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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.


This talk page is automatically archived by Werdnabot. Any sections older than 7 days are automatically archived to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive. Sections without timestamps are not archived.

These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

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

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) *Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Rschen7754bot 3 - Request was rejected, but may of course be resubmitted should consensus change. --kingboyk 23:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming they don't use multiple columns, the extra edits seem like an unnecessary waste of server resources to me. --YbborTalkSurvey! 18:24, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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. --YbborTalkSurvey! 18:31, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
[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)[reply]
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? --YbborTalkSurvey! 18:57, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]

(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_sonTalk - Edits 18:50, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Then that's considered the 1%, then?  V60 干什么？ · VDemolitions 20:13, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Where on earth has this 99% figure come from anway? Is it hyperbole? Martinp23 20:21, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
That seems to be the argument presented in support of this proposal; I was illustrating why that is somewhat faulty logic. I have no idea where the statistic came from. It used to be 99%, now its just generalized to "most." Though 4 of the first 5 articles on WP:FAC now do use reflist. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 21:13, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest first getting consensus at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources. That consensus then can be used to support the bot's task. (SEWilco 17:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC))[reply]
For the sake of information, {{Reflist}} appears to be used in about 34000 articles. Of all 1342 FAs, 417 have reflist and 925 do not. Gimmetrow 15:11, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do we all agree that any article with no references section should be given {{reflist}}? --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 00:45, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think this would be not be a wise thing to impose on people, and no existing list format should be changed without the consensus of the people at that article. People get very touch about references. DGG 08:09, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can't you do a trial run on 925 the FA articles and see the responses by users? And refere them to this discussion? --Shines8 21:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Many editors won't care or won't notice, but some editors strongly dislike "small" refs even for long lists. It's unfortunate that reflist wasn't written such that {{reflist}} simply produced <references/> (without font resizing), {{reflist|1}} produced one-column small, and {{reflist|2}} produced two-column small. Gimmetrow 00:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So you would normalize one possible stylistic variation while hundreds of others would persist. Seems kind fo futile if you ask me. --Infrangible 23:13, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Upgrading the references seems like a good use of resources to me. The importance of references can't be underestimated. If the improved functionality encourages a few people to add a few more references, then go for it. Savidan 18:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling standardization talk header

I am very much tired of seeing and or or reverting changes to Orange (colour) and similar pages where some editor, usually an anon, has gone through and substituted every "colour" with "color". It is equally frustrating (although less for me, I admit a bias) when an editor on an American English-standardized article to see someone change the article to Commonwealth English (I'll revert that too, though.) It also violates WP:ENGVAR when someone does that, and editors can be quite touchy about people trying to standardise a mixed-spelling article, even in good faith. Since that's the case, wouldn't it be a good idea to create a talk header template for such frequently-abused articles indicating that the article should generally keep using whichever variation is established? I designed a template for this idea: 

{| class="messagebox standard-talk"
|-
|[[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|50px]]
|This article's spelling has been standardized to {{#switch:{{lc:{{{spelling}}}}}
|american='''[[American English]]'''.
|british
|commonwealth='''[[British English|British]] or [[Commonwealth English]]'''.
|#default=a variety of English ('''Please clarify by specifying a variety in the template.''')
}} This spelling is established{{#if:{{{revision|}}}|, and has been established since <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title={{PAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{revision}}} revision {{{revision}}}]</span>|<!--no revision specified-->}}. {{#if:{{{reason|}}}|{{{reason}}}|<!--no special reason specified-->}} As such, '''please do not change the spelling standardization!''' Changes to the spelling variation to the article, including moves - if the article's title has a variation - may be reverted on sight, according to the [[WP:MOS|Wikipedia Manual of Style]]'s [[WP:ENGVAR|policy]] regarding [[American and British English spelling differences|national varieties of English spelling]]. If consensus on the article's spelling becomes unclear, please remove this notice.
|[[Image:Flag of the United States.svg|50px]]
|}

Example:

This article's spelling has been standardized to British or Commonwealth English. This spelling is established, and has been established since revision 121515871. In addition, it is so because Nihiltres thinks that it should be so, and because he wants to give a silly example special reason for spelling standardization. As such, please do not change the spelling standardization! Changes to the spelling variation to the article, including moves - if the article's title has a variation - may be reverted on sight, according to the Wikipedia Manual of Style's policy regarding national varieties of English spelling. If consensus on the article's spelling becomes unclear, please remove this notice.

What do you think? Nihiltres 23:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like a good idea, in theory. However, most of the editors who will change English styles are the editors who will not read talk pages or know the guidelines (anons, newbies). I would just revert the changes and warn the user with the {{lang0}} - {{lang5}} warnings. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 23:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I like this. However, I agree with the comment above that it would not reach the audience before the act; but rather I think its key use would be in quickly tracing the history and/or during legitimate spelling/grammar/punctuation corrections. For the former situation, the tag should consider subject (is it generally specific to a geographical location and/or dialect) as well as the original dialect it was written in; and in iffy situations (read: most situations) it should be clearly discussed on the Talk page before officially adding the tag. The tag, when added, should be done via a single edit with an all-caps edit description so that it can stand out as to when the tag was added. Now during disputes, it'd be easy to see what consensus was reached. Also, during legitimate reviews of the article, it'd help me easily choose which spelling/grammar/punctuation checker I should have selected.
Some extraneous thoughts: given my above concerns, the tag should be smaller as it serves more as reference rather than deterrence. Perhaps a small item along the side of the page rather than a banner across the width. If only we could protect specific segments of articles or perhaps sections (or can we?), it would be handy if this tag could be protected after consensus was reached as to what language the topic should be in. This would avoid confusion arising from editors changing the tag after it has been added. One last thought: the tag should provide for a link directly to the archived discussion regarding what spelling form is to be utilised. --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 23:33, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Adding "small" capability is easy. I'm working on a version that will have a double setup for talk page revision and article revision, and for protecting the template, it can be used on a protected talk subpage and that page can be transcluded to the main talk... that's an admin issue though, I don't want to make more work for them. One moment while I finish the double version by working out a little bug. Nihiltres 02:29, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'd think a comment in the article (near the top) would be more likely to be noticed than anything on the talk page, e.g.

<!-- This article uses [[British English]] spelling, not [[American English]] spelling.

DO NOT CHANGE THE SPELLING!

Please see [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English]] -->

Such a comment could be added by a template that was subst'd (and the links would not be "clickable". -- Rick Block (talk) 03:02, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Here's two combinations to address Bossi's concerns.
{| class="messagebox small-talk"
|-
|[[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|50px]]
[[Image:Flag of the United States.svg|50px]]
|This article's spelling has been standardized to {{#switch:{{lc:{{{spelling}}}}}
|american='''[[American English]]'''.
|british
|commonwealth='''[[British English|British]] or [[Commonwealth English]]'''.
|#default=a variety of English ('''Please clarify by specifying a variety in the template.''')
}} {{#if:{{{revision|}}}{{{talkrevision|}}}|<!--null-->|'''This spelling is not established.'''}} {{#if:{{{revision|}}}|This spelling was established in the article at <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title={{PAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{revision}}} revision {{{revision}}}]</span>.|<!--null-->}} {{#if:{{{talkrevision|}}}|It was established in the talk page on <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{talkrevision}}} revision {{{talkrevision}}}]</span>.}} {{#if:{{{reason|}}}|{{{reason}}}|<!--no special reason specified-->}} As such, '''please do not change the spelling standardization!''' Changes to the spelling variation to the article, including moves - if the article's title has a variation - may be reverted on sight, according to the [[WP:MOS|Wikipedia Manual of Style]]'s [[WP:ENGVAR|policy]] regarding [[American and British English spelling differences|national varieties of English spelling]]. If consensus on the article's spelling becomes unclear, please remove this notice.
|}
{{-}}
{| class="messagebox standard-talk"
|-
|[[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|50px]]
|This article's spelling has been standardized to {{#switch:{{lc:{{{spelling}}}}}
|american='''[[American English]]'''.
|british
|commonwealth='''[[British English|British]] or [[Commonwealth English]]'''.
|#default=a variety of English ('''Please clarify by specifying a variety in the template.''')
}} {{#if:{{{revision|}}}{{{talkrevision|}}}|<!--null-->|'''This spelling is not established.'''}} {{#if:{{{revision|}}}|This spelling was established in the article at <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title={{PAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{revision}}} revision {{{revision}}}]</span>.|<!--null-->}} {{#if:{{{talkrevision|}}}|It was established in the talk page on <span class=plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}&oldid={{{talkrevision}}} revision {{{talkrevision}}}]</span>.}} {{#if:{{{reason|}}}|{{{reason}}}|<!--no special reason specified-->}} As such, '''please do not change the spelling standardization!''' Changes to the spelling variation to the article, including moves - if the article's title has a variation - may be reverted on sight, according to the [[WP:MOS|Wikipedia Manual of Style]]'s [[WP:ENGVAR|policy]] regarding [[American and British English spelling differences|national varieties of English spelling]]. If consensus on the article's spelling becomes unclear, please remove this notice.
|[[Image:Flag of the United States.svg|50px]]
|}

Example:

This article's spelling has been standardized to British or Commonwealth English. This spelling was established in the article at revision 121515871. It was established in the talk page on revision 123456789. In addition, there's a good reason, like this example one. As such, please do not change the spelling standardization! Changes to the spelling variation to the article, including moves - if the article's title has a variation - may be reverted on sight, according to the Wikipedia Manual of Style's policy regarding national varieties of English spelling. If consensus on the article's spelling becomes unclear, please remove this notice.
This article's spelling has been standardized to British or Commonwealth English. This spelling was established in the article at revision 121515871. It was established in the talk page on revision 123456789. In addition, there's a good reason, like this example one. As such, please do not change the spelling standardization! Changes to the spelling variation to the article, including moves - if the article's title has a variation - may be reverted on sight, according to the Wikipedia Manual of Style's policy regarding national varieties of English spelling. If consensus on the article's spelling becomes unclear, please remove this notice.

Nihiltres 04:29, 10 April 2007 (UTC) (updated to fix a sentence structure bug 12:14, 10 April 2007 (UTC))[reply]

  • Personally, I prefer a comment in the wiki code for such articles, because the people who change it would have a hard time claiming they didn't notice it. - 131.211.210.18 13:01, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support this. I'm tired of seeing editors waste time discussing how to spell an article's title on the talk pages. I'd also like to see WP:ENGVAR expanded to a separate page to be more detailed about its rationale, and then all those who wish to discuss color or colour etc. to the end of time to be sent to its talk page and ignored.. LukeSurl 00:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that this may be cleaner on a full proposal page - I'll prepare one. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 22:51, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Further discussion may be held at Wikipedia:Proposal for a spelling standardization talk header. If you are interested or opposed, please participate in the poll there, or make suggestions for the improvement of this template. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 02:14, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. This problem isn't severe enough to warrant yet another enormous talk page template, so wordy that no one will even read it. If a noob or PoV warrior comes along and Americanizes or Briticizes an article inappropriately, simply revert with an edit summary of "Rv. reversal of dialect, per WP:ENGVAR" and move on. PS: If a template could logically be applied to every single article on the system, the template is a bad idea. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:20, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I'll have to admit, I didn't actually read the whole template. (Or really any of it for that matter.) I think it's too big and unsightly, as well as it promotes a segregation among editors of different English speaking countries (the flags...). I just don't think it's appropriate, and as SMcCandlish said, it's really not enough of a problem. └Jared┘┌talk┐  22:32, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment A simple way to deal with this problem will be to first reach consencus on the spelling, and then reverting any subsequent changes unless it is discussed on the talk page.--Kylohk 22:51, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image thumbnail for A class articles (Americas next top Barn star)

Quality
FA
A
GA
B
Start
Stub

The Feature Articles (AF) have a ()Star thing and the Good Article (GA) class articles have a round stamp image, but nothing for the A class articles (or B class). I thought that there could be a little Thumbnail photo/image for class A articles like the others, this may help motivate some people to work harder to get there article form GA up closer to FA class, because I know for many people the Jump from GA to FA class is a big one that requires a lot of work and more knowledge of the subject and Wikipedia. I see so many people with the little FA and GA Thumbnail pics on their user page showing off how many articles they have worked on and such. They have become a little like the Barnstars people give one another, becoming a little like bages of merit. “Keeping people around is harder than recruiting them; bored editors quickly leave” [citation needed]. I think Wikipedia most Valuable resource would be the people that edit it. Not the only the people that edit one line of text, but mostly the people that have passion for a subject and given the right positive reinforcement will become vary productive Wikipedians. So do any other Wikipedia members have ideas or experience with some thing like this. We could have people submit their own original take on what the A class Thumbnail Image should look like, and then vote on the entries. Max 16:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

