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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 listed at Wikipedia: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.

Rollback limit

When the rollback limit was initially created, it was when the flag was going to be given to all autoconfirmed users. As the permission has to be granted by admins manually now, and some degree of clue should be shown before a user receives it, I propose we remove the limit set on rollbackers - we've already shown that if there's misuse, we're effective at removing the permission. Ryan Postlethwaite 22:37, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've got no problem with this. Many users are having trouble keeping up with vandalism because of this limit. As Ryan said, we're doing fine with removing it when it is abused, so I don't think this should be a problem. - Rjd0060 (talk) 22:55, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I may be wrong on this, but I think the limit was raised to 100 a few weeks ago. Even so, I would still support removing the limit entirely: it's not needed. People who abuse rollback get it removed, and those who use it correctly keep the right, but are hindered by the limit. Let's remove the limit. Acalamari 02:18, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Never even knew there was a limit (is it documented somewhere?) But it sounds from the above that it would be beneficial to abolish it or at least raise it significantly.--Kotniski (talk) 09:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Get rid of it - it's not helping anyone. Hut 8.5 18:55, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, admin judgment is sufficient. Can we move forward with this? Skomorokh 11:50, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Opinion seems to be unanimous here so far. Any objections to taking it to the devs?--Kotniski (talk) 18:56, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The limit can't really be removed without actual development work on the software. But it can be raised to an arbitrarily high number. Currently, it's set to 10 / minute (I believe). Non-sysops can check their rate limits via the API (here). If people are regularly hitting the limit, there's no real reason not to raise it. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:12, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So, how about asking it to be set to 60 a minute? A limit of one per second shouldn't get in anyone's way.--Kotniski (talk) 08:27, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Assuming (based on the above discussion) that silence indicates consent, I've made a request at Bugzilla (Bug 14967).--Kotniski (talk) 08:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Branching articles

I've been working on a proposal at User:Phil Sandifer/Branching to better handle areas where we use multiple pages and articles to cover what would normally be considered a single topic. There's still some technical implementation to be done, and decisions to be made like whether to use the existing sub-article functionality or create a template-based system to handle it, but the basic proposal is there, and I welcome comments on it and thoughts about how to proceed in implementation.

An example of the proposal in action, using sub-articles, can be found at User:Phil Sandifer/Heroes, where I redid much (though not all) of our coverage on the television show Heroes in branching form. All live links are within the branching structure, so please feel free to poke around it. Phil Sandifer (talk) 20:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As shown here, Wikipedia software doesn't permit subpages in article space - which seems to be what you propose. So you're going to have to demonstrate that consensus exists to change that. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm proposing doing it via templates, actually. But the reason for disabling subpages in article space, so far as I can tell, isn't a consensus-based one, but a technical one - nobody was using article space subpages, and they caused problems with articles like OS/2. So they were disabled, because it was assumed nobody would miss them. I can find no record of an active decision not to use them - it was, as far as I can tell, incidental. And in any case, as I said, I think templates provide better functionality for this, in part for the OS/2 problem, in part because the interface for these should probably be more visible than our default subpages interface. Phil Sandifer (talk) 01:08, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The cricket people tried something simular a few years back. It wasn't popular. We've always found a series of stand alone articles to work better than messing around with templates.Geni 12:13, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I can't say I would have thought Cricket to be a subject area this was a natural fit for, though I'd be interested in seeing their efforts. But have a look at the three specific examples I offer- I think, for instance, that George W. Bush would be a lot cleaner if organized via branching, and that an article like Jacques Derrida would get a lot, lot better and easier to read if it were better laid out. To say nothing of the obvious benefits for fictional topics. That it's been tried and found wanting in one WikiProject doesn't seem to me that significant a barrier. I mean, notably they've got a version of this working quite nicely on Citizendium, and it's one of the few features they have that I think is clearly better than what we do. So clearly a branching/sub-articles structure can work. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In fact getting rid of subpages was part of the software upbgrade -not just an unused feature. The earliest software had no distinct namespaces and, for example, all talk pages were made be adding a /Talk link at the bottom of the article. The discussion at Wikipedia talk:Subpages/Archive gives some explanation for why it was disallowed for articles titles. Rmhermen (talk) 17:21, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Though, obviously, subpages are still enabled outside of the article namespace. It looks to me, for the most part, like subpages were a bad solution to a problem that was better solved via parentheses for disambiguation and a proliferation of namespaces, and that this is a very different time - it's worth noting that Larry, who killed them, went on to basically implement them on Citizendium. Which is to say, I don't think that the early decision to deprecate them is strongly binding. Phil Sandifer (talk) 21:57, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To get back to Phil's point, as this is coming from discussion of notability (particularly in areas of fiction), it has been suggested that adding something to the topic of the page (whether it's a dir-style sub-article approach, or a template to describe the branching nature) would be useful to help immediately identify articles that are meant to be considered as part of the coverage of a large topic. Part of this is raised by the question of supporting articles having to demonstrate their own notability or not, which is a question for that page, but if you consider it for a larger topic, such as say World War II where there are many notable subpages, does it make sense to have such indication present at the very top of the page to help users navigate larger topics? --MASEM 17:40, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And I think there the answer is yes, at least in some cases. Obviously Dwight Eisenhower shouldn't be a sub-article of any sort, but I think collapsing our articles on various WWII battles under the parent article of World War II could be a useful organizational tool. Phil Sandifer (talk) 21:36, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I have become too much of a fan of WP:SERIES and WP:SUMMARY to judge this proposal objectively. However, I do think the value of those approaches has proved itself over time, not least because allowing an article to standalone allows an article to be used off-line, for example in the Wikipedia 1.0 project or in One Laptop Per Child. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 06:33, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree - but there are topics that don't work well for standalone articles because they get too long. George W. Bush is the subject of a bunch of articles, and should be. This is a proposal to better organize those articles - not to start splitting things that work fine as a single page. Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:51, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But wouldn't Eisenhower obviously be a subpage of U.S. presidents? Who would make these decisions and how often and (pessimist,me) how would they be done consistently? Article series boxes are still used in some article (including some where I have added them.) In fact, I believe they used to be used in the World War II article which is currently hiding most of its links in collapsible boxes at the very bottom of the page where I doubt they are ever noticed. Rmhermen (talk) 14:29, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No. One thing you'll see, if you look at the proposal, is that I pretty clearly and carefully tried to cut off this problem by noting that branching should not be used where an article could plausibly have multiple parents. So Eisenhower shouldn't branch off of WWII or US Presidents because he could branch off of both. But I see the general objection, and have tried to head it off. The main thing is that I don't see this as something that should be done everywhere - it's a specific tool that's good for a specific type of article - namely one that has generated a large number of pages that are de facto subpages already. The proposal is not to start dismembering articles into subpages, but to start organizing the subpages we clearly already have but aren't organizing sensibly. Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:51, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is nothing that cannot be argued to have multiple parents.Geni 21:46, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is, however, probably a much more limited set of things that people would actually come to a consensus that it had multiple parents. I think people would have a much easier time nesting Kant's works under Immanuel Kant than they would nesting Niels Bohr under Physics. I mean, I'm just utterly unconvinced this is a major problem in practice. I don't think we're going to run into people who think that Early life of George W. Bush belongs as a sub-article of childhood instead of George W. Bush. Particularly given that it would have to stem out of a specific point in childhood. Remember that part of the idea here is that a branched article can be reassembled into a linear whole in theory. This is a much more rigid hierarchy than categories. Phil Sandifer (talk) 22:13, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Kant is mearly an author. His works come under 18th century philosophy no? Early life of George W. Bush belongs under formative years of US presidents. Your biased tendency to tie things to individuals is showing. I guess you would make Rolle canal a sub article of James Green (engineer).Geni 22:30, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Geni, are you even being serious here? Read the proposal - neither of the suggestions you're making here - early life under Formative years of US Presidents (is that even an article?) would never pass muster in the article, not because of a question of individualism, but because we'd never break up an article like that. 18th century philosophy (probably an article, though I can't say I'd be surprised if it's a redlink) might - might break down by work, but I'm pretty dubious - generally philosophers are treated as having a coherent system, and so Kant would be treated independently in such an article. I mean, come on. Phil Sandifer (talk) 22:39, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So how would you suggest we break down a Formative years of US Presidents article other than by person?Geni 22:50, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm struggling to imagine how and why we would even have an article on that - but I would imagine if we had one it would be organized thematically so that points about the overall topic became clear and so that it wasn't just a list of biographies. If we're actually going to have an article on formative years of US Presidents it is, presumably, going to be primarily about what trends and similarities can be found among these formative years. Phil Sandifer (talk) 23:07, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why? You could equaly put it together through a series of short bios and saveing the comparisions to the end. The category system appears to be scale free which suggests that attempts to enforce a parent child relationship on articls are fundimnetaly flawed.Geni 23:43, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Geni, you're objecting to an organizational scheme because of how an article that doesn't exist might be organized, despite the fact that it would be a completely idiotic way to organize this hypothetical article, which, I hasten to repeat, doesn't exist. I'm not sure how to possibly satisfy your objection, since it doesn't seem based on anything resembling the on-the-ground reality. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:38, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is what categories do, surely? ninety:one 22:03, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Categories or appropriate navboxes can do this, yes. The problem is is that you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to discover that. In the same line, a well-written lead should clearly state within a sentence or two that the article should be considered a child of a larger article, but not all leads are well written. --MASEM 22:09, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So use a skin with them at the top.Geni 22:50, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The category system provides no sense of relationship between elements of a topic. It doesn't matter if it's at the top or bottom, because it's completely inadequate to the task at hand. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:38, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fe articles fall within one topic area.Geni 00:48, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No. But some articles are clearly sub-topics of a parent article. Nobody is seriously going to suggest that Early childhood of George W. Bush isn't primarily a subtopic of George W. Bush, or that Name of the Father isn't primarily a subtopic of Jacques Lacan. This still isn't the majority of our articles, but even "few" of our articles is a lot of articles. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:54, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Categories seem to me a good tool for tracing a thread across multiple articles. But they don't really organize articles in relation to one another. Phil Sandifer (talk) 22:13, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
because as we have learned articles do not relate to each other the way you suggest they should.Geni 22:50, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Baloney. George W. Bush is basically already written this way. Tons of other topics do. We routinely split articles up for reasons having to do only with page length. This lets us do so without losing the overall coherence of the topic. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:38, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well if it is already possible to write that way then no need for a change is there? And you do lose coherence for your method. Suppose I mention GWB's childhood in a third article. Now do a link to your sub article which is going to have context issues or to a main article that only has a summery?Geni 00:48, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Except that writing that way is an ugly hack right now that causes problems with guidelines like Wikipedia:Notability. And nothing stops us from hyperlinking to GWB's childhood elsewhere when it is mentioned. All this says is that in the overall organization of coverage on GWB there would be a point at which a childhood article would clearly branch out. Other points can hyperlink to that point without difficulty - we do section-to-section wikilinks in other articles without trouble. And I don't really see why we wouldn't be able to organize our coverage of GWB without having two separate points where we would want to summarize his childhood. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if our coverage is organized such that we do have that problem, we've probably organized it badly. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:54, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So to get the content I want to link to to make sense I have to link via a seperate article?Geni 02:02, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Is... that... different from now? Phil Sandifer (talk) 03:13, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are some article that do relate this way. The problem is deciding which ones they are - and agreeing on it. WP:Series already does something like this, I think. Rmhermen (talk) 23:33, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly agree with this movement. When you're dealing with a single concept, but the information becomes too vast to put on one page, it is much better to have a formal structure wherein the branched pages are necessarily a part of the overarching concept. Caveat: the implementation of this needs to be simple, elegant, and automatic. II | (t - c) 00:10, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can see two good ways to do it - either use the existing subpage architecture, or use article names similar to subpages but process the names via templates instead of in Mediawiki - thus allowing OS/2 to not automatically be processed as the sub-article "2" of the article "OS". Either way, the heavy lifting should be done in the article title and some template code. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:40, 19 July 2008 (UTC).[reply]
  • Phil, I like the concept that we somehow protect the encyclopedic inclusion of sub-topics, where the parent article becomes unwieldy, but the sub-topic does not meet the GNC individually. But I don't see the need for special templates and software. Why can't we just place a tag on the top of the talk page similar to what projects place, explaining the nature of the article as a sub-page and the rational. We are trying to avoid the deletion of subpages, while not making a loophole for abuse. We do this with articles that survive AfD, providing a link to the previous AfD discussion as rational for continued inclusion. Can we preempt AfD by linking our tag to an RfC (in an AfD format) where consensus for inclusion is demonstrated upfront? --Kevin Murray (talk) 23:49, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • If there is, as you suggest, consensus to keep such subpages, why would it matter if they go to AfD? Consensus would then be to keep them. If they're getting deleted at AfD, well then, there is not consensus to leave them around, tag or no tag, subarticle or no subarticle. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Because I don't think that AfD works well. If a decent article ends up on AfD it faces prejudice immediately (e.g., guilty until proven innocent) and gets automatic opposition from deletion-zealots, "drive-by" participants, and ignorant newbies trying to be the worlds greenest admin. Though I have seen many article improve through AfD, it all depends on who is there that day and how much energy they have to "mentor" an article or author. I can typically save about two articles a day if I have the energy to do the research and rewrite. I see that attempts to "legislate" "objective" inclusion criteria as flawed -- we just need better processes to apply logical but subjective guidelines to inclusion selection. --Kevin Murray (talk) 15:02, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • I suppose I tend to disagree there. I agree that AfD doesn't work well, but probably not in the sense you say it—I see far too much unimprovable garbage retained and too little emphasis on quality control. I see no problem with an objective standard for inclusion, that standard being "Have independent, reliable sources chosen to give significant coverage to this subject or not?" Whichever the answer is, we follow their lead. If they've given significant independent coverage to it, and it otherwise meets our inclusion policies, we write an article. If they've covered it briefly in the context of a parent topic, we cover it briefly in the context of that parent topic. If they've declined to cover it at all, we decline to cover it at all. We do not second guess sources in any other area of our writing, why should we do so when deciding what to include and how to include it? Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:11, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Phil's initiative sounds good. Please note a couple of current AFD nominations which seem relevant:
These are obviously good appendices to our coverage of Mad magazine and we need a better formal structure for such to avoid wasting time at AFD, where it seems likely that both will be kept. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:55, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Prompting an editor, before submitting an edit, if not logged in

