Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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

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

Before posting your proposal:

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

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Web policy

Did I miss the posting to editors that what they write in "user talk" appears on the web? I was very surprised to find my comments posted there.Alethe 02:12, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

umm... Wikipedia is on the web, everything you write here is on line, probably forever, even if you delete it. Jeepday (talk) 02:35, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Friends List Or Activity Group

One User Should Be given the freedom to have friends of the same interests,that will ultimately result in the broadness of wiki as more and more information is gathered.

A friends list seems like it could be helpful when sharing information on articles/topics that a group of users are colaborating on. My big concern with starting a friend's section is that users will begin to use Wikipedia as a social networking site like Myspace or Facebook rather than a site dedicated to gathering information about a myriad of topics. Good idea in theory but seems like it would be bad in practice. Plm209 (talk • contribs • count) 18:53, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Try a Wikiproject. KillerChihuahua^?!? 11:08, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

maybe another tab entitled subject talk. You could then have general dicussions about the articles subject rather than just article accuracy or neutrality. Wardhog 22:51, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Request for consensus: External Links => Incline Citation Bot

• 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).

• Example Nonvolatile_BIOS_memory

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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))

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)

What's your point? A bot can also create missing citations. (SEWilco 05:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC))

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)

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))

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)

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))

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)

I also strongly support this proposal. References via external links look messy, and really aren't that standardized. If you look at most featured articles, you will find that they all use the footnote method. Seems like a great idea to me. Tim.bounceback^{(review me! | talk | contribs | ubxen)} 21:38, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

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)

A bot should not. [ES] is not an external link, and you can see Wikipedia does not show it as a link. An external link has to have "http:" or another protocol after the opening bracket. (SEWilco 05:41, 6 May 2007 (UTC))

this is a useful proposal in the case where an article has a mix of ref-style citations and inline external links. in these cases one style should be used - ref-style. i have tidied-up mixed up articles like this several times, and it is invariably an improvement, encouraging further ref-style citations to be added by other editors. 86.31.103.208 12:43, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Support - Standardization is good. I would just say either require human intervention before proceeding to edit/replace a [http://link with] text in it & make sure it ignores the contents of the external links sections. MrZaius^talk 16:19, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose; this is a bad idea for all the reasons above. This is the sort of change that almost always requires a human hand. (A citation with no details is no better than a numbered link, and not all numbered links are citations.) — The Storm Surfer 20:55, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose; Reference adding is by nature a human task. On the other hand, if you want to tag external links outside of reference/external links sections with some small ^{[Inline citation format needed]} type template, that might be OK. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 21:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Force Abolishing Of Anon Edits

Currently, all those who oppose anonymous editing are forced to continue with the status quo, in order to prevent their hard work from slowly deteriorating. Much work that is not closely watched over does deteriorate. Having read the perennial proposals page, I believe that we constitute a significant fraction, if not the majority. If properly organised, we and all sympathisers of this hitherto-ignored population of Wikipedians could force the powers that be to take us seriously and stop frittering our time and effort. If a date was set and widely advertised inside and outside Wikipedia, everyone who supported this stance could boycott Wikipedia for one week and leave the rest to deal with the vandalism. If we took it further, we could log out and vandalise pages ourselves (don't get mad, keep reading), the idea being that the Wikipedia bigwigs couldn't ignore us any more and realise that without us, the editors that they continue to abuse, Wikipedia is nothing. We'd force them to respect our time, and prevent anonymous editors from occupying so much of it. After the week, the most sensible thing to do would be to revert all articles to their status one week previous. Of course, if the necessary change was implimented before the boycott, it would not need to happen. Wikipedia is bigger than the people who created it.

Would anyone be interested in helping to organise such a thing? I'm fully aware how radical this sounds but I'm only trying to help Wikipedia and its editors in the long-term. --Seans Potato Business 16:12, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

This is a perennial proposal, and has good reasons for rejection. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 16:41, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Read m:Foundation issues, the ability of anyone to edit articles without registering is not up for debate, it is mandated by the foundation. I agree with this mandate too. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:46, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

If we were to do anything to reduce crap, I'd tend to instead set mainspace page creation to only autoconfirmed users. A lot of anonymous edits are poor or vandalism, but I've seen a lot that are good and helpful too, especially in aggregate. I entirely support continuing to allow anonymous editing. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:50, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I just looked at the latest 500 contributions of all three of you, and notice that the majority of these edits are in templates, talk space and userpages. I don't think that it's fair for you to condemn those who want to work on ARTICLES to an eternal struggle with vandals, when you yourselves don't suffer the ill effects. --Seans Potato Business 17:22, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

If you really looked at my latest contribs, you should probably also see a lot of edits in user talk with summaries such as "nn-warn" - newly created users creating articles inappropriate for various reasons. I'm fighting vandalism too, just the majority of the article space edits you were talking about are from tagging inappropriate articles that have been deleted - those deleted contributions don't show up. It further emphasizes the point that abolishing anon editing would destroy more than it would achieve - destroying all positive anon contribs while at the same time allowing vandals to simply use hundreds of throwaway accounts. I'm sorry if my rebuke seems harsh, but I do a lot of work in the article namespace to tag inappropriate articles, and your accusation feels particularly insulting to me. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 17:31, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I just looked at the top 20 anon edits in recent changes. I hit rollback on 5 of them; the other 15 looked fine, and most were actually constructive. If you block all anons, the vandals are likely to continue by registering usernames (making them even harder to stop), and the constructive edits are more likely to stop. (For reference: [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]). --ais523 17:38, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

By comparison, only about half of the top 20 edits by non-anons in Recentchanges were to article-space, and were about as useful as the anons' by comparison (it was the same sort of changes), although only one was the addition of a spamlink. In the meantime, an anon reverted vandalism to my user talk page. I suspect that if all anons were banned, we wouldn't have much of an encyclopedia by now. (By the way, you might want to compare Citizendium, another wiki encyclopedia that does ban anon edits, to Wikipedia.) --ais523 17:45, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Problems with Citizendium: 1) They want to start from scratch - Six years back in time 2) Wikipedia already has nearly 100% "market-share" 3) They appear to have questionable ideas regarding how to copyright their content. What I want is 2007 Wikipedia minus the vandalism (registration with confirmed email address) and everything that goes with it (a lot more than meets the eye). I don't see the point in discussing this, since according to m:Foundation issues, this policy is beyond debate. My call for editors in agreement stands - we'll use a way that doesn't involve debate. --Seans Potato Business 18:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Then fork Wikipedia, which you're perfectly entitled to and the project provides database dumps to allow you to do so. -Halo 01:47, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Our core aim is to be a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. What you mean is, basically, force semiprotection to every single article, a fact that prevents "anyone" from editing. Our strength is that anyone, anywhere, can fix a typo or correct a fact in a couple of seconds. It is up to everyone to prevent that fact from being our weakness as well.

Since you talk about organizing, create a Wikipedia:Obligatory registration or similar essay, and link to it from as many pages as you can find (besides village pump, noticeboards, help desks, Wikiprojects, etc), and see if the community agrees or not. Since I am against the idea of restricting edition (which has brought me problems for always giving second opportunities to even vandals), if I were to create such essay, it would be considered a point. However, if you believe that is the solution to many of our problems, don't let us stop you from starting that discussion. -- ReyBrujo 18:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Seans Potato Business, if you look a little closer at my contribs you will see that I am directly effected by the vandal problem. I have also done plenty of work in the article space, and even if I did not my opinions are just as valid. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:59, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

In addition to anonymous editing being the foundation of all Wikimedia projects, also consider a more practical matter: if registration were required, all vandals would just start registering accounts to vandalize. Krimpet (talk) 18:10, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I am also against abolishing anon edits. As an article writer I see first hand the benefit of anon edits in correcting typos and copy edits. Of course I also see the spam ELs and vandalism but admittedly they are easier to pick out and revert when they come from an IP. In my watchlist, IP contributions stick out and I make it a point to look over them. If everyone had to register it would be harder to isolate these potential vandalism edits for closer scrutiny. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 18:14, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Anons are the largest group of wikipedia editors, and IIRC produce most wikipedia content. If forced to choose, I would ban all registered users first. ;-) --Kim Bruning 18:25, 12 May 2007 (UTC) (Anons also produce most wikipedia mess, but that's what you get for being the largest group of editors ;-))

Gather supporters and spur on more debate: sure, go ahead. Log out and intentionally cause vandalism to articles to prove a point: I will pursue you just as I pursue every other vandal: be they IP or registered; regardless of a user's past beneficial contributions. Good editors know how to go about raising their concerns, and intentional vandalism is not the way. --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 19:26, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

This discussion has been going on for a long time. However, we have another option against vandalism : semi-protection. If we loosen the guidelines on semi-protection a little bit, it would certainly stop a lot of vandalism. Certainly all those articles that are as good as finished, could be semi-protected. Practically all changes on those articles just consist of vandalism. I’ve tried this out on a few articles (such as Apple, Rose, Leaning Tower of Pisa) that were vandalised one or more times on a daily basis and it helps a lot. JoJan 08:36, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

There are plenty of good-faith edits (though not necessarily the greatest quality of edits) by anons and I think content is very hard to come by, so any sort of good-faith edit can be worked upon and should be welcomed. x42bn6 Talk Mess 17:57, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

The reason for vandalism is simple: Anyone can edit and can see their change go live immmediately. Nothing can be more attractive to someone who wants to see that they can have an impact on the world, even if only temporarily. "Anyone can edit" is a "office policy", meaning that Jimbo Wales would need to change his mind on this one. I really don't see that happenning anytime soon.

The other option is not to have the edits "go live" immediately. One possibility is this business of "approved versions" that is being tried out in the German Wikipedia, but I am not sure of the status of that. It would show an "approved version" by default, but an editor could still go into the article and edit the current version at will. I am not sure if this works much to discourage the vandals or not, as the vandals edit does "make it in" to Wikipedia. I have also called for review of edits by anons and new users to no avail. Another idea is to require an e-mail exchange to verify an edit. This would force a vandal to "sign" their edit, but once again people have expresed concerns about inconveniencing the anons. Personally I feel that an anon doing a legitimate edit will be happy to put up with review or confirmation as long as they told up front what is going on and why. The process cannot be too onerous, but some bar is needed so that a vandal just does not find Wikipedia worth the bother.

BTW - I do have another suggestion: Immediately ban ANY editor engaging in blatant vandalism for at least two weeks. If it is so blatant that a bot can detect it, then you are probably catching the vandal when they are active. --EMS | Talk 01:56, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with any suggestion which prevents IP addresses from editing Wikipedia. Why? Well:

• The vast majority of people wanting to ban anons are people who do vandal fighting or regularly check watchlists, and are generally the people who see the worst side of IP contributions. They're inherently biased.
• The vast majority of edits by IPs are genuine, and much of the genuine content from Wikipedia was by people editing using IP addresses.
• It's inherently unwiki-like, and creates artificial restrictions on who can edit.
• It's easier to "see" the fruits of vandalism rather than genuine content, making the problem seem worse than it is.

I also disagree with anyone who inherently talks about "increasing punishment". This doesn't work:

• Many genuine editors will get hit in the cross-fire
• Promoting and extending already overly harsh bans isn't a good idea
• It doesn't work in real life with the "death penalty", why the assumption it will work on Wikipedia? -Halo 02:02, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, part of the appeal and initial draw of Wikipedia is the fact that anyone can edit. I remember reading through the project about 4 years ago, long before I registered an account, and fiddling around with copyediting and such. Just because SOME anonymous IPs vandalize doesn't mean all do. There are plenty of usernames on this site that vandalize as well. Jmlk17 20:08, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Lower the tolerance on vandalism by anons

The problem about stopping anons from editing articles is that the majority of anon edits are constructive. So it will not be fair for the well behaving majority. So, another idea will be to lower the tolerance for anonymous IPs. Make it so that they can be blocked after just 1 warning, rather than the final warning. If the IP address is shared, urge any innocents to create an account. On the other hand, allow the admins to actively track the IP address of any users with fewer than 50 edits. Then it can be immediately known whether it's someone who creates an account just to cause trouble after his IP's been blocked.--Kylohk 19:40, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

• Strong support - Lowering the tolerance is very much needed. I gets to be much less fun if you are stopped almost as soon as you get started. I have also called for a vandalism-revert flag to be added edit page so that people can point out vandalism to the admins. The two combined would no doubt curtail vandalism quite a ways. --EMS | Talk 20:11, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support – With a caveat. Certainly, that would make it easier to limit their activities and halt the bored children and casual mischief makers. I have a slight concern that this might result in more blocks being carried out, which would add to the admins' workload. That is in addition to the possible increase in malicious accounts and Agne's point about spotting IPs in one's watchlist. Adrian M. H. 20:33, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support I also agree. Four warnings and often more gives the vandal too much lenience. A quicker block will better stop the fun and multiple IP users may quicker as well. I don't think that extremly blatant vandals will ever become useful and must be stopped much sooner. Testers should perhaps recieve more warnings. Reywas92^Talk 20:30, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I'm not sure that I care to distinguish between testers and vandals all that much other than to perhaps give the non-malicious testers a shorter block. In both cases people are looking to see what they can do, and the quicker you lower the boom the better. (However some cases, such as when the tester quickly reverts their own edit, can and should be excused with little more than a warning.) As for Adrian's concerns about workload: I suspect that this will decrease workload by stymying vandals before they get a sense of power and start treating the vandalizing of Wikipedia as a game. --EMS | Talk 02:55, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Comment Looks like we are getting close to a consensus. If it is reached, I guess we can place it in the talk page of WP:VANDAL.--Kylohk 18:16, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Done. See Wikipedia_talk:Vandalism#Lessening_the_tolerance_for_vandalism. --EMS | Talk 02:37, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

• Strong oppose - seems like a slippery slope and prone to abuse, and lots of people genuinely trying to submit genuine will get hit in the crossfire, particularly people who "mean well". I also dislike the implication that people who make anonymous genuine edits will not do it from the same IP that would commit vandalism. Whatsmore, it may encourage the continuing practise of heavy-handed anon-IP blocks of "indefinite" over minor vandalism rather than the 24-hours deserved -Halo 01:44, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Immediate blocks won't do much. Most vandalizing IPs only do it once or twice, and by the time you block them they'll be done. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 05:39, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

