whether they should retain their status as administrators. The process could be quite similar to the RfA process, where retention of administrator status requires a consensus (75% or thereabouts) of support. Such a review process would provide a readily-accessible forum for discussing poor administrative practice. Furthermore, rather than having to initiate a long process with no certainty of outcome, those aggrieved by administrative practice will have a definite place and a definite time-period in which to present their views. Finally, if a review determines that an administrator should retain their status, others would then know that this administrator will retain their powers until it was time for the next review. Administrators who lose their status after a review may be able to initiate a new RfA for themselves, perhaps after a certain period of time has elapsed (a year, say).

There are very few positions of responsibility in the world where it is possible to avoid a review process for years on end. Wikipedians may have a tendency to assume good faith, not only about the behaviour of users, but about the Wikipedia project as a whole. This good faith is well-founded, but it should not substitute for an effective review process. That it is presently such a difficult and protracted process to strip administrators of their powers does not only mean that poor administrators can continue to edit, but that groups of poor administrators who feel justified in their poor practice may arise. When one administrator sees another administrator get away with bad behaviour, there is the potential for a culture of poor administration to develop. Acting against poor administrators will then become progressively more difficult over time.

I suspect that this proposal may encounter resistance from some current administrators, who, having achieved their status for an indefinite period, are reluctant to submit to such a review process. This reluctance would not necessarily stem from a wish to conceal their own administrative record, but could simply be a wish to avoid unpleasurable bureaucratic procedures. As such, this resistance is entirely understandable. I think it is important, however, for current administrators not to think in these personal terms, and I certainly do not believe current administrators need to feel defensive about this proposal. This proposal is definitely not intended as an attack on current administrators, the vast majority of whom behave very responsibly. I have no doubt that the great bulk of good administrators would have no trouble passing any review process. I am therefore hopeful that current administrators will be able simply to reflect on what problems there currently are, and consider the question of how these problems may develop in the coming years, and what can be done about them.

The fact is (or, at least, my opinion is) that some administrators are far superior to others. This may be because the wrong person was chosen to be an administrator in the first place, or because, having achieved the status of administrator, they enjoy the benefits of this status a little too much. It is sometimes said that the powers of Wikipedia administrators are quite small. Nevertheless, it should not be imagined that Wikipedia is immune from the fact that "power corrupts."

There will always be poor administrators on Wikipedia. My reason for making this proposal is not that I imagine it is possible to stamp out the evil-doers. But those who care for the Wikipedia project should nevertheless ask what will decrease the chances that poor administrators will be able to persist for years on end as a negative influence. I believe this is a potentially serious long-term problem for Wikipedia, but I also believe that changes such as the one I am proposing will substantially ameliorate these concerns. FNMF 08:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

1. Oppose, blocked me once for 3RR. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 10:31, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Since apparently the above is confusing-obviously, FNMF never blocked me for 3RR, but I think we'd see that type of thing in such a "re-election" system. The most valuable admins, the ones willing to dive into the tough cases and deal with disruption that's not being caused by a blatant vandal-only account, would be the first to go under such a system. ArbCom is perfectly capable of desysopping genuinely bad admins. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 10:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

In addition, a big problem would be the sheer number of admins that need to be approved. We have about 1,160 admins as I write this, and the number increases every day. To approve this number in one year would require 3 to be approved per day, placing an enormous strain on the RfA system. Of course in future we would have even more admins, leading to even more RfAs. The exercise would turn into a huge waste of time. This has been rejected before, at Wikipedia:Adminship renewal. Hut 8.5 10:57, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

perennial proposal --Kim Bruning 10:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC) Where did that page go, and is this on it already?

I did look on the perennial proposals page, but could not see it there. I must admit, I will be disappointed if this proposal is rejected on grounds that amount to either: (1) its been suggested before; or (2) its too hard. To me this would constitute a failure of imagination. FNMF 11:46, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Its a variation on WP:PEREN#Administrative, second item: the "expires" is usually combined with a "reconfirm" option when this is proposed. I suppose we could update WP:PEREN#Administrative to reflect that, if anyone cares enough. KillerChihuahua^?!? 13:39, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Look, I'm talking now as an administrator. First, what about the Voting is evil concept? Then I agree with you about that a review process would be recommended. But - to take my example - in the past few weeks, I haven't been able to participate strongly in the deletion procedures (had a lot of works on the medical topics), so now I'm ineligible to keep the mop and the bucket? NCurse _work 11:51, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not too sure what question you're really asking. In relation to voting, if it is an acceptable procedure for RfA, I don't see how it could be evil if applied to Renewal of Adminship. If, in the second part of your comment, you are asking about whether this will increase your "workload," I just don't believe that a review process every couple of years will be so catastrophically burdensome. Not for administrators who value their status (as most do). The fundamental question is: are people happy with the accountability processes for administrators? If you think the answer to this question is yes, then no doubt you will oppose my proposal. But if you think there is a problem with administrator accountability, then the challenge is to find a mechanism for addressing this problem (and I reiterate, the issue is not just the scale of the problem today, but what the scale of the problem may be a long way into the future). I believe there is a developing problem with administrator accountability, I believe this proposal is implementable and workable, and I believe it will go some way to addressing the problem. A review process for administrators is just good sense. FNMF 12:05, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Still, I believe it raises conflict of interest questions. The people who would be voting (and let's not kid around, with percentage thresholds even in the proposal, we're talking about a vote), would be the same people the admin is evaluating 3RR reports on or possibly closing a contentious AfD that deletes their pet article. Further, I think we might see admins lose their adminship for making a couple of mistakes (and again, let's not kid around, even good admins make mistakes, just like even good editors occasionally make a crappy edit.) Again, this would hit the hardest against the ones that handle tough cases, rather than the ones that block blatant vandals and delete obvious garbage. That's not to say those who block blatant vandals and delete obvious garbage aren't valuable, that always needs doing! But we don't need to make admins skittish about making a tough call for fear it'll swing a few opposes in the next reelection. Only admins who have a pattern of abuse or carelessness, and are unwilling to address the problem, should be desysopped, and that's exactly what ArbCom is there to determine. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 12:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