Sometimes a registered user forgets to log in when editing. The result is that the registered user's IP address is displayed in the history instead of the user name. I propose that when people who aren't logged in submit an edit, they should receive the prompt, "Would you like to log in before submitting your edit?" The possible choices would be "yes" or "no thank you". --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:34, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree with this suggestion and add the following problem that has happened to me. I was reviewing my watch list (which implies one is logged in) but when clicking on an entry to open it in a new window, that new window was not logged in. This does not happen very often, but results in an IP edit when you think that you were actually logged in. Dbiel (Talk) 18:36, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I really like this idea. This has almost happened a couple of times, and I wish that the Wikimedia software would ask if you wanted to log in when you begin to edit a page. It currently displays an unobtrusive notice at the top of the edit page when you are not logged in that isn't really noticeable. Perhaps that notice could be changed to be displayed in an {{ambox}} with a little log-in specific picture. That would be easier to implement than a log-in prompt during the page save. — OranL (talk) 19:13, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly support this idea, mainly because it's happened to me too, and there is no prominent visual indicator that alerts users they are not logged in. --.:Alex:. 19:27, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This sounds like a good idea. In the meantime, users could shove something in their custom .css files so that the appearance of the edit page when they're logged in is distinctive - bright purple background or something. This would make the difference more obvious. Pseudomonas(talk) 19:29, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question: Would it be possible to have the prompt stop after the first time one clicks on "No thank you" for that particular article/session? I would imagine IP editors becoming quite frustrated if they had to face that prompt every time they made an edit. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 19:33, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking of a global notice like this, but with a different coloured box (I don't know how to change it, and yes everyone is free to change it). --.:Alex:. 19:34, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
About 30% of our edits come from anonymous users. Do we really want to hit them with popup messages every time they try to edit? --Carnildo (talk) 19:40, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Seeing as login information can be stored on a computer, so when it detects your IP or whatever it automatically appears in the box, maybe we could make it so it detects you are possibly a registered user and causes the box to appear then? --.:Alex:. 19:44, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with this is that there are a lot of users that do not have a static IP address and the IP address may change every time the connect to Wikipedia. But a session cookie might be a possibility.

Here are a couple ideas:

  • This one looks like a warning:
  • This one looks like a notice:
  • Both are more noticeable than:

You are not currently logged in. Editing this way will cause your IP address to be recorded publicly in this page's edit history. If you create an account, you can conceal your IP address and be provided with many other benefits. Messages sent to your IP can be viewed on your talk page.

Props to .:Alex:. for the text that I used from his page. — OranL (talk) 20:17, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Though it should say something about creating an account if you don't already have one... Mr.Z-man 22:57, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I thought the point was that this should only be seen by editors who normally have an account.
In any case, I find using ambox a very bad idea; the particular series of templates is associated with problems in articles, and the nature of these messages is mostly of temporary issues concerning pages in the mainspace. If you want a format more suitable to general use, I highly suggest {{ombox}}. Waltham, The Duke of 23:27, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think its possible to display it to only users who have an account but are not logged in without displaying it to all anon users. Mr.Z-man 23:59, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the template to use {{ombox}} and the text of the current logged-out message. View it above and comment. Feel free to edit the template or the text. — OranL (talk) 03:01, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

_________________________________________________________________
Thank you all for your responses. I appreciate the consideration you've given to my proposal. It looks like I should give a more detailed explanation to clear up some things.

The proposed prompt is for all users that aren't logged in when they submit their edit. This includes both registered and non-registered users. Both are included because I don't see a way to easily differentiate registered from non-registered users.

The prompt does not come up when they begin to edit. It only comes up when they submit their edit. This choice was proposed because someone may only wish to view the edit page without submitting an edit and the prompt would be unnecessary in this case.

Since the users that will view the prompt includes users that are not registered and new to Wikipedia editing, I tried to make the language as simple and friendly as possible so as not to discourage them from editing. The prompt was,

Would you like to log in before submitting your edit?

and the choices to click on were meant to be as simple and friendly as possible too,

<yes>          <no thank you>

--Bob K31416 (talk) 03:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
___________________________________________________________________

Actually, there is an easy way to differentiate between registered and unregistered users. When you log in, a cookie is created. When you log out, the cookie saves your username so that you only have to type your password the next time you log in. So I suppose the software could be programmed to detect cookies when the user is logged out and prompt them to log in. This would work as long as the user uses the same computer and the cookies are not deleted. – FISDOF9 04:00, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, I was thinking something like this in terms of style. Noticable enough as it's not seen usually on the page, but blends in for any IPs that see it.

You are not currently logged in. If you wish to use your account to submit changes, click here to login.


--.:Alex:. 08:37, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This looks good but I am still opposed to the idea of a prompt each time an edit is submitted. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 09:51, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I see the advantages of this idea. It doesn't require any action and is thus unobtrusive. It should be positioned just below the "save page" button. It would only appear if the editor was not logged in. That way a registered user is likely to realise, "Something's different here!" It would be of no consequence to an unregistered user. So I agree with the idea and would only suggest changes in the wording of the reminder to make it simpler and softer,
If you would like to log in before submitting your edit, click here.
An additional feature may be helpful. After the user logs in, there could be a button to click to get back to where the user was on the edit page, but this time as a logged in user. However, since this isn't already a feature during routine Log in, I suspect it is difficult to implement.
--Bob K31416 (talk) 14:48, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you commonly have trouble with this and you don't want to wait for the devs, something like this in your monobook.css (or other skin css file) might be helpful. 

/* Turn the "Save page" button green if I'm logged in */
INPUT#wpSave {
    background-color:#88ff88;
}

It will turn the "Save page" button green when you are logged into your account. If the button isn't green, it means you're not logged in (so don't click it!). Anomie⚔ 11:25, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clever and simple solution! I like it. I'm using it myself now, although with different colours and whatnot. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 12:13, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A great idea, except it doesn't work for me. At all. Any code whatsoever never ever works on my monobook.css or monobook.js or whatever. Anyone why that is? --.:Alex:. 13:04, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Are you using the Monobook skin? If you're not, you'll have to use the .js or .css page for that skin. Occasionally when I need to stir things up I'll use the Modern skin, and so for when I do that my modern.js contains importScript('User:Nihiltres/monobook.js');. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 13:29, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, it's decided to start working, but when I AM logged in. Why is this? Hmm... --.:Alex:. 08:43, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Did you forget to clear your cache after making the change yesterday? Anomie⚔ 13:51, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I purged the cache and it had no effect. --.:Alex:. 16:30, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Your monobook.css modifications can only affect your personal user account. It cannot, for instance, make the button red if you aren't logged in. — OranL (talk) 18:32, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And as OranL has said above, that is the point of using the monobook.css. Using the example given above, the save button would be green when logged in, but grey if not logged it. It was my first monobook entry. The green button took me a little while to get use to, but it does make it apparent by its absence that I am not logged in; and thus a reminder to log in before clicking on the grey save button. Dbiel (Talk) 18:57, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh I see. I misread it. I thought the green would appear when not logged in (don't know how that would even be possible in a userscript). My bad. --.:Alex:. 20:59, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I like this proposal a lot. It would give all of us a better idea of who the noobs are around here, instead of having established users' contribs diverted to IPs. --Pwnage8 (talk) 18:46, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think this green button thing should be incorporated as a gadget actually. --.:Alex:. 15:23, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly oppose this proposal. While I understand the good intentions behind it, this polidy would presume that IP editing is some sort of mistake, rather than an intention, or the majority mode of editing Wikipedia. It would also introduce a further step of annoyance into IP editing, and we have done far too much to IP editors already. It is also yet another step toward the gradual elimination of IP editing, even possibly delivering "warnings" to IP editors that look suspiciously similar to the warnings delivered to vandals. I must oppose in the strongest possible terms. Mr. IP (talk) 08:58, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment I think all it would take is for the skin to be a different color for logged in editors than for IP editors. Heck, even if the lines surrounding the edit window that I'm typing in now were a different color it would alert me that I'm not logged in. Phlegm Rooster (talk) 09:19, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well said, Rooster. Well actually my skin is very different from that when I'm not logged in, and deliberately so. However, it's not different enough. The edit window for IPs could be green or pink or blue or whatever Mr IP would consider pretty. -- Hoary (talk) 09:26, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      If you want to change the edit window, just apply CSS to #wpTextbox1 as I suggested above for the save button. You could also throw in #wpSummary to do the same for the edit summary box. Something like this:
#wpTextbox1, #wpSummary {
    border-color:#0f0; /* Give it a green border */
    background-color:#cfc; /* Give it a light green background */
}
    • Sure, you could try to get the devs to somehow change colors and such for non-logged-in editors. Or you could do this right now, the only difference being the "standard" appearance means you need to go log in. And this way you can make it as obvious or non-obvious as you want; I think I'll stick with just a green Save button, but you can turn the entire page Magic Pink if it concerns you that much. Anomie⚔ 20:45, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

______________________

Please note that in my previous comment I have modified my original proposal in response to suggestions and comments, especially the suggestion from Alex.
I'll try to make the modified proposal more clear here. Instead of a prompt that requires action there would be a blue box positioned just below the "Save page" button row, only if the user is not logged in. It would not require any action and would be for information purposes only, and it would have a convenient link for logging in:
________________________________________________________________________________________
<Save page>    <Show preview>    <Show changes>
If you would like to log in before submitting your edit, click here.
________________________________________________________________________________________

It would only appear if the editor was not logged in. That way a registered user is likely to realise, "Something's different here!" It would be of no consequence to an unregistered user.
Note that a similar statement already appears when a user is not logged in. The problem is that it appears at the top of the page, away from the "Save page" button and is thus not noticed when the user goes to save the edit.
-Bob K31416 (talk) 13:07, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Overlinking report bot