--What do you think?--

If so, why not make symbols for each article class and display them all on every page? I can imagine that indicators for articles might be a good idea, especially for readers who could get an idea of how complete or incomplete the article is considered. It would take a lot of work, though - on that basis I'm not sure about it. Nihiltres 16:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. see commons:Category:Vote symbols, in particular Image:Symbol_possible_vote.svg, Image:Symbol_opinion_vote.svg, and Image:Symbol_keep_vote.svg. Nihiltres 16:48, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Image:Symbol_keep_vote.svg () would be good for A-class, and perhaps Image:Symbol_opinion_vote.svg () for B-class and Image:BA candidate.svg () for Start, though I'm skeptical that symbols for Start and B would actually be useful. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I passed my Idea by Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) and the good news according to him "it is technically possible to change it Wikipedia-wide (talking about the adopting of symbols or Images for A-Class, B-Class articles), if there's a consensus to do so, as it only requires modifying one template. "
it could look some thing like this, But this is only a thought:
  1. Featured article: The best of Wikipedia's articles.
  2. A-class: Essentially complete; a few omissions may be detected by a subject expert.
  3. Good article Good article: Well-written, nearly complete coverage of pertinent topics.
  4. B-class: Useful for most readers, but needs expanded coverage.
  5. Start class: Provides a significant amount of information, but serious gaps remain to be filled.
  6. Stub class: A placeholder for future work, usually a few paragraphs introducing the topic and/or a few external links.
  7. NIL: No directly corresponding Wikipedia article.
How would some thing like this be? Every page could have it's "class" shown in the top upper right hand corner of the page, like the Feature Articles()Max 00:10, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A-class is attributed one a project-by-project basis, whereas Good and Featured article follow a defined process. For that reason, I disagree that A-class articles (or classes below Good, actually, as the boundary are always sort of subjective) should benefit from any

icon. Circeus 23:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think that articles below the "Good Article" class will actually, benefit from the icon, it will draw people to the pages that need the most help, Because there is vary little editing to do to a FA or GA page, But with pages below GA, there is much work that can be done as the Article is needing much more work, and this will get people to see where there efforts will be best spent Max 00:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This proposal will make more sense after we've implemented stable versions. Until that happens, article quality, especially for the less-watched articles which haven't achieved FA or GA, will remain, well... unstable.--Pharos 00:10, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Ok, no top-right stars or any thing like that. But if we expanded the Article classes to include A and B class, can we then start tracking the number of A and B class article’s? I was just thinking this because it shows how many FA Article’s there are in relation to all of Wikipedia’s Articles. Now If we could know the numbers of article’s in the different Article graded classes we could start using the numbers to track Wikipedia’s Quality Growth and completeness. Wikipedia has to be proud to have 1,745,000 article’s, But at the same time start to improving what we have By developing a better “System” of Grading that reaches all across Wikipedia pages and sections, with standard criteria that helps move Wikipedia away from rapid expansion and dissimilar criteria to a Grading system that helps make the focus on the Quality of Wikipedias work a Top Priority . I think it would also be helpful because more articles would be peer reviewed, helping to avoid the negative attention Wikipedia gets when Articles are found to be slandering a person or un-encyclopedic. The more Popular Wikipedia Becomes the more the need grows for Wikipedia to be seen as a creditable source of Knowledge. With an Expanded Article Grading System the growth of Wikipedia will be in the right Direction, no longer the massive spreading out, but focusing on Increasing the Quality. Max ╦╩ 22:45, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • If we limit ourselves from corner badges, we'd need a spot to put these new rating images. If we made a general article quality template for talk pages of articles outside any existing WikiProject, then this proposal would make sense - but we wouldn't need a full badging system. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 00:21, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Back to contents
Project Active Assessment Peer review Collaboration Portal Notes
Anthropology yes

I like the idea of adding small symbols. On that note, there is a problem with A-class - some projects have a good peer review for it, but many don't, and I have seen articles A-ranked that wouldn't pass GA...-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  20:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What about using the thumbnails right on the article page just like in case of FAs.?Amartyabag TALK2ME 16:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In fact IMO by definition A-class articles should've all passed GA. Therefore the GA icon serves well as the "article status identifier" on those articles. The A-class is simply an extra attribute above the GA mark stating that the article is a high-class GA. It's like FA is scoring an "A*" in public exams, while A and GA are both "A"s. But there exists "A1" and "A2" under the item "A", where "A1" is the A-class and "A2" is GA. --Deryck C. 09:32, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This came up on WT:SIG (in this section); there seemed to be support for requesting the developers to add a 'talk' link to the default signature, but not many users commented. What do people think about the idea of a 'talk' link by default in users' signatures? --ais523 15:22, 18 April 2007

It's probably useful, but won't change much, and could be annoying for some users. I just changed my signature to what I've thought of having it as for a while, which does add those links, but I liked my simple "Nihiltres" for quite a while. In addition, doesn't it make sense for someone to first see the person's userpage? The addition of those links only reduces the link trail by one, anyway. I stay neutral - this would be useful, but what's the point of doing it? Nihiltres 16:02, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Having talk links by default, or making the default signature link to the talk page instead of the user page, would be great. There is very little reason to look at another user's user page more than once, but a lot of reasons to use a link to their talk page over and over. CMummert 16:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see no need to clutter the signature with a Talk link. It is trivial to find the proper Talk page for a linked user. (SEWilco 20:10, 18 April 2007 (UTC))[reply]
Yes, but lazy people like me just use the default signature which points to their non-existent user page when there is an actual talk page PaddyLeahy 22:17, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like this idea and have actually been using exactly that within my own signatures for quite awhile now. Of course, it's even handier when anons actually sign... --Thisisbossi 22:45, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No need for a contribs link, but the talk page link is a great idea. It'd be easy enough for people to type [[User:Myuserpage|Myuserpage]] and click "raw signature" in their preferences if they don't like it. John Reaves (talk) 11:18, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like this idea of having both talk and contribs by default. The only reason I started messing around with customizing my sig was to put those links in - the colors and extra links came later. I never would have bothered with colors and extra links if I didn't want the talk and contribs links. With the virulent hatred some people have for customized sigs, maybe adding those links by default would decrease the customized sigs and make everyone happier. ~ ONUnicorn 19:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I do not understand the point of a contribs link. Further, my signature by default goes to my talk page. Even further, I use Lupin's popup tools to click on whatever aspect of the user I want to see (including user page, user talk page, user contribs, user space, user block log). I'd prefer not see talk and contribs included by default. All you need is one link. --Iamunknown 19:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the point of the talk and contribs links: forget that you are you. You are now some person who is just discovering Wikipedia. You edit an article. Someone leaves {{Welcome}} on your talk page. You want to say hi, thank them for the welcome, and maybe ask some questions. You see their signature and it's the default - goes straight to a userpage. You know there must be a place to leave them a message like they left you, but where? A talk link helps a lot in that situation. As for the contribs link... you are still that same person, but some time has passed and you are more comfortable with Wikipedia but still relatively new. You've not yet needed to see anyone's contributions, know how to read page histories, but didn't realize you could see a contributor's entire history. Have no idea how to find such a page if it does exist. You stumble into some process like RFA or RFC where people are dealing with diffs and evidence. You actually have something to input, but don't know how to look in someone's contribution history for the evidence, so you just make a statement and get jumped on for not presenting evidence. Default sig links to contribs would help a lot in that sort of situation. Why not make Wikipedia easier for newbies and the technologically challenged? ~ ONUnicorn 19:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It still sounds pretty pointless. If I want to look at someone's contributions I go to their user page and click the "User contributions" link. If I'm engaging in discussion that last thing I want is to have to wade through a forest of "talk" and "contributions" links. They're useless and intrusive. One link is all that is needed to identify the user adequately. --Tony Sidaway 19:53, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I recently created a new template, {{wlink}}. Normally, links to edit a page or history links have to be formatted as external links. While this template doesn't change that, it simplifies the appearance of the code in the edit window.

A couple differences between this template and normal linking: It only works for action=, section=, and redirect= endings at the moment, but more could easily be added; and spaces in titles are replaced with + signs rather than underscores ( _ ). Also, if there is a second parameter, an extra & symbol will be added to the end of the URL.

For example, a link to edit the fifth section of Bay of Bengal with text of Bengal Bay:

Appearance
In edit window On page
Normal method [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bay_of_Bengal
&action=edit&section=5 Bengal Bay]		 Bengal Bay
With template {{wlink|Bay of Bengal|Bengal Bay|action=edit|section=5}} Template:Wlink

Should we widely use this template for internal links that need to be formatted as external? I'd like to see if there's any problems with using it that I didn't think of. Considering how much simpler and easier it makes linking, I think we should start using it unless someone brings up a major problem that we can't fix. Pyrospirit Shiny! 15:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This seems useful, although its use should not be required. I also propose that <span class='plainlinks'>...</span> be added around the template, since the internal links are only interpreted as external because of the requirement to create them using the external link syntax. Further, it might be useful to make links explicit in their displayed name. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 16:09, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't thinking about requiring its use, just letting people know about it for future use. The span class="plainlinks" is a good idea, and I just added it. Thanks for suggesting that. However, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "make the links explicit in their displayed name." Could you clarify please? Pyrospirit Shiny! 19:43, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, adding code so that links to pages are explicit would be, say... "edit section X of page Y". Oh and looking at the code, wouldn't it be useful to include the redirect=no by default (coded) if other actions allow for it? I'm not sure, but wouldn't it not affect other actions? Nihiltres(t.c.s) 23:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still not quite sure what you're talking about or how to do that, but go ahead and Template:Wlink. Pyrospirit Shiny! 17:50, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Please use fullurl for another alternative. You may even incorporate this into your template. –Pomte 21:32, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea, I'll do this. Pyrospirit Shiny! 17:20, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ooo, /me likes. I agree with using fullurl and, also, you should probably wrap {{urlencode:}} around the parameters. --Iamunknown 06:32, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • In many wikipedia articles, there are external links after a sentence which is used in a number formating (so the external link has no extra info attached to it); example [1].
  • Would it be possible for a bot to remove "[" replacing with "<ref>" and remove "]" replacing with "</ref>"?
  • After that the bot would search if there is <references/> in the article.
  • If it cannot find it, the bot would make a new sub-section "==References==" and place "<references/>" below that.
  • The bot would have to make a list from the last dump of all the mainspace articles, and perform the operations (hopefully it will get over within one week).