To me, that argument comes across as an argument for the entrenchment of power. Because: the argument about conflict of interest applies just as much to ArbCom as it does to the "user public." Whoever is making decisions will inevitably be a party involved in some way. The implication seems to be that ArbCom will protect administrators from the consequences of their own mistakes better than general editors. To which I have to make two comments: (1) is it really so bad if administrators are encouraged to reflect upon the potential consequences of their actions (this would seem to be a fundamental element of the Wiki ethos)?; and (2) is it really so clear that we should not have faith in general users to make good decisions, given that this is the very process for appointing administrators in the first place? FNMF 12:27, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm really not sure what this "power" bit is, regarding admins. A single admin really does not have a significant amount of power-if you think people are afraid to disagree with an admin, try doing it for a day or two. :) If you do something stupid, you will be asked nicely to reconsider; if you're unwilling, you'll be helped along to change your mind. Do it enough times, and you'll find yourself explaining it to ArbCom-and if anything, they hold admins to a higher standard than other editors. And probably, they should. I just don't see that the current system is broken. What leads you to believe it is? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 13:12, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid things don't always work the way you're suggesting. And I'm afraid ArbCom doesn't always hold administrators to a higher standard. It would be nice if things always worked the way you suggest, but I don't believe that the future of Wikipedia is best assured by presupposing that this is how things work and how they will work. The question is not whether things often work well. The question is how effective the processes are when things don't work well. In my opinion the processes for dealing with poor administrators are ineffective and insufficient. I believe poor administrators get away with improper and abusive behaviour, precisely because the process of bringing them to account is so arduous and fickle. I am not a doomsayer, but ineffective accountability for those in administrative positions will in the end deform the project. The problem is fixable (but there may come a time when it is no longer fixable). The question is whether there is the will to fix it. FNMF 13:23, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

A good admin is rarely a popular one. This is suggested often, but is not going to happen. ArbCom is doing a fine job, do you have any specific examples of when they have let an admin run amuck? ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 13:49, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

About the saying, oft-quoted: "A good admin is rarely a popular one." It may well be true that a good administrator may be unpopular with those who bear grudges against him or her. But I think the notion that this means they are unpopular is fairly un-wiki. I believe good administrators are in fact very popular, because the general community is capable of discerning their goodness. I believe there are good grounds for faith in the ability of the general community to recognise good administrators, just as the general community usually make good choices with RfA. Distrusting the community to come to the correct conclusions about administrator performance is in my opinion revealing. On your second point, the problem is not only whether ArbCom makes good decisions or bad decisions. What must also be asked is: how many times do administrators get away with abusing their powers because the victim of the abuse simply cannot face the Everest climb required to do anything about it? Bad administrators count on the fact that nobody will bring them to account. Because to have the will to do so would mean really really wanting to see an adminstrator punished. That said, I do believe the ArbCom has made bad decisions, but I don't think this is the forum to discuss that. FNMF 14:02, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Let me also add: it is common for people to describe achieving the status of administrator as no big deal. By the same logic, the loss of that status should be no big deal either. In fact, the Wikipedia systems should be structured so that the loss of that status is no big deal. As I said initially, losing admin status does not mean one cannot apply for it later. Perhaps it might even be a healthy thing for admins to go back to their editing roots for a while. FNMF 14:12, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The implication being that admins don't edit? I do both, and I think many other admins do too. -- Necrothesp 14:18, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

No that's not the implication. FNMF 14:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

So what do you mean by "it might even be a healthy thing for admins to go back to their editing roots for a while"? That sounds to me that you're saying that people stop editing as soon as they become admins. -- Necrothesp 12:39, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

FNMF I disagree, if you have been admin for even a year, you have a whole long list of people who you have blocked rightly, who would just love to oppose you because you have enforced policy. Admins are just regular users give the charge of a few tools. If one misuses them we have a process. I don't see the whole point in this, we don't have a large problem with admin abuse. What we have is lots of perceived admin abuse where people claim there is admin abuse, but there is not. At least that is what I get from reading WP:ANI. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 14:22, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Well you may be right that abuse by administrators is not that great a problem. You may be right that there is a process for dealing with administrators who abuse their "tools." In my opinion, however, it is not uncommon that abuse by administrators goes unaddressed. And in my opinion a crucial reason for this is the arduousness of the process. I will be honest with you: I consider the responses (all by administrators) to be disappointing. It is clearly the case that any position of responsibility, in any organisation, ought to have an effective review process attached to it. The process we have is very difficult, open to manipulation, and arbitrary. What I am proposing will be far easier, more transparent, more organised, more efficient, and show greater faith in the editing community. The only thing that protects the Wikipedia project is the effectiveness of its systems. The question is whether administrators—who, however you want to cut it, have a vested interest—are able to show the good sense and judgment to really analyse whether those systems are adequate, or whether they can be improved. I don't see that analysis going on in this discussion. FNMF 14:33, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Leaving aside the perennial proposal for now, since others have dealt with that fairly succinctly, I think the problem you perceive of "gangs of administrators enforcing their will" is actually best counteracted by having MORE administrators. The more users that have the additional tools, the less special it will be, the more oversight there will be on bad actions, and the less chance there is of a hegemon/groupmind. Just my opinion. -- nae'blis 14:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

That may be. My proposal, of course, has nothing to do with creating more or less administrators. It is to do with the quality of the adminstrators there are, however many or few they may be. FNMF 14:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Your proposal has everything to do with how many administrators there are, because any barriers to adminship will reduce the number of applicants; any admin who pisses off enough people will not be reconfirmed; and any imposed review will cause a certain percentage of administrators to resign. I'm proposing a different way to achieve your goal of oversight. Would you like me to nominate you? -- nae'blis 15:05, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

And you forget that the existing admins already have a life-time appointment, so this would only effect new admins. Which would create two classes of admins, which is a bad thing. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

To HighInBC: I don't believe that a change couldn't affect existing administrators. A mechanism would need to be introduced to stagger the review processes, presumably from oldest to newest, which would obviously take some time, but I don't see any major obstacle there. Its important to think long-term rather than short-term about major changes such as the one I am proposing, so a little inconvenience now will be coped with a lot better than being forced to deal with a much worse situation in the future. Like global warming! To Nae'blis: I don't believe there is any shortage of applicants for adminship, and I don't believe my proposal will seriously dent that number. I don't believe a fairly-conducted review process will lead to any and every disgruntled user forcing out every good administrator. This objection has been raised before, but in my opinion it forgets the support that good administrators receive from good users and from each other. I think the objection is out of proportion to the likely reality. As for your very kind offer, it is flattering, however at this time I do not wish to pursue adminship. But thanks. FNMF 18:53, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Punish the bad, don't make the good jump through hoops. That's like asking a citizen to go before a court every two years and prove they shouldn't be thrown in jail. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 19:50, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