I'd be interested in using a bot that could scan an article, check for duplicate links, then add an overlinking report to that article's talk page (if necessary). This would allow the maintainers of the page to cull unnecessary redundant links, while still allowing some human judgment in the process. Is anybody interested in putting a tool like this together? Perhaps it could become part of the PR process? Thank you.—RJH (talk) 21:42, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it'd be a great idea, though perhaps instead of a bot it might be best as a toolserver script like the FAC tools. I imagine that it wouldn't be all that hard to do: one could generate a list of wikilinks on the page and then note duplicates and highlight ones in the same or adjacent sections by doing separate checks for each section and then the unions of the sets found for each section for each pair of adjacent sections. It could probably even be done in JavaScript. The main trick would be checking for redirects, though that would be made slightly easier by that redirects are already highlighted by class="mw-redirect", and so only those links would need to be checked. I could probably whip up a prototype in AppleScript easily, but that wouldn't be useful for most people. Unfortunate that I don't yet understand JavaScript well enough or this would probably be a breeze to create given that that language has enough such functionality to create things like popups. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 23:12, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please tread carefully... Double links are not discouraged in long articles, where one instance of an item might need explanation and is far from the previous instance. Also, in articles to sections of which lead redirects many links have to be repeated, as one will not read the previous sections. I do agree with the proposed process (reports which will be checked by humans), and, although too much automation might be responsible for massive deforestationlinking if handled badly, I have faith in the community. I reserve further judgement until I see more details.
Yes, well this is why I was just requesting a report, rather than a script to actually remove wikilinks. I recognize that some human judgement is important when determining what links to remove, and the report can explain that. On the other hand, it is a royal pain to try and spot duplicate links in a long article—something that can be done easily with software. (At this point it's very tempting just to write my own perl script that I can run on a downloaded copy of a page source.) Thanks.—RJH (talk) 15:33, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
My own little idea on link handling is, I hope, even more uncontroversial... (I hope I'm not digressing too blatantly; I find this a relevant subject.) "London" displays London and links to London, England, which redirects to London. A useless complication, in other words; I've seen many of them, usually the result of moves. I wonder if that could be automatically converted to "London". Waltham, The Duke of 23:50, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please read Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups/About fixing redirects (basically, don't unless it's a double redirect) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:59, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is, don't fix these redirects unless you are editing the page for some other reason (like to add content). Redirects are handled efficiently by the server, and there is no reason to proactively fix them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I've heard the story... And I agree that there are some kinds of changes that should not be made unless the edit can be actually useful. (I don't add content, but I do copy-edit; sometimes I meticulously check an article for any mistake which I could correct in order to remove spaces around em dashes. It's actually a prime motivator for thorough copy-editing. :-D) It's just that I find this kind of links profoundly silly.
Ah, well, I suppose there's manual editing for that—I'm glad I have pop-ups for checking links. Thank you for your input, gentlemen. Waltham, The Duke of 00:12, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Make 'new section' bold and 'edit this page' regular

The sensible way to edit a large, oft frequented discussion page is by clicking on 'new section' or the 'edit' link next to the section of interest. Otherwise, one must search for the relevant section within the edit window and deal with the horror of edit-conflicts. Currently on pages like the Science Reference desk et al., the 'edit this page' link is bold and the 'new section' link is regular, leading to me accidentally being drawn to the bold link when I want the regular one. Indeed, I imagine few people ever need the 'edit this page' button on the reference desks. I suggest that the 'new section' link is made bold and the 'edit this page' link is made regular, so that people are drawn to what is probably the correct link out of the two. ----Seans Potato Business

It sounds sensible, but... Can this be done for a single page? Waltham, The Duke of
How about doing it for all talk pages and pages with __NEWSECTIONLINK__ on them? – FISDOF9
That might be a good idea. Pity that we seem to have failed to receive enough attention here. I had forgotten about this myself for almost a week... Stupid Pump. Waltham, The Duke of
This is a great idea, with no real downside. I do not know how long this topic has been here as nobody has timestamps... weird. ~ JohnnyMrNinja (I won't use one either)
It is weird, given that I distinctly remember adding a time-stamp. I suppose someone has removed them to prevent this thread from being archived. Waltham, The Duke of 19:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to target pages with __NEWSECTIONLINK__ on them, the MediaWiki software would have to be changed. I suggest filing a bug report and requesting this as a feature. —Remember the dot (talk) 06:48, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This can be done with individual mediawiki messages, or Javascript. No need for a change to mediawiki. Soxred 93 12:05, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A MediaWiki message (if it is what I think it is) would probably be the best solution; features useful for all shouldn't depend on individual scripts. Waltham, The Duke of 19:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Making new section bold could be done with CSS - making edit non-bold dependent on the presence of new section cannot. --Random832 (contribs) 20:19, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, someone want to start a poll regarding bolding the "new section" tab (and unbolding the "edit this page"), on all talk pages, so we can see if there is consensus for this? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
All talk pages? Can't a bot do it? --Seans Potato Business 17:45, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mandatory edit summaries in article and template namespaces

I propose that edit summaries be mandatory for all edits in the article namespace and template namespace. Ignoring any technical hurdles, how does the community feel about this? --- RockMFR 02:23, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt it's really all that useful. People who don't want to write summaries will start using meaningless ones, such as the letter a. Granted, there will probably be some increase in useful summaries too, but the downside is that you'll antagonize a bunch of people. --Trovatore (talk) 03:59, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Edit summaries are for when an edit need explaining, which is not always. Chillum 04:52, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I often use a . to keep my summaries 100%, when I am editing something repeatedly, or mundanely (like a sandbox). I don't think it'd make much of a difference, and although summaries are nice, people shouldn't have to be forced to add them, as they don't really alter the quality of their work or the article. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 06:38, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I do wonder if we can increase the amount of automatic summaries though, to make things a little easier. Such as "Added image", or "Removed section"/"Added section" ect. Just to help when viewing histories, as some of them for articles where many IPs edit can be very difficult as there is no indication whatsoever of what's been done. --.:Alex:. 08:31, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I like Alex's idea better. It would be very nice if the software cam automatically put a summary like "its -> it's". Sometimes I'm too lazy to write such summaries, especially when I'm making the same kind of edits en masses. -- Taku (talk) 01:45, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Taku, if you are making the same kinds of edits in masses, you might consider signing up for AutoWikiBrowser, which facilitates such mass edits, and will fill in the edit summary automatically. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 22:57, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The idea of more automatically-generated messages is a great one, but I don't know how that can be done with the Wiki software. Perhaps a browser plug-in or something? ~ JohnnyMrNinja 20:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I find that firefox remembers the edit summaries I've typed. --Pwnage8 (talk) 23:19, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I dont like the idea of forcing anyone to do anything, but perhaps I would agree that making the default value for Special:Preferences>editing>Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary>true could be helpful. for IP's who dont have pref's perhaps it could default to ask them as well. When I started editing I didn't know that the preference setting even existed, but once I learned about it I immediately set it to true.... Just a thought, hope it helps %%-SYKKO-%% (talk to me) 01:56, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Setting it as default for everyone is a good idea. It will not force anyone to do anything, but will heavily suggest it. I found tnhis option annoying when I first started editing, but now I never see it (as I always do edit summaries). ~ JohnnyMrNinja 20:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that feature works very well. Chillum 20:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Specifics? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
When I forget to enter an edit summary, it usually does not go off due to automatic edit summaries. Chillum 23:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to move "Village pump"

Please see Wikipedia talk:Village pump#Move Proposal

A "resource fork"

Often when I'm researching an article, I'll come across relevant reliable sources that I don't immediately need but might be useful in further expansions of the article. Similarly, there are times when articles are trimmed to remove sections per WP:WEIGHT or WP:SUMMARY and useful sources are dropped along with the edit.

Would it be reasonable to have a subpage (similar to a talk page) that's just a list of resources for future writers of the article? SDY (talk) 18:10, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You could include these in a section near the bottom called "Further reading". − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 22:51, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Often I'm running into cases where there are quite a few of them (PubMed journal searches, for example) and a long "further reading" section might be kind of cumbersome. I suppose it can always go on the talk page. SDY (talk) 23:55, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Talk page, or you could comment it out in an appropriate section, like so:
<!-- Yadda yadda, here are some other useful resources: --> − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 00:45, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Also see the section above where there was some talk of holding these in a sub-talkpage (like Talk:Foo/LinkSuggest links), and having a "LinkSuggest" user-script to conveniently mediate access to them from the article proper. I'd have a crack at writing it if I only had the time. :-) For instance, the script might add a "suggested links" option to the toolbox which pops up a list of items and gives controls for adding or removing items yourself. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 07:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is absolutely nothing wrong with posting these on the talk page; most talkpage comments are far less substantive. I have recently begun creating sections titled "Resources relevant to the page" on talk pages. II | (t - c) 21:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
SDY, I think this is a great idea. Yeah, sure, theoretically this can be put on the talk page. Sure, there's absolutely nothing wrong with putting it on the talk page. But that doesn't happen. The presence of resource forks as a common or universal practice would encourage the posting and collection of resource lists, which would be of IMMENSE help in sourcing articles! There's no solid reason to oppose this idea that I can think of. Mr. IP (talk) 08:52, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Semiprotect the entire Template: namespace

We've been suffering a lot of vandalism to templates lately (just check the threads on WP:AN/I and elsewhere). Many of our most commonly used templates have already been permanently protected or semiprotected as "high-risk templates", but a lot have still slipped through the cracks. Therefore, I'd like to toss out a proposal for discussion: how about we semiprotect the entire template namespace?

There are two ways in which we could implement this:

  1. MediaWiki has a configuration variable $wgNamespaceProtection which can be used to set a minimum protection level for all pages in a given namespace. By default, it's only used to prevent non-admins from editing the MediaWiki: namespace, but the Wikimedia sysadmins could use it to semiprotect the Template: namespace.
  2. Wikipedia also has the Title Blacklist extension, which could be used to achieve a similar effect by adding the line "Template:.* <noedit|autoconfirmed>" to MediaWiki:Titleblacklist. This would be more of a hack, but it could be implemented by local admins without sysadmin assistance, and could also allow more fine-grained control. (In particular, I've proposed elsewhere to use this mechanism to protect subpages of Template:Convert.)

Obviously, this would prevent new and unregistered users from making legitimate changes to templates; however, most users with enough wiki experience to usefully edit templates should probably pass the autoconfirmation requirements anyway. Conversely, I'm aware that a determined vandal can easily register accounts in advance and rack up the required ten edits before vandalizing; but the semiprotection would still serve as a speed bump, and we can still keep fully protecting the highest-risk templates as we already do. Let the comments roll in. Also, feel free to notify any other relevant forums about this proposal. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

TI have thought about this myself in the past few days. The main downside is the foundation principle of open editing, which I strongly advocate. I might be willing to compromise on that in this case, but I don't think the current autoconfirmed standards are rigorous enough that semiprotection would have much effect. I don't think full protection for all templates is a viable option, though. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:20, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think the idea has merit and I support it but just something to think about though is that this would make vandalism harder to spot, right now the IP's are easy to spot editing but if the requirement were changed to autoconfirmed status then there would be no way to filter there contributions out from more established users. - Icewedge (talk) 03:46, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There's been far too much limiting of the ability to edit going on lately; it all started with making it harder to get autoconfirmed, and its gotten way out of hand; we have principles, and they're more important than templates that can be watchlisted and reverted. Celarnor Talk to me 04:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I mentioned this the other day as a facetious comment - while I do see why this would be considered, I don't think it's something we should implement. As mentioned, it limits constructive editing too much. Someone trying to make a useful edit to a template can't do so unless they're logged in. Locking out the entire Template: namespace also prevents additions or corrections to documentation of templates as well. We do have several tools already available to us to help with this - the preview screen now lists all templates used on a page; recent changes can be restricted to Template: edits only, as well as showing only anonymous users; high-risk templates can be protected as many already are. Several administrators, myself included, transclude various templates onto a user subpage with cascading protection (See User:Hersfold/Lockbox - the ones I have listed there are commonly used in coding more complex templates, and could cause severe damage. While most are protected of their own merit, some are/were not: {{((}}, for example, was open to all editing until I locked it manually and added it to the page above for double security.). While template vandalism does take some time and effort to track down, it's not impossible, and usually can be found and corrected within a short time. Admittedly, it is more severe than your run-of-the-mill vandalism, but not to the point it merits such a severe measure of protection, in my opinion. Hersfold non-admin(t/a/c) 04:26, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've given this a lot of thought today. Here's what I've thought of:

  • Turn on flagged revisions for the template namespace.
    • Good: Should stop vandalism almost entirely.
    • Bad: All the problems that come with flagged revisions.
  • Change the software to automatically full-protect any page transcluded on over XXX number of pages.
    • Good: No high-profile template vandalism.
    • Bad: Requires a change in the software; template edits still need to be watched closely; coming up with a good XXX will be difficult.
  • Full-protect all templates.
    • Good: No more vandalism!
    • Bad: No more edits!
  • Semi-protect all templates.
    • Good: Might slow down vandals.
    • Bad: Probably won't. And anons do make good edits.
  • Delay changes made to templates by non-admins (i.e., won't affect transclusions for X minutes, don't go into the job queue if reverted).
    • Good: Recent changes patrollers can stop any vandalism.
    • Bad: Software changes.
  • Use the filter extension thing.
    • Good: Temporarily stop the vandalism.
    • Bad: Arms race.
  • Continue with what we're already doing.
    • Good: ???
    • Bad: ???