--Paracit 23:24, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In my view, end of section references are preferable when there is a textual description of the reference. For a pure html link, the reference section just obscures matters, requiring an extra click-through. However, putting raw links into a reference section might encourage people to change them to proper citations. That's a testable proposition, and if it's true this would be a good idea. Derex 00:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some editors might consider it controversial to change an inline link to a cite.php reference. Even if it encourages adding full citation info, some will view this as a short term detriment, by making the link one step removed. Gimmetrow 01:34, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is possible to create such a bot and not very complicated actually. But I share the concerns mentioned above. Maybe you should see if you can reach a consensus in a discussion on this question at WP:CITE. Perhaps this has already been decided on and you can provide a link to it? I'd be interested in helping with the bot / programming it, if there's such a common agreement. I suggest continuing to talk about a bot when we are sure your suggested changes are supported by the community. — Ocolon 08:33, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've run across other articles where an editor has manually (I assume) converted embedded links to references/footnotes, without adding anything else. I suppose that encourages editors to work the references to improve them; I'm not sure (because I didn't systematically follow up over the months) that anyone actually did.-- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would almost suggest to just be bold, and manually do a few articles and see the reactions. Do the links get improved? Do you end up just annoying people? etc. —— Eagle101 Need help? 04:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Check this out so many external links converted to inline citations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clinical_depression&diff=118654983&oldid=118576074
--Parker007 21:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the Clinical depression article *did* benefit from converting the external links to inline citations. A problem that this conversion did not address is that the reference sections contain a lot of raw link text that ought to be replaced by useful 'metadata' in the form of authors, titles and complete names of publications. (Each raw link could be replaced by a citation template, and the link itself could be filled into the 'url' field, so the citation would be clickable). Someone could go through manually and fix that. Another more general problem is that this article seems to be overwhelmed by its excessive references. Wikipedia is not a directory or a bibliography. Not sure what your tool could do about that, but it might suggest to us that manual fixup can do things that a bot cannot. EdJohnston 16:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Request for consensus, please. --Paracit 06:44, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would be helpful if a click on a citation which is a bare URL went to a screen that prompted for the rest of the citatation metadata as an encouragement to get it collected. I dissent in part from EdJohnson that the Wikipedia is a not a bibliography. The Wikipedia only has credibility or encyclopedic authority to the extent that it can reference the secondary sources which compose the articles. After all, the article authors are not experts but anonymous compilers of information available in secondary sources which are attributed and can be verified. Something which appears first or only in the Wikipedia is called original research. patsw 12:31, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals such as this should be discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals); consensus on on a talk page is not usually considered adequate justification for highly visible bot operations. CMummert · talk 12:39, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Request for consensus, please. --Paracit 21:09, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Bad idea. Raw number external links are not an ideal form, but hiding them behind a ref tag isn't the answer, they need to be replaced with properly formatted citations. That's not really a bot task. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I too have misgivings about the idea - whilst I personally would like to see all inline html links replaced by properly cited footnotes, this would be against current guideline of forcing a change of footnote/citation style - see WP:Footnotes#Converting_citation_styles which states "Converting citation styles should not be done without first gaining consensus for the change on the article's talk page.". So whilst I would dearly personally like this, I would bow to the wider community's relunctance for this.
Minor point from WP:MOS, surely "References" are used for sources researching the whole topic, whereas what we are addressing here are footnotes supporting or elaborating on specific points. Hence the <references/> tag (despite its name) should be under a "Footnotes" or "Notes" section. David Ruben Talk 22:42, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've used [2] type links in the bodies of articles deliberately on several occasions. A semi-automated bot maybe, but not automated. LukeSurl 00:03, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Define what you want done. Automatic or semiautomatic doesn't matter if nobody knows what is acceptable. Under what conditions is a direct Wikipedia link useful as a direct reference? Usually Wikipedia is not a reference. (SEWilco 05:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC))[reply]

It's worth pointing out that bare URLs are an acceptable reference style, so long as they are complemented by full citations in a separate reference section. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:35, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What's your point? A bot can also create missing citations. (SEWilco 05:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC))[reply]
The point is that how will a bot recognize between bare URLs used incorrectly and correctly used embedded citations. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:19, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The simplest test is to look for the same URL in both the article text and in a citation. If the place where citations are listed does not have a URL, then that URL does not have a citation. (SEWilco 00:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC))[reply]

This strikes me as a bad idea too. I think there are times when an editor wants to link to an outside source inline without sticking it in a footnote. --Selket Talk 06:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A detailed citation is required; see WP:CITE. For example, if you don't document the title of the web page which you are linking to then it becomes much harder for someone to clean up your link when the page gets moved on the external server. (SEWilco 04:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC))[reply]
This is a very good idea, take Tar_sands for example, where instead of a reference section it has external links after the sentence. I strongly support this proposal. --Khunter 16:16, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This cannot be an automatic process, in articles such as Enzyme kinetics the square brackets are used to denote concentration, eg "At low concentrations of substrate [S], the enzyme exists in an equilibrium between both the free form E and the enzyme–substrate complex ES; increasing [S] likewise increases [ES] at the expense of [E], shifting the binding equilibrium to the right." A bot would replace this correct formatting with ref tags. TimVickers 00:21, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Users online.

I think it would be a good idea to have the number of people online on the front page of wikipedia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kinglou135 (talk • contribs) 21:44, 23 April 2007 (UTC).[reply]

I think that that would take too much developer time and bandwidth to implement - as far as I know, that would involve: developing a feature to tell when users are online, and a magic word to gather the total at any given time, and recaching the Main Page every few seconds as users logged on and off. While it would definitely be a neat feature, I don't think it's worth it. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 21:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

okay thanks anyways Kinglou135 21:56, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Where to discuss long-term systemic problems with Wikipedia?

I noticed that there are many long-term systemic problems with Wikipedia, which are not dealt with because some will "cover their backside", pretend the problems don't exist, and discussion eventually dies out, only to start up again a week or month later.

For example, on the talk page of AIV, there are complaints that we are too soft on vandals. A couple of users will pretend this problem doesn't exist, and let discussion die. A week later, someone will raise this complaint again.

There are also many who believe that some processes, such as RFA and AFD, are broken. Yet nothing is done to reform them.

If you check the list of missing Wikipedians, and read the reasons why established users leave, you will see the same few problems being mentioned over and over again. Why are these problems not resolved?

Other sites criticise Wikipedia for allegedly being anti-elitist, lacking credibility, and some admins abusing their powers. Shouldn't we do something to address these concerns?

I think we need a place for centralised discussion on such issues. This would ensure that discussion does not die out just because some pretend the problems don't exist. By creating a place where we can openly discuss problems with Wikipedia, contributors will be less tempted to join Wikipedia Watch and other anti-Wikipedia sites.

Wikis are meant to be dynamic, so problems can be quickly dealt with. However, with systemic problems, this evidently isn't the case. While unlike some, I don't believe Wikipedia is irredeemably broken, I believe that it eventually will be if we don't quickly deal with these systemic problems. Please note that I am not anti-Wikipedia - I believe it has great potential and that's why I hope these systemic problems can be dealt with.

--Kaypoh 07:30, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(sticking fingers in ears)... La La La... I can't hear you... La La La La  :>) Blueboar 16:50, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
On a more serious note, this page is OK. You can also write an Wikipedia:Essay in Project space or your own userspace and ask users to comment on it. x42bn6 Talk 17:22, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the discussion will quickly die out, the thread will be archived in a week or so, and nothing will be done to deal with these problems. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:47, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, please write an essay on this, with some brief examples. Then the essay's talk page can be the centralized discussion for this meta-issue, and hopefully the discussions won't die out there. Get the Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost to cover them. –Pomte 09:02, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Wikipedia:Reform. All comments, edits, and additions are more than welcome. Seraphimblade Talk to me 09:16, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am a frequent and fond visitor of the Wikipedia platform. As I have already skimmed though all the featured articles I have the following suggestion:

Would it be possible to implement a specified random article search? For example;


- Most frequently viewed articles

- Articles with at least 20 lines of text (no stubs)

- Articles from certain categories only

- Excluding certain categories (no counties, cities or high schools)

Hope the input helps to create an even better Wikipedia.


A Swiss Wiki-Fan —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.0.102.200 (talk) 08:59, 25 April 2007 (UTC).[reply]

This is a good idea, but there are a number of problems, and some of these ways to search already exist. First, in order to exclude certain categories, and to be able to search in certain categories only you would have to make a general search browse through all the categories on Wikipedia. This would EMMENSELY slow down the search process because there are thousands of different categories here on Wikipedia. As for the no-stub search, you can always look at the size of each article when searching. Any article less than about 1,000 bytes is guarranteed to be a stub. Finally, there is already a way to see the most frequently viewed articles already. I don't exactly know where, but it's out there. Anyway, thanks for your suggestion. Diez2 15:21, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, most stubs are longer than 1000 bytes. The really short articles are redirects on RfD (so they don't count as redirs); most of the others shorter than 1000 are disambiguation pages. --ais523 17:27, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I think what you're getting at is an advanced mode for the search engine with oodles of different checkboxes and fields that could be used to narrow the search, for example:
[x] hide articles tagged stub
[x] hide redirects
[x] hide disambiguation pages
[ ] hide non-Featured articles
[ ] hide non-Good articles
[ ] automatically show a random article from among the results

I'm guessing these features will be added eventually, as developer time and server resources allow. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 20:31, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, a random search based on something like the list below would be very easy to implement (I've omitted the last item in the list above, since I don't understand it, and I've tweaked the fourth and fifth items for clarity). With this list, checking one or more of the first three boxes simply requires the random article generator to do multiple tries until it meets the given criteria (almost certainly less than five attempts, which for a computer is a matter of a small fraction of a second); checking the fourth or fifth would mean simply using one of two lists, which could be generated once per day, as the base for selecting an article, rather than all articles.


-- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Having three checkboxes that say "don't select" and two that say "do select" is confusing. Use five positives or five negatives. >Radiant< 09:36, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Not that I expect anything to come of this, but sure, no problem:
[x] don't select any article tagged as a stub
[x] don't select a redirect
[x] don't select a disambiguation page
[ ] don't select anything that isn't a Good article or a Featured article
[ ] don't select anything that isn't a Featured article
-- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:11, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

dismiss

The "dismiss" notice at the top of articles should be explained (e.g., with a right-click message). The word is unclear and looks very dangerous. Wik insists on using all sorts of unexplained words (especially neologisms and ambiguous words), to the detriment of its reputation. Kdammers 01:28, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The word "close" or "hide" is more standard. YechielMan 05:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support making the interface easier to use for newcomers. You may wish to cross-post to the technical pump. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:41, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. "Hide" is more appropriate and not misleading. –Pomte 23:53, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - "Hide" is the standard wording in other places; much easier for user to understand. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:34, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I changed it to "hide". John Reaves (talk) 11:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

undo

I think the "undo" command should make clear that simply clicking it does NOT undo an edit in the sense that many editors think it might. That is, it should be made clear that after clicking it, one still has to scroll all the way down to "save page" and click that, too. Kdammers 02:05, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. It should be a fairly simple matter to change the code, but I don't know how. YechielMan 05:07, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support making the interface easier to use for newcomers. You may wish to cross-post to the technical pump. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:42, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is clear. After clicking (undo), you get at the top of the screen either
The edit could not be undone due to conflicting intermediate edits.
or
The edit can be undone. Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
If you want to change the (undo) link on the diff page, how would you reword it? (attempt undo)? –Pomte 23:50, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This article is within the scope of WikiProject X

Can we please get rid of these templates already? See Talk:Gibberellic acid, for one of many examples. — Omegatron 16:00, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There exists a Template:WikiProject Banners which can combine multiple banners into one to clean up talk pages a bit. Dr. Cash 00:48, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There is no other content on that talk page, so the banners are not being disruptive there. –Pomte 23:45, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the banners are disruptive altogether.
Especially so when they're the only thing on a talk page and prevent the talk from being a redlink. — Omegatron 18:06, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You may be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject reform. –Pomte 20:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update on Article of the Week and Article of the Month

Ok, these pages are essentially completed and ready to go, but I do want to hear if more people support this and/or will help out with this. Thank you! Diez2 15:22, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The community attempted this at Wikipedia:Article of the week, but the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article of the week was (to say the least) unsupportive. Perhaps it really ought to have been called, Wikipedia:Newly featured article popularity contest or some such! The question was repeatedly raised, "How would this help the encyclopedia?" Personally I thought the answer was obvious: it would encourage editors to read more of each others articles, and gain insight into what makes articles popular with readers! (Sdsds - Talk) 16:15, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Personal redirects

I have a proposal for "personal redirects." When we type in a page in the search bar, it looks for an article with that exact title. Well, I'm proposing an improvement to the MediaWiki software that adds options (in User Preferences) for personal redirects. For instance, if I type in American Idol into the search bar, it takes me to the American Idol article. Well, what if I was a frequent editor of that article (I'm not, this is hypothetical) and When I typed in American Idol (or even AI) into the search bar, I wanted it to take me to American Idol (season 6). Basically, there would be a table in our preferences that had a column for our preferential search term and another corresponding column for the link we want it to take us to. Something like this:

Search term Article
American Idol American Idol (season 6)
AI American Idol (season 6)
Heroes Heroes (TV series)
Scrubs Scrubs (TV series)

When a search term is entered, it checks this table first and then proceeds as normal if no match is found. This will allow people who want a certain link to go directly to an article as opposed to a different article or disambig page to set Wikipedia to do this for them. Apologies if this has been suggested before. Thoughts?↔NMajdan•talk 17:21, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject User scripts has a solution to this one already; you can create this functionality by copying an appropriately modified version ofUser:AndyZ/monobook.js/personalredirect.js to your monobook.js. --ais523 17:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Figures. "Everything that could be invented, has been invented." Thanks for pointing me to that. I still think it would be a good addition to the MediaWiki software.↔NMajdan•talk 17:27, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Or you can see how to set your browser to do this. –Pomte 09:44, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Brazil Collaboration

Wikipedia:Brazil Collaboration was created!!! JoãoFelipe ( Let's talk! ) 21:58, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Template:BraC

browse by alphabetic sequence

I like browsing through hard copy encyclopaedias article by article in a sequential fashion. However, wiki does not allow this as a standard feature. Could we consider a 'go to next article' button/arrow and a 'go to previous article' button/arrow; maybe at the top or bottom of every article. Many software stacks have this feature, especially where didactic info is displayed. It would be neat, and also elegant design-wise. Lgh 23:40, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can use Special:Allpages though it's not as convenient. –Pomte 23:44, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You may have your opinion, but I see that serving no encyclopedic value and Allpages is just as good (except for the excess of redirs). Sorry. Reywas92Talk 00:00, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Without getting into value judgments (or commenting thereon), I note that Wikipedia:Quick index is a slightly different presentation of the same way of accessing articles. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:27, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
none of these suggestions is satisfactory. Allpages is inconvenient. My suggestion stands. As for my suggestion being unencyclopaedic - it is precisely encyclopaedic. Note the origin of the word and get back to me. Lgh 23:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

{{user:Wikihermit/meta}}

Tell me what you think. Its based off of this at meta.