This policy would never work in my opinion. There are far too many anonymous IPs that have multiple users. I recall how 300,000+ users from Singapore were blocked because someone didn't notice how they shared the same IP, and someone was using it to vandalize. Jmlk17 20:10, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Support As a frequent vandal patroller, I have noticed that an IP will become very active in vandalism for a short period of time. I believe this could be due to the location the IP comes from, ie) a middle school. Now, this is a hypothetical situation, but if a group of students were on computers researching something in an english class, say Shakespeare, frequently, the WP page is the first one to hit in google. So, now you have a group of students, all accessing the same page and topic, and one student realizes you can edit the page, so they blank the page and add Janie loves Bobby to the page. Now, every student sees this in the class and they are editing like crazy and hence, a vandal attack is inadvertantly initiated. In this case, if the IP was monitored, and accessing the same article and causing vandalism, the IP could be blocked quickly and vandalism would be ended. This also leads to another question, should a short, ie 1hr block be standard for an IP that is identified with a school or similar institution, barring further vandalsim after the 1hr block is up? Plm209 (talk • contribs • count) 19:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Avoid movement in pages

Yesterday's Picture of the day, Image:Translational motion.gif, was extremely distracting; it may well have caused problems for users with cognitive disabilities. It appears to breach WAI-WCAG Web Content Accessibility Guideline number 7.3: "Until user agents allow users to freeze moving content, avoid movement in pages". I suggest a policy that all such images should use a still image, or text, to link to the animated version, with a prior warning. (prior discussion: Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day#Animation, Wikipedia talk:Accessibility#Animated Picture of the Day) Andy Mabbett 21:34, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with this. I don't like animation on pages unless I specifically want it. This allows people who want to see the animations see it and those who don't can see a static page. Perhaps we could have a user setting to have the animated or still version of images load by default on the article pages. Koweja 21:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm with you 100%. But, as I often find in the course of my work, it can be hard to convince people of the importance of accessible web standards. Adrian M. H. 21:43, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree on general principle, but sometimes an animation is essential. For articles on horse gaits for instance, a series of still images just doesn't do the subject justice. A looped vid or animation is the most powerful informative tool on the page in a case like that. If you require a link, I guarantee it will get missed. So I agree with making it policy, but it needs to be clear that it's avoid movement, not a across-the-board ban on animation. VanTucky 22:22, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Of course an outright ban would be bad, I would just like a choice in when we see the animation. You can even make it default to showing animations and users have to check something in their settings to see stills w/ a link to the animation. That'll help prevent people from missing it if we made no-animations the default settings. Maybe even a bar on top of the page if there are animations and the user has animations disabled. Koweja 22:35, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. VanTucky 22:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Warn people about the moving picture but keep it because some people enjoy them and the people who do get seizures from movement dont have to look because they know that the moving picture will be there.adambear8888 19:13, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that some applications may warrant moving images. This should be left to editorial control. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 22:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Can you give an example of a page where it's more important to show (rather than link to) a moving image, than to respect the meeds of users with disabilities? Andy Mabbett 11:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Can't we just create a JS/CSS system where 2 images are preloaded, and then you need to click like a "play" image before the animated image is shown? I think it's possible we just need to find the right place to place the .js Sounds simple and doable. It should still be used with the greatest reserve and stuff, just like any other animated gif we have now, but it would address some of the concerns mentioned above I think. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:59, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

That would involve always sending both images and using up bandwidth. As you're using JS anyway, maybe replacing the image using DOM manipulation would make more sense? --ais523 13:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I just did some testing. we only need a special version of the table collapse scripting. My tests show that hidden elements are loaded when needed, not upon page load in Safari and Firefox. I think it would be relatively easy to change the table collapse code in some code that will switch between a "play" image or the "animated" image. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:53, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I cordially invite you to run a test on the GIF page, which has two three useful but potentially distracting animations. Being able to see the effects would enable people to gauge whether it would be a good idea to implement this feature and doing so on a page heavily devoted to GIF animation might bring some more knowledgeable people into the discussion. GDallimore (Talk) 14:07, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The other problem with using display:none-like code is that it breaks an accessibility guideline itself; see Wikipedia:hiddenStructure. With DOM manipulation code, it'd be possible to degrade in a more graceful manner for ancient browsers (e.g. have the 'play' link take the user to the image description page for the animated version). --ais523 14:09, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Click the image to see the animation. The only drawback seems to be I can't get the image to resize, but maybe I just haven't figured out how to do that yet.

As I outlined on Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day, this capability already exists on MediaWiki with the following syntax: [[Image:Animated.gif|thumb=Still frame.png]]. howcheng {chat} 21:08, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

3 comments copied from Wikipedia talk:Accessibility#Animated Picture of the Day

Could you perhaps clarify the problem with an example or two? What kind of disabilities are affected by animated images? Do the images at Earth#Orbit and rotation and Engine#Modern need to be removed/made-static and have a warning added? Every other animated image on the site?

The only example I can think of that makes obvious sense to make static/warn about, is Strobe light, which is of course linked to from Photosensitive epilepsy. Though possibly its small size makes even that ignorable.

We simply need more to go on, than "is extremely distracting" and "may well cause problems".

Finally, it's the Picture of the Day, it's meant to be distracting! --Quiddity 23:22, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

"We simply need more to go on, than "is extremely distracting" and "may well cause problems". " Indeed, which is why I cited WCAG.

"Do the images at Earth#Orbit and rotation and Engine#Modern need to be removed/made-static and have a warning added?" - Yes. Andy Mabbett 12:04, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

They make JAWS behave more sluggishly (with all modern versions of JAWS I have including the latest one). This is because when the JAWS rendering engine sees a change in a page, it thinks it is a new page and tries to redraw it. This tech support bulletin is slightly relevant, though things have improved since it was written. For what it's worth, I just turned off animations in Internet Explorer - it can be done easily through the tools menu - and sluggishness at the article Earth disappeared. I had never thought of that before I read this conversation and I haven't found anything in the JAWS documentation about non-flash animations. I like the way the picture of the day section works on the main page and I have no objections to animated images being featured as long as they are not directly displayed there. However, in actual articles, I think only static images should be displayed directly. Graham87 12:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

end of copy

The WCAG 1.0 Guidelines you cited are from 1999, and the draft for 2.0 appears to have removed that particular element of advice on general animated images. Possibly because it is indeed now possible to disable them within all major browsers (firefox, IE, opera).

The Strobe issue is addressed by WCAG 2.0 Guidelines #2.3 - Seizure (Working Draft). It should indeed be made-static.

Apart from that, I'm still unsure who exactly is being affected by this? Who are we going to be helping by removing what is, to most, useful content? --Quiddity 18:04, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

The WCAG guidelines v1.0 are still current; version 2.0 is being re-drafted because they were not accepted by the wider community. Andy Mabbett 21:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

But the 1.0 guidelines were developed during the heyday of blinking-rotating-animated interfaces, the monstrosities of geocities and flashturbation. The spirit of the intent was not aimed at removing single useful animations from an encyclopedic page.

You keep arguing the abstract point and tangential concerns, and I keep asking for concrete examples. Who are we going to be helping by removing what is, to most, useful content? Is there a single disability that is seriously affected by the image at Horse gait#Gallop? --Quiddity 01:25, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

"But the 1.0 guidelines were developed during the heyday of blinking-rotating-animated interfaces, the monstrosities of geocities and flashturbation. The spirit of the intent was not aimed at removing single useful animations from an encyclopedic page." - can you cite some evidence to support that claim, or are you just expressing a personal opinion? Andy Mabbett

Call it common sense, call it personal opinion. The web has changed just a little bit in the last 8 years; to ignore that, and the original context, would be foolish. --Quiddity 19:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Common sense as a method of argument is a logical fallacy. The kinds of disability affected by movement or flashing have not changed in that period. Andy Mabbett 12:15, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

"Who are we going to be helping by removing what is, to most, useful content?" - Straw man. No-one is asking to remove useful content; I'm suggesting that where that content is animated, and this breaches WCAG 1.90 guidelines, it's preceded by a simple but clear warning; to help anyone and everyone who is distarcted or made ill by such images, such as people with cognitive disabilities, attention issues or types of dyslexia. I'm not an expert on those issues, but the people who drafted WCAG 1.0 were. Are you? Andy Mabbett 22:21, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, attention issues makes sense. But reducing the utility of the 'pedia for everyone else requires overwhelming need, and frankly I'd like to see an actual complaint from someone suffering a problem first. Similar to the spoiler tag controversy - supposedly noone has been able to find a valid complaint about a lack of spoiler tags yet.

The likelihood that a reader will not click through to an animated image is quite high. Conversely, I find the animated images useful because they capture my attention when I'm scrolling down a page - an animated image will often be the item that makes me curious enough to read that section.

My only suggestion would be for you to draft what you envision as an appropriate policy/instruction-set for animated images, so we can have an example of what you want. Apart from that, I think howcheng's answer above covers the problem adequately.

The last line at Wikipedia:Image use policy#Displayed image size already suggests that "Inline animations should be used sparingly". That's where any changes would go, and a note should be left on its talkpage pointing to this discussion (or move it all to there). --Quiddity 19:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

That guideline is being ignored, or circumvented; presumably because "sparingly" is a weasel-word. Andy Mabbett 12:15, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Image:Roodlicht.gif I support this proposal. Image:Dainsyng.gif Krimpet (talk) 01:56, 17 May 2007 (UTC) Image:Roodlicht (reversed timing).gif

There should be a ban on enforced viewing of moving images. They are distracting. Distraction was also mentioned for removal of movement at Pan Am Flight 103. Non-stop images are the worst. Distracting work colleagues or calling attention to the use of Wikipedia at work can also be a bad thing. Currently, the only options to avoid unrequested moving images are to scroll away or close the page. Neither option is good. I see no reason for a total ban on moving images (the horse gait example is great) just on unrequested image movement. Thanks for bringing this up. Editore99 12:44, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Users who should not be loading Wikipedia from work are not our concern. Unrequested moving images are no greater a concern than sexually explicit images, and we already know how that discussion goes... without concrete descriptions of the harm to be incurred, this needs to be a page-by-page consensus on whether animation is warranted. At most, a guideline for some of those reasonings so they can be more globally applied (though I suspect we already have one, somewhere). -- nae'blis 14:33, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

"Unrequested moving images are no greater a concern than sexually explicit images" - I've heard of sexually explicit images inducing moral outrage, but never epilepsy. Andy Mabbett 09:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

You need to show the evidence that all moving images trigger epilepsy, or concede that not all moving images are bad. -- nae'blis 14:41, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Given that I've never claimed that "all moving images trigger epilepsy"; no, I do not. Andy Mabbett 14:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Given that you think Earth#Orbit and rotation and Engine#Modern need to be made static, I think we need a more clear view of your criteria then. -- nae'blis 15:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

My "criteria" is adherence to WAI-WCAG Web Content Accessibility Guideline number 7.3: "Until user agents allow users to freeze moving content, avoid movement in pages". Andy Mabbett 15:15, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Do you have any answers for my questions/statements 8 comments up (Beginning: "But the 1.0 guidelines were...")? --Quiddity 16:57, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

"Users who should not be loading Wikipedia from work are not our concern." You do not speak on behalf of me so the word our is not appropriate. Editore99 12:04, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Let me rephrase that, then: "There has never been a consensus that Wikipedia should be edited with an eye toward the concern of users who should not be loading the encyclopedia from work." Whether or not you personally have a concern about such, it's not a goal or policy of the encyclopedia. -- nae'blis 14:41, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for rephrasing it. I understand your point and agree that the issue has not arisen before. Editore99 18:20, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I strongly object to this proposal. One of the most powerful features of Wikipedia is the ability to insert moving pictures into the articles. Such moving pictures often make for a far easier-to-understand exposition of a principle than would 1000 words.

Can it be misused? Of course. And I'm sure we'll see that. But properly used, it greatly improves the accessibility of information in our encyclopedia. I look forward to the day when, for example, our tiger article shows video of tigers in motion and not just a few static images.

Atlant 17:11, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I look forward to the day we have a video of a tiger on Wikipedia, too. But I want it to star playing when *I* say so, not the page's authors. This concurs with the findings of every usability study worth its salt. Andy Mabbett 22:23, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Above there was an inquiry as to whether moving or blinking images cause actual problems for soemone. i have been presnet when blinking computer images caused a serious epileptic seziure in another person -- and let me tell you significant harm was done. I'll go into detail if anyone wants. Now most moving images are not in the least likely to cause seizures, any policy about those must rest on other grounds. but images with significant area blinking or changing color on a regular basis such as Image:status.gif can indeed cause a problem. DES ^(talk) 21:16, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't really want to sound insensitive here, but what do we imagine coming next? A ban on police and ambulance lights? You can never be politically right enough, right? Motion sickness is a more regular phenomenon than epileptic fits, but that shouldn't get us to want a ban on passenger airplane flights. I personally have a problem with cathode ray tubes, which makes my eyes hurt bad after every Wikipedia session. I am sure there are millions of other people who has a similar problem. So what do we ban - cathode ray tubes or the Wikipedia or both? Please, banning something is a serious measure, think long and hard before you propose it. It's easy to start banning things, for one reason or another, all with a good intention - smoking, abortion, slash-and-burn agriculture, euthanasia, polygamy, inter-religion marriage - whatever. But, when we start stretching things, where do we stop? Before we all go and ban something as little as a blinking image, we might end up becoming either a bureaucracy or an authoritative regime - both highly against our fundamental principles. Please, think again. I don't think this discussion should be about seizures, value of moving images or bandwidth. It should rather be more about principles and ideologies. Aditya Kabir 16:13, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Please avoid slippery slope as a method of debate. Andy Mabbett 14:46, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

But that's an integral part of the argument that you are relying upon. It's a rare image that would trigger an epileptic seizure, yet we're supposed to ban all motion (in large part) because of that. Clearly, objectionable images can be dealt with on an individual basis.