--- RockMFR 04:52, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The original poster's proposal is a bad idea. Any vandal sophisticated enough to employ template vandalism is generally determined enough to create an account. I don't know how many useful anonymous edits are made to templates - not many, I expect, since anonymous edits are generally by unsophisticated users - but this still happens sometimes, due for example to "edit" links on transcluded infoboxes. Even this small number should not be ruled out for no purpose. Dcoetzee 05:51, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
User:Jaysweet had come up with an idea to help fight it on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive450#Fog; basically it was a "View Recent Changes to pages transcluded on this page" tool (can AWB do that, or does someone want to have a crack at the toolserver?) with which users can easily find which template is the culprit of such an issue and revert it. Does that sound like it would be useful? --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 10:12, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It does actually. I also like the idea of templates being automatically protected when they are transcluded on a certain high number of pages. --.:Alex:. 12:10, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, I'd bet all we need to do is tag the list of transcluded templates on the edit page that were most recently edited (say within the past 3 hours), similar to how protected templates are already tagged there as "(protected)". Usually, the most recently edited template is going to be the vandalized one. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:47, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Is there anywhere we can list "suggestions for toolserver tools", or is this really a {{sofixit}} situation? :-) --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 15:17, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, that's a good idea. I wrote a user script to do just that. Anomie⚔ 01:34, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I support this, but only if the default protection level is semi-protected, not fully protected, as there I'm sure there are a lot of non-Admins who edit templates in a constructive way (myself included). It Is Me Here (talk) 12:38, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly second It Is Me Here's point that the default protection level should be semi-protected. WP:CEX uses several templates created / modified by its members. -- Philcha (talk) 13:14, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding Use the filter extension thing: Good: Temporarily stop the vandalism. Bad: Arms race., I disagree with the "Bad" analysis. Figuring out how to evade the settings in a filter extension would (a) be a lot of work and (b) would in no way give the vandal an advantage with regard to human beings spotting and fixing this sort of vandalism. A better analogy is to something like surveillance cameras or x-ray machines at airports - whether or not you think they're worth doing (primarily because of costs and false positives), they in no way lead to an "arms race". -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:10, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The extension isn't meant to deal with vandals like this; it is meant to employ filters to deal only with very specific, very easily identifiable forms of vandalism (i.e, the HAGGAR pagemoves); it is by no stretch intended to deal with the vandalism that is reverted by ClueBot and the like. Celarnor Talk to me 14:12, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are also lots of anonymous editors who edit constructively, too; are you better than they are because you have an account? Should we really block them from doing so because there are a few losers among the group? If you think that, then you really should be endorsing full-protection, since autoconfirmed users can be vandals too. You can even take it a bit further and say we shouldn't have templates at all, since you could work an account up past RFA to vandalize. Is it really a good idea to inhibit editing by default because of a few losers? Celarnor Talk to me 14:12, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is a wiki. Semi-protecting the entire Template: namespace is a bad idea that will do far more harm than good. Autoconfirmed limits are trivial to bypass and a great deal of legitimate page content is stored in the Template: namespace. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:27, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Doing nothing at all would be worse than the current situation, which is summarised by the instructions here [1]. At present we revert, protect, purge and warn on a template-by-template basis, and we're slowly moving towards protection of most common transcluded templates in an inefficient, time-consuming and piecemeal way. There's a case for making it less convenient overall for the drive-by template vandal who wants to make a big mess with little effort.
I think semiprotecting the whole space is too draconian, but I like the idea of a "View recent changes to pages transcluded on this page" - dead useful if it could be made to work for Popups too. As for the "semiprotect when transcluded to >X pages" idea, I don't buy the argument that it's unworkable because you'll not get consensus on what X is. We appear to have consensus already on full protection for really important templates, and the judgement about whether to protect is made on the fly by individual admins. I'm sure a figure for X could be reached by discussion if the proposal was made. Finally, there's scope for a far better, step-by-step explanation at [2] as to how non-admins can detect and revert template vandalism: that's where users will go first for guidance, and it's a bit sparse. I found Hersfold's suggestions above particularly helpful for my own future reference. Maybe experienced template vandal-fighters could look at fleshing out the section a bit? Karenjc 18:11, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We are going to have to do something about this. This vandal has worked out how to hit hundreds of high-profile pages at once and consequently the number of people who have been affected (and the number who have complained) is huge. I wrote a program to find out how many templates have more than 500 transclusions, and it returned over 2000. Semiprotecting templates with more than a certain number of transclusions looks like the best way to go. Hut 8.5 18:51, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mm-hm. Absolutely. I think we can all agree that a template that is transcluded on 500+ pages is certainly "high risk" and should at least be semi-protected. Of course templates that are transcluded less than that and are high risk are special cases and will likely receive enough attention to be protected without automatic intervention (like the AN templates for example). Some templates, however, get "forgotten" and overlooked and people can therefore miss some large scale vandalism. I don't know whether we should pursue some of the other ideas or not, but I do strongly think that this particular idea should be applied to the template namespace. --.:Alex:. 19:05, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No. At least, not all templates. Protecting high-risk templates is within reason -- and established practice -- but not all of them preemptively. Any serial vandal knows how to register accounts to bypass semiprotection, meaning all this solution will do is exclude honest IP editors from contributing. I've been collaborating with an IP editor recently, who has made constructive edits to dozens of articles and related templates. One of the articles we've been working on was semiprotected in response to a conspiracy-theory vandal, and as a result all IPs are now locked out. I'd sooner just keep reverting the vandal than lose contributors.--Father Goose (talk) 19:13, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We aren't talking about semi-protecting articles, though: this is about semi-protecting templates, which are quite a bit more arcane to (most) newbies. In any case, it's considerably quicker and easier to revert vandalism on an article than it is on a template. - Jredmond (talk) 20:40, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to register extremely strong opposition. As Dcoetzee says above, any vandal sophisticated enough to hit templates is sophisticated enough to ripen some accounts. All this does is shut off another area of the encyclopedia to IP editors. I have created templates in the past, and I shudder to think that soon I could never be able to do it again under my preferred mode of editing. IP editors should not be shut out of template space completely. Ever. I'm sorry, I understand the intentions here, but an extreme, total, and permanent crackdown on IP editors is going too far. This is just another step toward the total elimination of anonymous users.  Mr. IP, Defender of Open Editing  16:40, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good. The percentage of useful edits, compared to vandalism, of IP users is so low these days that anonymous users should be totally eliminated. Great idea for the startup of the project, but with intensely high worldwide visibility now - first hit or two on almost any google search - the concept is outdated and the protection of "the rights of anonymous users" is anachronistic at best. Anyone can register an account, and the positive effect that would have on the reduction of vandalism far, far outweighs any loss of constructive edits from IPs. Tan ǀ 39 16:50, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'll go you one further, and suggest we eliminate all editors. They are such a nuisance! Administrators should not have to clean up after them.  Mr. IP, Defender of Open Editing  09:00, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's an idea - it doesn't prevent the vandalism, but it's a speedbump, and the template space is sufficiently esoteric that most people contributing are well-established editors, so we get less collateral damage this way than from sprotecting articles. Perhaps more usefully, someone could generate a list of all templates transcluded more than a hundred or so times, and let us start full-protecting them... Shimgray | talk | 20:25, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I can make such a list, but posting it on-wiki is a bad idea as it gives the vandal a list of targets. Hut 8.5 20:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like the general idea here. When it comes to editing templates, anybody can comment on the talk page, and any registered user can create a /Temp subpage with a mockup of their changes. My only major concern here is how effective semi-protection will be against throwaway autoconfirmed accounts. - Jredmond (talk) 20:40, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I personally think all good wikipedians should have account. Idea of semi-protecting templates which are present on more than 500+ pages seems fair and just. It will reduce some load of patrolling. Also good wikipedians who want to do constructive work would pass the basic test easily. This idea will prompt them to come up with an account. Vandals anyway are more interested in dirtying articles which has more visibility than templates which have auto set for hidden than show. --gppande «talk» 20:50, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Once we implement automatic semi-protection after the transclusion #500, how long will it be before people start adding more transclusions just to up the count and force protection? IMHO, a preview that allowed you to use the list to toggle which templates are shown would be a better approach to template vandalism, more in line with the "easy to break, easy to fix". -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 21:11, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Highly endorse. As one who believes that Wikipedia has moved past the "startup" where anyone can anonymously edit and into a realm where users should have accounts, and dealing with all the Grawp bullshit lately, this is a great idea. Tan ǀ 39 01:35, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bad idea, agree with MZMcBride, this will only hurt good editors and looks like being used as another step against anonymous editors. Davewild (talk) 07:02, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I downright oppose any indiscriminate protection of pages in any namespace. Protection should be applied on a case-by-case basis, with the potential exception of pages which fulfil certain criteria of high risk of, and vulnerability to, vandalism. Thanks to the raise of the criteria for auto-confirmation, semi-protection is more meaningful than it used to be, and caution and good judgement should be involved in the use of such measures—without exceptions. Waltham, The Duke of 19:43, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have a hard time believing that (a) newly registered users have any need to be mucking around with templates until they have a lot more experience than 10 or 20 edits (if they are "deterred" by semi-protection, that's arguably a benefit, not a problem), and (b) that there are many experienced editors who have been making useful changes to templates and yet haven't figured out the value of having a registered account (personalization, better anonymity, ability to track one's own edits, better reputation, etc.) Why don't we acknowledge that any template that impacts more than a couple of dozen pages is *high risk*, which means that most templates should be at least semi-protected, which means that we might as well semi-protect the namespace and be done with it.
The purpose of allowing "anyone to edit" is to avoid stifling viewpoints and encouraging contributions to articles. On the other hand, Wikipedia isn't (and never will be) "the encyclopedia whose software anyone can modify". We only let developers muck with the software - and no one considers that censorship, or a problem. Templates are code. In the risk-reward calculation, the risks of vandalism seem far greater than the benefits of contributions by novice and IP editors to templates. Or any "damage" to the concept of Wikipedia. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:20, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's an excellent point. Besides, most high risk templates are deemed unsuitible for even registered users to tamper with, hence why they are fully protected. I can't see how semi-protection would be unreasonable. The amount of actually beneficial template edits by IPs is so minimal, that the benefit's of deterring vandalism are indeed much greater. --.:Alex:. 14:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
John: With all due respect, you're utterly wrong and you are making statements without any support. Look at the Recent changes feed with logged-in users hidden showing only the Template: namespace (here). Anonymous editors make hundreds of edits to templates every day. And to say that only code is found in templates is simply rubbish. Take, for example, Template:Los Angeles Dodgers roster navbox. That template (and many, many, many others) contain legitimate page content. If we are to allow people to edit page text freely and anonymously, there is no reason to block editors from editing page content inside templates freely and anonymously. While I would certainly agree that the template that Template:Los Angeles Dodgers roster navbox uses (Template:Navbox) should be fully protected, semi- or fully protecting that template is absurd and anti-wiki. One of our guiding principles is the ability to allow anyone to edit, and we restrict such an ability for various reasons (large-scale damage, wasting server resources, content disputes, etc.). I've seen no compelling reason or evidence to flatly restrict the Template: namespace from anonymous users in this discussion. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree; besides, many templates are little more than repeating text or tables. They don't have to be complex. They are easy to edit by anyone without (m)any glitches, and in case of a mistake they are easy to correct. I remind the honourable colleagues that, even though vandalism in a template can be seen simultaneously on many pages, that also increases the changes of someone spotting and correcting it, restoring the balance. And there is something else...
Templates are not restricted to the Template namespace. There are templates in the user and project namespaces, and although these are not transcluded in the mainspace, vandalism there can be equally or even more disrupting, depending on the case. These will be excepted by any blanket semi-protection on templates, creating double standards and precipitating unforeseeable changes in template-creation and -editing trends. What's wrong with the merits of case-by-case protection? Why flood the logs for what amounts, in many cases, to protecting templates transcluded in twenty pages? This cannon will kill far more flies than soldiers. Waltham, The Duke of 00:29, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Without addressing the merits of your comment in any other respect, I'd just like to point out, as a minor technical correction, that neither of the suggested methods for (semi)protecting the template namespace would create any log entries. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:27, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Duly noted. For all it's worth, I meant it more as a poetic image than literally. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 23:06, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anomie's userscript solution