{{user:Wikihermit/meta}}

Which produces:

reha This user is a Wikipedia Rehabilist.




Wǐkǐɧérṃǐť(Talk) 01:30, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's better than {{AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTD}}. –Pomte 09:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cross-category searching

Sometimes I find that I want to browse all the entries within a certain category, that simultaneously fulfil another category. Is there an existing way to do that, because I certainly knw I would love to use it. If not.... who can I take this idea to? --Mattbray 03:53, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See :m:User:Duesentrieb/CategoryTree-gadfium 08:52, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also see Wikipedia:Category intersection and m:Help:DPL. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:06, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Simpler ways to learn -- how to peel an onion.

Many, many people want to learn how to learn things. I'm a psychologist, but it doesn't take a psychologist -- or parent -- to know this is true.

Kind of like getting the Almanac every year -- I don't know where to start to systematically acquire new and important information. So generally the book sits there and is used as questions arise.

There are a huge variety methods of acquiring new information. Such as: go to school until you graduate from high school, as a librarian, watch fun stuff on TV, etc.

Wikipedia has the opportunity of streamlining the process for people, helping them acquire necessary information as easily as possible.

For example, I test youngsters for reading deficits fairly regularly. Perhaps Wikipedia should have methods to remediate reading deficits.

I am interested in new science research. I'd be very interested in what people think of as cutting-edge research in science, health, environment, etc.

You may very well have such a system in place, but until I can access it, the Almanac is largely unread, the onion unpeeled, and the foreign language I want to learn is still unknown to me.

I'd be delighted to discuss this approach.CalebBurns 04:28, 28 April 2007 (UTC)CalebBurns[reply]

Yours truly,

Caleb Burns, PhD

[e-mail address removed to prevent spam]

You might want to check out Wikiversity. -- Ned Scott 05:27, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Right. We're facing enough challenges here writing the world's best encyclopedia; no reason why Wikipedia should try to be all things to all people. If Wikiversity isn't what you're looking for, either, then you perhaps you should be proposing a sister project at Meta. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:47, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Have you tried the Simple English language Wikipedia? -- Phoeba WrightOBJECTION! 01:54, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Audio

I just want to bring attention to this template used to listen to an article's title pronunciation. My main problem with it is that it includes nothing less than three links —"pronunciation" or "listen," "info" and "help" (example here)— which are very distracting and add unnecessary clutter, where a simple audio icon linking to the Image (file) page would suffice. All the needed help and information can be placed there, so there's no real reason to clutter the article with "microsoftian" links. I've been trying for months to remove the links, but the talk page is not exactly bustling with activity. I would like to get this issue resolved once and for all. Thank you for your help and support! ☆ CieloEstrellado 09:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it should only be the image of the speaker thing that is already there. No parentheses, no links, just that. That makes the most sense. └Jared┘┌talk┐  01:12, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Since Antidisestablishmentarianism already has {{inline audio}} at the top, I've removed the (info) links. I see no reason for someone to need to get to the Image: page of a pronunciation other than maintenance or to find who uploaded it, which can be done by looking at the wikilink and they'd know how to do this. I think it's better to keep (info) for other cases such as song clips, and (help) provided {{inline audio}} isn't nearby. –Pomte 09:37, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We need to provide an easy link to show who uploaded it, to comply with the GFDL. There's no guarantee that no GFDL audio files will be used with Template:Audio. More talk at Template talk:Audio-nohelp. --Kjoonlee 11:39, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
*Falls on floor* Seriously, I'm talking about having less links, not more! ☆ CieloEstrellado 12:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The links aren't really that obtrusive and of course we shouldn't violate the GFDL just to make things look prettier. To get rid of the info link, you can direct the main link to the info page, but that would make it more tedious to access the audio file. –Pomte 12:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm dead serious as well and we can't get rid of the info links. The help links can be reduced if and only if we can provide an alternative help link. Hence Template:Inline_audio, and the -nohelp audio templates. Other than that, I agree the help/info links aren't really that obtrusive. --Kjoonlee 14:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you dislike the links so much, you can put ".audiolinkinfo {display: none}" (without the quotes) inside your monobook.css page and they won't be displayed at all. --Kjoonlee 15:01, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

wikipedia tool bar

why don't wikipedia have a tool bar? like google, yahoo and ask do. i think it would be a nice idea to see what wikipedia says about topics we are searching for. and get its various services one click away on the interface. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.108.99.234 (talk) 14:48, 28 April 2007 (UTC).[reply]

I think there is a tool bar: see WP:TOOL and look around there. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 18:32, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting own Pages

I think we all agree that if you want to delete your own page, you should be able to do so quickly. However, as the CAT:CSD becomes more and more backlogged, should we be able to have the power to delete these pages ourselves (if the user is the author of the page in question, of course)? You could even extend this idea to cover the user and user talk pages of a user. Please comment on this idea. Diez2 22:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Allowing users to delete pages they've created once others have edited them is a bad idea. That would make it far too easy to delete records of conversation that a troll doesn't want people to see. -Amarkov moo! 23:10, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What about the ability to delete their own user subpages?↔NMajdan•talk 23:19, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That would just add the step of moving the thing you want deleted into your userspace. Delete an archive, shuffle some others around so there's no incriminating redlink, and it takes a good Wikisleuth to notice that anything happened. -Amarkov moo! 23:37, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Fine. Then let's take the most simple case: someone is the only one who has ever edited a page. Why not allow him/her to delete it? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why not tag the page with {{db-author}}? --Iamunknown 04:47, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that the point that Diez2 was trying to make is that adding a CSD template would lengthen the process of deleting the article. I honestly think that we should continue with the process we have now (using the CSD template). As more admins pop up and people become more aware of the backlog, the size of the backlog should shrink down. For John Broughton's question, I stand by my opinion above as well. I don't think that you will find a case often when only one editor edits a page and wants the page deleted (this is usually the case for user and subpages), in which case it may not help with the backlog. Sr13 (T|C) ER 12:10, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why tag it with {{db-author}}? That would just increase the backlog. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 06:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with such a deletion possibility is that a bad-faith user can do the following to make it harder to fix his/her vandalism:
  1. Move a page to his/her own namespace.
  2. Delete the redirect created by such a move.
  3. Delete the page, which is now in his/her own namespace.
In this way, the vandal has, basicly, deleted a page from Wikipedia in suich a way that it would be hard to find it.
However, I think that if this ability is limited to pages that weren't moved, and weren't a redirect caused by a move, would fix this problem. Under such limits, I think it's a good idea - it would limit the amount of speedy pages in the backlog, and would give reasonable limits on usage to prevent abuse. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Od Mishehu (talk • contribs) 07:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC).[reply]
It would add to the backlog insignificantly. As Kusma said (below) such speedy deletions are trivial and, additionally, can quickly be cleaned out by going to Category:Candidates for speedy deletion by user. The additional step is not a hassle. --Iamunknown 13:01, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pages that are tagged for speedy deletion by user are easy to decide on for admins and usually get deleted quickly. However, user pages or subpages may be used or referenced elsewhere (say, in a RFC or ArbCom case) and these pages shouldn't be deletable by their author. In any case, user pages are non-urgent deletions; if you think they cause too much of a backlog in C:CSD, create an extra category for them that can be processed slower. Kusma (talk) 12:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Senior Editor

And yes, I've read the FAQ. And I did see it posted. However I don't the reason for objection is strong enough.

For most people on Wikipedia their are I.P. users, Registered Accounts, and Admins. I think their needs to be a middle level between Registered Accounts and Admins. For example, admins may page protect, delete pages, block users, ect. Most users often come across situations were they might need to protect a page or if they are monitoring AfD and an article needs deleted, they instead have wait for a Admin to delete that article. A middle level, which could be called a Senior Editor, would be able to delete articles and protect pages. The process would work like:

Editor ———> Request for Seniority ———> Senior Editor ———> Request for Admin ———> Admin...ect.


The senior editors would NOT have the power to block a user, but they would be able to make edits to protected pages, protect pages themselves, delete articles (including speedy) , restore deleted articles, ect. They would have to go through a process that would be similar to RfA. I don't have any ideas on this, but it could be possible to become an Admin without being a Senior Editor. I don't know. I'm just throwing the idea out there. Thanks! WǐkǐɧérṃǐťTalk to me or learn something new! 01:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea, but what with the whole admin rehaul thing going on, this may be the last thing that those people there would want to think about. What I might suggest, though, is that you run the idea by at WP:RfA or tell them to come here. I might also suggest that the process of becoming a "senior editor" (or an alternative name) might be similar to the current GAC process, whereby a user is put on a list and reviewed by one admin, and if he or she deems that person acceptable, then they would get the status. Maybe to make it sound more appropriate, we could only give these people the rights to do certain things, like protect and maybe delete. Or maybe a page may be deleted fully if two "Senior editors" press the delete button. Who knows. └Jared┘┌talk┐  01:17, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Admin rehaul? Where is this being discussed? Corvus cornix 01:19, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry. Admin overhaul. See this signpost article. Also, I was thinking that Wikipedia:Limited administrators would be a good place to start looking, and possibly the talk page, for suggestions on what to do. └Jared┘┌talk┐  01:23, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You may also want to peruse Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform, to see if someone has already suggested this, or make a new proposal there. └Jared┘┌talk┐  01:25, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly a board of Admins (say 5) who could approve "Seniority." The purpose of the "senior editor" should be encyclopedic. WǐkǐɧérṃǐťTalk to me or learn something new! 01:26, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. It's Requests for Adminship that is being discussed (although perusal of the mailing list indicates that this has been discussed ad nauseum for months now), not Adminship per se. Corvus cornix 20:40, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would strongly oppose granting delete powers to users through a less extensive review than the current RfA process. The word of one or two current admins is nowhere near enough. Look at various recent failed RfAs. DES (talk) 01:29, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I sort of agree. But what's outlined at Limited administrators is appropriate, I think. └Jared┘┌talk┐  01:35, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. It says articles created within 3 days. That would prevent a person avoiding AfD and would allow Speedy Deletion for vandalism. I think they should also be allowed page protects. WǐkǐɧérṃǐťTalk to me or learn something new! 02:06, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly, vociferously, vigorously oppose. The last thing we need is yet another class of users around here. This is overly bureaucratic and serves no purpose. If a person can be trusted to delete something or protect something, they certainly can be trusted to block someone. We don't need yet another class of users. --Durin 02:05, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why? The standards for adminship are insanely high! WǐkǐɧérṃǐťTalk to me or learn something new! 02:08, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The only standards that should exist are that the community trusts the editor to not abuse the tools, and that the editor has enough experience on Wikipedia to be able to handle most admin situations that come along. There are some editors, unfortunately, who apply ever-increasing personal standards to the position, which only causes reactions such as yours. It's really too bad. One good bit of news: there has been a recent upsurge in the number of people requesting adminship. Hopefully that trend will hold steady. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:09, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So change the standards. Kelly Martin (talk) 02:32, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. If we can trust someone not to go insane with two extra buttons, we can trust them not to go insane with one more too. If not, they shouldn't have any extra ones. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:33, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The merits of having limited administrators aside, there is no reason to believe that people will not just bring their absurd standards to this, as well. The only way to avoid that is to have that aformentioned "Senority board", which is a very bad idea. The community should have the power to decide who gets tools, not a clique of five people. -Amarkov moo! 04:45, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are so many things a non-admin can do to help out, that it doesn't help much to create limited adminship. Either the community trusts you, or it doesn't. All admin functions should be limited to admins, with the possible exception of closing XFDs as keep/merge/redirect/no consensus. YechielMan 04:51, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
YechielMan is right. --TeckWiz is now R ParlateContribs@(Let's go Yankees!) 05:04, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree as well. Adding another class of editors will just confuse the general process more. The Wikipedia community as a whole must be able to confirm if the person is trusted or not. We can't have a class which has half of the admin tools with approval from a clique of admins. And yes, I'm sure that RfA is a grueling process, but it is a step that must be taken in order to trust someone with the tools. Sr13 (T|C) ER 11:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
One of the ideas used at wikiversity is probationary admins. Basically, if one admin thinks someone would make good admin, the take them on as a apprentice. The bureaucrat promotes the user to a admin, and the trainer keeps a eye on them for a week. After a week, the community votes on how well they handled the trial period and gives a yes or no on full adminship. --Rayc 05:55, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Rayc, your suggestion would encourage cliques and admin abuse. A rogue admin could take a friend on as an apprentice, and ask them to make an inappropriate admin action on their behalf, hoping that it will be hidden among the friend's hundred appropriate admin actions.
Perhaps, under certain circumstances, probationary adminship could be granted through RFA (and perhaps it could even be an option along Support, Oppose and Neutral). For example:
  • An RFA where there is a numerical consensus to promote (80% or more), but the opposers raised one or two serious concerns that were not adequately addressed by the candidate or the supporters (possibly because they were raised too late). Probationary adminship should only be used if the RFA would easily pass if there were no serious concerns. What constitutes a serious concern is left to the closing bureaucrat's discretion, but I'm thinking along the lines of diffs which suggest the candidate would abuse the tools, or glaring inexperience with an area in which the candidate has indicated they wish to use their admin tools (when the candidate has indicated at least two other areas where they have sufficient experience).
  • An RFA where the candidate indicates that they wish to focus on a severely-neglected but important area (such as image backlogs), and there is about 70% support (slightly falling short of numerical consensus), with the supporters applauding the candidate's contributions to that area, and the opposers mainly stating that the candidate should not focus on only one area.
  • An RFA where the candidate is a bot focusing on a severely-neglected but important area, and there is about 70% support (slightly falling short of numerical consensus), with the supporters hailing the benefits of the bot, and the opposers mainly stating that bots should not be granted adminship.
  • An RFA where the candidate is a former administrator who was desysopped for abuse of admin tools, and there is about 70% support (slightly falling short of numerical consensus), with the supporters stating that the candidate should be given another chance given their past history of positive contributions, and the opposers harping on the incident that got the candidate desysopped.
Probationary adminship should last a week or two, after which another RFA is run where the community decides whether the candidate passed their probation or not. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 12:51, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • No to what encourages more stratification within the community. - Mailer Diablo 17:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Who gets to decide the board of 5 admins? The Senior Junior editors? And who gets to choose them? :) No more layers needed, please. Aim to make things simpler, not more complex. – Riana ऋ 17:12, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think powers should be individually assigned, on request, for performing specific tasks. There's no need for it to be all or nothing, and this is already possible with trivial software modifications to create a group for each power. This would hopefully also defuse a lot of the hullabaloo around RfA, as we wouldn't have to be as careful about it if we weren't giving out as much power. Besides, it's good as a matter of security principle to follow the principle of least privilege, and it would allow people to gradually phase into adminship while under observation. Dcoetzee 17:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely not, as currently worded. Probationary periods are easy to fake-out, and we've seen recently how much damage a rogue user with the extra tools can do in 17 minutes. There are any number of things that person could have done that would have been even worse, moreover. Meanwhile, I don't even trust our current administrators enough right now to mentor new admins on a one-on-one basis; the only protection we have against more rogue actions is the global scope of RFA, and that anyone (even an anon. user) can participate to alert us. That's how the 'pedia as a whole works, and that's how the granting of (the dangerous) powers and tools should work. Is RFA's culture sprained? Probably, but doing an end-run is not going to solve that. Change the culture. Support decent users who are on the borderline. Encourage users to run. Nominate someone you think might pass. -- nae'blis 17:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Links to deleted image go to upload page