Atlant 16:39, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

There is a difference between a government banning soemthing in real life, and a website adopting a policy of what images it will and won't use -- anyone who doesn't like wikipedia's policies is free to find a wiki with different ones. There is also a significant difference between the harm done by a seizure and by motion sickness, and there is also a difference in the oppertunity of a potential victim to anticipate and avoid the problem -- people generally know when they are about to get on a vehicle that may cause motion sickness. In many jurisdictions the design of flashing lights for emergency vehicles has been altered to reduce the chance of seizures -- and the positive benefit provided by such lights is IMO rather higher than that provided by flashing images on wikipedia not behind a link. DES ^(talk) 17:10, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Please, avoid an intention to stop a method of argument that is quite popular in areas as diverse as macro-economics, criminal law, mechanics, and public health. And, please, if you really want to advise someone to leave Wikipedia if the policies is not suitable, then stop discussing them and start hurling people out of the community. We discuss policies that we like or don't like, and try to build a consensus (that includes non-existent policies that have a potential to become). If you don't like the way Wikipedia operates, I guess, you can leave it and start one Wiki on your own, with complete liberty to drive people out. Now for the slippery slope, I'd like to ask a simple question - do we go out banning stuff left and right and act like a stiff bureaucracy? Or do we depend on the editors to work towards a great encyclopedia, and try out a system that politely asks people to make careful use of blinking images? I stand for the second route (I have already removed one blinking image I was using, and that didn't need a banning policy). Cheers. Aditya Kabir 17:19, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Evidence

• A presentation on Chronic Fatigue which notes the harmful effects of movement on web pages. Andy Mabbett 18:55, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

• More. To support the above on Photosensitive epilepsy, I am adding the following research findings (Harding, Graham; Photosensitivity: a vestigial echo?, The first Grey Walter lecture; International Journal of Psychophysiology, 1994, volume 16, pages 273-279.):

• About one in 4000 individuals has photosensitive epilepsy. Repetitive flashing lights may induce seizures in these individuals. The flash frequency of concern is from 5 Hz to 70 Hz, with most individuals only susceptible in the range of 15 Hz to 20 Hz.
• A flashing strobe (or a close combination of multiple strobes sequenced together) must not be programmed to flash in the 5 Hz to 70 Hz frequency range.
• Slower flash rates, and randomly flashing lights are not known to be a cause of photosensitive epilepsy.
• Point sources of light are much less likely to induce seizures than a diffuse source of light which covers a large part of a person's field of vision.
• To induce a seizure the light must be present in the center of the field of vision as opposed to the periphery.
• Reducing brightness or increasing distance between a photosensitive viewer and the light source is effective for preventing photosensitive epileptic seizures.
• Lights flashing in the distance, even in the frequency range of concern, are not known to cause seizures when in the presence of other lights of a more natural or chaotic nature.
• The probability of inducing a seizure is greatly increased (by up to a factor of ten) if the light source is arranged in a regular pattern, such as a raster scan image. (This would be far more difficult to accomplish with the DMX Multi-Strobe Brik than with say, a television image.) Stated another way, avoid adding spatial contrast (pattern) to temporal contrast (flickering).

It is also widely known that seizures in photosensitive individuals may be triggered by events like:

• Flickering or rolling television images
• Certain video games
• Computer monitors
• Alternating patterns of different colors

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 proposes the following remedies to the threat:

• Allow users to control flickering, avoid causing the screen to flicker
• Allow users to control blinking, avoid causing content to blink
• Allow users to freeze moving content, avoid movement in pages
• Provide the ability to stop the refresh, do not create periodically auto-refreshing pages
• Provide the ability to stop auto-redirect, do not use markup to redirect pages automatically. Instead, configure the server to perform redirects.

There also have been evidence that Epileptic Seizures can be self-induced, like looking at the sun and blinking rapidly. May be it naturally follows that an outright ban would be a too simple minded solution. I propose that we develop a start button for moving/flashing/blinking images, and incorporate that into the coding for such images. May be a bot can help. There is no evidence to tell us that people who may be able to provide with such images of great educational value are also adept enough in writing codes that incorporate a "start" button. Aditya Kabir 04:34, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

• Post Script As for seemingly cute but actually quite silly images like Image:Status.gif (not that I mind the silly, I used the image myself), which has no educational value whatsoever - they can always go. There already is a deletion debate going on, and it doesn't warrant a high-handed policy/guideline at that.

Absolutely agree that images should not animate until being told to animate. The proposed inline Flash video player could handle this, no? — Omegatron 17:29, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Overhaul of article assessment

See WP:ASO.

Hit counter for every article in Wiki.

I feel a hit counter has many advantages:

1. May serve as a measure of 'popularity' for an article.
2. It motivates contributors to do more on the article if they know that it is popular.
3. May serve as a measure of 'reliable content' if it is accessed by many people.
4. Acts as a reward to the author because so many people read his/her article.
5. And many more that I can't think of right now in this quick post.

I don't know wheter it is appropriate for Wiki but for example 'planetMath' do have it.
Also, a hit counter wouldn't be appropriate for the 'Main Page' as the articles differ frequently.
Just to add another, a hit counter for each article may be used one for each year in order to assess its time evolution. Edyirdaw 14:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC).

This is not feasible on Wikipedia because of the server load it can incur. You may be interested in some aspects of Special:Statistics. -- nae'blis 14:27, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

We do have this though.↔NMajdan•talk 14:28, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

And what is more, if that was visible on every article, it would make it easier for vandals to target either the very popular pages for maximum exposure, or the least viewed pages for the best chance of going unnoticed. Bad idea. But to answer your points:

1. It is not a contest.
2. I have no desire to concentrate on mainstream and/or popular articles. Quite the opposite.
3. I doubt if very many of "my" creations are high-traffic (often quite obscure) but they are still reliable. 100% I hope.
4. Same answer as 1 and 2. I'm not in it for the glory.

Adrian M. H. 21:04, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it would just end up becoming a popularity contest or a vanity issue for far too many users. Jmlk17 20:14, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't the server logs already have the necessary data? If not, tracking this data wouldn't demand a lot of resources and it would address the primary criticism of Wikipedia

And measuring updates as a proportion of hits(views) would avoid a popularity contest while providing a measurement of reliability. See post below about measuring the reliability of an article

I Agree With You,The Wiki Should Must Accept This Proposal.Good Idea

SunnyIndia 09:35, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Strong oppose. Because of quite a few reasons:

1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and encyclopedic content can't or shouldn't be judged by popularity
2. It is only natural that Linda Lovelace will always have more hits than The Old Man and the Sea (check here to see that latest films and human organs have way more hits than almost any of the featured content
3. There is no reason that accuracy or authenticity will draw more hits than human vanity and well circulated behavior patterns
4. This would actually promote Wikipedia:WikiProject Pornography over Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias very strongly (it roughly translates into a typical Big Mac becoming more imprortant than 1 billion Chinese people, just because the Chinese visit the English much less than the average American)
5. In a world where MySpace is way more popular than BBC how can we suppose that "popularity" is a measure of "reliability"? (Hitler was very popular when he won the election, but was he reliable?)
6. Instead of addressing the primary criticism aganist Wikipedia it will aggravate the criticism deeply, with a possibility of turning an encyclpedia into a farce of popularity parade
7. And, of course, for all of the reasons already stated above

Very, very bad idea. Aditya Kabir 20:18, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

British/English

In my opinion British and English are 2 different things depending on the subject matter. English LAW and English LANGUAGE are two seperate and easily distinguished matters. I refer to, as one of possibly many Wikipedia examples, the subpoena article, extract pasted here in parenthesis (The subpoena has its source in English common law and it is now used almost with universal application throughout the Anglo-American common law world. However, for Civil proceedings in England and Wales, the term has been replaced by witness summons, as part of reforms to replace Latin terms with easier to understand English terms.) The link in question in in bold. To the uninitiated or layman, this could be confusing. I therefore propose that all links featuring the word 'English' with a reference to England as a country (law, culture etc but NOT language obviously) could have a (GB) suffix attached, so the previously highlighted link would read 'English(GB) common law', so to distinguish that 'English' means 'originated in England ' rather than be possibly confused with the English language, that is obviously used worldwide.

The alternate proposal is that 'American English' should be described by the term 'American', while 'British English' should be described by the term 'English'. Neither proposal is realistic. Addhoc 12:28, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, hasn't this been as issue around here for quite some time? Even down to spelling (colour vs. color, centre vs. center, etc). I think that if it is readable and grammatically correct, it doesn't matter which version the article is in. Jmlk17 20:05, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

How could English common law possibly be confused with the English language? Incidentally, of course British and English are two different things - one refers to Britain and one to England! -- Necrothesp 14:10, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Edit Summary link

Can we have the Edit Summary link open in a new window. A couple of times I've gone to put in my edit summary after a long edit and ended up losing everything because I clicked in the wrong place. Thank you, C0N6R355^talk_contribs 17:03, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

In most browsers, you can get your edit back if you click on 'back' immediately. I also agree that new-window opening on links in the interface for the edit window would be useful, but it would require a software change. --ais523 11:11, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I've done the same thing, and, while it is a pain in the butt, it doesn't happen often enough to me to vote for a change in software. Jmlk17 20:16, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

All it requires is some editing to MediaWiki:Minoredit, not a software change. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 11:05, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Hiding Footnotes/References/Notes

As you all know, most articles have references, notes or footnotes at the end of the article. But some articles have a massive list such as Spider-Man 3 and Virginia Tech massacre. They take up a lot of room, so perhaps, could we start using the hide tag:

{{hidden begin|header=header}}

{{hidden end}}

to hide it, to save space? Just a thought. — « hippi ippi » 05:27, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you'd get any benefit, they're tucked away at the end after all the content anyway. As for spider-man 3, that article has too many references, many of them are used only once to cite little things that are probably covered in any of the other reasonably complete references. I'd like to see some consolidation and pruning going on to make it less crowded. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 05:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

This has been tried in the past, and as I recall if they are hidden by default it breaks the footnotes -- i.e. when you click on a footnote you are not taken to the reference. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:56, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh... okay. There goes my (unoriginal) idea. Ok then, I'll live. — « hippi ippi » 10:58, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Night's comments. To be honest, I'd rather see a huge list of references then see an article with a huge amount of whitespace. As Night said they are tucked away at the bottom, so I don't see any good reason why they should be hidden. –Sebi ~ 09:53, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist Categories

I currently have 115 items on my Watchlist. What I think would be useful would be a way to group items into categories such as Radio, TV, Wikipedia (pages like this for example), Education, Computing etc.

The you could select the category and see if any changes have been made to set pages rather than having a long list of changes. pjb007 14:27, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Here's a "low-tech" way to do it. Create alternate accounts, such as User:Pjb007a, User:Pjb007b, and so forth, and put on the user page a link to your main account. (This is permitted per WP:SOCK.) Then create a separate watchlist for each user account. YechielMan 16:16, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Only 115 items? This survey might interest you then. Adrian M. H. 17:17, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like an interesting userscript project. I guess it would be a major PITA to design a even marginally efficient way to store and retrieve dataset<->location pairings though (especially with bigger watchlists where this would be most useful). -- Seed 2.0 19:58, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Use related changes to achieve a similar effect to what you're saying. Place links to all the articles that you would want in one group on a user subpage, and when you're viewing that page and click "related changes" in the toolbox, you'll see a watchlist-type pages as if only those pages were on the watchlist. —METS501 (talk) 21:47, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

It seems like a good idea, if it was in a user script, and not something that is default in your watchlist. I would prefer categorising by namespace but even then it would only be useful if you have a high amount of articles in your watchlist. –Sebi ~ 10:09, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Ability to gauge quality of information

A simple way to gauge the quality of the information in an article, or more accurately the extent to which the information is accepted, would be to measure the number of edits in proportion to the number of visitors. The theory is that the greater the number of people viewing the article the more opportunity there is to make corrections. Therefore, an article that is viewed by many but edited by few contains widely accepted information. However, an article that contains many edits in proportion to the number of viewers contains more dynamic and less accepted information. A more static article is expected to be more accurate.

These measures would need to be constrained to a period of time. For instance, the number of viewers and editors could be from the past day, week or month. An analysis of the frequency of edits of existing articles would likely reveal an optimal period of time based on the article total lifespan. For example, the quality of information in an article that is only a month old may be measured by activity in the past two weeks, whereas an article that is a year old is measured based on activity in the past month. There are lots of options for determining the time frame.

The resulting metric could be represented as a rating (low, med, high; 1-5; etc) near the title of each article to indicate to users the reliability of the information they are reading. Metrics could also be produced for each independent block of an article to give a more granular measurement since the blocks are edited independently of one another.

Unfortunately, due to server resources, we don't track the number of visitors to each page. —METS501 (talk) 00:35, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

The server logs should contain the number or requests for each page. If Wikipedia has customized those log files it wouldn't require a great deal of resources to track this info - 65.196.71.3 14:57, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Intersecting Categories

Does anyone know of an easy way to cross-reference two categories? As in, I'm looking for all articles related to biochemistry that need cleanup, or the like. Besides, of course, skimming through the actual categories. Someguy1221 00:15, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this feature is available as "List comparer" in AutoWikiBrowser. —METS501 (talk) 00:31, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Category intersection is a perennial feature request that may actually get implemented if someone can figure out how to manage the server load it will create. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 23:08, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Image sizing

There's been considerable discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Images regarding bot removals of thumbnail size tags from articles. There appear to be three broad schools of opinion at present:

1. Thumbnail sizes are inherently evil because they override user preferences - including those of people with accessibility issues e.g. visual impairment. People who want to change from the default 180px should get an account and set their preferences accordingly.
2. Removing thumbnail sizes is evil. Very few readers even consider getting an account (remembering that only a very small percentage of readers become editors, and relatively few editors become account holders). We should size images so that they're easily legible to the vast majority of visitors. That often means that they need to be bigger than 180px.
3. Thumbnail sizes are a necessary evil at present because the MediaWiki 180px default size is too small for the average display. On a 1024x768+ screen (most modern PCs), 180px images are little better than postage stamps and are overwhelmed by the text. The minority of users who require small (or very large) images might be easily encouraged to register an account; we shouldn't handicap the encyclopaedia just to cater to the visually-impaired, etc., many of whom are probably already familiar with making accessibility adjustments during their internet usage. The default thumbnail size should be increased to, say, 220px, to reflect the larger average display size of modern computers.