(clarification, section edit)

I feel I need to make clearer what I consider the danger to Wikipedia to be. The problem with an ineffective review process for administrators is not that a rogue administrator will get away with misbehaviour. The real threat is that groups of misbehaving administrators will coalesce, act in concert, and defend each other. No doubt these groups will believe themselves to be good and effective administrators. But that doesn't mean they are. And without an effective means of bringing them to account, they will act with increasing impunity. Admin powers are greatly intensified when administrators can act in concert. Thus, for example: if an administrator is blocked by another administrator for misbehaviour, a third administrator, friendly to the first, may immediately unblock. If the first administrator can count on this support in advance, then on this basis they may grant themselves license to act in whatever way takes their fancy. Now, you might say: but then action can be taken against both the misbehaving administrators. But what if the group is three, or four, or five, or ten? Under the current oversight processes, it is almost impossible to address this situation. And, if this situation does not occur that often at the moment, the question is how it may develop, and how it will then affect Wikipedia as a whole. It is my belief that such situations poison the atmosphere of Wikipedia, and are unconducive to good editing and good administration. The growth of a poor administrative culture will drive away far more good editors and administrators than will any effective oversight process, as many organisations have learned too late. A workable but effective review process is not simply an exercise in making administrators jump through hoops. Most of the "work" will be done by others, those who support or oppose the retention of adminship, and they will be happy to do it. What a workable and effective review process will do is make Wikipedia a healthier and more attractive place to be, and produce a better encyclopaedia. FNMF 20:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The situation you describe has come up before, and we have a term for it...it's called "Wheel Warring." It's highly HIGHLY frowned upon and has lead to several different arbitration cases. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 20:09, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The greatest long-term threat to Wikipedia is the development of a poor administrative culture. A culture of poor administration may develop in any organisation. How much more likely is it to develop on Wikipedia, an organisation disconnected in a significant way from the real lives of its contributors, and thus disconnected in a significant way from consequences? The only protection against the development of poor administrative culture is an effective review process. Administrators have a natural inclination to resist the introduction of review processes. But in most organisations these review processes are implemented from above. What Wikipedia administrators need to reflect on is that it is largely up to them to determine the processes of their own review. This is an added burden of responsibility borne by Wikipedia administrators and by the Wikipedia community as a whole, and it is one that requires a leap of imagination beyond the natural inclination against review processes. This discussion has shown this inclination in spades. My proposal is not an attack on administrators, but rather constitutes a defence of good administrators. The question is not what conduct is frowned on and what conduct is approved. The question is what processes are in place to encourage good conduct and discourage poor conduct. The question is whether these processes are adequate. The question is what kind of administrative culture will develop in the long-term if ineffective review processes remain in place. And the question is whether administrators are capable of the leap of imagination required to implement more effective oversight processes. If your answers to these questions are different from mine, you will be happy with the status quo. My belief is that this threat exists, and that signs of poor administrative culture are showing. Naturally these signs are frequently contained within the fine grain details of administrative practice, and may at present be nearly invisible to those who do not apply a magnifying glass to the particular situations of poor administration. But as I said in my initial comment: Wikipedia is still only a few years old, and what seem minor problems today may become major problems tomorrow. Only an effort of thought, will, and imagination will have a chance at addressing these problems, but such an effort can, I believe, address them, if it does not arrive too late. FNMF 20:39, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah great. Time for the misnomer to bite us. Of course, the "admin bit" is actually supposed to be more akin to a drivers license. Just like drivers licenses, people with admin bits aren't one hair better or worse than people without one. But people try to keep ascribing magical properties to this admin bit thing. If we could drop that, the role of admins would be much clearer.

The way culture is at the moment though, is that admins are actually locked up in a gilded cage, and people get to randomly poke them with sticks. Most unpleasant. (That's why I'm a big proponent of people being allowed to leave adminship honorably, after a year of having "served their time".)

Of course, if by some event everyone suddenly realizes it's just a "drivers license" (but for wikis), then it would also be clear why "admins" should be allowed to keep the dang thing indefinitely. :-)

--Kim Bruning 21:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

That is, unless they go senile and start running over cats or driving 40 miles an hour on the highway. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 21:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe my argument presumes administrators are better or worse than anybody else. Nor do I believe I am ascribing magical properties to them. FNMF 21:50, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

What I meant to say was that the administrators do not form the administration. It's a misnomer. :-) On the other hand, I am extremely interested in hearing about what kinds of small-scale issues might be popping up, and extremely interested in the long view. Tell us more? --Kim Bruning 22:01, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I seriouly don't think that this should work. The high number of admins makes it simply a lot more work to do. If admins are behaving in a bad way, it is not too difficult to un-admin them. So many do such great work and we need more, not less, to work on backlog and vandal blocking. With more admins, it is easier to check up on others. IMHO, the RfA process should be even easier than it is now. Reywas92^Talk 23:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps at some point we'll need to implement a "reconfirmation" system for adminship, but as it stands right now, we have neither the need nor the manpower to do so. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 00:01, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd tend to agree. As to the bit above (admins unblocking one another, etc.), I wouldn't unblock anyone, admin or otherwise, without first contacting the administrator who placed the block and getting their rationale, and if they stood behind it, I would be much more likely to take it to ANI than unilaterally override them. That's what's expected, it's not just my thing. In a technical sense, admins can unblock themselves. In a realistic sense, that's about the quickest way to getting desysopped there is. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:11, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

(Addendum I meant to put earlier) As to losing adminship-yes, it's a big deal. If anyone doesn't believe that, I'll go block them right now.

What????!!!!