I just tried User:Anomie's User:Anomie/previewtemplatelastmod.js script, it seems to work pretty well; it modifies the "list of templates used here" list to show the most recent change instead of just the name of each one. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 06:58, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Coincidentally, rev:37927 is now live, so that Special:RecentChangesLinked (listed in the toolbox on the left as "Related changes") now includes changes to transcluded templates. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia password limits

Wikipedia's page for creating an account or logging in has a link to the article "Password strength". I have the following questions:

-- Wavelength (talk) 02:16, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This doesn't really belong at the proposals village pump - more probably the Help Desk or the tech village pump - but anyway, I can't find anything on Wikipedia about this, and I'm having difficulty locating it on the MediaWiki site as well. meta:Don't leave your fly open should help answer some of your questions, but not completely. I can answer a couple questions, however: the Mediawiki software will not truncate over-long passwords - this would be a terrible bug in the system if it were the case, as it could make logging in very difficult for people who enter an overlong password. If you enter one that is over the software or site limit, it should tell you to enter a new one. I'm not sure what the limit is, however. Also, the answers aren't on the account creation page because nobody's added them to the Mediawiki interface, probably because everyone else is having as hard a time finding the answers as I am. Once they are there, they probably will be added as soon as someone figures out exactly which Mediawiki page that is - very few of them are intuitively named. Hersfold non-admin(t/a/c) 02:57, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Probably it would go on one of MediaWiki:Signupend or MediaWiki:Fancycaptcha-createaccount. I checked the source a bit, I found that User:isValidPassword() checks only against a minimum size. The password field in the database is just an MD5 hash of the "actual" password, so the only real maximum is PHP's maximum string size, which I believe defaults to around 8 million characters. That would be a very secure password! --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 11:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The minimum size is in $wgMinimalPasswordLength, which on Wikipedia I think is set to 8. The check for the minimum uses strlen(), but I imagine Wikipedia is using a UTF8 string with mbstring.func_overload, which would mean that even "fancy" passwords with Chinese script only count each character as 1. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 11:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For what it is worth, User:Slark has posted the following message (07:39, 20 March 2008) [3] at Talk:Password strength#Wikipedia password limits.
I just changed my Wikipedia password using KeePassX 0.2.2 (new version 0.3.1! with AutoType!) with maxed out password strength, which has the following options:
1000 characters length
Upper letters
Lower letters
Numbers
Special characters
White spaces
Minus
Underline
higher ANSI characters
KeePassX reports a password generated with these options as either 8000 bit or 12816 bit quality, either way Wikipedia happily accepted it. [end of message by Slark]
-- Wavelength (talk) 16:08, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While MediaWiki indeed accepts such passwords, it's worth noting that they're hashed internally to a 128 bit value (using MD5). Thus, there's no real point in using a password stronger than 128 bits, since you'll start getting hash collisions. Of course, allowing long passwords is still useful, since passwords that can be memorized and typed by humans tend to have fairly low entropy per character. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 07:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
After reading this post decided to create a script to add a password strength meter on the new accounts form. It doesn't use a checklist like most meters instead opting for calculating the bit strength. I'm centralizing discussion at Common.js. — Dispenser 00:32, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Auto-confirm sleepers

While noticing some of the recent page move vandalism today I decided to see what it was they did for their first 10 edits to get auto-confirm status (needed for page moves). This account only has two edits before it started using the page move feature, and their first edit was made on July 4th. I'm guessing the account existed before the auto confirm settings were changed, and got the flag when it existed for more than four days.

I propose, assuming it's possible, that all accounts that have not made any edits that were made before the auto-confirm settings change have their auto-confirm flag removed. Assuming this is possible likely means a dev would be needed to do it, but I thought I would post this proposal here to double check with the community before making the bug report. -- Ned Scott 02:58, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The page was not moved. The edit summary was faked to look like a move. Being autoconfirmed is determined by the current rules, so many existing accounts lost their status when the rules were changed. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:32, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be mistaken, Prime, because at least some of them were actual page moves. Unless there were 8 deleted contribs that I can't see, then this account does have auto-confirm status based on the old settings. -- Ned Scott 03:45, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was referring to the alleged move after two edits. The first real move was made after 7 visible and 3 deleted edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:54, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Number 3 to 7 of the visible edits were dummy edits with an edit summary imitating a move. There were 3 deleted edits on 4 July. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Aaah. -- Ned Scott 04:45, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. Would also help a little with the haggar/grawp crap, if that's not what yer referring to in the first place. Tan ǀ 39 03:33, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now I'm even more confused, as the logs show the account was created on July 4th, 2008. There must be deleted contribs that are involved. -- Ned Scott 03:48, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Raiselived had three deleted contributions on July 3, 2 non-deleted comments on July 3, and 5 "fake move" edits on July 21, for a total of 10 before the first real move. --B (talk) 04:07, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I see what you are saying about dates, though. The difference is timezones. The account was created July 3 at 21:42 Eastern. The deleted edits were at 22:21 and 22:22, and 22:25. All times are Eastern (UTC-5). --B (talk) 04:09, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I think the reason for Ned Scott's confusion over the July 4 (UTC) creation was not related to time zones. Rather, it was because he originally guessed the account was created before the autoconfirmation requirement was raised on a much earlier date. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:15, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I guess that pretty much explains everything. -- Ned Scott 04:43, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it wasn't faked, he did move the pages but the autoconfirm settings is 4 days 10 edits and though the account was created on July 4th, he really didn't start vandalising 4 days later because he has previously done this and was "blocked" by the admins over and over again, now what he does is atleast wait over 10 days and in this case, 18 days weirdly and the 10 edit requirement INCLUDES deleted edits, and this way he can easily fool anyone into thinking that he is a newbie by creating fake pages and making multiple dummy edits on it and confidently wait for the admins to delete it, thus though his contribs will show no edits, his deleted edits will show 10 edits which is all he needs and when no one takes interest in that account anymore, he strikes...plain and simple..but a new trend I have seen is that he now creates account names using CAPTCHAS and since most CAPTCHAS are repeated, its easy for admins who help out in Account creation to see this trend...--Cometstyles 05:03, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Should autoconfirm be changed to not count deleted edits? -- Imperator3733 (talk) 15:01, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest not. Someone this clever can simply do edits to the sandbox or his/her user page. There are benefits to simplicity - it's easier to say "all edits", and it's easier if someone isn't going back and forth between autoconfirmed and not autoconfirmed, if/when edits are deleted. And yes, while the present system can confuse non-admin vandal fighters (who can't see deleted edits), it's better (I think) to work on informing vandal fighters (as needed) than to add yet another complication to our auto-confirmed process. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:15, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Easy as pi?

I have recently been browsing a lot of mathematical and scientific articles, and have noticed a problem with them. A great number of them make no sense whatsoever to the lay person. In what seems to be something of a Catch-22, the only people who might be able to understand some of these articles would be people who know all about the subject matter anyway and so wouldn't need to read them. As for the curious public who just want to learn a bit more about maths or physics, say, these articles will probably make no sense at all. For instance, of those of you reading my comment, how many can understand what the formulae in Lorentz transformation or Special relativity mean just by reading the articles?

You might argue that some knowledge of the subject matter is expected of those reading such articles, just like people who want to read Wikipedia articles in general need to know the alphabet, but I would say that some of these formulae are too complex not to warrant some sort of explanation.

I propose, then, that one of two things happen:

  • Either all of these articles be rewritten with clear steps breaking the formulae down and showing the logic involved (as happens with articles such as Monty Hall problem, which I think is very well written, incidentally).
  • Or we make a new template similar to {{ChineseText}} or {{Contains Ethiopic text}} which explains that an article contains formulae and gives a list of other articles to read to familiarise oneself with the layout of the formulae contained within the original article. Thus, if for the purposes of this proposal we name the template "Formula", then...

{{formula|[[Derivative|Differentiation]]|[[Matrix (mathematics)|Matrices]]}}

...would produce something along the lines of the box that is below in the article.

This article contains formulae concerning:

You might find it useful to read the articles on those types of formulae in order to fully understand this article.

WP:MTAA seems to favour the first option wherever possible, but where it suggests that simplification is impossible and the article be left alone, could my second idea be used?

It Is Me Here (talk) 16:47, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why would you put a template saying there's a mathematical expression on a page about a mathematical expression? The fact that Wikipedia contains formulae in full without dumbing it down into three paragraphs worth of explanation where you have to rederive what's being discussed has always been one of my favorite things about it. I don't see why we can't do both; have the nice, concise version integrated with a more simple, longwinded explanation for those who don't grasp the higher mathematics involved; Integral seems to do this pretty well. Celarnor Talk to me 17:07, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree; the ideal is that both are present. I think if we're going to have a template, I'd prefer a cleanup-type template saying that the article should have an more accessible explanation added. Pseudomonas(talk) 17:12, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
{{Too specialized}} kind of does that already; I suppose a derivative of that template specifically for math/science articles could be made up pretty easily. Shereth 17:17, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(wacky ec) I think the problem with explaining formulae while writing them in full is that we're used to explaining terms by wikilinking to their articles as they occur, and we can't really do that in the middle of a differential equation! :-) I think User:It Is Me Here's proposed template would give a handy box to collect those wikilinks we'd like to put on the equation if it were possible (for instance, an equation with could have a sidebox for Limit (mathematics) and Infinity, since we can't wikilink the "lim" and "infty" themselves. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 17:16, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good point - so you would like to see one of these templates next to every formula, rather than at the top of the page? For instance:
For more information about this formula, see:
...except all on the same line (not sure how to do that).
It Is Me Here (talk) 17:43, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal assumes that our article on differentiation, say, will give someone a sufficient understanding of differentiation to follow the use of it in other articles. I'm not sure that assumption is valid. Wikipedia is not a textbook, we don't aim to teach basic mathematical techniques. If people want to understand articles about advanced mathematics they need to learn the basics properly, not just read about them in an encyclopaedia. Where possible and worthwhile, we should make articles accessible to the layman, but with advanced mathematics articles it often isn't possible or worthwhile and attempting to do so will just make the article harder to read for those with the understanding required. --Tango (talk) 17:55, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I support the idea of a derivitive of the {{Too specialized}} template for maths and science articles. Obviously these articles have to be encyclopedic, but it's almost too encyclopedic, to the point where it barely makes sense if you know what I mean. Look at this quote from Special relativity:

"Special relativity reveals that c is not just the velocity of a certain phenomenon, namely the propagation of electromagnetic radiation (light)—but rather a fundamental feature of the way space and time are unified as spacetime. A consequence of this is that it is impossible for any particle that has mass to be accelerated to the speed of light."