I'm pretty much in agreement with #3. It strikes me that, ideally, two changes would please most people here:

1. Increase the default image size somewhat.
2. Allow thumbnail sizing for odd-aspect-ratio images and change the software so that user preferences override article image sizes, rather than vice-versa (is there already a setting for this somewhere?).

Opinions from a broader audience would be welcomed. Cheers, --YFB ¿ 23:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

• My opinion is that there should be a software solution. Editors should have the ability to make some thumbs larger (maps, paintings with small details) and some smaller (simple diagrams, etc.). Users should have an ability to set preference to see thumbs larger (if they have good monitors and Internet connections) or smaller. I would suggest syntax like [[image:..|thumb|150%|...]where the size is set as a percentage to the default image size set in user preferences. If user set default to 300px, the image would be shown as 450px, If user set the default to 100px, the image would be shown as 150px, etc. For now, I would recommend to use fixed sizes then it matter: the image clearly should be shown in the size above 180px or clearly in the size bellow 180px. Otherwise we should use defaults sizes Alex Bakharev 07:07, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that rather than setting pixels, the best solution would be to allow editors to set the proportion of the width of the article space that an image would take up (say 5% 10% 20% and so on) which would be uniform regardless of the monitor size. That would allow editors to set a page layout that would be constant regardless of the viewing device. Although I am not a technical person and so have no idea whether this is feesible or not. G-Man * 19:21, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is possible with CSS. Dynamic page layouts, by the way, can never be truly consistent. Adrian M. H. 20:52, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Just to clarify: it would take a change in the wiki image syntax to accept anything other than pixels. It fails to respect the surrounding div with any other measurement.

I like the idea of percentages. I wonder how hard it would really be to change it. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 20:20, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it's worth mentioning a function similar to Alex Bakharev's idea has been implemented already (just a few days ago): [[Image:...|thumb|upright|...]] will display the thumb at 75% of the thumb width; this is supposed to be used for unusually high images. This factor can be changed, e.g. [[Image:...|thumb|upright=0.6|...]] uses 60% and widths are rounded to the nearest multiple of 10. (I'm not sure whether this is documented anywhere on en.WP yet--I couldn't find it.) --Dapeteばか 22:33, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Image zoom

I have two issues with the image pages - no caption, and checkerboard backgrounds. An attempt has been made to provide an image description but it does not serve the end user well - it's usually buried in the maintenance material - not good.

The checkerboard is displayed as if the image page were an image editor. Editors show checkerboard to indicate a transparent background. The end user does not want an editor's view of the image.

People need to zoom on images, especially the plots with small text labels. That's a weakness of html, and one reason why technical content tends to be published in pdf. Let's overcome this limit of html and provide the end-user a high quality image zoom facility, with caption, ane without the maintenance content, up to par with the general high quality of wikipedia. Rtdrury 19:42, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Naming conventions (Indic)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Indic) should not be tagged as "inactive". It is being actively linked to as guideline. It was tagged as "historical" because there was no "active debate". I find this strange, because the absense of debate does not necessarily mean the page is obsolete. It may also mean, incredibly, that there is consensus and the page is stable. dab (𒁳) 07:01, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

You appear to be correct. Be bold and remove the inactive tag! YechielMan 13:50, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Good advice Yechiel...only by being bold can this project keep growing and changing as much as it has the potential to. Jmlk17 20:49, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Multiple tags

I've seen a few articles lately that have multiple cleanup tags, and clog up the page alot. Could we possibly discuss a new template that could have multiple cleanup tags all merged into one cleanup tag. I am not proposing that we create a combination template for all possibilities of combinations of cleanup tags (e.g. {{unreferenced-or}}, {{unreferenced-npov}}, etc) but like This article does not {{{1}}} and is not {{{2}}}. or similar. Please discuss pros and cons of this idea. –Sebi ~ 10:01, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not in favor. I think it's helpful to list each problem separately because it makes it easier to read through them, and it's simple to remove one tag while keeping the others, or to add a new one. If you are concerned about visual clutter - and that is a valid concern - I wonder if there's a way to shrink some of the templates, as was done with Template:Uncategorized. YechielMan 13:48, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm opposed as well. Not all articles need to have multiple tags. Some just need a slight wikify, while not needing to be references. It's a big step to make a page sport many different tags, and it should be a complete mess in order to do so. Jmlk17 20:51, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

See {{Articleissues}}, which was kept at TfD. –Pomte 21:13, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Reliability noticeboard proposed

See Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources#Reliability_noticeboard for a proposal about a new noticeboard, a kind of RfC for discussion of reliability of specific sources.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  17:24, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Unclear status of Wikipedia:Reliable sources/examples

This useful page seems partially forgotten, and has no clear status, I have labelled it with 'proposed'. See also my comments at relevant discussion page about how it ties to aspects of WP:ATT/FAQ.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  17:32, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Edit summaries

Currently, the limit for edit summaries is 200 words. Perhaps that can be extended to 300 (or 400, for that matter) words. The reason is that sometimes, people want to provide more detailed summaries; they have to use abbreviations because of the short limit. Universe=atom^{•Talk•Contributions•} 18:28, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I dont't know, bu I believe that is characters, not words. Reywas92^{TalkHow's my editing?} 19:24, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I think perhaps an expansion to 250 might be in order. But 400 words in quite a lot of writing for an edit summary in my opinion. Jmlk17 20:52, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, 250 is the maximum edit summary length that MediaWiki accepts. For some reason, the edit form's textbox has its maximum length set to only 200. The number can easily be altered with JavaScript, or even better, in the software itself. Gracenotes^T § 03:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually the current maximum is 200 characters, not words. There is no minimum. I was only thinking of having the max extended. Universe=atom^{•Talk•Contributions•} 17:55, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I would like a maximum higher than what it is at the moment, if technically feasible (250 is just below 255, so there may be reasons why it was chosen). Increasing the edit-summary-box maximum would be helpful; I'm fed up of having to edit my edit summaries just to make them shorter.

Oops, I meant "characters" as well. Eh, the following js code might be useful.

addOnloadHook(function() {
    var sumBox;
    if (sumBox = document.getElementById('wpSummary'))
        sumBox.setAttribute("maxlength", "250");
});

Gracenotes^T § 13:03, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

New template for global perspectives task force

I am posting here to let the community know about the creation of a new template that is being used by the Global perspectives task force of the Project on countering systemic bias. This template will be placed on talk pages to let editors know that the task force is actively working to improve the global perspective of an article. In that sense, the template will work in concert with the existing cleanup templates, which are typically put on article pages. I am not 100 percent sure this is the right place to announce this new template, so I welcome suggestions of other places I should post this information. I also welcome any questions or comments about the template or the global perspectives task force. Thanks! --Mackabean 20:21, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Sandbox name?

What would everyone think of changing the name of the sandbox? Right now, Sandbox gets nothing but vandalism. There are plenty of warnings that this article is not the place to play around, but people do so anyway. No article exists by the name of Edit test area, so if we renamed the sandbox to Wikipedia:Edit test area and made Edit test area a protected redirect, that might cut down on the mainspace test edits. --BigDT 22:58, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree personally. I think Sandbox is a cool name, and it is meant to be a test area anyway, so why does it matter if someone adds some junk to it? It is reverted almost immediately anyway. Jmlk17 23:21, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

You misunderstand. The article Sandbox gets vandalism because people go there looking for Wikipedia:Sandbox. The problem isn't people vandalizing the page in Wikipedia: space - the problem is people vandalizing the article. --BigDT 23:25, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like that much vandalism. If it gets higher, just semi-protect. As people usually using it have just created an account, semi-protection will work, since editors must be autoconfirmed to edit semi-protected pages, and if I remember right, auto-confirmation takes 4 days. Any other people doing editing tests probably know they're at the wrong page. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:56, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

We could introduce some sort of message that appears when you are editing the article stating "If you are making a test edit, please use Wikipedia:Sandbox" or similar. –Sebi ~ 00:05, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, we can't keep reverting test edits on the article without letting the test editors be notified that they are at the wrong page. The small italic note at the top of the article doesn't seem to suffice. –Sebi ~ 00:10, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Template for byte quantities

The current WP:MOSNUM, regarding binary prefix, recommend to "stay with established usage, and follow the lead of the first major contributor to the article." and also suggest that "The use of parentheses for binary prefixes "Example: 256 KB (KiB)". As WP:MOSNUM state , "There is currently no consensus as to whether common binary prefixes or the IEC-recommended prefixes should be used in Wikipedia articles.". That lead to chronic edit war and lengthy arguments. The acceptance of the IEC notation has been slow, both in the industry and in the public at large, and it is reasonable to think that is will still take significant time, years in not decades, before the usage is settled.

This proposal attempt to eliminate few of the most commons objections raised during the debates on this topic. These are, in no particular order

• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and therefore exactitude and precise standard conformance are paramount
• Wikipedia is the reflect of the world as it is not as it 'should' be.
• Legacy hardware have all their reference materials written using usual notation therefore IEC notation are confusing
• Non-specialist user is confused when seeing S.I prefix used with a different value than their expected meaning

and of course, at the end of the day, a lot of the arguing is motivated by a very strong force : personal taste.

The following templates Template:KiB Template:MiB Template:GiB Template:TiB are proposed. They take 2 positional parameters. The first one is the size itself, a number. the second is an optional unit.

For example: If an editor has no preference he would defer to the template, which should reflect the then current consensus. In this current version of the tempalte version that would give: {{KiB|16}} -> 16 KB (KiB)

If an editor whish to use the traditional notation, he would use {{KiB|16|KB}} -> 16 KB

A benefit of the few extra characters is that it make apparent to any other editors that the editor knew that KB was a binary prefix in this context, and that he belive that it still should be represented as traditional notation.

But the main feature of these templates is that they are wirtten in such a way that a user can customized his environment in order to see these units in his favorite representation.. Indeed, thanks the good work of User:Mike Dillon, a small piece of javascript can be used by any user who want to see only his favorite notation.

for example:

var byteSuffixes = {
    "kib": "KiB",
    "mib": "MiB",
    "gib": "GiB",
    "tib": "TiB"
};
importScript('User:Mike Dillon/Scripts/byteQuantities.js');

to have only IEC unit displayed or

var byteSuffixes = {
    "kib": "KB",
    "mib": "MB",
    "gib": "GB",
    "tib": "TB"
};
importScript('User:Mike Dillon/Scripts/byteQuantities.js');

to have only traditional unit display.

Note that it will not impact the place where the unit HAS to be one way or the other for the article to make sens, like for instance in binary prefix, since only the text using the template will be impacted.

The proposal is as follows:

• That these template be mentionned in WP:MOSNUM
• That on pages relating to legacy hardware/software, the main editors be encouraged to use them in order to indicate the consensus on the page and to clarify to other editor that the choice of unit is purposeful and not an oversight.
• That editors in general do not fight the usage of such template, so long as their introduction do not change the normal appearance of the page (that is without any javascript helpers)
• That the existence of the technique based on javascript be mentioned so that user that have a strong opinion on the matter can satisfy their preference.

The current form of the Template is not necessarely part of this proposal. The only characteristic of the template that are part of the proposal is the use of the class attribute in order to make the javascript substitution technique works cleanly. -- Shmget 03:52, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

• Seems overly complex for little gain. >Radiant< 12:06, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Images

Would someone please be kind as to find some good images for an article I made and an article I Wikified. The article are:

My created article- Gold Coast Art Centre.

The edited article- Gold Coast City Art Gallery.

Please find very suitable, good images for both this articles. Please contact me at my Talk page if you've replied to this request.

§→Nikro 15:29, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Place {{reqphoto}} on each talk page and/or add a request for each article at Wikipedia:Requested pictures. Adrian M. H. 19:49, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Good luck...also, this probably wasn't the right area to go looking for image requests, as Adrian was kind enough to give you a template and links. Jmlk17 21:31, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

WelcomeBot

A new type of welcomebot proposal is being discussed here.

More convenient way to discuss recent edits with other users

Currently it is not very convenient for users to identify and discuss recent edits in an article. I have a few proposals to make the "peer review" process easier, so that more readers will read and comment on recent contributions:

• To find recent edits, you currently need to go to the history page and do a comparison with a previous version. This could be facilitated by having a direct link to show changes made in the "Last 7 days" and "Last 30 days". Some edits would need to be flagged as vandalism, to prevent them showing up again 7 days later in the comparison.
• After discovering an edit that requires discussion, you currently have to start a section on the talk page, and explain which edit you're talking about. It would be much easier to have a link from the History page, allowing you to create a discussion automatically (or to take you to a pre-existing discussion). Readers of the discussion could then click a standardized link to see a "before/after" comparison for the corresponding edit, so everyone knows exactly which content they are discussing.
• When submitting an edit for an article, a user should have the option of creating a corresponding discussion thread. This would be helpful if the user feels that some improvement could be made to the new content, or if it is likely to prove controversial. It would also be courteous to give other users the opportunity to comment after removing unwanted material from the article.
• Comments posted in a discussion should drawn automatically to the attention of the user who made the corresponding edit.

Mtford 02:00, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Weighted Random Article Link

I enjoy the "Random article" link on the left navigation menu, but it takes some clicking before it conjures up an article of interest. Mostly, it seems to pull up small stubs. I'd like to see a "weighted random" link that pulls up a random page selected by popularity - i.e. any page that has 100 times more visits will be 100 times as likely to be chosen as one that has only ever been viewed by its creator.

I have to imagine the wiki software has a page hit counter somewhere.