(I did not mean that, and I certainly don't intend to block anyone for saying that, no one crucify me!) However, it illustrates how "adminship is no big deal" does not necessarily correspond to "losing adminship is no big deal". Editing is no big deal. Every last person in the world can come around here and do that. But taking away someone's editing privileges is a big deal. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:15, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I really don't see how what you do as an administrator, or what administrators are expected to do, or for that matter what 95% of administrators do 95% of the time, is relevant to the question. Furthermore, the attitude that anybody can come and edit, whereas only some people are administrators, is one reason that administrators are reluctant to consider proposals such as mine. What I am arguing is that administrators need to think further into the issue than simply asserting that they are good administrators and that losing administrator status is a big deal. You can argue that there is not a problem with administrator behaviour if you like, and you can argue that the existing processes will always be sufficient for dealing with administrator abuse, however I am unpersuaded by these arguments in the form they have been put thus far. FNMF 00:23, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, the fact that there do exist certain standards that would discourage or prevent the hypothetical scenario you put forth is somewhat relevant, I think. What we're trying to ascertain here, is whether what you're proposing is a solution in search of a problem, or whether there is an existing problem that isn't adequately addressed by what's already in place. If there is change needed, we should make it, but that should generally be because problems do exist, not because they might someday. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:28, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe I have engaged in a considerable amount of argumentation about the very issues you raise. If you don't wish to address those arguments substantively, that's ok. FNMF 00:34, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I see that you have, and there's been a considerable amount back. What I'm asking now is, are there specific situations that exist right now that this is intended to solve, or is it based on hypothetical future scenarios? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:47, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Both. FNMF 00:50, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

That's kind of a nonanswer. I guess I'm very reluctant on accusations of "cabalism", given my own experience. Not too long ago, I found myself in a pretty contentious dispute over content. Three people on the "opposite side" were admins, one was also at the time an arbitrator. I wasn't an admin at the time, neither was anyone else arguing the other way. If there would be any case I should have seen "admin abuse" used against me, that would be it. And yet, what actually happened was that everyone agreed to mediation, and it was worked out just fine. At no point did anyone try to "pull rank" or do anything inappropriate whatsoever. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 01:05, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Let's just say that FNMF has been peevish since I blocked him over his method of participation at Christopher Michael Langan (a block I and a good number of other admins stand by), that's why. He's been on this campaign at Jimbo's and Fred Bauder's talk pages to get me desysopped or otherwise waylaid, and failing there, to set up a process to hamstring admins with mob rule "make admins more accountable." FeloniousMonk 04:37, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I feel obliged to point out that the above assertions by FeloniousMonk are untrue and an unfortunate misuse of this forum. I am happy to discuss this further with anybody who may be interested. FNMF 05:48, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad your experience turned out well. But as I say, that things work well most of the time is not really the question. You are of course free to suspect that I have interpreted situations within my own experience incorrectly. But I feel I have to point out that I am not making any "accusations" here: I just answered your question. FNMF 01:16, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, I don't really understand why you described my answer as a "nonanswer." FNMF 01:19, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Just "Both"? Well, what problem exists now then? What's the current situation that's gotten you to make this proposal? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 03:39, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Not that I would necessarily support such a proposal, but why not create some process for review that would provide a more accessible way to withdraw community support for an adminship than the arbitration committee? Perhaps if 15 (the number is just for example) or more users (who have not been the subject of punishment from the sysop in question, or have more than 300 edits, or some other combination of standards) post a request on something like Wikipedia:Petitions for Administrator Review, they could compel a renomination of the sysop similar to current RfA's. Perhaps a separate committee could even be formed (composed in such a way to make tasks manageable). Such a system would permit the community to withdraw support for a sysop without going all the way to arbcom, and not hassle administrators who have not taken actions to aggrevate the community. --Ybbor^TalkSurvey! 01:09, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Other mechanisms for dealing with these problems should certainly be considered as well. FNMF 01:18, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Reply to Seraphimblade above: I don't believe this is the proper forum to discuss specific cases of administrator misbehaviour. I am happy to do so elsewhere. Nor does the argument stand or fall with whatever my own experience has been. If you do not believe there is a problem, and do not believe a problem is likely to develop, then anecdotal evidence about a problem here or there is not likely to persuade you. If you do believe there is a problem, or that a problem is likely to develop, then, if you care enough about the problem, you should address yourself to the question of what can be done about it. This is what I am doing. FNMF 03:47, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

If 95% of administrators are acting well 95% of the time (your hypothetical numbers, above), then why make 100% of them go through a review process every X years? That's one of the things people don't understand about your proposal, I believe. Do we need to strengthen our ways to deal with problematic administrator behavior? I believe so. But making everyone go through a process designed to weed out the bad eggs is not good policy. I'm dealing with this practically every day in my real-life job, or I wouldn't make such an assertion (even though I'm an administrator I have the sysop bit). And your proposal is subject to the same "cabalism" in the form of administrator cliques defending each other when they come up for review, isn't it? I'm going to assume here that you're familiar with the contents of Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship, before I retread any more ground. Also, I have broken this into a subsection, as this section of the Village Pump was 36k long. -- nae'blis 16:04, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I am certainly open to the idea of review-on-demand rather than an automatic review after a designated time period. I believe there are pros and cons to both suggestions. The pros of review-on-demand are, as you say, that it saves administrators whose work is not questioned from having to go through a review process; and, secondly, that an aggrieved editor would not need to wait for the scheduled review time to come around. But I do believe there are arguments the other way as well: I believe there are benefits to the idea that all administrators will know they face a review process. I do not believe administrators will be cowed by knowing this, but I believe it may mean they think about their actions in a slightly different way. As I feel I have to always add, this is not a criticism of the bulk of administrative practice, but rather a question of whether it is possible to improve the overall administrative culture. And I also believe there are benefits to the notion that any administrator at any time may find themselves back on the street, so to speak, spending a year as an editor like everybody else. I believe that the idea that this will upset administrators so much that they will leave Wikipedia is exaggerated. And I believe the idea that a review process will be unduly onerous is exaggerated. And, finally, I believe the idea that a few disgruntled editors will easily be able to have an administrator de-administrated is also exaggerated. The RfA process works well, contributors behave in a thoughtful way, and if editors weigh in with attacks they can't back up, neutral participants are unlikely to be persuaded. I believe the same would happen at a review process. The problem today is that it is just far too difficult to have an administrator's record effectively reviewed. It is a solvable problem that the Wikipedia community should make the effort to solve. As for the 95% issue, that was just off-the-top-of-my-head made-up figures: the real question is whether people believe the problem of poor administration may grow, and if so, whether it will be more difficult to solve later on. I believe both of those things. As for how to determine the best method of improving the situation, I think it would be a pity if a review process was put into place, but a watered-down or weak version. Unless the process is accessible and robust, it will turn out to be a waste of time for everybody. But if current administrators can put aside their anxieties about the consequences of such a review process, a real improvement to the long-term outlook for Wikipedia can be achieved. FNMF 01:07, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Bad idea, will never fly; too easily gamed by those looking to settle old scores. Any admin worth their salt will have a long list of disgruntled nogoodniks looking for retribution, and the community already provides two methods, RFC and RFAR, for admins who are so far out of step that they need correcting. FeloniousMonk 04:30, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