This is one of those paragraphs that just makes you go "What?!" and makes you need to read it several times to actually form an understanding of it in your mind. I assume a lot of these articles are written by "experts", to the point where only said experts can actually understand them. I'm not saying to dumb things down. Don't dumb things down, as advanced things have to be explained in advanced ways, just clarify them and make things clearer. Sometimes it's just all in the language, and there is such a thing as a "language rich sentence". I support such a proposal mainly because I personally find these articles difficult to read, simply because it's just a little too much. Wikipedia needs to be accessible to everyone, including these articles. Obviously most readers should know basic maths in the same way they are expected to know basic English, but to expect them to learn all about advanced maths before reading about these articles is ridiculous and defeats the purpose of an encyclopedia. I'm not saying that articles need to teach things, just make things easier to understand. --.:Alex:. 18:07, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{Technical}} was more along the lines of what I was looking for above. Not sure if versions more specific to math/science should be made up. Shereth 18:17, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It may be because I do have a significant understanding of relativity, but I can't see a problem with that paragraph. If you mean that it doesn't explain why the speed limit is a consequence, then that's simply because that's beyond the scope of the article - I doubt it can be explained in layman's terms. To understand the technical details of a lot of these articles requires advanced mathematics. We have two choices, either don't explain the details at all, or explain them in a way laymen won't be able to understand. Explaining them to laymen is extremely difficult, bordering on impossible - if we attempt to do so, the article will probably just end up being misleading (see lies to children). --Tango (talk) 20:19, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some articles already link to indices and glossaries, such as Table of mathematical symbols and Glossary of group theory. Perhaps you could ask the various wikiprojects to create templates to make such linking easier. It is somewhat unlikely that all of the science and mathematics projects will want to use exactly the same text. JackSchmidt (talk) 18:26, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re. Tango, if other Wikipedia articles are insufficient to understanding an article, then we could just change the links in the template to transwiki links to Wikibooks (e.g. - quite appropriately, I must say - Special Relativity is a featured book at the moment and so might help people understand Special Relativity over at Wikipedia)? Also, NB the Prerequisite template used in the article over there - I'm looking for something very similar to be used in Wikipedia. In fact, I'd be quite happy with you guys just plugging en:Template:Prerequisite into WP, although we might need a WP prereq. and WB prereq. template. It Is Me Here (talk) 19:59, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If there is an appropriate wikibook, then we should certainly link to it. --Tango (talk) 20:19, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The following text is copied from User talk:Wavelength#Subject (difficulty) level.
Each page on Wikipedia can be given a rating for difficulty of subject matter (distinct from difficulty of language, although simpler language would be less able to be used for expressing more complex subject matter). Most pages would have the simplest rating (possibly indicated by the number 1), and higher levels of difficulty might be indicated by 2, 3, 4, and so forth. This rating can appear as the last part of the page title (possibly in square brackets: [1], [2], and so forth).
Each page can begin with a row of levels for any page(s) which otherwise have the same title (apart from disambiguation differences). All levels except the current page can be shown as links. Each page indicated in such a row can be a prerequisite of any following page(s) indicated in that row. An additional wikicode can be devised in order to save editors the time used in repeatedly typing the same title in these instances.
A typical row might appear as follows:
level 1 level 2 level 3 level 4 level 5
Each page can next show a list of links to any other page(s) considered to be prerequisite to understanding the page in question. If Simple English Wikipedia has a page corresponding to the current page, this fact can be highlighted here (in addition to there being a link in the language list in the left column).
If the context of the article contains any link which is considered to be such a prerequisite, it can have a notation to indicate this fact.
Likewise, each page can have a separate section (like the sections for "See also" and for "Internal links" and for "External links" and for "References") for pages on other topics to which the current page is considered to be prerequisite.
These matters of rating and prequisiteness would have some degree of analogy with book chapters and with school grade levels. Someone would decide the ratings and the prerequisitenesses.
Wavelength 02:06, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Some ideas similar to these have been expressed at Talk:Mathematics road map Wavelength 22:20, 22 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
[end of copied text]
-- Wavelength (talk) 20:23, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This seems unnecessarily complex. Really I don't see why this ought to be a big deal - it's been stated above that there are tags that can be put on an article to suggest some additional clarity for technical subjects. Anything beyond that strikes me as a bit creepy. Shereth 21:35, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Re. Tango, come to think of it, it might also be appropriate to link to any Wikiversity topic that is appropriate (e.g. wikiversity:en:Linear algebra#Matrices - and, if you will allow me to go out on a limb here, I would say that it was better than the current article at Wikibooks).
Re. Shereth, would you be OK with using the Wikibooks Prerequesite template in Wikipedia articles?
It Is Me Here (talk) 07:56, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Suggested wikibooks

I don't think the wording on wikibooks:en:Template:Prerequisite was quite what we want here, I made {{suggested wikibooks}} as a possible one. Maybe the wording isn't great, feel free to change it! :-) --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 10:13, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Formula links

I also made a {{formula links}} to play around with.
Nice - I like it! How do we make them official, though? It Is Me Here (talk) 14:25, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Easy as pi? - continued

(outdent because my : key was getting tired) Same way you make anything "official" around here; ask if anyone has any concerns (this thread should provide that), then start using them once that's settled, then see if anyone brings up any other concerns (an ongoing process). Here's a concern to start you off; can you improve the wording on these any? If the template syntax is too arcane please go ahead and simplify it or ask me to explain. :-) --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 14:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I added notes to both their documentations specifying that {{technical}} or {{too specialized}} might be more appropriate if in the cases where it's feasible to do it that way. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 14:49, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I'm going to have a field day w/ {{technical}} and {{too specialized}}! (Oh marvelous templates, where have you been all my life?) Kevin Baastalk 15:10, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I know! I don't know how I never came across these before. --.:Alex:. 15:21, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK, tiny plastic Grey Knight, I edited your two templates slightly and created my own - {{Suggested Wikiversity}}, and because I have no idea what the markup means, I just copied the code from {{suggested wikibooks}} and, well, changed the words a bit. Is there a page explaining how to do them anywhere, by the way? Anyway, here goes:
In order to fully understand this article, you may find it useful to first read the page at Wikiversity Making sense of quantum mechanics on the topic of
OK, it doesn't really work that well from where I'm standing, but, y'know, it's a start.
It Is Me Here (talk) 19:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't support the idea that we would add a special template just to say that a formula in an article includes a derivative. That's the sort of thing that can be handled in prose. We already link to wikibooks and wikiversity, when appropriate, in the "see also" sections of articles, so no additional templates are needed for them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

More me the suggestion to include a link to wikibooks in backwards. Wikibooks is the full topic covered in a detailed way, wiki is about imparting understanding of the concept .Limit_(mathematics) , intro starts well but then i get totally lost with symbols and Consider ... Gnevin (talk) 21:18, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
According to Wikipedia:LAYOUT#External_links, links to sister projects go in the last appendix section of the article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:07, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But if putting links to sister projects at the start of an article improves it, we can ignore that rule, right? It Is Me Here (talk) 08:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It would take a quite strong argument, more than just that the sister link is related to the article topic. Users who want to learn more background can be expected to look at the see also section and the links in the article itself; we don't need to go out of our way to rub their face in the prerequisites. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:32, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, for instance, the article Minkowski space contains only articles directly relevant to it in its See also section, and does not, for example, contain links to Matrix (Mathematics) or Wikibooks / Wikiversity articles about them although one must understand how they work in order to understand the article. Thus, surely we should point out to readers where they can go before reading Minkowski space in order to understand the subject matter of the article? It Is Me Here (talk) 18:21, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Eugh, no, that's so ugly. First, someone reading Minkowski space is probably already familiar with matrices. If not, then they can go to matrices; a link in its see also is already more than we really need. Like CBM said; we don't need to rub the prerequisites in everyone's faces, especially not every time some math shows up. Do we put links for people to go to the basics of logic every time speculation is made a page? Do we put templates to the wikibook on Latin in legal pages? Do we put templates to the basic classical studies pages every time we see a mention of Homer? Do we put templates to basic physics every time we see a mention of velocity, acceleration, or jerk? If the user doesn't understand the basics, then they can either go to Simple Wikipedia or check the "see also"; although I've no idea why anyone who doesn't understand basic concepts of matrices is reading an article on the mathematical underpinnings of special relativity. Celarnor Talk to me 18:46, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(Outdent)As a compromise, how about adding categories (preferably hidden) like "Physics concepts dependent on an understanding of Matrices"? That gets the point across that you need to understand basic elements of algebra and precalculus without cluttering up the mainspace with unnecessary "gb2algebra" templates every time there's an equals sign in an article. Celarnor Talk to me 18:50, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not really a case of rubbing it in people's faces, and we do link to matrices and Homer usually - indeed, you just did it there. But the problem, as tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ said, is that we cannot put links in equations which means that we should let people easily access the pages linked to those equations in some other way. It Is Me Here (talk) 08:47, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
An equation might be compared somewhat to a picture. We can put links in the caption of a picture. An equation can be given a caption (perhaps below it, or perhaps beside it), and that caption can have one or more links. -- Wavelength (talk) 13:41, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But surely it would be more economical and discreet to just add links to topics relevant to an equation, rather than writing a lengthy description of it? It Is Me Here (talk) 15:20, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A Twitter account to tweet the main page FA

I've created a Twitter account to broadcast the mainpage FA of the day. Read more here on why, and how to participate. Steven Walling (talk) 01:21, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

user boxen diffused

About a year and a half ago, there was an effort (called Wikipedia:Userbox migration) to move templates which display user characteristics—commonly called userboxes and frequently appear on user pages—out of template: space into user: space. As a result, we now have perhaps thousands of userboxes (or userboxen) scattered all over the user: space, under various users' pages.

I have no idea if this has been proposed before, but would it make sense to move them into one easy-to-find place? I propose using user:Box (talk · contribs) which I've confirmed isn't available for creation, doesn't have any contributions, and is already used as a "system" redirect to Wikipedia:Userboxes. My user page is a rich example of userboxen, but taking a few at random:

  1. {{User:The Raven's Apprentice/Userboxes/User Firefox}}
  2. {{User wikipedia:No personal attacks}}
  3. {{User:Menasim/Userboxes/User Google}}
  4. {{User:UBX/Scuba Diver}}
  5. {{User time zone|UTC-8|(UTC-7 summer, UTC-8 winter)}}
  6. {{User:Lucasbfr/Admin open to trout slapping}}

I notice that even in the highly regarded {{Babel}} usage, there are some user space boxes:

  • {{Babel|:Feureau/UserBox/AmericanEnglish|:ZeroOne/Userboxes/php-3}}

In my six more-or-less-random examples, four are under various user's pages and two are in template space, though both the latter "pretend" like they are in user space. All very confusing. It looks like a significant fraction (20%?) of userboxes are under UBX (talk · contribs): a good start, and Mets501 (talk · contribs) put a nice directory there. But I'm not surprised it didn't catch on. UBX is ugly, and doesn't flow through the mind very well. (It does have good keyboard feel though.)

Should all the user boxes be migrated to be under User:Box? Examples: {{user:Box/No personal attacks}}, {{user:Box/time zone|UTC-8}}, {{user:Box/Admin open to trout slapping}} —EncMstr (talk) 01:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a great idea. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 05:22, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea. Celarnor Talk to me 05:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Anything that will remove the dozens of Template:User X style boxes is a good thing. MBisanz talk 06:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Been proposed in the past but the anti userbox mob objected strongly.Geni 19:53, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why? Celarnor Talk to me 19:55, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Because they were the anti userbox mob? I wouldn't worry. most have quit wikipedia or lost interest in the subject.Geni 22:57, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Userboxes#Which namespace? already recommends the account User:UBX for this. I had been under the impression that, these days, only "official" userbox templates that clearly facilitate collaboration, such as the Babel templates or {{User time zone}}, were permitted in Template: namespace, whereas random "personal" templates like "this user likes being whacked with sealife" should stay in User: space to make it clear that they're not part of Wikipedia (the project) proper. Apparently, however, that isn't quite the case: the guideline only says, in a vague way, that "userboxes in the Template and Project namespaces are expected to adhere more tightly with policies and guidelines". —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:26, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The status of userboxes is under an uneasy truce at the moment. The less shifting around you do with them the better, I think. Stifle (talk) 10:06, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just as an aside (and probably terribly naive) question: where did this "boxen" plural come from?--Kotniski (talk) 15:19, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See wikt:boxen. Algebraist 16:31, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That half answers it - but whence this habit among some otherwise apparently quite normal Wikipedians for using the specific term "userboxen" (which have nothing to do with the computers that boxen refers to according to Wiktionary)?--Kotniski (talk) 17:12, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I worked for years on Vax computers. How does one pluralize "Vax"? Vaxen! (If you like them; Vaxes, if indifferent.) —EncMstr (talk) 21:31, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So do we conclude that "userboxen" is used chiefly by computer geeks who think userboxes are a pretty neat idea?--Kotniski (talk) 22:57, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Since User:UBX already exists, I don't really see any strong advantage in moving the numerous userboxes there over to User:Box. However, I would not object if other editors think that this is a good idea. I have the same impression as Ilmari – that the Template namespace is to be used for more official userboxes, while the User namespace is for others. As for placing userboxes in User:UBX or editors' own user pages, the main thing to note is this guideline from "Wikipedia:User page": "[B]y convention your user page will usually not be edited by others. ... In general it is considered polite to avoid substantially editing another's user page without their permission." Therefore, I see placing a userbox on your own user page is a signal to other editors that they should refrain from modifying the userbox, whereas they are free to do so if it is put into User:UBX. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 19:46, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Access to password-protected journal articles

This issue has probably come up but is there any way for Wikipedia to provide online access for editors to all those password-protected journals? I'm fortunate to have an institutional "Athens" account that enables me to access nearly all journal articles I want to, for free, with a single username & password. But I would find it so frustrating if I didn't have that, and I don't like the idea of so many not being able to access them. It doesn't seem in the spirit of Wikipedia or of equal access to sources and knowledge.