It does, but is disabled for performance reasons. x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:24, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't really make it random, now does it? Besides, stubs are meant to be expanded, and if we have a weighted system, it'll just start brining up the same pages over and over again eventually. Jmlk17 23:04, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe the true essence of the "Random article" button is that it is "Random". I would not be oppposed to having a most viewed pages button on the menu. My signature is not WP:COI. :) --Random ^{Say it here!} 03:36, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I think there's an off-wiki page somewhere that has the top 100 pages. And yes, random article is designed to show shorter pages. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 03:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

The location is here. However, don't you think it would be kind of cool to have it more accessible. --Random ^{Say it here!} 03:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

If you take a look at top 100 most popular pages, which cover very a large proportionof our hits, you'll see most of them either involve something linked from the Main Page, something linked from a popular web site, or something involving sex. I think a random article that returned one of these most of the time wouldn't be all that useful. Dcoetzee 05:05, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Also whatever the popular movie of the month is, and numerous pages about Naruto. --tjstrf talk 18:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: Gnome Day

Originally posted this at the talk page for WP:CLEANUP but I thought it might get more eyes here. Didn't see it on perennial proposals.

Some points:

- It goes without saying that Wikipedia is in need of a massive, massive, massive amount of cleanup. From typos to wikification to bad prose to poor articles, the list goes on. Not to mention all of the backlogs.

- People who perform cleanup tasks are known as WikiGnomes.

- There was a "Spring Cleaning" day proposed awhile back, but the page has been deleted (it was in userspace, and I believe the user left. I wish I could remember who it was so they could get credit for the idea.)

- June 21st is International Gnome Day.

Starting to add up? Basically, the day would be set aside for a massive cleanup effort by any and all editors who wish to participate. If there's enough interest I or someone else could set up a Wikipedia/WikiProject page for it with sign up list. There could be some sort of running total of work done, although hopefully so many articles will be improved that this won't even be feasible. (The original idea suggested shutting down new article creation and anonymous editing, but that will never happen.) This gives more than enough time to "rally the troops", as it were, a worthy cause, and an exciting moniker to make cleanup fun! :)

Thoughts? Crystallina 04:30, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd support an extended drive, a week or a month, with site-wide notices and motivations for people who participate, like "I wikified X pages in the 2007 cleanup drive!" Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 07:15, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I might be down with that :). Jmlk17 08:20, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Agree, especially with the first point. I think the issue might be started within the Wikipedia:WikiGnome/Kudos. IMO we require more gnomes to face the increasing backlog issues. --Brand спойт 11:14, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

A week/month could work - in fact that'd probably be better. If it were me I'd probably have it start on the 21st though, just to get in the reference. Crystallina 16:36, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I would love to have a month of no new articles and no new image uploads ... just cleanup what we have. That probably won't happen, though. --BigDT 15:38, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

All right, I wrote a first draft of an essay page here: User:Crystallina/Gnome Week. Does it look okay? If so, I'll go ahead and move it out of my userspace. Crystallina 23:33, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I like the concept, I say go ahead and move it out onto the WP space. I will be adding my name momentarily. --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 01:10, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

"TEAT" - An historical novel about Isaiah Dorman, the only African American to fight with the Seventh Cavalry at "Custer' Last Stand."

To Whom It May concer:

I spent many years in research and five years writing it. I had a Literary Agent and dear friend who was to submit the story to Publishers specializing in this subject matter. I believe my agent, Mark Bredt, died last month. All communication has ceased. I discovered your wonderful web-site when I thought about contacting the publisher of "Son of the Morning Star," which, as you know was the last mega-hit on the "Battle" and the persons and events that led up to it.

The manuscript is 268 pages long. I've been told it's a "real page turner!" At the end of the novel the reader discovers what Heaven tuly is. I went on the Custer web-site. As you know, there must be over one hundred historical books about him, but not one novel! History books tell you what happened, my historical novel tells you how it felt. I believe it is a first and, like Son of the Morning Star, would not only be the next "Super Hit'" but an epic motion picture like "Dances With Wolves and, unlike "Wolves," it would also make a terrific televison series.

I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Respectfully yours,

O.C. Jenkins, Jr.

Sir, I am not sure that this is the correct website for you to be promoting your book. It does not interesting, but I recommend you keep trying else. Also, I am not exactly sure what you are hoping to get a reply towards. Good luck however, and best wishes. Jmlk17 20:51, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

However, there is a wikipedia page on Isaiah Dorman which looks like it could use expansion, improvement, and supporting cites. -- Boracay Bill 23:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Excellent suggestion! The article could benefit greatly from your knowledge. Jmlk17 05:23, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

In case you're still confused, I should point out that this website is a general-interest encyclopedia, and is not affiliated with the book-publishing industry in any way.--Pharos 05:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Your novel is certainly not the first one about Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. See Little Big Man, a novel and motion picture in which Custer's Last Stand is the high point and focus. Edison 15:11, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

The page has been created per discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources#Reliability_noticeboard.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  18:21, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Snakes on a wikipedia

An article named State Snakes {or whatever you want, I don't care}, should be made, listing all 50 states, which are redirects or links to a list of snakes {including a clear, very visible picture for each snake, and a good discription of the snake, and a picture or map showing where they live} in that state (Example: Click on Missouri and it takes you to a list of all the snakes in missouri.) and if i'm correct, i didn't find any article like these, so all these articles might need to be created. This would help people check to see what snakes are in a state, and what they look like, in case they're planning to move and want to be prepared, or if there's a snake and their garden or their yard, and they need to see what it is, and a picture will be very helpful, so a picture for every snake and a map of picture of were they live for every snake listed could be very helpful. So this could all be a good idea. after all, Wikipedia is supposed to be so people can find the imformation they need. §→Nikro 20:46, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Not sure, but wouldn't that article and the accompanying articles be quite long? I mean, how many species of snakes are there in each state? It must be a large number. Just a thought and comment. Jmlk17 04:17, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

List or category? (SEWilco 01:13, 31 May 2007 (UTC))

Ya, but think of the good it can do, I mean, there's a copperhead in my garden and i'd like this idea, incase any other snakes are spotted. And if I want to move out of state, this would be helpful, and if an unknown snake is seen, this could identify it. This would be very useful and quite helpful. §→Nikro 11:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh believe me, I think it could potentially be quite useful. But is there a source online (or off) that actually has listings of snakes of each state? Jmlk17 21:15, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Ya... Um... Hello, ain't there sources online {and off} that you can find out stuff and learn more, so why need Wikipedia, besides, wikipedia is almost the first place some people looks to find stuff, and wikipedia to meant to help people find imformation, {That can be found on and off line}. Imformation that this proposal can provide if accepted. §→Nikro 23:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Of course, no one is stopping you from creating such a list for your (or any other) state. I myself created List of Minnesota reptiles which the community expectedly expanded. Grika Ⓣ 20:53, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd say something like List of reptiles in the United States. bibliomaniac15 An age old question... 01:49, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Top bar with more options

Currently, the top bar (don't know if it has a name) includes the user page, talk page, preferences, the watchlist, contributions, and the log out option. I was wondering if it was possible for there to be an option in preferences that would allow users to add other pages to this top bar. It appears that there is room for at least four or five more pages/options that could be added. Users could choose to add subpages they have (for image galleries they have, sandboxes, userboxes, templates they always use, etc.), specific articles they are working on at the moment that they may not want to type in all the time, or other user's pages or talk pages. Is this feasible? If it is, by allowing it in preferences, users could modify it how they wanted or if they choose, not modify it at all. --Nehrams2020 06:33, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering about this recently, although it would probably be through users' CSS files if it can be done at all. Adrian M. H. 14:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Not quite the same thing, but I just found Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation shortcuts, which can add stuff to the links pane. Adrian M. H. 18:20, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Neat! Thanks. I was wondering the same thing earlier this week actually. Jmlk17 21:17, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

That's a cool link, thanks. Is this the only location where this can be proposed or is there another place where someone else would know? --Nehrams2020 00:14, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Templates for common topics

I noticed that many items from within a certain topic are very inconsistent. For example if i look up two different movies some of the most common and important information (Date released, Actors, directors, ect...) can range from being very easy to find to very difficult depending on who wrote the article. If we create common topic templates that convey the most common and important information first then any additional information afterwards this would give wikipedia more consistent feel, easier to use and more useful. Topic templates can range any where from pharmacuticals, animal classification, plant classification, movies, people, to musical albums.

I agree, it can't harm anything, in fact, it can only be good from my point of view. §→Nikro 12:00, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Infobox templates allow you to easily spot the essential info. Article text does not need to be strictly standardized, I think. If info is hard to find, try organizing the sections in a better way for that particular article. There are general guidelines like Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Style guidelines. –Pomte 09:03, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

New posts on top of List

• Why not have the new posts on the top of the list, instead of at the bottom. This way then the older it gets, therefore most people have said what they want or lost interest, the further down the list it is. This way then one does not have to go all the way to the bottom for the most currest posts; it is automatically near the top of the list. The oldest ones will just fall off the list automatically then due to Old age.
• Can one put a Watch just on the posts one made. Then a peroson would only check back if there is a response to one's post. Otherwise now one has to check back even though there has not been a response yet (possibly a waste of time). If not, can software be designed to make these features happen?--Doug ^talk 13:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like you want a messageboard format. That's not how a Wiki works. Anyway, in direct response to your questions:

• First suggestions sounds like a bad idea. You read from top to bottom, so following a discussion top to bottom is far better and easier. In any event, a long talk page will have a list of contents so you can jump to the relevant section quite easily.
• Second suggestion is already catered for in a sense. If you create a topic with a heading, additions under that heading will have the heading title as part of the edit summary, assuming the editor edited just that section or didn't delete the edit summary. In the history tab, you can then see what was added to each section. GDallimore (Talk) 14:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I still prefer it the way we've always had it. Scrolling down only takes a second, but it keeps it much more organized. Jmlk17 21:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• First suggestion: What I am suggesting here is for example on the Humanities reference desk that May 30 (most recent date) be at the top and May 27 be at the bottom. May 27th subjects have been answered and no longer have any interest to most. May 30 material are still being answered. Within each of these days the most recent contents of that day at the top and the oldest for that day at the bottom. I understand you read from top to bottom, so within each "Content" that discussion reads from the top to the bottom (same as it is now). The only thing I am suggesting is the most recent "Content" be at the top and the most recent day at the top. Otherwise it would read from the top to the bottom, within each Content. The way the "My Watch List" is set up is in this fashion I am speaking of, with the most current and newest on the list at the top. Oldest eventually drops off the list; a much more logical approach. The way this is set up is that May 30 is at the top with the most current Watch on top. May 23 is at the bottom and will fall off by tomorrow and May 24 will be at the bottom. May 31 will be at the top tomorrow morning and any new changes to any pages I am Watching. Except I can not put a "Content" of a Reference Desk on My Watch List.
• Second suggestion: However you can not put a "Watch" on this as you do for an article as it is on your Watch List. I don't want it that anytime someone puts anything on the Humanities Reference Desk it shows up on my Watch List, however ONLY when the "Content" I started (i.e. "When was Petrarch born") is answered will it show up on my Watch List - otherwise I can just ignore checking back ever-so-often to see if there is an answer. Sorry I didn't make it more clear the first time.--Doug ^talk 21:50, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

GA icon on top of page?

Just wondered, since the FA's are on the top right, why can't we list the GA icon there too? :-) ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ ^{slurp me!} 19:31, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

GA is not supposed to be a FA replacement, and it's already too similar to FA. It's supposed to be for articles that are ... pretty good. CMummert · talk 19:38, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

There has been discussion over this in the past, and the main objection to not having the icon in the corner is that articles are only reviewed by one editor who can pass or fail a GA. FAs, on the other hand, go through a stricter and more developed review process that involves multiple editors. This allows FAs to have the designation of being in the top right corner for the amount of people who are looking over the article to ensure its quality. --Nehrams2020 19:38, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This idea has been suggested and rejected in the past. See the "what links here" for {{good article}} for various related discussion. This might also be of interest. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it should stay where it is. To gain the status of FA on an article is an achievement, and, while GA is a great achievement, FA is a class higher...of course. Jmlk17 21:20, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree. The FA icon is a symbol of excellence, that has been found by the community. Whereas a GA is a one person review. When you see the FA symbol, you know you are reading a top notch article in the communities opinion.
--Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 19:45, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

New forum-based format for talk pages

This proposal is related to my previous one about discussion of edits.

Wikipedia currently uses the same type of interface for editing both articles and talk pages. This seems illogical, as talk pages are not encyclopedia articles - they are forums. Most other forums on the web (e.g. Google Groups) use a thread-based format, in which contributions are automatically signed and users can only edit their own posts. In Wikipedia talk pages, it is often difficult to see where one user's comments end and another user's begin. Any indentation or insertion of comments between previous posts must be done manually, and there is no standard style for this; often in a complex multi-user discussion it is hard to tell which comment a user is responding to. Why not implement something similar to Google Groups?

Mtford 02:29, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I think every agrees this is a good idea, and development is underway (m:LiquidThreads). It might take a while to be implemented.--Commander Keane 08:51, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I may be alone here, but I actually believe the current talk page system is ideal. Since it is identical to the article system, working off of the blank slate of "anyone can edit" rather than delineated "threads", talk pages are able to function as the article's workshop, not only for discussion of how to improve the page but for actually hammering out the details right there as well.