When I follow a link to an image that is a redlink, it will take me to the upload file page. It used to lead to the image page where it said that the image did not exist. For example, following File:Karte Fuessen in deutschland.png will go to Special:Upload. This is annoying because, for example, I want to look at its deletion log. To do that, I must copy its name into the search box and find it there. This may also lead to a problem because new users will upload an image, not knowing how it works. We should really go back to a redlinked image goes to its non-existant image page. Although it doesn't exist, I believe that would be better. Thank you, Reywas92Talk 18:41, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When you click File:Karte Fuessen in deutschland.png, at Special:Upload there is a link at the bottom of the blue box to the deletion log. –Pomte 21:22, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, heh, didn't notice that. I do think that there should be a link to the image page, though. Thanks! Reywas92Talk 19:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pimp my village

Did you know that the village pump is really hard to find? Unless you know the shortcut you generally have to scroll up and down in the community portal hoping you'll spot the link. And when I type 'Village pump" into the search field I am redirected to an article called 'water well'. Maybe Village Pump could be made more prominent and easier to find. Lgh 04:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dynamic functions

Re. previous comment posted on Technical board, 17th April

I'm looking to make a template that will display a custom page when sent data - specifically to illustrate the position of a certain time in the geological time scale. I've written a template which will perform as I wish, and whilst I can include the template in a page, I hoped to be able to link a date using Template:Ma so that clicking on the year would take the user directly to a timeline with the specified year marked. I've spoken to a couple of experienced editors who are unaware of a solution to this problem. Is there any way I can carry this out? (I hope I've explained what I want clearly enough...)

Many thanks, Verisimilus 21:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

That does not seem possible. We would need m:DynamicFunctions##arg: - instead of including a page for given parameter values, this allows linking to a page for given parameter values.--Patrick 00:42, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]


I'm not sure whether this is the best place to post this.
What are the arguments against getting m:DynamicFunctions##arg?

I'd quite like to campaign to have it installed, since I feel it could add useful content to Wikipedia.

Verisimilus T 18:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that would be useful.--Patrick 13:45, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know whether this is the reason it's not enabled or not, but it seems to me that any page using any of these functions (except perhaps #skin) could not be cached in the front end Squid caches which serve roughly 3/4 of the site's traffic (see m:Wikimedia servers). This would not be an issue unless a significant number of pages (by access count, not by raw number) started using these functions. If you want to pursue this, I'd suggest posting a query to the wikitech-l mailing list. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:17, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't foresee this being a huge contributor to traffic, so I've posted a request on the list. Thanks for your pointers! Verisimilus T 13:41, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ignore All Rules - policy? guideline? meta-policy?

As far as I can determine, WP:IAR was declared a policy on 23 April 2005, about a week after Jimbo made an edit where he stated in the comments that IAR is policy and always has been. Note that he did not change the formatting of WP:IAR on that edit to reflect the statement he made in the edit comments. So about a week later (give or take hours), editors at the time made changes to the body of the article that reflected that assertion.

I have asked around about that mechanism (in general). I've asked on Wikipedia_talk:IAR, and I've asked on User_talk:Jimbo_Wales, about whether what Jimbo says, goes. The edit on 18 April, 2005, when Jimbo made that editing comment, as far as I know is not actually an official declaration. Previous informational boxes on the same project page declared it a guideline, a meta-policy, a policy, a mix of all three, as well as a hoax and an AfD and an MfD.

Given the article's history, the reminders I've had that not all that Jimbo says is official, I suggested going back (in the policy information box) to some of the wording from prior that 18 April 2005 edit, that talked about IAR being part of the official body of policies and guidelines, but that didn't specify a particular role it had to play in that body, instead mentioning three: policy, meta-policy and guideline.

It was suggested I go here and ask, so here I am asking, is WP:IAR really policy? Or is it a guideline?

As a side note: What's its meaning? I'm led to believe by the various folks I've talked with about it that it's not as obvious as it looks, but at the same time, the same folks, or similar folks are saying it is. To me, it is a sort of meta-anti-rule which serves to underline the importance of consensus over process/policy, but I also know that a lot of folks who've been around Wikipedia for a long time take it at face value and use it to justify individual judgment calls in the face of consensus opposition.

Anyhow, a lot of the discussion is still quite available on the main talk page, should you choose to delve.