I realise Wikipedia isn't like a university or institution with a set number of qualified and ID-registered staff and students for a set period of time, like those who join up to schemes like Athens. So it's probably easy to say that it's impossible and the existing schemes couldn't manage it or the journals wouldn't want it...but is there any chance at all? No doubt the set of eligible editors would have to be restricted in some way, perhaps those who are "established" or whatever...and I guess there would have to be a small payment by each editor wanting to sign up for a year's access or whatever, and maybe their password/username linked to their IP address or whatever to stop passwords/usernames being too easily obtained and passed around.

I'm not sure how schemes like Athens work the financial side but surely the more users and funds the better for them and in turn for the journals. And the better for Wikipedia if more people can access more high quality sources (even if that requires increased guidance on the interpretation and use of such sources, noting that people who can afford it can already acccess the articles regardless of scientific or academic credentials). EverSince (talk) 21:27, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's actually a pretty good idea; I'm in the same boat as you are and have institutional access to pretty much anything that I would ever need, but I know that there are a lot of editors who don't have the opportunity of being academically involved with anyone and either have to depend on whatever limited resources their library can provide. Celarnor Talk to me 21:32, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A nice idea but probably not going ever be anything more than a nice idea. As much as we might hope otherwise, the project will never be regarded in the same light as a traditional academic pursuit, and just don't see how any subscription-based entity is going to be OK with an open project like Wikipedia having group access to their materials. Shereth 21:35, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Publishers and aggregators normally charge universities based on their combined student and employee FTE. Wikipedia could fairly reliably count the number of "established" editors, but many versions of "established" would likely push that number and the accompanying price well beyond the wikimedia foundation's resources. I doubt the WMF has the money to even purchase access for the en.wiki admins.
I don't think there would be any problem with the WMF not having an academic reputation. Publishers are not concerned with such things. Publishers are somewhat concerned about anonymous access, but they already have mechanisms in place to cut off abused access. Many university libraries do not require users to be associated with the university in any way; some cannot by federal law. Publishers have learned to deal with this. JackSchmidt (talk) 21:41, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe the Wikimedia Foundation could purchase only minimal access upfront, then wait until enough fees had come in from editors signing up with them, before purchasing more. Unless the charge to institutions per user is much greater than what a reasonable individual sign-up fee for editors would be, I don't know. EverSince (talk) 22:43, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The main trouble with this is that the bar for joining Wikipedia is so low that people would be happy to join solely to gain access to these records. It might make sense to have some class of approved and verified users who gain access to these resources, or get a discount on them; just admins for example. The question is whether the money spent on this would be best spent this way, or whether these users typically have access to these resources by other means. Dcoetzee 18:28, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal would be nice and here's an article on Athens http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2268217 . Although I didn't understand all the details of this article, my impression is that it would be very difficult to get a system like this for Wikipedia. --Bob K31416 (talk) 20:02, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please see my thread located below. I am quite concerned that there is a creeping into Wikipedia of a sentiment that if text is not in a proprietary data form, it is not valid. By the way, I suspect the utility of the hard copy pay for content scientific journal is rapidly diminishing. Just as software should be open source, so should scientific discourse. Menalaus2

What thread below? EverSince (talk) 06:22, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Promote blogging with "this is not a blog" tags

I think "this is not a forum" is really not that convincing or relevant for most occasions. For example, one can easily hijack the rules but just going "blah blah personal opinion blah blah POV POV blah, and here's a source, and here's how to improve the article". i.e. it's not hard to make it seem like non-forum but really being at least 80% blogging. So, promoting blogging and tagging of 'this is not a blog' is more relevant. --Leladax (talk) 06:53, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Umm ... what are you actually proposing be done? (And would you mind defining "promoting", as you're using the word; I'm having trouble making sense of it?) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:33, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Local Embassy

This is something which is quite frankly under staffed and seems to be almost unstaffed in that there hasn't been some responses for over a year, and really needs to be firstly more easily available to our international users and secondly more integrated into mainstream use into with support from editors. I would like to suggest about including this in the interaction sidebar or perhaps integrating it into the Community Portal or village pump. I mentioned this to a user who has been actively present on wikipedia for nearly 3 years and they hadn't heard of it. Seddσn talk Editor Review 21:06, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh! Not a real embassy. It would be cool if we could to the nation of Wikipedia. I say "Yes! My dear fellow Wikipedians" we must stand up for our beliefs." Wikipedian Passport's could integretated with our login accounts to prevent from those annoying sock-puppets. --CyclePat (talk) 21:35, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding was that it was supposed to essentially be a list of users who can speak a certain language so people coming from other wikis can find someone who can understand them. Personally, I would say it would be nice to put it in the sidebar but I think you'll struggle to get consensus for that, GDonato (talk) 20:07, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why not a name like "the Rosetta Stone of Wikipedia", "Wikisetta Stone", (see Rosetta Stone) or "WikiBabel Fish", "Babel Wikifish", (see Babel fish) or simply "the WikiTraductor", "Translitarater", or why not "Translingua" : Since "Trans" means "through" or "across, beyond, to go beyond" and Lingua means "speech, language"... If we go back to the Proto-Indo-European, the hypothetical reconstructed ancestral language of the Indo-European family we could probably even say Trans-dnghwa (for immediate translation). Or better yet "Trans medius Lingua" which would mean "Through the midle language". --CyclePat (talk) 05:41, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's necessary to have this item automatically on the side. It could however be an option where users could chose if they wish to have it from there user settings. I think that would be a better option. --CyclePat (talk) 05:45, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Purchasing power of wikimedia

I would like to know what is the purchasing power of wikimedia. I've found an old vinyl for 199$. Can wikimedia pay part of all of the purchase of this old vinyl if I was to republish the content onto wikimedia under of course GFDL... etc? b.t.w. the vinyl in question is no longer copyrighted so we could republish the content. Also, on occasion, some people have asked for court transcripts. If these are order and payed for by an individual copyright status indicates (in Canada anyways) that the employees work belongs to the payer. Hence this material would or could also be freely released into GFDL. Anyways, this one Vinyl I've found is circa 1928 and is about King George V. It's in excellent condition. It's also one of his rare and first audio recordings. How do you think we could solve this problem? Should we? Could wikisource become some sort of purchasing power like a type of museum and republish the material? Then could wikipedia use this material? talk:George V if the UK is the current propossal but, I believe this could be used on a larger scale (Macro). --CyclePat (talk) 21:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt very much that the Wikimedia Foundation is going to budget money for buying information; I doubt they see that as their role, and it would be an administrative nightmare to set up and run a system to accept requests, decide which to fund, disburse the funds, and monitor whether what was promised was in fact delivered. (All this, of course, not just for the English Wikipedia, but for all 200+ language Wikipedias, because it wouldn't be fair to do this for just one; and, of course, many if not most Wikipedias involve multiple countries, so provisions would have to be made to avoid a small clique in one country taking over the process for a particular language Wikipedia, and treating this like free money ... ) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:38, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not asking to implement this into other languages. --CyclePat (talk) 17:26, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wikimedia doesn't have money problems, but neither does it have money to burn- I do not think that would be a very good way to spend Wikimedia's funds, and nor do I think it's quite what we're aiming to do anyway. J Milburn (talk) 18:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Considering a good portion of Wikimedia's Board of Trustees (who would probably have to approve a program like this) have their "home wikis" in other languages, making this an "English-only" system would likely never happen. Mr.Z-man 20:55, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Your free to have that opinion, but nobody has said this would be an english-only system. If others Wikipedia systems want to follow along afterwards that's up to them. Right now, however, I'm request funds for a vinyl of King George's innaugural speech of the Tyne Bridge in 1928. In Canada there is a copy at the National Archives but it's not available to the public. I've found one that is for sale for 199$. I'll buy this copy, make a digital copy, take pictures and post it onto wikimedia only if Wikimedia is willing to pay for half of the expenses or approx. 100$. In this proposal, I will host the vinyls for perusal by anyone (upon request) and could also get it verified by other local wikipedians if necessary or even a fellow Canadian National Archivists. This is a proposal and I believe it belongs here. However, thank for your advice... I will also bring this up to the board of Trustees. --CyclePat (talk) 21:29, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that you said it would not be for other languages. I'm not sure what you mean by "other Wikipedia systems" - Wikipedia itself has no money. Its just a website. If you want the money to come from the foundation, it would have to be a Wikimedia-wide (all projects, all languages) system or only for a project like meta or commons, which are both multilingual projects. If you want a system for this project only, the money would probably have to come from individual contributors, not the foundation, which is responsible for all projects, not just this one. Mr.Z-man 21:38, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If the Foundation purchases material like this, what do they do with it? Do they start a library and ship stuff out to anyone who needs it? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 01:28, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request: Unwatch button in watchlist

I would like to request the addition of an "unwatch" button in the watchlist. I know this can be accessed by either opening the article or viewing the "manage watchlist" page, but in either case this requires an additional step. SharkD (talk) 22:32, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't fully understand what you want and how this becomes more convenient. Also why use the prefix "un"... Couldn't we use "dewatch". --CyclePat (talk) 05:21, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unwatch is already in the interface. The point of this appears to be to be able to unwatch pages directly from the watchlist, without viewing the page you want to unwatch; this does make some sense, since the ordering on the edit watchlist view is very different from the ordering in the main view, so that it may be difficult to (for example) unwatch several recently modified pages quickly. Dcoetzee 08:56, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely support this idea. It may not seem a big deal to those of you with fast links, but on a slow link especially every extra step costs time.--Kotniski (talk) 09:14, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, very useful. Stifle (talk) 10:03, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Installing the user script user:js/watchlist works. However this really oughtta be a permanent feature in the software. It's listed as request 424 over at Bugzilla. Anyone willing to submit it as a patch?--Father Goose (talk) 10:17, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
enabling the WP:navigation popups gadget already provides this capability when you hover over the page title on the watchlist {or anywhere else) DGG (talk) 11:49, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As you say, this appears everywhere, not just in the watchlist. As a result, it adds more bloat to pages and causes them to take more time to download. Also, not everyone likes the intrusive nature of popups. SharkD (talk) 18:00, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is feature creep. --Pwnage8 (talk) 15:36, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Does "this is feature creep" mean anything more than "this is a request for a new feature"? If so, could you provide at least some kind of argument?--Kotniski (talk) 16:42, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, yes, it does mean more than that. Did you click the link? While I'm not sure I agree that it is feature creep, having to paraphrase because you are unable to understand the term is a waste of time... Tan ǀ 39 16:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't mean I didn't understand the term, I just don't see how "this is feature creep" can stand as an argument on its own, without any attempt at justification. It's like writing "this is a bad idea" (with no "because..." after it).--Kotniski (talk) 16:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Too many buttons. Lets just leave it as a javascript add-on Chillum 16:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It could be implemented as an option, removable via user preferences, for those who think it's too much clutter.--Kotniski (talk) 16:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if I was snappy above. Too much of this last night. Tan ǀ 39 16:55, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is a very good idea and I don't see anything that would prevent this from happening. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 16:48, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A template to wecome users with problems with COI

There is already a WelcomeNPOV template. However, it doesn't seem to fit with people who make autobiographies. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 09:47, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{welcome-auto}} does, though :) Stifle (talk) 10:03, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't know that! It should be placed in Friendly though, along with Welcomeusername. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 10:07, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's a really good welcome template for that situation, Stifle. I shall have to remember it. ~ mazca t | c 10:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Need better handling of Ogg video in articles

(This may be a software proposal that perhaps should go into BugZilla, though at the moment I don't claim to understand the layers of software well enough to know exactly where this should go.)

There are some major problems with the way video is currently handled on Wikipedia, and I assume this extends to other Wikimedia projects:

  • Video is treated like a image in articles even though the data format is not the same at all. The keyward "Image:" is used to display video files for no apparent reason.
  • Wikimedia software actively transcodes images to a smaller size when an editor wants to post a thumbnail or otherwise resized image in an article. This transcoding is done to conserve bandwidth and send no more data than is required to show the image. This is done transparently for users.
  • Wikimedia software does not actively transcode video and in fact does nothing at all to video when displayed with a frame size smaller than the original. If a 640x480 video is uploaded to the Commons but then displayed in an article at 128x96, it still streams to the reader at the full 640x480 bit-rate and consumes a massive amount of bandwidth unnecessarily.

It doesn't seem like video handling has been properly considered by whoever designs this software, compared to the handling for image auto-resizing.

DMahalko (talk) 14:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Changes that don't require added functionality

In general I am proposing two changes here to the way video is handled, which would better deal with how video is used now:

  • 1. Use "Video:" to designate all video content in wikipedia
  • 2. The image thumbnail template needs to be modified to be able to recognize when video is being displayed, and to not attempt to resize the video frame to smaller than the original since it saves nothing and wastes bandwidth, and to ignore attempts by editors to display a video with a smaller frame size than the original video.