English and American

I was wondering if anyone would oppose the creation of an English Wikipedia and an American Wikipedia, only it seems a little unfair and very misleading that the American language has taken over the English Wikipedia. Thanks! Whiskey in the Jar 10:13, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

British and American spellings can be used interchangeably. Typically we use the spelling the article was started in. --Kim Bruning 11:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Kim Bruning is right, and plus there is no "American language" it is called "American English". - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 11:27, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Whiskey in the Jar (t c) appears to be a single-purpose account; please take this into account. CMummert · talk 11:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I can accept that this may be construed as a single-purpose account, though i do intend to be of some other uses. And I'm not going to run off and change all the American spellings back to the Queen's English - unless I'm given permission - :-PWhiskey in the Jar 12:38, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The "American language" hasn't taken over English Wikipedia. Many articles are written in British English and the British editors (myself included) will continue to write in British English and revert any changes to American English in articles that are written in British English, as mandated by Wikipedia policy. Since we can read each other's versions of English perfectly well and since the editors and users of English Wikipedia aren't just British or American, but come from many different countries, some with English as their first language and some not, forking into two would be a pointless exercise. -- Necrothesp 14:12, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Try Conservapedia which can only be written in American English. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 20:20, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

And in a pro-Bush (N)POV... ^demon^{[omg plz]} 00:02, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Ta matey! I was hoping to find something only written in the Queen's Enlgish! Thanksanyhow, I'll have a peek at somepoint! Whiskey in the Jar 07:17, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

How about a Pirate Wikipedia where all articles be written in Pirate. Arrrrr.  :) --JeffW 16:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Come on, there are enough languages out there allready! If the Brits want to conserve their language, they should make more contributions that their fellow Americans (that is if they actually care that much!!!!!). Why don't we take any other random language that is spoken by a large enough number of people to have slightly distingt dialects and then get two separate languages for basically the same language. I bet that the French from the north of France speak a much more different language from those in south fo France. American English and British English are basically the same languages woth a small difference in usage.

While you're at it, why not a City-of-London-English Wikipedia? —SlamDiego 14:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

All I know is, unless we open an Ancient Aztec wikinews soon, I'm quitting. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 16:22, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

MediWiki

I have an idea for a medical wiki... It will have information on and help for doctors and Med Students, giving information on proceedures and effects of different drugs.

Vagery 12:31, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Why couldn't the information be stored here on the Wikipedia? -- drumguy8800 C T 12:33, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

It could be, but it would be alot easier for Medical Professionals to access it if it was seperate. Vagery 12:39, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

What about PubDrug wiki? I work on several medical wikis, drop me a message for further talk if you're interested. NCurse _work 13:49, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Considering we have a Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer, I'm not actually sure this is a good idea.  ;) Because of Wikipedia's nature, there is no guarantee the information is useful (or won't kill patients), especially as we have not been ratified/supported/etc. by, say, the FDA or something. This type of stuff would be better off on other wikis. x42bn6 Talk 17:06, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

See this listing of medical wikis, and this follow up post.-gadfium 21:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for changing the WP:EA shortcut

The shortcut WP:EA currently redirects to the inactive Esperanza main page. I realise that changing a commonly-used and established WP shortcut is likely to be very controversial (which is why I'm posting it here, rather than just doing it), but I think the shortcut should redirect to Wikipedia:Editor assistance. Surely an active project (albeit a very new one) merits a shortcut more than an inactive one does? Walton ^{Vivat Regina!} 19:11, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that there are a few thousand pages that link to Esperanza using that shortcut. Changing the shortcut would disrupt all of these links. Even though the project is currently dead, that's where all of those links are supposed to go to. WP:ASSIST can use other abbreviations; there's nothing wrong with WP:EDA or something like that. Koweja 19:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I was just about to bring that up...that would be a lot of work to change all the old links to Esperanza, and it would probably confuse people that're used to WP:EA going there. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

What about putting {{redirect1|WP:EA|the former Wikipedian organization|[[Wikipedia:Esperanza]]}} at the top? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 19:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Because it would still create potential confusion in cases where the context could have referred to either. --tjstrf talk 22:14, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

• I suppose you could list it on WP:RFD but I suspect people will not approve the suggestion. >Radiant< 08:43, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Esperanza was deactivated four months ago and already there are phalanxes of new users who have never heard of it. It does not seem right that a dead organisation should supplant a new and active one. SatyrTN has calculated the links and is happy to use his bot to change all current EA links to Esperanza ones so we can change the redirect. Is that ok with everyone? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:56, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Avoid the word "vandal"

I recently created Wikipedia:Avoid the word "vandal" to counter a recent tendency to call edits made in good faith "vandalism".

I would deeply appreciate any modification to the essay to improve it. ^Thanks, _{Luc "Somethingorother" French} 04:02, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Logo

I propose that we reject the current logo until discussion at m:Logo and trademark policy concludes, and permanently unless such discussion results in the logo image being released under a GFDL-compatible copyright license (the foundation can still protect it with trademark if necessary) --Random832 14:46, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Colors and shading of text background according to its age and priority.

For every article, it would be nice if one could at a quick glance distinguish between very recent edits, those less than a day or a few days old, and those that are simply ancient.

Background shading and colors might be useful. Light greens for new edits. A brighter green for recent edits and fading to white or the user's default color with time!!! If an edit was reached by consensus, an administrative color, a light purple perhaps, that also fades with time could be used. The automatic green tints and subsequent purple tints could be changed periodically by bots.