I cannot see how a switch to a forum-like system could be implemented without either losing a lot of our ability to work on talk pages (rather than chat on them), or creating yet another meta-article namespace for banners, drafts, article status information, and everything else talk pages currently do. I additionally expect that the not-so-sparse layout of a forum system would annoy me to no end anyway, and believe that it would serve only to turn Wikipedia talk pages into forums, places for random chatter about a subject, rather than workspaces. In short, oppose. --tjstrf talk 09:10, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Who is everyone? Some self-appointed group of guardians? I agree with tjstrf - this is completely unnecessary and a perfect example of change for change's sake. The talk pages are not for chat, as are fora, but for discussion about the articles. Wikipedia should not morph into yet another chatroom. There are quite enough of those on the web already. -- Necrothesp 13:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Two very sensible editors, there. I strongly oppose this silly idea. What we have now is very clutter-free, very flexible, and easy to use (most fora are not particularly user-friendly). Adrian M. H. 16:57, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

See my essay User:Dcoetzee/Why wikithreads are bad for a host of reasons why we don't want to use wiki for talk pages. To answer the practical question of how to hammer out details, that can either be done on a temporary page or the individual posts could be written using wiki syntax. There's no reason to go to the unmerciful trouble of formatting our threads using wiki formatting rather than just embedding wiki formatting inside them. Dcoetzee 17:09, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

• I guess I am not everyone either. I agree with tjstrf, the current talk page system is not a forum Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines The purpose of a Wikipedia talk page is to provide space for editors to discuss changes to its associated article or project page. Per Internet forum An Internet forum is a web application for holding discussions and posting user generated content and as user generated content would violate WP:OR. A switch that would encourage forum based discussion rather then generation encyclopedic content would be counter to Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. Jeepday (talk) 17:20, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:OR specifically applies to articles, not talk pages. The primary purpose of a talk page is to discuss the article, but it still takes the format of a discussion, having threads of conversation, and is distinctly different in its appearance and evolution from an article. Saying something is a "forum" doesn't say anything about the topic of conversation - it's not like people would start posting social things there just because of a change in format. The purpose and content would be identical, only the software support would be different. Dcoetzee 05:02, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• Strong oppose - I really do hope this becomes yet another perennial proposal. I completely agree with the above comments; wiki should not turn into a forum or its talk pages spammed with content about the article topic itself. –Sebi ~ 08:30, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm still failing to see how simply presenting exactly the same discussion regarding article development in a different way that better supports discussion will magically make everybody start discussing off-topic things. Is there a psychological study explaining this that I've overlooked? Or are people just overgeneralising their prior experiences with other forums? Dcoetzee 08:35, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Same here. Having something better for our talk pages will greatly improve our efficiency in collaboration. If anything, removing and preventing off-topic chatter would be easier. -- Ned Scott 08:57, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the above comments that a talk page should be a place to work on the article, and not to chat about it. As such, it is vital that the talk page should use wiki syntax, and that all contributors should be able to read (but not necessarily edit) the raw content of other posts. However, I don't see why this is inconsistent with a more forum-like style of presentation. My two biggest objections to the current format are:

1. You cannot easily find the most recently-updated threads. I frequently find myself wanting to say something on a matter that was discussed several months ago. However, unless I start a new discussion, or move the old one manually to the bottom of the page, nobody will find my comments.
2. Take a look at the formatting of this thread: it starts out with a sequence of indents, then somebody stopped indenting and used a single bullet point, then there are more indents, a single indented bullet, and finally a boxed comment from the original author with numbered indents inside. Could you see at a glance where my current comment begins and ends if I had not put a box round it? Surely this would be easier if the software enforced some basic formatting standard.

I don't see any problem with preventing users from editing other users' comments; if two people really want to work together on editing some text before it goes online, they can use User pages.

Thank you dcoetzee for posting this: User:Dcoetzee/Why wikithreads are bad. I entirely agree.

I will now demonstrate how a discussion should operate, by moving this thread to the bottom of the page. NB if moving threads down the page is bad practice, why did you give me such an excessively flexible interface? And if it's good practice, why doesn't it happen automatically?

Mtford 07:05, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Well said. Much time is wasted each day just finding which threads have been updated with additional comments, and all too often we've all missed discussions and posts in the shuffle. -- Ned Scott 07:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

A forum based format works for quick comments... but not for working on snippets of articles (which is one of the primary reasons for a talk page). I prefer things as they are. Blueboar 18:29, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Once again, snippets can be edited within individual posts (which can still be written in wiki syntax) or in temporary articles. Dcoetzee 19:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Lots of people are saying that forums are unsuitable for working on snippets of articles; however, I do not see many examples of such "work" in the current talk pages. I certainly haven't noticed any cases where the work relies on a free-style talk page, or where the combination of forums (with wiki syntax) and user sandboxes would be less convenient. Perhaps somebody could move this discussion forward by finding an example of such work in the history of a talk page. Then we can discuss in concrete terms how the same work would look in a forum, instead of just idealizing about why "Wikipedia does things its own way." Mtford 20:12, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

SUPPORT : IT initiative for the Rural Community

My establishment is planning to embark on a rural IT initiative has part of our contribution to the development in my country to enable the people especially students in the rural community to train them, improve their skills and to own a computer.

I need the support of meaningful developers to cooperate with us to achieve these objectives. DAVAK.

Linking to other Online Free Encyclopedia

Wikipedia should link to other online encyclopedias like Conservapedia as it links to other Wiki projects like Wikibooks or Wikiquote. This way Wikipedia can show and guarantee neutrality and the diversity of opinions. --draq

No, we should write neutral and diverse articles here. We only link to other wikis where they provide a service we do not. --tjstrf talk 19:32, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with tjstrf. The Wikimedia network, is the "Wiki" network. There is no real reason to link to outside encyclopedias. --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 19:41, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Though there are some subject-specific wikis that can warrant linking to because they offer more depth of coverage than us. --tjstrf talk 20:00, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

You can certainly add a link in an article to whatever site you want and leave it up to the community to decide its relevance. Grika Ⓣ 20:56, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, If another free encylopedia has better coverage than us, then we should link to it. --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 01:04, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

No, no, no. Wikis are all unreliable. Corvus cornix 03:14, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Which is why we don't reference them. They can still make good external links in cases where they provide some sort of functionality we don't. You're not going to find a better resource for scanlation techniques than the Wikilation wiki, for instance, and it makes an excellent external link on the relevant page because it provides instructions, which we do and will not include on Wikipedia. --tjstrf talk 03:20, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Retired Wikipedians Memorial

I was thinking yesterday. "Wouldn't it be a good way to appreciate wikipedians who have moved on by creating a memorial?" I don't know what other peoples ideas on the matter are, but I thought it was a good idea. So I'm bringing it up. --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 19:50, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

• Start in userspace, and if it catches on, move it to WP-space. It looks like a good idea, but there would need to be parameters so that RickK and Elaragirl are in, but Robdurbar and Essjay are out. Also, it may be odd if a memorialized Wikipedian decides to rise from the dead. YechielMan 20:06, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

• If that is your opinion, I might start a page of my userspace. I think the best way to decide if the user deserves to be in, is to have a consensus, once the page reaches the WP space. If one returns, you simply remove the individual from the list. Any other thoughts? --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 01:07, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
  • We already have Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians. Raven4x4x 12:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Article Duplication option

When creating multiple, similar articles, it would be useful to be able to duplicate the article and the Talk page after finalizing the format of the initial article including wikiProjects on the Talk page. This could just be another tab next to Move and could even have check boxes for what the editor wants duplicated:

□ Article

□ Talk

□ [something else I haven't considered]

It could also have a field for the new article name or simply alert the editor upon saving to choose a new title. Grika Ⓣ 21:17, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

You can do this - add "&preload=Article" to the end of the url to edit your new page, and it will copy all wikitext from the original (Article) to the edit window of the new one. You have to do talk pages separately, but it's very convenient. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 23:14, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I would say it is somewhat convenient. It is very interesting and I am sure to use it, but I still would want a solution that does both the article and the talk page at once. Grika Ⓣ 05:56, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Flagged revisions

Just started this proposed policy page a while ago. Voice-of-All 23:32, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletable signatures proposal

Since I'm canvasing for opinions, and trying to avoid the bad kind of canvasing, I'm mentioning Wikipedia:Deletable signatures proposal here. Anybody care to comment? ^Thanks, _{Luc "Somethingorother" French} 14:50, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

What's the use of such a proposal? bibliomaniac15 An age old question... 01:48, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree with concept. It is too restrictive. Also many good signatures are longer than 100 charecters. --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 23:16, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Add search engine

For JavaScript-enabled browsers, there is a drop-down box on Special:Search so that a search engine can be selected. Someone has suggested to me that Exalead should be added to it; as the author of the script, I’d be fine to write the code if the community agrees on it. (See the request at User talk:Gracenotes#Add a search engine). Gracenotes^T § 17:04, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't know the right place to bring this up, but Firefox earns $50 million dollars a year from its drop down search bar. How should we choose our search websites?--Commander Keane 09:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

By the amount of money they donate to us, then! Er, in our case, probably how effective it is at searching. See the note on my talk page; David.Monniaux (talk · contribs) can probably provide details. Gracenotes^T § 17:03, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Propose Ending the Rules against Puppets

Based on the logic in my essay on sockpuppets (User:Cool3/Puppets), I propose ending the ban on sockpuppets in favor of a policy to "judge each account on its own contributions". I welcome your input. Cool3 22:12, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Sockpuppets are permitted, but discouraged. See Wikipedia:Sock puppetry for further information. Clearly, if you cause no harm, then no harm should come to you or your friendly little puppets of sock. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 22:21, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

In many of the cases you propose, it can already de facto happen. If Willy on Wheels is around somewhere making good, constructive edits, no one will ever even think to question whether the account is his. However, sockpuppets do have a lot of harmful and abusive uses, such as falsifying consensus (and the number of editors supporting a position is a factor in determining consensus, even if it's not the only factor), and revert warring. It also is possible to find sock accounts. Checkuser isn't magic, but it certainly can find supporting evidence. (Also, note that a husband/wife team would probably be considered meatpuppets, and they're pretty much treated the same.) I have a sockpuppet myself, you can find it here, but it's clearly marked as mine and used for a legitimate purpose (preventing compromise of my admin account while editing on a public terminal). But we certainly shouldn't say "use socks for whatever you like." And if we just allowed people to circumvent a ban by creating a new account, bans would be meaningless. A ban means that the person is forbidden to edit, not that their account is. If they want the ban lifted, they can wait a suitable amount of time, come back around, apologize for what they did, and ask if we're willing to give them another chance. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 22:41, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I am perfectly aware of the circumstances under which sockpuppets are permitted, I'm saying that they should be permitted all of the time. As for the husband/wife team, if both are editors in their own right and perhaps without even each other's knowledge, the term meatpuppet hardly applies. I understand that we ban people not accounts, and that is essentially what I want to change. As for consensus, I would direct you to the section entitled "People Judge Accounts on their Contributions" in my essay. Cool3 00:07, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes, people use sock puppets as a malicious means to socially engineer debates. Even if the logic of arguments is more important than the number of people saying it, Wikipedia can be based on "consensus" more than "logic". Intentions (in some cases, ignoring social contracts to get what you want) and consequences (in some cases, disruption) can be important in analyzing if a certain editor is overall good or overall bad for both the community and the encyclopedia. Your idea is not a bad one, but even Wikipedia has not a social structure so Utopian. Gracenotes^T § 01:17, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Ooo boy. I think that this would spiral out of control in the end, resulting in quite a bit of bad sockpuppetry, and I don't personally agree with that. Jmlk17 07:04, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

• Whether it should or not, Wikipedia uses a protocol of “consensus”. Allowing unlimited sock-puppetry would produce an equilibrium in which the most aggressive group of puppeteers got their way. In many cases, single individuals would dominate areas simply by virtue of having the free time and will to engage in puppetry.
• Allowing unlimited sock-puppetry would mean that it were impossible to block editors whose actions were plainly and overwhelmingly destructive.
• There should be greater modesty about Checkuser. Specifically, editors should not treat confirmation as definitive proof, and denunciations should generally be avoided.
• The rules against “meat-puppets” represent an attempt to have the cake and eat it too. There was an especially ugly transition period as meat-puppetry went from been encouraged (albeit not under that name) to being outlawed.

—SlamDiego_←T 10:06, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Merge of Template:Backlog, Template:Adminbacklog, and Template:Noadminbacklog

I am proposing a merge of the Template:Backlog, Template:Adminbacklog, Template:Noadminbacklog. Template:Backlog would be revised to use parser functions to have the abilities of the above 3 templates combined into 1 template. It would also be possible to switch "experienced editors" in Template:Backlog to something else. A draft of this can be found at User:Funpika/Drafts/Backlog. Funpika 17:47, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I am taking the silence as acceptance of this proposal. I will begin the merge now. Funpika 21:07, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Sandbox

There is a sandbox for editors in general. Is there one for admins? Simply south 17:47, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Why would they need a sandbox? To test deleting, protecting, etc? Perhaps even create an account User:Adminsandbox to test blocking? Funpika 17:54, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Try the test wiki. —METS501 (talk) 18:08, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

The test wiki isn't there to play with administrator tools. Funpika 18:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Why not? Obviously not to delete the main page of the test wiki, but you can try blocking yourself there, protecting or deleting your userpage, editing the Wikimedia messages, etc. —METS501 (talk) 18:38, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Ask the developers! According to test wiki's Requests for Permissions page it is really used to make sure changes to the code doesn't cripple the live sites. If you want a test wiki where everyone can test admin tools then someone should make one (editthis.info is not suitable)! I will see if I can do something. Funpika 18:44, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

How nice I easily found a free PHP5 host to put a mediawiki installation on. Now I just need to set up the Wiki. :P Funpika 19:01, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Crap! It is actually PHP 4.4.6. Well Mediawiki 1.6 should be good enough...I hope. Funpika 19:22, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay here it is. Funpika 19:38, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Internal emails

Maybe we could consider a feature so that when you receive emails internally via Special:Emailuser, you could get a little notification bar similar to the

and this would save you having to keep checking your email box, any thoughts? The Sunshine Man 18:03, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Where would the new messages link and last change link lead? How would the software know that you have received the message so it doesn't show the bar anymore? If you need a notifier, there's always Gmail notifier if you use Gmail, or many programs, such as Mozilla Thunderbird and Microsoft Outlook, which will alert you when you get new messages. —METS501 (talk) 18:11, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to appear to be shooting down your suggestion, but why not just check your mails more frequently, like most folk do? Or use the auto-check feature that mail clients provide. Allowing mails from Wikipedia users seems redundant to me, though; talk pages are better because it provides a record of communications. Adrian M. H. 18:17, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I never thought about the software actually knowing whether you had emails, guess this was a silly suggestion. Apologies for wasting your time. The Sunshine Man 18:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

No, it wasn't a silly suggestion, it was a good suggestion, and it would be great if it was possible, but it's not :-) —METS501 (talk) 18:34, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Hehe, it would be eaiser but... guess I was thinking of ways to be lazy (). The Sunshine Man 18:41, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

It would just need a software change or bot or something to edit your talkpage with a brief note saying "Someone has sent you email", that way you'd get the notification bar.... Seems simple enough, no? --Quiddity 20:33, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Promote the use of multilevel templates

Templates are often used for navigational boxes, where the same content must repeat on several articles. But editors with less technical/scientific training tend to make new navigational boxes by copying and pasting code and then modify the content. This is a bad practice. This is the number-1 not-to-do in the software industry. If something common to these copied-and-pasted templates must be changed, the the update would be a repeated process and a time-consuming effort.