Thanks in advance for any and all opinions. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 01:40, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It needs to be policy, as it is essential to policy maintenance. At the same time, some people do abuse it. Perhaps there's some way to alter the balance a little to make the latter harder? --Kim Bruning 01:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It occurs to me that the editors who know enough to Ignore All Rules when necessary to keep the encyclopedia running smoothly are probably also sensible enough not to get all twisted up over the template (policy, guideline, or essay) that appears on WP:IAR. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
<grin> That much is true. But it makes things harder for new people to learn, which is also somewhat important. (see intro to: Wikipedia:Follow consensus, not policy). --Kim Bruning 02:06, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say that the "Ignore all rules" is a good policy, but only taken in the context that what rules exist exist so that there are clear ways to resolve conflicts and standardize form, and that otherwise, users can edit freely. Users sometimes abuse IAR by misinterpeting it as license to do whatever they feel like and break the standards Wikipedia must uphold. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 02:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, that's not abuse quite yet. --Kim Bruning 02:21, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In any case if they do act abusively they can be blocked if it's a serious problem, and dissuaded if it isn't. This is a very useful policy and if a few nitwits think it means they can act the goat then it's also a useful nitwit detector. --Tony Sidaway 02:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(EC) I think the harm of IAR manifests itself in a couple of ways. It first tends to result in people thinking "Well I know I'm right, so I'm going to act out of process." Well, that's fine, except that it's usually not. Even if you really are right, you may cause a tremendous amount of disruption and ill will from people who think they didn't get a "fair shake." If the process runs, and genuinely goes against those people, it still might irritate them, but it won't appear abusive. Secondly, a lot of people interpret it as "do whatever the hell you like." I've seen people break the 3RR and get blocked, only to come back and argue "But I was improving the article, so I'm entitled to ignore that rule!" IAR should be very narrow, and applied only in exceptional cases that the rules don't cover, or in the very unusual case where acting according to normal policy would be undisputedly harmful. But for the most part-if someone wants to argue to keep a crappy, unsalvageable article at AfD, just let the thing run, let everyone but them argue to delete, and delete it. Let them take it to DRV, and see the deletion overwhelmingly endorsed. They probably still won't be happy with the result, but at the very least it will remove any doubt that it really is the result. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. We should ban the use of WP:IAR on WP:AFD and WP:DRV. That way people would more quickly clamor for reform on those pages. --Kim Bruning 02:56, 1 May 2007 (UTC) But is my proposal WP:BEANS or WP:POINT or both, and am I violating WP:WOTTA?[reply]
In this case, I personally think that the DRV/AFD project pages should be changed to more accurately reflect the truth of the process you described here, Seraphimblade. For instance, DRV asserts it's for reviewing policy/procedure issues but is also a de facto forum for reviewing the actual content of the article itself. But that's a different conversation. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 13:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • (after EC) Well i think it shouldn't be policy, or guideline, or anything like policy. But it is clear that my view does not have consensus on this. When there was an open straw poll on support for IAR, it looked like a majority supported it, but a majority that was rather short, numerically, of what we elsewhere call a clear consensus. If this is policy, it isn't because a clear community consensus ever made it so, as far as I know. Jimbo can make policy by fiat, perhaps he has done so in this case. If this is policy, I would like to know why. Arguments of the form "This is essential to the project" or "Because it is and always has been." don't impress me much. A statement that 'This is policy because Jimbo said so" would do, but one could wish that he was clearer about when he is and when he isn't acting with his "founder's hat" on. Other sorts of reasons would be good, I'll see what is said here. DES (talk) 02:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is "policy" because it is inherent to the design of a (revision-history backed) wiki. Why this is so might perhaps not quite fit in this margin.
Note that your first encounter with IAR, (and incidentally a prototype bold revert discuss) was when it was used in circumstances where I think most people agree it was appropriate (to counteract some particularly expert trolling, where people were using the actual wikipedia guidelines against us) --Kim Bruning 02:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think much of WP:BRD at levels beyond article content, either. I don't approve of its use on policy pages, for example. I still think that the page deletions on the occasion you refer to were improper, and also that they were counter productive -- they in fact caused the trolling to be more widely known they would otherwise have been the case. i further note that most of the deletions were of edits by established wikipedians, not trolls. As for "inherent to the design of a (revision-history backed) wiki" that is simply incorrect. we could perfectly well have a much stricter view of policy and procedure, without any hint of IAR, and still use a "(revision-history backed) wiki" and still get the benefits of that technology. it is true that such a change would change the community dynamic to some extant. Whether for the better or the worse could be debated -- i think it would be for the better. But it could be done, and indeed most users might well not even notice the difference. So much for "inherent". Something like IAR is common, if not inherent, in relatively small, informal projects, where most people know each other, and personal reputation is a vital factor. Wikipedia in its early days was much closer to this model than it is now, and I suspect that the IAR concept arose largely from this. Note also that one long standing version of IAR qualified it by "in editing articles" if I recall correctly. This was interpreted by many to say that if you dded content but messed up style guidelines, or the like, not to worry, another editor would deal with the matter. if that were all IAR stood for now, it would not be nearly as controversial as it is. I note, for a "foundation policy" IAR is very controversial indeed. Many long-established editors support it passionately, and a good number oppose it with similar warmth. i don't think this is true of any of our other core policies, and that might be worth considering. DES (talk) 03:07, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think we're debating a (famous?) deliberately instigated GNAA deletion AFD/DRV infinite recursion. Or rather, it would have been infinite if people kept following policy slavishly. I killed the recursion and resulting meatball:ForestFire, centralised the discussion with the assistence of others, and got full backing from the on-duty steward as soon as she woke up and got on-line. Eventually DRV also backed up my decisions, as I predicted would happen upfront.
Note that BRD is the best way to deal with policy pages when the consensus system has broken down.
Hmm, by now you might be starting to notice a pattern in my editing though. I'm one of the people who show up to deal with situations where normal wikipedia policy has failed for some reason.
When doing that kind of thing, people try to stick as close to existing consensus as possible. At the same time, I do use techniques based on IAR, WP:BOLD (like for instance WP:BRD) and Wikipedia:Consensus. Also clever applications of wiki-technology might be sought, use of tools like skype and irc, and documentation might be sought in game theory, systems analysis, sociology, psychology or ethology, and use might be made of documentation on Meatball and WikiWikiWeb. --Kim Bruning 03:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think that WP:IAR should only and strictly be applied when the case in question puts the policy as harmful to the development to the encyclopedia as a whole. Sr13 (T|C) ER 03:29, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
*phew* Thank you for supporting my position here, at least. Though I do think IAR is useful on a wider scale --Kim Bruning 03:37, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion, WP:IAR is, at the same time, one of the most important guidelines, and one of the most dangerous ones. Important, since the rules can't possibly give the best result in every situation. Dangerous, because it can be abused easily.
I think that WP:IAR has been getting too much notice by being mentioned on WP:RFA. Any user, including any vandal, who keeps up with that knows about IAR, and some vandal may use that to abuse the system.
In my opinion, IAR says the following: If you know a rule, understand why it exists, and you think that a specific case is different from the general situation, you may choose to ignore it, provided that if asked, you can give a satisfactory reason for it. Od Mishehu 11:31, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, what I'm objecting to on Wikipedia_talk:Ignore_all_rules is inflexibility with respect to naming the particular role IAR has in the body of official policies and guidelines at Wikipedia. On the talk page, most folks are asserting that IAR is policy, many because Jimbo said so (which is a clearly flawed reason unless Jimbo wants to be the King Midas of policies, and there is evidence that says he doesn't), others because it has been labeled as such for a year, and some have said that they don't consider it or want it to be a policy at all. So why not a guideline? Or why not a more descriptive guidelines and policies box like I proposed (text cribbed from versions earlier than a year ago, and mashed up with current text) already, where IAR is described "considered official policy by some, a guideline by others, and meta-policy by yet others"? --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 13:29, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is policy, it is one of the most important policies we have. The trick is to not ignore people when you ignore the rules. It needs to be a policy not a guideline because it overrides other policies. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 13:32, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) As far as I can see, IAR is useful in the following cases:
  1. When the situation you're in doesn't come up often enough that a rule's been created for it. For instance, this delete of mine was done entirely under IAR; there isn't a CSD for the deletion of MediaWiki pages whose text is identical to the default, but such deletion is nevertheless important.
    • This is especially useful when there's consensus that a rule doesn't apply in a situation (for instance, XfDs where the deletion reason isn't in the deletion policy); this case and the fourth one are I think what are described in Wikipedia:Follow consensus, not policy.
  2. When the rule in question hasn't been designed to take the situation you're in into account, or fails in the specific situation. This is harder to use correctly and more often controversial.
  3. The rules-lawyer interpretation: if IAR didn't exist (and people didn't apply it), the letter of policy would apply rather than the spirit, which would make gaming the system happen a lot more and be hard to prevent. (Note that as WP:POINT also disallows gaming the system, this is less needed; but if someone is busy trying to enforce the letter of policy rather than the system, without necessarily gaming it, that might not go against WP:POINT, but is certainly a 'WP:IAR violation'.)
  4. The Larry Sanger interpretation: According to [3], Larry Sanger says that he created IAR 'humorously' so that people wouldn't worry about getting every exact detail of things right. (The 2003 database snapshot of IAR doesn't have the history going back to its creation, but Larry Sanger is listed there as its first supporter). IAR means that new users don't have to learn all the rules before they start contributing. Incidentally, I notice that WP:WOTTA is policy at Citizendium, enforcable by a ban.)
So what tag to put on IAR? I think it's important that it's a policy, in some form, but there seems to be too much of a problem with just putting {{policy}} on it because people will misinterpret it. No doubt there are people who think that I've misinterpreted it. (I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is, or I'd offer it.) --ais523 13:47, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Malcolm, riddle me this. How is changing the tag on that page into any other tag going to help anybody? You appear to be just making up an arbitrary classification for no reason. >Radiant< 13:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To me, making sure that the truth that consensus is not solid about IAR being policy is told on the project page itself makes for a world of difference in challenging the status quo, in challenging how some folks use IAR to further their private, individual interpretations and judgment calls in spite of consensus, and other ways that IAR's being abused right now. It's also simply more accurate, and given that Wikipedia is about accuracy in its body of knowledge, it seems right to me that the IAR project page be labeled accurately. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 13:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, I wish to leverage existing/previously use terminology. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 14:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why don't we add in the clause about consensus that's in all of the other policy templates? I think it could clear up some issues. Rockstar (T/C) 17:21, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You mean this one:
It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus.
?
I could get behind that. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 00:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How about tweaking it a bit (hell, the IAR policy tag was tweaked) to say "...Before invoking this policy, please ensure that your action reflects consensus." Rockstar (T/C) 00:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'll go suggest the wording on the IAR talk page, but I have to note, ironically, that's what I've been trying to do here. Have you detected any consensus? I've seen stonewalling and opinion-touting, but very little actual working together toward a common goal (i.e. building consensus support for this controversial issue). I'm beginning to think that that kind of consensus is simply not possible here. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 13:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, nevermind. Radiant's installation of the standard policy box sort of makes this moot, so I'll leave it as is. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 13:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Bah. I'm not sure I like Radiant's change. At least the last version made sure that IAR was seen as something a bit different from the other policies, at least more challenging. Now there really is no difference between this and WP:COPYRIGHT. I'd like to see the old policy tag with the sentence "Before editing using this policy, think about consensus" or something like that. Rockstar (T/C) 22:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I obviously didn't get what I wanted, but Radiant did move a bit, which is something, though I'm not sure he did it because of any kind of mutual respect - probably just to get me to shut the hell up. I'm happy there's phrasing about consensus in there, but I also think it could have/should have gone further if we were talking about actual consensus, since it's clear that I'm not part of the consenting bloc, which means the ideal of true consensus was not met. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 13:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a consensus to prevent people from ignoring rules that prevent helping Wikipeida. This has been standing policy for ages, and if it to become less than that a rather large consensus would be needed. I would not support such a reduction in status for this policy, while often misunderstood it is needed to avoid being bogged down in mud. Think of it as a jet pack. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 13:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Jet packs can be fun for a while... untill they kill you. Rockstar (T/C) 17:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And that is why you should always think long and hard before using one. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 17:32, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Or need expert training. And/Or be International Rescue? ;-) --Kim Bruning 17:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can I be a part of the International Wikipedia Rescue? WP:IWR? Rockstar (T/C) 20:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps. Though my preference would be for The Interesting Times Gang, who seem to work roughly the same way as wikipedia. I don't think they're into measly jet-packs though. O:-)--Kim Bruning 15:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That universe is teh awes0me. I really enjoyed Excession. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 15:25, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pinpointing The Supporting Statement In A Reference: The Quote Attribute

The current situations is that if you want to use a citation template, you can use the 'quote' attribute, to quote the relevant part of the supporting text. This helps people search and verify the veracity of a source which would otherwise necessitate reading it from the beginning, until the supporting statement was found, assuming it even exists to begin with. The problem arises when the same source is used to support more than one statement in an article. I would like to suggest that the <ref> tag is modified to allow a 'quote' attribute as well as a 'name' attribute, so each time a source is used, a new, relevant quote can be given. Otherwise, people can continue to put sources that they "think probably" support a statement, in a hurried, half-hearted attempt to improve an article (I've seen it done before and had to go through the entire text to discover that it was improperly quoted as a source). Implementing this system would at least allow people to spend less time verifying those citations that make use of the feature. --Seans Potato Business 21:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A problem with your suggestion may be the repetition of citations, depending on whether all the source information appears with each quote. A way to do this currently to put the source information in the references section, then cite that same source using multiple citations in the notes section. The former code will be at the bottom of the page and the latter code will be inside <ref> tags within the content. Inside each <ref> tag will be something like
  1. Smith 2000. “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.”
  2. Smith 2000. “Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.”
Then further below you have the complete source information in a bulleted list:
  • John Smith (2000). "Lipsum". Publisher. Retrieved 2007-04-29.
If people are dropping off links without quotes, they probably don't know about the quote parameter in the citation templates either. I don't think adding this attribute will solve that, because if they are using <ref>, they could always provide a quote within those tags without any help of templates. –Pomte 22:29, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Searched-term Counter

When creating a new Wikipedia page, there should be a way to see how many times the term has been searched for. This would promote the creation of demanded-for pages and help Wikipedia grow in a desirable direction. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stussy D (talk • contribs).

There is a way to see how many pages link to the target page. It's right under the search box, called "What links here", and it works even if there's no article. It's a great way to see what kind of need there is for an article. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 21:06, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed change to "Template:Unreferenced"

{{Unreferenced}} is a high-profile template that is currently used on thousands of different articles. I tried to start a discussion on the talk page to make an edit that I think might actively prompt people to go hunting for sources. However, due to concerns that it might constitute advertising and due to the high-visibility of the edit, it was suggested to bring the discussion here.

Here is my original proposal:

I was wondering if the template could include links to the three big search engines (Yahoo, MSN and Google) to prompt people to start searching for sources. I chose those three search engines, because those are the search engines that Wikipedia already chooses to use as part of its searching system: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=googleblat
I've created a proposal so that people can see what I mean before implementing anything: Template:Unreferenced/Proposal
The template essentially plugs the article name into the search engine as a search term. Could lead to useful results, or at least represent a good starting point to refine the search terms used...