I think such a system would prevent readers from getting too worked up when edit wars, vandals and temporary editing mistakes occur.Modocc 23:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, since such a simple system is likely to evolve, lets call the bots cuttlefish or cuttlefishbots or something similar. These cute creatures were featured this week on NOVA and they put on a wonderful display of colors! Modocc 01:44, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

excellent idea. The feature would need to have a "disable" option somewhere, because all the colors could get obnoxious. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.32.38.79 (talk) 02:05, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. A personalized babel-fish tool should be developed to interpret the cuttlefish colors. :-) The babel-fish would enhance, interpret and/or eliminate the colors as they evolve into a detailed, yet useful, text presentation. Modocc 02:27, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I must admit I do like this idea... though I foresee a need to defend against "colorvandals" whom add background colors to words to confuse others. Additionally, if such a concept were implemented, the default setting should be OFF so that it does not bewilder newcomers. However, with a toggleable setting, would this be something added within the wikicode to set the background color? Seems like this wouldn't be so much of a simple "throw in some extra wikicode with a bot to colorise everything" but rather "modify the coding behind Wikipedia's engine". --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 02:11, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh and to reflect a post further above within this policy forum, perhaps I should refer to "colorvandals" and "color-mishaps" for those whom do it unintentionally :) --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 02:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the support. Perhaps the cuttlefish and/or babel-fish will be trained to recognize colorvandals and color-mishaps since edits are sequential and archived. Thus,I'm hoping there isn't any insurmountable obstacle. Modocc 03:00, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, come on. I'm trying to quit facebook :{ If this isn't approved, what about a personal client-side plugin that checks diffs for new content to display your own version of the article with colors? This may even highlight content that was deleted. Would take a load of parsing on every page view though. –Pomte 04:45, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Client-side plugins could work. Yet cuttlefish would likely be better suited to large-scale development and are would also be subject to wiki imposed standards. This will allow additional content; specific colors can have added meaning. Whether or not third-party developers create plugins, I think wiki should have a babel-fish too.Modocc 05:12, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, your point raises another important consideration, if cuttlefish are not employed soon, then client-side plugin(s) that might become popular due to the need for them would tax servers with redundant dif info requests and waste server time as well as the client's bandwidth and resources!! In fact, human clients may be making more dif requests, currently, than they otherwise would with my proposal. Modocc 08:15, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I should add too that most, if not all, the colors need apply only to the most recent edits(those within a week, month? or so) and are removed by the bots as the colors fade out completely, therefore the extra storage space required should reach a stable and relatively fixed amount per article. Most articles would lack colors, and many would be green tinted for a few weeks(if one's wikipedia babel-fish tool is set to "see" it, for the poetry might be too ghastly:-)).

Currently, considerable distrust and confusion with wikipedia is due to the difficulty all readers have in distinguishing new edits from established edits. Adding this important information with color-coding should make a dramatic difference to all parties by helping both casual and serious readers easily spot and assess the newest edits as they are reading and assimilating the information. Of course, novel editorial uses of standardized color-coding can be employed as well and these could be very interesting and helpful to readers and editors alike. Modocc 08:15, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Mini-Summaries Instead of Titles

When you move your mouse over blue text, you get the title of the article that is being linked to. This tends to be redundant. It would be more convenient to readers to see the first sentence of the article when the mouse is above the link.

For Example, mousing over Wikipedia would show "a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project." instead of "wikipedia" in the white box next to the mouse.

A great idea, but Wikipedia already has it! Try Wikipedia:Popups. Reywas92^Talk 02:49, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Showing the title of the page being linked to is useful when the link is piped or mystery meat. –Pomte 04:36, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Display of last time the article was modified (somwhere in the top of the page)

I would like to know when was the last significant update on an article. It would not matter that somebody changed a letter 1h ago and the rest of the article has been unchanged for 5years, at least it will be possible to know if a specific article has not been changed AT ALL in the last 5years.

It's already displayed in the footer at the bottom of the page. Is that good enough, or does it have to be visible at the top? --ais523 11:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Such a function doesn't exist - but you can go through the history of an article yourself. x42bn6 Talk 14:08, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Separating out maintenance categories

This proposal relates to the list of Categories at the bottom of articles. Maintenance categories like those attached to maintenance or stub tags tend to be wordy, and because of the position of the tag at the top of the article, these categories show first on the list. This distracts from the actual subject categories which the article is in. Would it be possible to separate these two types of categories, so that the subject categories show up first, followed by a second list of maintenance categories, that non-wikipedians can simply ignore? Thanks. ::Supergolden:: 11:31, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

It couldn't be done without changing the software, and this change would be quite complicated to program, I think. You can make software feature requests on mediazilla: (you'd have to request something like a second Category namespace that showed up separately from the first, I think). --ais523 11:34, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Formating alteration: Justification of text?

Appearance and readability could be better if the text was justified to fill the whole lines in the same way as most books. 86.135.212.93 11:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

It's unlikely that would increase either appearance or readability. Web browsers are generally quite awful at typesetting, and they never hyphenate, which is crucial for fully justified text. CMummert · talk 12:20, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

One of the benefits you get from getting a user account is the ability to set your preferences; one of the preferences allows you to view the text as justified. --ais523 12:26, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Justified text looks much better. Thanks. 86.135.210.91 23:20, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Proper order of the main wikipedias

Recently the Spanish wikipedia has surpassed the swedish one, so maybe the order of these two should be changed in the logo page Zidane tribal 18:41, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Are you talking about {{Wikipedialang}}? If so, those are in alphabetical order. x42bn6 Talk 18:08, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe he's talking about http://www.wikipedia.org/ (note that those article counts are incorrect). I don't think the English Wikipedia is the place to discuss this though.--Ybbor^TalkSurvey! 18:24, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm in fact talking about http://www.wikipedia.org/, i would apreciate if anyone could tell me the proper place to discuss it Zidane tribal 01:56, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, probably. I was going to ask on Meta (it's a nightmare to navigate there) but eswiki has only 300+ more articles than svwiki, and is it really necessary to update it with such a small difference, which could well sway drastically in a few months? x42bn6 Talk 01:59, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

But if you would like to ask, I guess it's m:Metapub on meta, which coordinates all the Wikipedia projects. x42bn6 Talk 14:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Is true that it can change even in a couple of weeks but i`ll try anyway. Thanks Zidane tribal 19:07, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's triple crown

The standard triple crown.

I'm initiating a new personal user award called Wikipedia's triple crown for editors who achieve all of the following:

1. Start a new article that gets highlighted at Template:Did you know.
2. Be a major contributor to a good article.
3. Be a major contributor to a piece of featured content (featured article, featured list, featured picture, featured portal, featured topic, or featured sound).