How can it be circumvented? Templates can also be used to generate other templates. Right now this issue on navigational templates has been somewhat alleviated. And there are other examples that fit my proposal

Good examples

• {{navbox generic}} generates {{Currencies of Africa}}
• {{languageicon}} generates {{zh icon}}

Bad examples

• Stub {{Money-stub}}-{{Coin-stub}} which should be sibling templates derived from a common parent template
• Project banners {{Numismaticnotice}}-{{Electron}}
• Copyright tags {{PD-USGov-Military-Navy}}-{{PD-USGov-Military-Army}}
• Template:Globalize
• Category:Temporal templates

The benefit of migrating to using root template:

1. Consistent look and feel
2. Eliminate human errors when copying-and-pasting
3. Update one place instead of many
4. Easy to derive intermediate templates

But the migration itself is no easy task. What about a WikiProject? The closest thing I can find is WikiProject template sharing, which is about sister projects. But my proposal is more like consolidation. And Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates is too general.

But before there is a project, or whatever collaboration method we choose, I'd like to get opinions from everyone. What do you think? --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 11:24, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

A new project? Perhaps Wikipedia:WikiProject Navigational Templates with WP:NTE as a shortcut (WP:NT has been taken). Funpika 12:11, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, I just changed the WP:NT shortcut today as it had been unadvertised and unused for a while. –Pomte 14:18, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I just want to say, the scope of this proposal is beyond that of navigational templates.... --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 12:13, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Then what, Wikipedia:WikiProject Mutilevel Templates? If not that then the Templates project is probably not too general. Funpika 12:18, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this issue will have enough participation to warrant its own WikiProject. Places of discussion for different types of templates include WT:NAV, WP:INLINE, and WP:UW; these may be more useful as different standards apply to each. Perhaps a task force or a noticeboard (which links to discussions in other talk pages) as a subpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates? –Pomte 14:18, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you should start discussion in Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Templates by reporting on a single general template which you're writing, mention some templates which will invoke it, and report as you convert templates to use the more general one. If others do the same, start a subproject. (SEWilco 15:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC))

I personally see little benefit in small and very specific WikiProjects as they usually end up having too few or exactly the same members as more general ones, so I'd try working on this with Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates. —Ruud 16:32, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Template test subpage(s)

When template editors try something bold on templates, we usually put the new code in a sandbox, and put some sample transclusions in another sandbox. What if we centralize the use of these two sandboxes as subpages, say /test code and /test transclusion? For a high-profile and complex template like {{Infobox Country}}, different editors may understand/care more about different parts of the template. With the centralized sandbox, we get better coverage of testing. Obscure use cases can also be documented (like the recent Giant space issue of {{Infobox Country}}. This is a pattern that is similar to the /doc pattern dictated by Wikipedia:Template documentation. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 11:40, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I know of one active example at Template:Infobox Settlement/Test, and there's a need for test cases at Template talk:Cite news#Volume/issue, redux. I see no problem with creating a subpage and linking to it from the documentation. –Pomte 14:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

An advantage of a single sandbox is that a prepared collection of test cases can link to the sandbox, so effects of modifications might be more easily apparent. (SEWilco 15:49, 3 June 2007 (UTC))

Could be useful for a few templates and could encourage regular users to edit modify otherwise protected templates. I would keep the names of the subpages a short and descriptive as possible though. How about /sandbox and /testcases. —Ruud 16:23, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Or /sandbox and /sandbox/doc, and then put the testcases in the latter instead of the documentation. —Ruud 16:25, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Any name is fine with me. If this is perceived as a good thing by the community, should this be written into a page in the "Wikipedia:" namespace? What's the process of creating a new one? --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 00:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest just to modify {{template documentation}} to mention the sandbox (if some parameter is set), then create a few testcases for a number of highly used templates which could benefit from this (e.g. the cite-family and some of the infoboxes) and see if it catches on. —Ruud 07:39, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

P.S. if you follow the naming-convention I proposed it should be possible to copy the real and sandbox code one-on-one between the template and the sandbox. —Ruud 07:39, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

This is my plan:

• Use /sandbox and /testcases
• Put conditional links at {{Template doc page transcluded}}
• Create Category:Template sandboxes and Category:Template test cases (parallel to Category:Template documentation)
• Write the documentation of this pattern at Wikipedia:Template test cases
• Implement on a few high profile infoboxes.

--ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 08:28, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia project

I was thinking last night that perhaps someone should start a wikipedia or wiki project (not a new wiki)that brings the wikis together. For example a article about spanish language might then have a link or part of something that was on another wiki. So to give the user a full advantage on knowledge throughout the wikis.Wiki.user 11:53, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, there are interwiki links (the 'in other languages' boxes along the side), sisterproject boxes, (like the one here pointing to Wiktionary), and the entire project Meta, which among other things coordinates interwiki issues. I'm not quite clear I understand what you mean, though. --ais523 14:14, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I think he wants interwiki transclusion, so material in other wikis will appear within an article. (SEWilco 15:51, 3 June 2007 (UTC))

Something in between the two latest suggestions.Wiki.user 18:07, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Is your are reffering to a project, where you search in particular subject and get a list links to the subject from other wiki projects, I don't like the idea. It would be overly confusing. However, the idea of having more interwiki links, not just dealing with different language wikipedias, sounds good. --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 19:34, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I think he wants data that is duplicated between projects to be editable from a single source. So the population of Spain is cited/verified at a single location, and embedded everywhere else. He wants m:Wikidata, which will exponentially increase the amount of raw-facts we can distribute. --Quiddity 21:08, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

All i basically thought was just to have more wiki links, to make it easy and encourage people to use all the wikis for knowledge, not just wikipedia...that's all. Where people have got these fancy ideas about wikidata or putting things into an article i don't know.Wiki.user 19:34, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Psychological projection and wishful thinking ;) --Quiddity 19:49, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikidata

Does anyone know where m:Wikidata is being discussed currently? All those links appear to be untouched since June 2006, and the wikidata-l mailing list is utterly silent. Omegawiki is not an official Wikimedia project (? so why does OmegaWiki list all our sister projects at the bottom of its mainpage?), but Wikidata isn't even mentioned at the foundation site... --Quiddity 19:52, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Robots.txt

I expected to find this on WP:PEREN, but didn't. Have there been previous proposals to change the robots.txt file for EN to lock out Googlebot and/or other major search-engine spiders? Our high PageRank is very flattering, but is increasingly leading to Wikipedia serving as an indiscriminate source of real-time information, rather than a project to construct a high-quality encyclopedia over the long term. Of course this would require massive discussion here and then with the Foundation, and would probably be bogged down in public outrage, but this seems like a discussion we should be having. -- Visviva 22:15, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there's any reason to block out search engines completely, but I .really. wish we would block user pages and all talk pages. Those pages don't get patrolled all that well and it's very easy for something defamatory to survive on a talk page or user page. By not allowing those pages to be indexed, we limit the possible damage. --BigDT 22:30, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

According to Brandt, talk pages are already blocked by google for some reason. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:05, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I was proposing (or at least inquiring about) blocking major search bots from all pages, including articles. -- Visviva 01:03, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't see why this should be done. Additionaly, I frequently use Google to search Wikipedia because Wikipedia's search is terrible, and makes it very hard to find pages if you don't know how to spell something and what not. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 01:24, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

We write WP in the first place in order that people will find the information. We want to encourage our articles being found, rather than less reliable articles elsewhere--blocking talk pages however seems reasonable, since discussions take place there which we'd never permit on an article page.Not that we would ever want to hind them, just that people shouldn't find them first. DGG 01:42, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I've put up some rough pro-and-con at User:Visviva/Robots, which anyone is free to edit. I'm not actually proposing this -- I was just curious if anyone might have done so already -- but I do think that our increasing role as a real-time information source and internet presence is detracting severely from the actual work of writing an encyclopedia. -- Visviva 04:11, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

So you're trying to have that we won't be as prominent on Google to reduce spam, etc.?! That would greatly reduce the amount of constructive edits and potential great users! Reywas92^{TalkReview me} 20:18, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

It would also, and more importantly, reduce the number of people who come here to make their voice heard on the Net, who are more interested in winning arguments than building an encyclopedia. To say nothing of people who think their contribution to Wikipedia is to make the articles look pretty... Going off the grid would also dramatically lower the stakes in edit wars and requested move conflicts, and considerably reduce the immediate gravity of issues like WP:BLP. I am less concerned with vandalism or spam -- although anything we can do to make ourselves a less inviting target is worth considering -- than with our becoming the World's Battleground or Slashdot 2.0. -- Visviva 08:42, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The only major problem with blocking out articles from robots.txt, would of course be that a) we would have to rely on the fairly poor search engine in Wikipedia in order to find articles, b) we'd hide ourselves from new editors which may not know about Wikipedia yet, c) hide the information people actually search on google in order to find...thus making the encyclopedia rather pointless. Bjelleklang - talk Bug Me 11:25, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Every good, active user we recruit can fight off fifty spamming, vandalizing, testing users. I also completely agree with Bjelleklang above in all points. Reywas92^{TalkReview me} 20:14, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Establish a convention for barring an editor from a page.

There are a lot of policies and procedures for dealing with problem editors, but each one has the drawback that it is somewhat time-consuming. Currently, those of us on the general relativity article are dealing with a very POV and disruptive editor. This editor feels the GR is "rubbish" and that the article should reflect that "fact". Currently, he is on a path to being blocked for disruption, but it occurs to me that it would be nice if a motion against the person could be brought on the talk page of the article.

I'm not sure what to call it, maybe a "motion to exclude" or a "reguest to deny editorship", but the idea would be that the editors of an article could request that a particularly bad editor be kept from editing the article. If established, it should be something that

• Requires an administrator to sign off on.
• Requires strong consensus of the article's editors to invoke (such as 75% or 80% of the established editors who work on and/or watch the article.), and
• Has a quorum requirement (such as at least 10 or more editors expressing an opinion on the motion).

If the motion/request is approved, then any further edits by the editor would result in an immediate block, and being excluded from two or more articles could constitue grounds for a RfAr.

The purpose of the requirements I listed is to make it difficult for a cliche to control an article through this mechanism. A broad consensus of a large number of editors should be hard to come by unless there is an obvious cause for the action IMO, but the admin approval is an additional sanity check on such an action. That is not to say that other checks and balances (such as a review procedure) cannot also be established. --EMS | Talk 02:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

This is called an article ban, and it is already instituted in some cases. However, the decision to hand out article bans should not rest with those who edit the relevant article. It would be hard for a clique to control an article through this, yes. But if most editors of an article have some view X, it would be easy to imagine a case in which an editor who complains that the article is biased against another view Y would be banned from the article for no good reason. Also, article bans should be a last resort, occuring after blocks have shown to be ineffective. -Amarkov moo! 02:56, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Community article bans seems like a sensible idea in some cases cases (General relativity makes a very good example). Why not propose to have the editor in question article-banned at the community noticeboard? —Ruud 07:45, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Concur with Amarkov - this is already an option, with the emphasis on uninvolved editors deciding. However, I am not aware of any case where this sanction (whether endorsed on the community or admin noticeboards) has been implemented without the editor in question leaving the project. Addhoc 10:41, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Problem: Section renaming breaks links --- Workaround ??