I suggest keeping the discussion here rather than putting it on the template talk page. Looking forward to comments.GDallimore (Talk) 13:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If worded carefully, this might be a useful change. It would have to be very carefully worded to avoid advertising though. What sort of language were you thinking of? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:00, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see the link to your proposed wording. I don't care for that language - it does sound advertisy and makes it look like only internet sources are required. How about something more along the lines of "You can help! Google, Yahoo and MSN might be good places to start." Though I still think that's a little ady. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't like it. It sends the wrong message - Internet sources should not be used exclusively, and are indeed generally somewhat unreliable. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 18:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe a template can be created to search http://www.worldcat.org/ and then be added to Template:Unreferenced alongside the Internet search engines. --Iamunknown 18:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Most readers know how to use general search engines so linking to them isn't very helpful. More specific ones that they may not be familiar with, such as Google News and Google Scholar, should be much more useful for finding reliable sources. The template currently links Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check. Instead of linking one specific WikiProject, there should be a central page on referencing with convenient links to other pages like Wikipedia:Newspapers and magazines request service and Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange. –Pomte 19:53, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I actually don't find Google Scholar to be all that helpful as I usually only get abstracts rather than full text of the papers. But I like the idea of pointing to resources that can be used to find potential sources, and maybe pointing to resources that can help them figure out the how of citing ones sources in Wikipedia (something like Wikipedia:Citation templates). We don't want the template to get too crowded though. Maybe we should put together a page of links that are helpful for finding sources and link to that page. It could link to the "big three" search engines, Google Scholar, and more specific things like Chronicling America, and internal links like to the citation templates. However, that would eliminate the usefulness of the posters original idea, which was to format the links in such a way that clicking automatically takes you to relevant search results. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've made a couple of changes to the wording of the template. This isn't intended as final, but is just a first stab at softening the wording. Maybe a fourth link could be added to the list of other resources that are being suggested.GDallimore (Talk) 21:47, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Had a thought and made a couple more edits to {{Unreferenced/Proposal}}. It now uses exactly the same wording as the Wikipedia search screen and includes a possible way to link to an article that suggest other resources. That article should include at the top "your local library" or something. :) GDallimore (Talk) 21:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To me Search for "article title" on Google, MSN or Yahoo!, implies the search will result in finding Reliable sources which is far from the case. If an editor knows what a reliable source is they will know where to find it. If they don't know there is no reason to point them towards a million unreliable sources. Jeepday (talk) 02:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The template already includes a link to explain what reliable sources are. If people find unreliable sources, they'll be removed, that's the way Wikipedia works, but at least it will prompt people to start looking. GDallimore (Talk) 08:57, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Take a look at today's featured article, William Monahan. Almost every reference in it is an Internet reference, with online articles by the Boston Globe and other reliable sources. The Internet is invaluable for articles about relatively recent things, people and events so it's hardly a useless thing to do to include links to search engines to be able to find whether it was the Boston Globe or the New York Times that printed an article about Mrs Jane Untermyer and her unusually large cat. GDallimore (Talk) 09:59, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The "Vandalpedia"

This may have already been proposed. It may even already exist. But I've been thinking. If vnadalism is such a big issue on the Wikipedia, how about we let it happen, but not ON the Wikipedia. Place a link, easily viewable, on the mainpage, to a "Vandalpedia". This "Vandalpedia" would be a full mirror of the Wikipedia on which people will have the full right to vandalize it in any way. It probably wouldn't deter the problem much, but at least a little bit. Madhackrviper 15:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Uncyclopedia probably counts.GDallimore (Talk) 15:56, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I thought awhile back about an idea to add links to Uncyclopedia on the user vandalism templates - giving bored people something amusing might deter them from vandalising Wikipedia for amusement. As for a link on the Main Page: Forget it, that's just an acknowledgement of the problem vandalism poses, and who'd use it? Vandals and trolls are rarely rational. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 16:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I feel that we should not have to assume good faith when it comes to blatant or persistent vandals. Still, until such time as the policy is reverse, I will still show it. -- KirinX 16:23, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WP:AGF states: When you can reasonably assume that a mistake someone made was a well-intentioned attempt to further the goals of the project, correct it without criticizing. If it is obviously "blatant and persistent", then you can't "reasonably assume" it was well-intentioned. Thus "assuming good faith" in the face of blatant and persistent vandalism is actually against the guideline, which also states: This guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of evidence to the contrary. dr.ef.tymac 17:25, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Nice, thanks. Now if only blocking admins that remove perfectly reasonable AIV reports, would actually refer to that. Or perhaps blocking policy needs to be changed to reflect that. I don't believe vandals have any intentions of contributing positively, so if an IP is blocked, so what if a user who inherits the IP a month later has to apply for an unblock? This policy of never indef blocking IPs is just contributing to the vandalism problem. It's a big huge revolving door. -- KirinX 17:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Vandalpedia, huh? How about making a large dedicated "graffiti wall" so people can write whatever nonsense they like, and it would all be gone by the end of the day!--Kylohk 21:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We already have one of those, too: WP:Sandbox. GDallimore (Talk) 21:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Don't forget the interwiki. 129.98.212.51 01:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, you'd be surprised at how organized Uncyclopedia has to be. People get blocked for cracking unfunny or lame jokes, for goodness sake! bibliomaniac15 01:50, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Uncyclopedia takes its humor quite seriously I have noticed when I go there. It greatly looks down on vandal style humor and heavily uses satire or parody. Uncyclopedians don't like vandals any more than we do. Captain panda 02:52, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

BirthdayBot discussion

Hello community, I have since been declined my request to run a new bot called BirthdayBot. Firstly, I will tell you a little about it, and then get the community's thoughts about it (as that was the suggestion made on the request).

Now it's time for your say on this. I am really enthusiastic and want this bot running, but many people say it's like a welcome bot - that's not the case - it only greets 5 users per day at a maximum, whereas a welcome bot could do thousands. Looking forward to your thoughts. Many thanks, Extranet (Talk | Contribs) 20:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the mass sending of templatized messages worth the time and server resources? Isn't the point of a birthday greeting that it's done by a person who notices and therefore cares? Λυδαcιτγ 03:15, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose bot; keep doing it manually. If the Birthday Committee is being inactive, then its purposes should be reconsidered, not replaced by a bot. –Pomte 03:38, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
sigh...an impersonal waste of server use for something unrelated to the project goal, we've been through similar things several times before. Voice-of-All 04:39, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thats fine, I just really needed to see what the community thought and it looks like the bot won't be going ahead. Thanks again. Extranet (Talk | Contribs) 04:47, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merging New contributors' help page and Editor assistance into Help desk

I propose to merge Wikipedia:New contributors' help page and Wikipedia:Editor assistance into Wikipedia:Help desk. The reason for this is due the more or less similar activities:

  • All three have a help desk with possibility for users to leave a question on how to use the wiki, although the Help desk is the most established.
  • All three deals with "how-to" type questions; anyone asking for factual stuff is directed towards the reference desk
  • In addition, the new contributor's page and the help desk also mentions/links to the {{helpme}} and the IRC client.

There's really not a point in having three similar pages dealing with (as far as I can see) support mainly targeted at new users, and it would probably be better for Wikipedia if we were to have one single page instead of three. Could also be better for those interested in contributing through helping other users.

Also, this would mean the creation of #wikipedia-help and #wikipedia-en-help channels instead of using the current #wikipedia-bootcamp on IRC, as has already been suggested by some of the users on #wikipedia-bootcamp. The current bootcamp channel will be forwarded to one of the new channels. Bjelleklang - talk Bug Me 00:30, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • I disagree with the merger. Strongly. I think differentiating the pages (by linking them on the main help page as different links, as I have done), is necessary. New users: (1) may be intimidated by the technological jargon of the original Help Desk, (2) receive answers that may be hard to grasp given the extreme use of acronyms and abbreviations for answers, and (3) few users (especially new ones) read the backlog of questions as most present singularly unique questions. I look at having two different pages the way a school teacher looks at differentiated instruction. Teaching everyone with the same resource might be practical and more clear cut, but students have divergent needs and skills sets so instruction needs to be different. If there's a problem here, it seems to me that the two pages need to be further differentiated so they better address the divergent needs of different users. SkipperClipper 02:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merging WP:NCH was already discussed, but I don't see how Wikipedia:Editor assistance is mergeable. It has more in common with the Adopt-a-User program than with the help desk, so if it has to be merged, I'd suggest it's merged with the adoption program instead. - 87.209.70.231 04:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree. As SkipperClipper mentioned above, the three pages are like two teachers teaching the same idea with different resources. Moreover there are several major differences among the projects:
    1. HD deals with questions in a single-thread Q-A manner. Old discussions are archived automatically after 5 days. A second follow-up action or response is unlikely. On the other hand, both NUH and EA works in the form of a personal follow-up.
    2. EA and HD is for everyone, while NUH is specialized for newcomers.
    3. Processes in HD and NUH are more well-defined, while EA is comparatively casual.
    Owing to these differences in working principles and style, I believe the three projects should survive individually. --Deryck C. 04:56, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: As far as I can see, WP:EA does nothing different from the other two pages mentioned; on the requests page people leave their questions, while other users reply, also keeping follow-ups in the same page. That's more or less exactly the same as HD or NUH. As for the level of expertise on the users seeking help I can't really see a that big difference with EA compared to HD! Both pages have questions ranging from brand new and inexperienced users to those with more experience and more advanced questions.
If the original intention of EA was more coaching-thing than traditional Q&A, this should be empathized much more instead of focusing on the Q&A. As an alternative to the Q&A, both NUH and HD links to an online IRC client as well as the {{helpme}} template; the latter primarily for users to put on their userpages in order to get help from a more experienced editor directly. EA has no such alternatives, and only focus on Q&A. I also don't understand the problem of mixing questions from inexperienced users with other questions from somewhat more experienced users; this has been done on all three pages, although there is generally a lower level of expertise required to answer questions on NUH. If it turns out that the differences are really small, why not expand one of the projects instead of having three different? Bjelleklang - talk Bug Me 10:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Reply: if a Wikipedia project page can solve a problem, why bring it offsite to IRC, complicating things? Moreover, EA is not just Q&A; it also lets people discuss stuff. See some more complicated cases out there. It's just the simple cases that look like Q&As. --Deryck C. 14:40, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree, and would note that a failed (and I mean failed, only one person supporting) merger proposal happened around a month ago. EA's been working just fine as a separate project, let's leave it alone. Seraphimblade Talk to me 11:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not convinced there's enough of a difference between WP:NCH and WP:HD to keep them separate, but the arguments I've heard to prevent the merge seem reasonable. The problem is that WP:NCH is not that well-known; new users often find the Help Desk instead, and NCH doesn't have as many users answering. So maybe better advertisement, rather than merging, is the solution. --ais523 12:53, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Disagree. ASSIST is working nicely as it is, and is performing an additional role in getting newbies' heads around policy, so that they actually do what they're meant to, rather than get the AMA to wikilawyer for them. Moreschi Talk 14:20, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree with the merge, but perhaps some sort of restructuring of the New contributors' help page, I keep both watchlisted, but the problem with the NCHP seems to be that it's not very well publicized, maybe it would help to add a few more links to it in the various banners and page headers designed for new users--VectorPotentialTalk 14:25, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree in part - I concur with ais523's comment about the need to promote the WP:NCH page properly; but it suffers from alarge degree of redundancy, so it should be merged. I have only recently begun to monitor it because I didn't even know about its existence, but it suffers from very low traffic. I and at least one other editor raised the same point in the previous merger discussion. WP:EA, however, should not be merged, but its intended use needs to be emphasised and/or repositioned to reflect the differing nature of the assistance on offer. I often work one-to-one with new editors about specific queries/issues and WP:EA is the ideal forum for their requests. As such, it needs to be promoted properly, described clearly, and easy to locate. Adrian M. H. 16:13, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I would also like to point out that too much merging may result in excess strain being placed on the Help Desk during busy periods, and if that happens, some questions will slip by unanswered and questioners will only find it that bit harder to find their questions. Adrian M. H. 16:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree in part - I think that WP:HD and WP:NUH should be merged while WP:EA should remain. WP:HD and WP:NUH are the same set-up and used for the same purpose. I think having these two is redundant. If someone is at the mall and needs help they go to the help kiosk; the system we have now sends the new shoppers one place and the established shoppers somewhere else. I don't think that WP:EA should be included in the merge simply becuase it does more than answer questions. WP:EA is used for resolving disputes and is a more personal aid. In summary, I strongy agree that WP:HD and WP:NUH are merged to one page (after all new users come to the help page all the time), and I feel that WP:EA remain as its own page. Scottydude talk 17:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree in part - WP:HD and WP:NUH should be merged while WP:EA should remain per above. Agree that WP:NUH has low traffic and so could be merged to streamline our procedures, while WP:EA is working ok and merging could over-load WP:HD. Addhoc 23:18, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I definitely support the merger of NUH and HD, EA is an essentially an unnecessary fork of the Adopt a user program (or perhaps just the same thing with less "cute" title). Maybe they should be merged. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by John Reaves (talk • contribs) 23:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Upload wizard

Commons uses a 'wizard' when uploading, to help people identify the correct licence. There is ongoing discussion about doing something on Wikipedia at MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext#Proposal for mass overhaul, matching Commons. Could people contribute to the discussion there? --ais523 12:45, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Categorization scheme: Nationality -> Country