Two special edition triple crowns are also available: the imperial triple crown jewels for editors who qualify for multiple triple crowns and the valiant return triple crown for editors who satisfy all three triple crown requirements after an arbitration sanction or a lifted siteban. Editors who think they qualify are welcome to petition me at User talk:Durova and I'll keep an honor roll at User:Durova/Triple crown winner's circle. Durova^Charge! 01:43, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Hell no. Trophy cases are baaaad. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:16, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Word hunt game

Hey,

I’d like to suggest an idea. I know it may sound a bit “odd” at the first glance, but believe me if implemented properly it’s an entertaining stuff that involves rapid reading, rapid thinking, general knowledge and fast mouse movement. It’s something me and my friends do at home every now and then. Simply put, it’s a word hunting game mainly based on wikipedia interface. I randomly choose two totally different and unrelated words in mind (for instance, Presbyterianism and sonar) and try to jump from the first word (Presbyterianism ) to the target word (sonar) within the shortest period of time, just by clicking only on the shortcuts on the page. With a little bit modification (a chronometer, nickname of other participants or contesters), it'll attract other user’s interest and will also help people improve their general knowledge (both a contest and a source of knowledge on any topic). Users may be given a rest period at the end of each stage to look at what those words actually mean (Transcendental Idealism?? :)))

Well, I hope it will attract your interest.

Thank you

Gunhan Pikdoken, 30, Turkey e-mail removed

See Wikipedia:Wikirace and related games. –Pomte 15:05, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

List of resources

To help with referencing articles, perhaps we should construct a list of sources (i.e. books and magazines) that editors have access to. I know some WikiProjects (such as the Alternative music WikiProject - here) do this already, so such a list would link to WikiProject-specific lists. It would help immensely with referencing articles and encourage the use of more written sources. What do you think? CloudNine 17:03, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

You might want to take a look at Wikipedia:Newspapers and magazines request service, Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange, and Wikipedia:Public domain resources. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I've just added a suggestion to Merge some of those, at Template talk:Article resources. Those pages could be a lot more active/useful with a little streamlining and interlinking. --Quiddity 05:26, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Or you could just create another list! Wikipedia:List of sources. These all need to be merged, me thinks. --Quiddity 18:00, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikibibliography project?

We have an awful lot of "in popular culture" sections, and the comprehensiveness of some of these can be controversial. For example, does every cartoon that makes a passing reference to a piece of classic 19th century literature really deserve mention in the article? Perhaps we should develop a Wikibibliography project, similar to Wikiquote. This, probably more importantly, could also provide an NPOV guide to literature on a given subject, like an Open Directory Project for printed books. This isn't a formal proposal yet, just an idea. Thoughts?--Pharos 18:19, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Changing <references /> to {{reflist}}

Just to get a wider consensus, User:Vishwin60 has proposed a bot that will change all <references /> tags to {{reflist}} tags in articles, as of now only in articles within the scope of WP:USRD. There are advantages to {{reflist}}, such as the ability to use multiple columns, but most articles don't have enough references to split it up into two columns anyway. It also makes the references small, but if this is done everywhere we may as well just change the stylesheet to automatically display references in a smaller font. An obvious disadvantage is the thousands (potentially hundreds of thousands if all articles are changed) of edits that would be required for such a change. What do you think? If I've missed an advantage or disadvantage, forgive me. Perhaps another option would be to get a database dump, and find only articles with more than 10 references, and if so, replace <references /> with {{reflist|2}}, otherwise leave the article alone. —METS501 (talk) 18:19, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Assuming they don't use multiple columns, the extra edits seem like an unnecessary waste of server resources to me. --Ybbor^TalkSurvey! 18:24, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

WTF??? Unnecessary server resources? Compared to Wikimedia's huge server farm, it's barely a blip. Also won't cause any database locks either.  V60 ^{干什么？ · VDemolitions} 18:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, if you say so, I really have no expertise in the area. I just don't see why it's worth it to instiute such a "change" which won't really change anything. --Ybbor^TalkSurvey! 18:31, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Ybbor. It won't cause any database locks, but it's just a waste of resources. —METS501 (talk) 18:39, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind also that according to the bot policy, the onus is on the bot operator to show that the bot is useful. A change that would require thousands of edits that could be done with a simple stylesheet change is not useful. —METS501 (talk) 18:43, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[double edit conflict] The change is for a first step in GA/FA noms. It is also for standardization of all USRD articles, not all of Wikipedia. And please stop complaining about extra edits; it's making the resolution process a hotbed of anger. Mets501-Please do not make a big fuss over this; it is driving everyone at USRD crazy. Unfortunately, you are making the Highways department a hotbed of anger, so please chill.  V60 ^{干什么？ · VDemolitions} 18:46, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Ahh, I was under the impression that this might soon become the case for all of Wikipedia ("as of now only in articles within the scope of WP:USRD" emphasis mine). Pardon my ignorance, but how/why is the change to {{reflist}} a first step toward GA/FA? Does it really impact the quality of the article? Why does standardization of the method for displaying references matter if the way its displayed ends up the same? --Ybbor^TalkSurvey! 18:57, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Right now, USRD is in a state of trash. Therefore, we need to start to clean up these articles by doing the conversion. The underlying reason for the conversion is that 99% of all GAs/FAs have this or something similar to this. And yes, how the refs look have a bit to do with the quality of the article. The section should be non-intrusive to the rest of the article.  V60 ^{干什么？ · VDemolitions} 19:05, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Mets501 - why are you making a big deal out of nothing? Server resourses aren't a big deal - if these guys want to do it, let them do it. Unless there is a hard-line rule set down by the wikipedia governing bodies, don't worry about it. -- master_son^{Talk - Edits} 18:50, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

For the benefit of those who haven't seen the previous discussion: what is the benefit of this change? Can you provide a link to the proposal? The last time I checked, the <references/> method was not deprecated in any way. Does WP:FA? actually forbid it? CMummert · talk 19:11, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

WT:USRD houses the original proposal. What I am trying to say is that 99% of GAs/FAs have something similar to {{reflist}}, in which those articles must have lots of references, reliable sources needless to say. See DNA and (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction for examples.  V60 ^{干什么？ · VDemolitions} 19:26, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I've written several FAs and commented on other FACs, and I've never heard of this template. It's most certainly not a requirement for FA. --kingboyk 19:46, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Then that's considered the 1%, then?  V60 ^{干什么？ · VDemolitions} 20:13, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Where on earth has this 99% figure come from anway? Is it hyperbole? Martinp23 20:21, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I know. WP:FA? says that meta:cite is "recommended". That's the cite.php <references/> system. CMummert · talk 20:21, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