Just a thought.... WP:GTL says, in pary, "Changing section names breaks links (hence the utility of permalinks), so it is best not to change already-established article section names." However, cases do exist where an article contains badly-named sections. How about a workaround for this problem something like {{alternative name|Old_name}}, which might be coded something like <p><a name="{{{1|}}}" id="{{{1}}}"></a></p> or {{#if:{{{1|)))|<p><a name="{{{1|}}}" id="{{{1}}}"></a></p>|}}? (here, I used the HTML anchor coding which I observe being generated in wikipedia article pages) -- Boracay Bill 03:58, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

If a section is poorly named, the incoming links should be updated accordingly. Unfortunately, it takes time to find all those links that specifically lead to one section. Editors are supposedly encouraged to use HTML comments to record the incoming links, but I've never seen that done. We probably shouldn't be using templates in article sections though. What happens when the section gets renamed again? –Pomte 23:27, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

1. it sounds as if you are disputing the guidance I quoted above from WP:GTL. 2. If a section is renamed seven more times, seven more instances of "{{alternative name|Old_name}}" could be added -- or not added -- editor's choice. 3. I don't follow the logic behind: "We probably shouldn't be using templates in article sections." -- Boracay Bill 23:40, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Page history – "previous" and "next"

The links for paging forward and backward in page history are confusingly backwards: previous for newer edits, and next for older edits. Is there any reason not to change these to either later and earlier, or Newer and Older (as in User contributions)? --Fyrlander 16:51, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I strongly agree, though I'm not the one who can really help with this. Reywas92^{TalkReview me} 20:21, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

see MediaWiki talk:Nextn, they cover this exact issue. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:29, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

and it's covered by bug 4777 Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:30, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

New Tag

A new tag should be made to tell people if there’s any sexual or inappropriate images or features in an article so no one stumbles across something they don't want to see. This could be a tag that have two options on it, see the inappropriate images/features, or block them. Or the tag could work anyway. If I had kids, and I stumbled across one of those sexual image, I don't want my children seeing it, not to mention i don't want a kid to go into an article with inappropriate images and seeing them {I wouldn't want a kid on an article that needs sexual images in the first place.} A tag like this could be helpful in so many ways. §→Nikro 21:38, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia and Wikipedia is not censored. If you don't want your children to see them, monitor what they're doing. --13² 21:42, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Here's another relevent article (here), that talks a little more in depth about why they shouldn't (or even should) be used. --13² 21:45, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this is one of the perennial proposals. The main problem is that you'd have to figure out what constitutes sexual content, and then how to judge it. Is a woman showing ankle too much? Is genitalia in need of censorship? Wikipedia isn't censored, but it's also supposed to work on the principle of least surprise, so as long as you stay away from articles related to sex and anatomy, you aren't likely to see many naked people. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:49, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. There's the clincher. What's inappropriate? It's extremely subjective. Some people don't consider anything about the human body or sexuality to be inappropriate while some would think that someone showing their shoulders or ankles is entirely inappropriate. It's a slippery slope that would likely cause one nice, big snowball effect where more images are censored than not because someone, somewhere thinks it's inappropriate. --13² 21:55, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Toby was a proposal where you could tag any page with 'toby', where basically 'toby' represented anything someone might not want to see, and people could turn that on or off. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:10, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 March 8/Template:Linkimage involves this issue. –Pomte 23:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

That's simply unnecessary. The project is not censored...well, you know the rest. Jmlk17 06:12, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not use disclaimer templates. See also the Content disclaimer. Kusma (talk) 11:35, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, and see also WP:PEREN. >Radiant< 13:03, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Random Portal tag

Is there a possibility of coding in a Random Portal tag or page like the one available for a Random Topic ("Special:Random")? It would add further functionality and consistency to the site and would further increase the presence of the portal pages (which even I wasn't aware of until recently).
Kudos 06:50, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. Or, if that is not suitable, Wikipedia:Portal/Directory should be more prominent. Adrian M. H. 16:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Special:Random/Portal will take you to a random page in the Portal namespace. That page will link back to the top-level portal page. 69.201.182.76 17:22, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Clever Search?

I was wondering if Wikipedia's search could be modified in such manner, that it would recognise (more or less) common spelling mistakes? (e.g. today, when I accidentally typed "elctrochemistry" in the search bar, I received no results; it would be nice to get a "did-you-mean type of link) I don't know much about the technical background, this is just an idea, but it would be nice to hear other opinions on that
Bakic 16:15, 5 June 2007 (CET)

I'm assuming you are aware of the "restricted search" and "spelling suggestions" features of Google? These provide precisely the functionality you are after, although unfortunately this does require reliance on a site outside WP. dr.ef.tymac 14:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

This is a perennial proposal too. Dcoetzee 23:34, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Lists of Office Holders - standard format?

Wikipedia has numerous pages of Lists of office-holders (many of which I have contributed to myself). The thing which detracts from the standard of Wikipedia is lack of conformity in such pages as these lists. The style is so varied that it makes Wikipedia look piecemeal.

A standard format means a reader can instantly grasp the layout and can expect the same in each list.

Certain lists have different emphases according to the nature of the list. However as far as lists of office holders go, consistency should extend to the following:-

1. A tenure date column (with an agreed consistent format - some currently have the from and to date in a single column, whilst others have the dates in separate columns) 2. An incumbent's name column, a political affiliation column (where appropriate) and a Notes column. 3. A column containing thumbnails of the portrait of the individual adds to the appearance of the page. 4. The position of the columns should be standard.

I personally consider that the column which specifies the order of the list should be the first (leftmost) column. In the case of a chronological list of office-holders this is naturally the tenure date column. --JohnArmagh 16:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

A way to read entire archive at once?

I have been a little frustrated with trying to bring up discussions on talk pages after finding that the topic had already been discussed way-back-when on some deeply archived page. Rather than have to cut through 15 individually archived pages, could we add some sort of button which would combine the archived pages in subfolder (like /archive/1, /archive/2, etc...) into one viewable page so that one can quickly do a CTRL-F on a search term? I don't think we need to create an actual page but perhaps some sort of mirror of preexisting archives just all displayed on a single page. Is this feasable? --Valley2city^₪‽ 19:15, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem with that is (and the reason why we archive talk pages) that if we had one big archive, it would be impossible to view due to the page being so long - it would most likely crash many computers. Take a look at Wikipedia:List of administrators to see what I mean about a long page. We also have to think of those poor users using a dial up connection. Ryan Postlethwaite 19:23, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Right, I agree, but is there a way to have an automatic option to, say, transclude all of the archive pages into one, to be introduced onto the Template:Archive box template, as an OPTION for people who want to risk the increased bandwidth to avoid having to do a CTRL-F on dozens of archived pages to find what they are looking for. I think perhaps utilizing some of the all-caps variables in order to automatically include all pages that have the prefix /archive or whatever to which it is set might help, but I would want the advice of someone who is an expert on this kind of thing. --Valley2city^₪‽ 01:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Though History isn't, I'm pretty sure that archives can be navigated through with a simple Google search. Specify to only search wikipedia, and include the keywords archive, and the page name. Reywas92^{TalkReview me} 20:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

general discussion forums (again)

Last year, I suggested that Wikipedia should have forums for off-topic discussion. I understand that Wikipedia is an encylopedia and not an online chatting service, but having forums for chatting will encourage many new users to stay. Here is my idea on what the forums should look like. This would alsoput the Forum namespace to good use!

Any thoughts? --Ixfd64 19:52, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Really that is a truly bad idea. Editors are here solely to further the development of the encyclopædia; not to socialise. Adrian M. H. 20:24, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

That may be true, but having off-topic forums could attract more editors. On another note, would having off-site forums (outside the wikipedia.org domain) be a better idea? The only off-site forum I currently know is the Wikipedia Review, which is not an official Wikimedia site. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia Review is down at the moment, and many Wikipedians don't have very positive impressions of that site. Plus, the Wikipedia Review isn't very popular anyways. --Ixfd64 20:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:IRC for real-time chatting. WP:FUN, WP:HUMOR, WP:REFDESK for activities outside encyclopedia editing. Various talk pages can get slightly off-topic, just not so much for personal unverifiable opinions. –Pomte 21:19, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

fringecruft board?

I believe we should have a separate project or noticeboard for reporting fringe theories. For instance, I accidentally stumble upon Cyrus the Great in the Qur'an and read the following: "Gog and Magog were the wild tribes of North Eastern Asia which, from the very early times had been making inroads on settled kingdoms and empires in Asia and Europe and ravaging them. According to the book of Ezekiel (Chapters 38, 39), they inhabited the territories of Meshech (Moscow) and Tubal (Tubalsek)." Is there a place where I can report it, since I have neither time nor desire to revert war or persuade people that it should be removed and the whole page rewritten? There are dozens huge articles along these lines scattered across Wikipedia. If no measures are undertaken, Wikipedia will rapidly evolve into an asylym for kooks eager to elaborate their obscure theories in mainspace. --Ghirla^-трёп- 06:17, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

the main problem is that many good editors do not have the required background in humanities to tell fringecruft from bona fide minority views. I understand this, if you have no deeper acquaintance with the field, how can you tell? That's precisely how kooks sell books, they target a popular audience and tell them they are being hushed up by senile professors. There are just as many cranks in the natural sciences, if not more, but they don't stand a chance because many Wikipedians have a science background. But nonsense about Proto-Armenians, Harappan Proto-Aryans or Gog and Magog go unchallenged for months because very few people can be bothered to check. The problem is that the only people that seem to care about the Armenian hypothesis are Armenians with little or no education, and the only people that care about Indian mathematics are Indians with a collective inferiority complex. And we both know that the less educated or self-assured you are, the more aggressively you will push your national honour on the most absurd points. Our problem is not with real kooks so much as with second-generation expatriate youths who are shedding their testosterone properly intended for tribal warfare in front of the screen.

what can we do? The problem is not that we need a board, but that we need more good editors to clean up the poo-poo made by the confused and indoctrinated. A noticeboard would see much abuse. I can already see Bakasuprman and cronies tout N. S. Rajaram and denounce the entire field of Indology as fringecruft (or "dabcruft" as he likes to put it) that belongs deleted.

I could see a WikiProject. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Decrankification. Where we can keep lists of articles that need cleanup, troublespot topics, and keep records of past discussions so that interested editors without the necessary background can get their bearings quickly. But I'm not sure it would do much good, we simply lack the manpower. dab (𒁳) 06:33, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

IMHO, such a tag would only allow a new kind of tag abuse, where people add such tags to articles where they don't belong. How many times don't we see bad faith {{fact}} additions?--Berig 06:54, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't propose a tag but a noticeboard along the lines of WP:PAIN or WP:RD/H where people could investigate obviously cranky statements along the lines of "Ezekiel wrote that Moscow..." as in my link above. Or: "These fundamentalists thrust Islam by hook or by crook. They converted by atrocities, by polluting the KPs by banning the wearing of sacred thread and tilak, by sexual harassment and forcible abductions of the daughters of Hindus and other satanic misdeeds."[23] Or: "The Parama Kambojas (Asii), Lohas and Rishikas (Tukharas?) also fell into the Scythian region often said to belong to Amyurgian Scythians by Herodotus".[24] You don't need an Oxford degree to understand that these statements are cranky. Neither dab nor me have time to remove these claims and to spend days defending their removal from unavoidable accusations of "vandalism". For this very reason, they are perpetuated in Wikipedia for months if not years, seriously compromising the project's integrity and reputation. We need to address the most glaring violations of WP:FRINGE, which instructs the proponents of fringe theories to reference their claims "extensively, and in a serious manner, in at least one major mainstream publication or by another important mainstream group or individual". --Ghirla^-трёп- 07:19, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

indeed. But look how difficult it is to get even our reasonably educated friend Rokus01 (talk · contribs) to edit responsibly. You can always dodge common sense and put the burden of proof on those who challenge you. Most of the "cranks" we get have no education to speak of, often they can hardly write comprehensible English, let alone follow explanations of how they are mistaken, even if they wanted to. Oxford degrees have nothing to do with it, but you need at least highschool literacy for a meaningful debate to be possible. We cannot take it upon ourselves to offer basic education to random teenagers with internet connections. That is what I meant with my infamous "shithole" comment: If a handful of educated editors are faced with literally hundreds of uneducated edit-warriors on switching IP addresses, Jimbo's approach of 'talk to them kindly until they understand' simply breaks down, as much as I hate to say it. The result is, of course, a growing number of permanently semiprotected articles. That takes away the brunt of driveby-cranks, but is of course no obstacle to cranks with any dedication to speak of.

anyway, your idea of a noticeboard has some merit. I tried to give a first outline of the shape of the problem here. What we need are pages that allow a quick overview of affected articles, and the typical issues involved. dab (𒁳) 07:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I tried to leave statements on talk pages along the lines of "I wrote the article and I consider this version [link] definitive" but in reality this approach does not work. I also thought about bringing forth the most glaring cases on WP:RD/H, as it is the last refuge of reasonably erudite public interested in improving mainspace coverage of humanities. In truth, it took me about a year to have someone (an anonymous editor) deal with Martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadar, after I mentioned the article on more than one noticeboard. I will air my grievances on Wikipedia talk:Fringe theories and WP:VPP to see what others think about it; your comments are welcome too. --Ghirla^-трёп- 07:46, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Fringe-cruft is best handled by discussion and pointing out relevant policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. WP:FRINGE is a good start but don't forget WP:WEIGHT, WP:N, WP:RS, WP:NOR, and WP:V. In order to even have a mention at Wikipedia, the prose must fulfill all those points. That is, it must not be unduly emphasized in comparison to its notability, it must be sourced by reliable sources -- which usually means that critical review needs to have happened: using only primary sources doesn't cut it, it must not represent an original amalgamation or construction, and must be wholly verifiable. Normally fringecruft violates one or more of these policies and guidelines. If the editor is reticent and refuses to admit this, try getting a Wikipedia: Third opinion. If you are meticulous in your documentation (which isn't that hard), you will find that other editors will be responsive to your perspective. -- ScienceApologist 12:56, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

You don't get it. I'm aware of dozens articles along the lines of Komedes which have been here for years and whose current shape is damaging to the reputation of Wikipedia. I have neither time nor desire to muck about with them, much less to request third opinions, to pontificate about secondary and tertiary sources, or to fend off accusations of vandalism. I don't have a noticeboard where I can report Komedes, so that people with plenty of time on their hands could decrankify such pages. Your proposal amounts to preserving status quo. Well, I don't give a hoot either way. --Ghirla^-трёп- 14:02, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Also, there already is a fringecruft noticeboard of sorts at Wikipedia: Wikiproject Rational Skepticism. No need to reinvent the wheel. --ScienceApologist 12:58, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Where can I submit a page for investigation? I have been exposing kooks for years and I have not come across a single member of this project, by the way. Probably they are simply not interested in history, especially its nationalistic aspects. --Ghirla^-трёп- 14:02, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Category listing all people in Wikipedia

Is it possible to create a category listing all the people in Wikipedia so that I can find them easier and read about them?

Do you mean people who have Wikipedia articles about them, or people who edit Wikipedia? –Pomte 17:53, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Or Category:People? Adrian M. H. 18:33, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Automatic talk page shortcuts

I've often thought it would be very, very useful if there was an automated way of having a short-cut to a talk page such that if, say you made WP:VLPNNAS as a redirect to Wikipedia:Very long page name needing a shortcut, WPT:VLPNNAS would automatically be created as a redirect to the page's talk page at the same time. Is there any way this could be rigged up? Grutness...wha? 01:47, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

You'd probably be looking for a bot to do this, in which case Wikipedia:Bot requests would be a better forum for discussion. Also, the shortcut would begin with [[WT:, not with [[WPT:. —METS501 (talk) 04:27, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposed change in the WP:NOT#DIR rule

Moved to Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Proposed_change_in_the_WP:NOT.23DIR_rule, as it's a proposed change in policy. Firsfron of Ronchester 07:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)