I have a new bold proposal to reduce controversy in our categorization scheme. I propose we categorize people by "country" rather than "nationality". Nationality does not equal citizenship even if that was the original intention. If one changes citizenship or has multiple citizenship it can be tagged by all that apply. Stuff ambiguous like "American people" would also be gone as a result of this since it is "People from the United States". -- Cat chi? 13:54, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This will not stop controversy... just change it's nature. You will simply get arguments over what country someone is from. This is especially true for historical figures... borders change, countries expand and contract through war, regions break away and form new countries, etc. Do we classify someone by which country controlled the territory they lived in when they were born, or during the majority of their life, or by it's current name? Take for example someone born in Dublin in the early 1800s... would you categorize him in "People from Ireland" or in "People from the British Empire". After all, Ireland was not a "country" at the time. The same would be true for an historical person from Tallinn in what is today Estonia... would you categorize someone born there in 1600 in "People from Estonia" or in "People from Sweden"... what about someone born there in 1800 (people from the Russian Empire?) And forget about trying to categorize someone from the Balkans... Yugoslavia? Croatia? Serbia? Boznia-Herzegovina? Greater Bulgaria? Austria? Hungary? Autria-Hungary? Venician Republic? Roman Empire? Byzantine Empire? Ottoman Empire? Some areas of the Balkans changed "country" multiple times during a single lifetime! Good intention, but it won't work. Blueboar 18:06, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
First of all this change is to effect current peoples mostly. Historic personalities are a completely different issue. Someone from Ancient Rome should be categorized as being "from Ancient Rome" and not as an "Italian" or being "from Italy".
The intention of categorization is to base it on a legal document called "citizenship" throughout their life. It is not intended to be based on what country owns their birth place today. I am not going to reply to specific examples since that makes it a content dispute. Someone from the ottoman empire who did not carry another citizenship should be categorized accordingly. Einstein carried 3 different citizenship throughout his life.
Ethnicity/race of a person should play no role in ones citizenship. Categories are navigational aids. Nothing else. If the person is Irish or something else it can be mentioned in the relevant article.
-- Cat chi? 20:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To the contrary, nationality is an important thing. Of course, we shouldn't discriminate by ethnicity, but we shouldn't think it doesn't exist. What would be done with any nationality that doesn't dominate any state, such as Kurds or Taureg; it surely makes more sense to categorise a Kurd from Iraq with a Kurd from Turkey rather than with an Arab from Iraq. What would you do with an ethnically Russian person born in one of the other former Soviet republics? What about someone born in Abkhazia: would that person be Abkhazian or Georgian? I echo Blueboar: good intention, but it won't work. Nyttend 00:19, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What would I do? I guess there is no avoidance of specifics.
  • There is no reason why we cant tag an Iraqi Arab, an Iraqi Turkomen, and an Iraqi Kurd under the same "People from Iraq" category. It is completely noncontroversial to suggest such a thing.
  • To call a Kurd from Turkey as a "Turkish" can refer to both citizenship (everyone from Turkey is a "Turkish" citizen) but Turkish also means an ethnicity, (not everyone from Turkey is of "Turkish" ethnicity). It is problematic the way we use it can be self contradictory.
  • No comment on Taureg, we do not even have an article about it.
  • An ethnically Russian person without a Russian citizenship should not be categorised as being from Russia. Whatever country he/she is from should be the category. If he/she is from Poland categorizing accordingly is nothing problematic.
  • Abkhazia is a de facto independent republic. Anything we talk about it will be in the gray area. Defacto counties such as Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Northern Cyprus, Republic of China, and even Sealand can be categorised like a regular country. There is a verifiable claim that these are countries even if the majority of the world disputes it. In the case of Abkhazia, everyone from Abkhazia can be tagged as "from Abkhazia" and "From Georgia" just like how a territory disputed by two or more countries are tagged as being the territory of those countries
I do not see leaving it "as is" a better solution. Lets either categorize by ethnicity or by country. Lets not mix these two with "nationality". Ethnicity can be controversial since it is a cultural issue and hard to verify. Someone can be 1/4th of a certain ethnicity, should he/she be categorised for his her 1/4th quarter or the other 1/4s. There are those living melting pots you know. Citizenship on the other hand can be based on a legal document. People typically have a single citizenship. Very few has dual, it is nearly unheard of for people to have triple citizenships.
-- Cat chi? 02:58, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Protecting the featured article

The feature article from 2 days ago was corrupted with an explicit (gay sex) photo for a short period of time. I could also see someone going into a feature article and incorrectly/intentionally changing something less obvious. While there are many people who could catch it, the most vulnerable article on Wikipedia is the feature article.

It would be great if there were people who could monitor the article...but it would be even better if the article was locked while it was featured. Changes could either be made once the article was no longer featured, or a separate "proposed changes" page could exist while the article was featured, and changes could be made by committee during or after the article is featured.

Johnny1926 14:49, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This has been discussed to death, so here it is in a nutshell. For the duration of its stay on the main page, the featured article probably has a hundred worthy editors checking on it from time to time, who will revert vandalism. Also, protecting our most visible article takes away from the "anyone can edit" portion of the philosophy. --Phoenix (talk) 19:55, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In fact, front page Featured Articles almost always stay unprotected. As a result, you could imagine the chaos on the Wii article when it was up front. What a mess to clean up, with vandalism popping up every second.--Kylohk 22:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Clarifying binary prefixes in MediaWiki templates

Would anyone object if I edited the MediaWiki templates MediaWiki:searchsize, MediaWiki:size-gigabytes, MediaWiki:size-kilobytes, MediaWiki:size-megabytes, and MediaWiki:longpageerror to use the binary prefixes KiB, MiB, etc. as per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Binary prefixes? These messages are used to refer to the amount of storage used by articles, and disk storage is an area where these prefixes cause the most confusion. Krimpet (talk) 18:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Creation of stubs for every human gene and RNA family

At the MCB Wikiproject we are gearing up to import several databases into Wikipedia. These would include families of RNAs in collaboration with the Rfam database and the complete set of publicly-available data on each human gene in collaboration with the Novartis/GNF SymAtlas project.

I'm worried that people may object to the automated creation of these stubs on the ground of notability and wanted to float the idea here. What are people's opinions? Should we restrict this to gene families, rather than individual genes, or should we regard this as the basis for future additions as scientific knowledge grows? Each gene stub would have several references to other databases and information, an example can be seen here.

Thanks for comments. TimVickers 21:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How many of these are you going to create? I've always hated rapid creation of stubs, especially ones that won't have much of a future. Keep them only to gene families, expanding only if one goes further than a stub. Reywas92Talk 21:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The number depends on the level that we go into the database. I'd be most happy restricting this to genes with known or proposed functions, as these will have some literature associated with them and can therefore be easily expanded in the future. On the other hand, the simple completeness of Wikipedia having an entry for every human gene is attractive, and could help us recruit more expert editors from the science community. TimVickers 22:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would be nice if the bot creating the stubs put a list of known associated sources on the talk page. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 22:35, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea, the references in the Entrez gene page could be used. TimVickers 22:43, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How many are we talking here, and is there any reason they couldn't be bot-generated into a list by family and then split out upon sufficient development? This was done with "geographic locations" a while back and we've still got tons of botstubs around from that, I don't know about anyone else but that soured me on the idea of bot-generated articles a bit. At least if it were into families there would be some meat to the article, and they'd be more likely to get eyes on them and get expanded. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:15, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Depending on which estimate you listen to, there are about 20,000 human genes annotated at present. The bot proposal is for 10,000 of these to be imported, these are the genes for which published information is available. The question isn't really how these articles are created, that's just mechanics, but instead we need to discuss what the content will be and if this content will be useful and notable. For example, is the ITK (gene) a notable subject, or does this stub not contain enough information? TimVickers 23:33, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a great idea. I've added some wikilinks to the sample article, which I think the bot should be able to add, and commented on the talk page for it.-gadfium 00:21, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if it would be possible to create these articles in a gradual fashion rather than 10,000 at once. For example, maybe the bot could identify the top 100 genes (as ranked by number of GeneRIFs in the database) that have no existing Wikipedia article and create stubs for them. A list of these could be created on a subpage of the MCB WikiProject in an attempt to attract Wikipedia editors to the new stubs. Then after a month, do the next batch, maybe 200 for the second month. --JWSchmidt 00:36, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The bot won't create all the genes at once, that would be a tall order indeed. The first run is planned to create just 10 new stubs. What I'm trying to do here is get a feel for the community's ideas on the eventual scope of the project, which could run over many months. TimVickers 00:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

20,000 is one in every 88 articles! I really don't think articles should be made for every one. I'm not even quite convinced that the gene families are very notable or encyclopedic. Sorry. Reywas92Talk 00:28, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What do you think of the example page Reywas? Does this meet the standard of notability in your opinion? Do you think only genes that have been the subject of scientific papers should be included? TimVickers 00:31, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Your going to need reliable sources for each of these to show their notability, otherwise it's going to put intense pressure on CAT:CSD. Ryan Postlethwaite 00:35, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so far there are three main proposals:
  1. Create a page for each gene.
  2. Create a page for each gene that has references in the scientific literature (meeting reliable sources)
  3. Create a page for each gene family and a list of the individual genes.
TimVickers 00:38, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'd go for number 2, there's 20,000 gene's genes, but there they're not all notable, many of the notable ones are only notable because the are linked to a disease, in which case, a merge with the disease page may be all that is required. Also, don't forget we're an encyclopedia, outside users should be able to understand the articles, not just profesionals on the subject. Ryan Postlethwaite 00:44, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I choose number three. How many of them are there? Reywas92Talk 00:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's a problem in that option with classification. If we use Gene Ontology terms, each gene could fit under one of several classifications, as you can see with the ITK (gene) example. This option might seem simpler, but it would be much more complicated than any of the other options. TimVickers 01:13, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would support number 2, also, I made a couple of style edits to the sample page. It had some extra line spaces between the box and the start of the prose content, creating extra whitespace at the top. Second, the title wasn't bolded in the first use. Also, most of the links on the template box under "function" and "Orthologs" are external links. Links to Wikipedia articles, if they exist are preferred (a link to an article explaining what Orthologs means would be nice as well, I had to look that one up) Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 01:00, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, we seem to be coming to consensus on proposal 2. This would involve the import of approximately 10,000 individual genes into stubs with 76,000 separate citations added to these stubs in order to meet WP:Reliable sources (numbers from GeneRIF statistics).

That's an interesting point Mr.Z-man, we could create a page for each GO term, and then use Wikilinks rather than external inks to the GO pages, however, then you would lose the classification information you get on GO pages such as this. I think external links are a better choice for the infoboxes (as with the standard Chembox). TimVickers 01:08, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User names merge to Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention

With the Meta for Deletion entry on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User names heading for a keep/no consensus there is a proposal to merge the functions of that board into Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention. Please comment at WT:RFCN. -Mask? 22:16, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category idea

I don't want to create a category just to see it get deleted, so...Category:National anthem writers? Does that sound useful? Nyttend 00:10, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds great! But how about Category:Authors of national anthems instead? Reywas92Talk 00:20, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

numbering posts

On VP as well as in all talk pages it would be good if each post was headed with its number as it appears in the contents/hyperlinking box at the head of the whole page. For example this post's heading would read: 42. numbering posts, ie as it appears in the contents box. This is because I quite often look at a page's contents box and say to myself: I would like to look at posts 3,4,17 and 44 (for example) then I have to either memorise these numbers and the headings or scroll up and down all the time. To summarise: It would be good if the program that created the post inlcuded the post's number in the heading. Lgh 01:26, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's an option in preferences (under Misc in the classic skin) to do just what you want.-gadfium 03:11, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Start Tag?

What do people think of this? After a stub is no longer a stub, it can be tagged with a "start tag" signifying that it is no longer short,etc etc(whatever a stub is defined as) but now a start(whatever a start is correctly defined as). There could be the same start tags as there are the same stubs (eg "disease stub" with "disease start", and once the stub gets enough content it can move on to the start tag, where more people will have ability to see it and possibly work on it. Thus once the start taged article is worked on long enough it will then go on to the next up level (but by then the article will be far better than what a typical 'start' type article looks like. I know there are already articles labeled as "starts" on their talk page, but there are also "stubs" labeled as such on their talk page as well (articles that are usually rated by their wikiproject) and furthermore, not everyone looks (or bothers) to look at the discussion page anyway (personal random choice really)(Furthermore this is not to say that a "start" tag will trigger a impulse in someone's brain to say, hey lets make this article beter, but they can also say that for the stub tag as well true?..applies to new users in particular). Unless of course youre thinking that having MORE tags is a bad thing, and now it would take FOREVER to implent into the countless "start" articles, im sure it can be achieved.(Probably with the creation of a new wiki fix up project? or bot?). So yeah, sorry if this has already been asked before or its written in the wrong place. Thanks in advance. petze 03:35, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

There are thousands and thoudsands of stubs, and no matter what you object, it will take a very long time to do that. There should always be an improvement impule in one's brain. Labelling something as Start rather than Stub will do nothing. IMO, the rating of articles with Featured, Good, stub, or none is fine enough, without A or B. Reywas92Talk 03:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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