The documentation for Template:reflist says If used with no parameters, it will simply produce a reference list in a small font. Small font is certainly appropriate for FA articles that are supposed to have dozens of references. But small font is totally inappropriate for articles with only a few references; it simply makes the references difficult to read without saving a great deal of space. If you want to set a reasonable minimum (I'd say 15 rather than 10, myself, but don't feel that strongly), I have no objections, but please don't suggest changing every article. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:29, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how a small font is warranted, especially if the motivation is to "save space". This is not a paper encyclopedia, and space is not an issue. CMummert · talk 18:46, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see the purpose for a mass implementation of this. The reason most GA/FA quality articles use {{reflist}} is not because it is so much better than <references/> but because they have so many references, (2 dozen+) that reflist just makes it easier to read, as the casual reader doesn't look at the references in great detail. For most articles with 3 or 4 references (that usually aren't in in-line style anyway), readibility isn't as much of a concern. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 19:36, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

It may well be true, but where did you get the statistic that most GA/FA articles use reflist? CMummert · talk 20:54, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Search Spell Check

Why doesn't Wikipedia have a feature that would allow search suggestions to come up for misspelled words? Almost all search engines have it, so wy doesn't wikipedia? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.101.30.99 (talk) 11:43, 7 April 2007

Because Wikipedia's search sucks :-) In all honesty, Wikipedia needs a better search engine, but I don't think it'll happen anytime soon. I would recommend using an external search engine such as Google. —METS501 (talk) 20:19, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(perennial_proposals)#Better_search_feature.-gadfium 22:15, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

wiki Weather

I was thinking for some pages on wikipedia could we have a way to show the Weather for that location using the Governments Weather reports that are free [2] it also provides Warnings & Forecasts stuff about the Air Quality (good to know if you live in CA). the weather information could be automaticly updated every hour or some thing like that, This may need some complex wkik language code, but I would not know Many pages have there location all ready in place making it easy in my mind to enter the information and get the weather for that location, this would be helpful for pages about Air ports or sports stadiums, I was just thinking it would make Wikipedia a little bit larger in the knowlege it holds, this is not vary encyclopedia like, but I like to know what others think about this idea (Sorry for the bad spelling a am dyslexic), Max 06:30, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Weather is not encyclopedic, as it changes frequently and no one is interested in old weather reports. Climate is encyclopedic. Many geographical entries already have climate information.-gadfium 06:34, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with gadfium in that it might be impractical to display updated weather. However, a LINK to a live-time weather site would be a nice idea for each locale. But just one link per page. Links lists for some cities are too long as they exist now, no need to further burden them. --Valley2city^₪‽ 17:28, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Userbox discussion page

We need like a Userbox discussion page similar to WP:UCFD. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 15:07, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

There was an attempt at this a while ago: see [3]. It didn't seem to attract much discussion. --ais523 15:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

There aren't so many nominated that TfD can't handle them. –Pomte 15:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Save administrator time - make complaining users go through procedures

Lots of admins are bothered by little incidents, bickerings and disputes. A complaining user might cry "mommy" and bother the admins. This happens a lot and it makes Wikipedia suffer because Admins spend their time on solving these little disputes, when they could be spending time on more important tasks. I propose that if any user bothers an admin about a small issue, they should be replied with a template that basically asks them to go through the DR and RfC - the usual method. And if they have done that already, only then they should bother the admin. This will save admins a lot of time. Yes its nice to have admins freely available to talk to but that doesnt mean they should spend their time resolving disputes that should have been resolved themselves by going through DR and RfC. Stop people from bothering admins over little issues and let admins spend their time on more important matters. This is equivalent to having an organization where the top level managers spend a lot of time resolving small cubicle disputes, rather than tend to more important company issues.--Matt57 16:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Admins are normal users with a wiki-drivers license. They are there to deal with the little incidents. --Kim Bruning 16:59, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Generally, when someone starts up with "Go block this guy that disagrees with me right now!" we're smart enough to say "Nope, take it to mediation." On the other hand, sometimes users bring our attention to situations where things really are getting out of hand, and some intervention is needed. There's nothing wrong with people asking more experienced users for help or advice, be that from admins or just editors that've been around for a while. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:07, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:AGF, please. It's disrespectful to characterize a set of people as juvenile. It takes a bit of experience to understand how this site works and some editors just don't know which venue is appropriate for their situation. It only takes a moment to point those users in the right direction. I've seen the pendulum swing both ways: disputes have gone into arbitration that just might have been nipped in the bud if someone had contacted a sysop with Somebody posted my real world name on Wikipedia. That upsets me. Could you help out? Other complaints aren't juvenile at all: they're political moves initiated by a primary aggressor. A significant proportion of the userblocks I issue and the long term vandals I uncover are people who brought themselves to my attention. So I'm kind of grateful for frivolous complaints. Durova^Charge! 17:58, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

article not found

I'm trying to request a page be made that is dedicated the the Anthony Wayne Suspension Bridge in Toledo, OH. I'm sure that people would like to know more about it however I am no good at making a page for it. I don't understand HTML and the whole process of making a page. Someone please help me out with this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Caesar2286 (talk • contribs) 18:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

• Try Wikipedia:Requested articles or one of the road projects. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:19, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Large print Wikipedia

I would like to propose a Large print Wikipedia where the font size would be larger than the normal Wikipedia allowing the eldrly and those with poor eye-sight to read Wikipedia with ease. I have made it but it was deleted and requested that I propose it here. Thank You. P2me

Most Web browsers will have an option to increase their font size; people who require large writing are likely to have used such a setting on their browser already. --ais523 17:19, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Many people who have difficulty reading web text have found ways to adapt to it for their overall web-browsing, not just on a particular sight. If you or someone you know are having trouble reading the text size on Wikipedia the easiest way to increase the font size on internet explorer is to go to the title bar and click View --> Text Size --> Larger or Largest. This is more than adequate for users having trouble using standard typeface. No additional work on Wikipedia is necessary. --Ybbor^TalkSurvey! 17:20, 8 April 2007 (UTC)