With this change in place, it will reflect the realities of working with video as it stands now. If an editor wants a smaller frame size they are going to have to:

  • Download the current large video
  • Transcode it on their local machine
  • Upload the smaller video as a retouched version of the original (not replacing the original)
  • Link to the smaller video they have uploaded, showing it at full frame size without using "100px" resizing methods

I have created an example of how these transcoded alternate video files can be linked to the original. I will be using something like this for my future video work: Image:Rhof-histWaschmaschine.ogg


TIrreler Bauerntradition shows an early Miele washing machine in the Roscheider Hof, Open Air Museum
This video size: 50% 100kbit
Other sizes and bitrates: 25% 64kbit‎ 75% 220kbit 100% 270kbit Original 1100kbit

Since I know that the image template is broken and that resizing of video should not be attempted, I am experimenting with my own freeform wikitable video template style that makes no attempt to resize the video, as seen in the washing machine article:

(I am also showing this example on Wikipedia:Creation and usage of media files.)

DMahalko (talk) 14:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Automatic video transcoding

A much more extensive change to functionality is that the Wikimedia software should add a capability to transcode video into smaller frame sizes and lower bit-rates automagically without any further input from the user, just as it already does resizing for image users.

There is no defined method for doing this so it would have to be created. Image templates can already use "100px" to designate a width. Something similar should be possible for video, perhaps with an additional "kbit" designation:

[[Video:Example.ogg|200px|200kbit|thumb|Example video shown at 200 pixels wide and 200 kilobits maximum streaming rate.]]

DMahalko (talk) 14:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How to handle the time needed to transcode?

A potential problem here has to do with the time and processing power required to transcode video. It takes me about two minutes to transcode a one minute video clip.

Wikimedia transcodes images live and on the fly since the data volume to be transcoded is small. Doing on the fly video transcoding may not work, especially since there may become a backlog of video to transcode as thousands of people add and edit video in articles.

Also it seems possible for the transcode queue to be subject to abuse since it does take a certain finite amount of time to transcode a video file. A vandal could queue up hundreds of transcodes, each with sligtly varying transcode parameters, and fully block transcoding for anyone else.

Capping transcodes to a certain number per day doesn't seem like a good option since a vandal can just keep overflowing the limit each day. I do not know of a good way to handle video transcoding issues and dealing with potential system vandalism.

DMahalko (talk) 14:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How to handle the storage needed for transcodes?

A second issue has to do with storage. Apparently wikipedia transparently stores resized images in a cache so they don't need to be recoded again when viewed by thousands of people in an article. Presumably if wikimedia did its own transcoding of videos, these too would have to be cached, and the space used by these transcodes is not trivial.

Here too I have concerns about vandalism since a vandal could generate many transcodes of a 20 meg video which end up consuming hundreds of megs of Wikimedia storage.

DMahalko (talk) 14:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maintaining status quo

If automatic transcoding is not used then we are stuck with the current system, where each user is left to their own devices to muddle through using a local transcoder on their own computer and uploading each size variant of the same video.

There are no guidelines for what bandwidth rates should be used for transcoding or for frame resizing, and so the results of transcodes created by each user are already highly nonuniform and inconsistent from one video to the next.

I am trying to make a stab at finding consistent methods here: Wikipedia_talk:Creation_and_usage_of_media_files#Offering_multiple_video_bit-rates

The annoyance factor for local transcoding seems to be a limit on vandalism abuse, though I don't see anything that prevents a vandal from uploading hundreds of recodes of the same video and wasting wikimedia storage space that way, too.

Overall I just don't see a good way to handle this, but something should be done to make it easier to use video in articles.

DMahalko (talk) 14:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. I didn't realize Wiki(media) supported video formats. I guess a solution is to offer several (standardized) sizes of a video, maybe in steps of powers of two (e.g., 128x128px, 256x256px, 512x512px, etc.), except sized to fit the more common 4:3 aspect ratio. They could either be, a) uploaded by the editor or, b) created automatcally by the server. The actually displayed video would then be chosen from among these possibilities and squeezed into whatever size is specified in the article itself. I would suggest reducing the number of possibile sizes to a finite (low) number. Making this value finite and basing the scheme on powers of two (or powers of some other number) ensures that minimal amounts of local disk space are wasted on very large files. SharkD (talk) 18:08, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I always thought the reason we didn't have that much video was because of some conspiracy from "Big Brother" to reduce Wikipedia's already very large bandwith. Hence I always though there was some sort of unwritten rule that we try and keep this fact a secret. Maybe, instead discussing this here, there you could consider a better venue. Have you looked into wikipedia to see what type of documentation already exist regarding the uploading of media files (images)... ogg files... etc? (Try gathering up as much information on this) I remember looking into, but getting a couple road blocks primarilly from the "upload" mecanism. Instead of what now appears to attempt to denny the fact we can upload video's why not simply have a section which actually deals with it. I think this proposal brings up a valid question. First off, 1) it's difficult to format an OGG file (or at least the last time I tried it was) 2) It's hard to figure what are the specs we should use. So again, instead of ignoring the problem I think we should look into this issue a little further. Elaborate a plan that deals with videos. Which ones should be kept, which one deleted. The maximum size. Etc. Maybe it's time to start WP:VIDEO (and place that gathered up information there) which could follow similar guideline to WP:IMAGE. --CyclePat (talk) 06:00, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would even recommend adding mecanisms to prevent "new" users to upload videos. And add a security code feature; like some random letters. Or a maximum upload ratio for video of maybe 3 videos per IP range (that covers Sockpuppets that try to upload more) --CyclePat (talk) 06:05, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We find using a codec that is so obscure that currently no one outside hard core free content enthusiasts knows about it and how to transcode into it keeps uploads under control. The reason our video handeling is fairly poor compared to our image handleing is that for images it was mostly a matter of building ImageMagick and RSVG into mediawiki. However at the moment support for Theora is somewhat lower (which is why a lot of us who upload videos still use command line based ffmpeg2theora in order to do it). Cortado (software) is better than nothing but it is still fairly basic. There is however going to be at least some work to improve this. See here.Geni 15:43, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Page protection explanations

For a lot of users, it can be frustrating or confusing to find that an article has been protected. In some cases, anyone can figure it out, but in others, the reason is mysterious and can take some digging. Might it be a good idea to include the text of the RFPP entry on the article talk page automatically? And good policy to require this inclusion? I've never worked closely with protections, so any refinement of the idea is appreciated.  Mr. IP, Defender of Open Editing  15:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like an interesting possibility for a bot; perhaps someone could make a request at WP:BOTREQ? Probably should be triggered by an entry in the protection log, rather than a posting at RFPP, though. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:46, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why not just check the protection log yourself? That should explain why it was protected. J Milburn (talk) 16:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The protection log isn't very accessible. I would support a move to make the protection log easy to access directly from an article. Also, I thought all protection edit summaries were supposed to state a reason. --.:Alex:. 16:49, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There should definitely be a reason for why a page is protected on its talk page. New/inexperienced users may not even know that a protection log exists, much less where to find it. It would also be easier if there was a noticeable template at the top of the talk page saying "This page has been protected because..." and then the reason. This should be a simple task for a bot to do. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 17:03, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request for Help

Couple of questions.

What do you do if your article gets canceled, and/or the title gets redirected ?

Also, on the question of references, what is the benefit of having references to written material that is not accessible to most people (i.e. is proprietary). Than how do people check on the veracity of the source ? I am going to advocate that people prioritize sources that can be accessed on the Web, or at least are public domain, (and not pay for content, therefore not accessible on the Web in most cases.)

Menlaus2 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Menelaus2 (talk • contribs) 20:56, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The answer to the first question is it depends on the circumstances: a deletion via AfD is very different than a redirect; a redirect by an experienced editor who provides a good edit summary is very different than a redirect put in place by an inexperienced editor without an edit summary; and whether the matter is worth fighting about depends a lot of how much discussion there has been. Take a look at WP:EIW#Delete, particularly the subtopic WP:EIW#Postmortem.
The benefit of references to sources that aren't online is that (1) much of the information in the world is not online, or accessible publicly online, and (2) if Wikipedia didn't use this information, it would be crippling to many articles. Wikipedia isn't just about recent events and cultural matters. Online sources available to all are to be preferred if of at least equal quality to restricted or off-line sources, of course, but often that's just not an option. As to checking on off-line or restricted sources cited by an editor, it depends if the editor is (a) posting controversial or questionable information; and (b) lacks credibility (from prior editing) at Wikipedia. If both conditions are true, it's highly likely that another editor will track down the sources (something not available to any other editor isn't, by definition, a reliable source) to verify them. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:57, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Menlaus2,
  • If an article you created got deleted by an administrator, a warning notice was probably placed on the article before this happened. The notice would have stated why it was thought the article should be deleted, and contained a link to a subpage of "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion" where the issue could be discussed. Therefore, there should have been an opportunity for you to put forward your views on the matter. Perhaps you were not watching the article, and so missed the notice?
  • If an article gets moved to another article name or turned into a redirect and you don't agree with what has been done, you should post a message on the talk page of the new article and explain your objections so that the matter can be discussed. You may also want to contact the editor who made the change through his or her talk page and mention that you've started a discussion on the matter on the article's talk page.
  • For articles to be properly referenced, it is often necessary to cite not just material that is available freely online but also subscription-only material and print resources. In fact, most good articles and featured articles cite a large number of such references. This is to ensure that the best resources have been consulted; not everything that is important is available on the Internet! If you are particularly interested in the subject-matter of a certain article and wish to verify some references, you may have to visit a library to look them up. Alternatively, you may try contacting regular editors of the article and ask if they can e-mail you copies of the references.
By the way, do sign and date your messages by typing four tildes (~~~~) after them. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 20:04, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No trace of a discussion in the subpage "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion".

Also, my very specific concern is proprietary information. I do like the idea that references should amplify the ability of a reader to examine the subject more thoroughly. But, from that perspective, then information resources should be those that do not require a trip to a major academic center to get an article. Menelaus2 22:11, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Let me try again: When you say information resources should be those that do not require a trip to a major academic center to get an article, you're wrong if by "should be" you mean "should only be". You're correct if by "should" you mean "should, preferably, be". Wikipedia does not now exclude important information simply because it is not easily available. If you really mean the first of these two, then you should be posting at the talk page of the policy WP:V, because what you're proposing is a major, major change in the way Wikipedia works.
And as for the deletion (or redirect) of an article, it would really, really help if you would mention a specific article that you're concerned about. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree - paid-access-only academic journals are a curse, but we can't ignore the information contained in them. At least the abstracts are all freely available, and an increasing number of authors are putting their own papers on their websites (making it at least worth web-searching for any individual paper to see if an online copy exists) Pseudomonas(talk) 08:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There's even progress towards real Open access. All articles based on work sponsored by the NIH in the US, and by RCUK in Great Britain, and by several agencies elsewhere, is now required to be available to the public in some form 6 months after publication--either the final published version, or the authors final accepted manuscript. This basically applies to materials published from mid 08 onwards, but will help our authors in a great many subjects, especially in biomedicine. (The concept is the 6 months will not hurt publishers excessively, as researchers in a university will need the material immediately. For general information on this, the best source is the new Open Access Directory wiki. (COI--I'm one of the editorial group there) DGG (talk) 22:18, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]


I think that Menlaus is talking about edits he/she made to Psychiatric illness. Corvus cornixtalk 18:29, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That would be where he/she changed a redirect into an article, if one wants to characterize unsourced analysis as being an article. In which case, the question should have been What do you do if you change a redirect to an article, and your changes get reverted? And the answer to that would be "If you really think that the redirect should be a separate article, you need to make your case on the talk page of the article to which the redirect points, and see if you can get consensus that there in fact should be separate articles." -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to disable hotlinking

For all those interested, I have made a proposal to disable hotlinking on all Wikimedia projects. Please join the discussion at Meta. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 20:46, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For those not familiar with the term, "hotlinking" means using a Wikimedia site as an image storage and image server site, pulling images (for display elsewhere) without ever doing anything that a normal viewer would do (say, looking at a Wikipedia article). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 12:36, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal was very well received and picked up steam before it was torn to pieces and left bleeding and crying in a gutter. To quote my summary - "Regardless of bandwidth, disabling hotlinking on the projects as things stand is a bad idea, especially for Commons. My proposal was based on the pictures found in the PD categories of EN, assuming that those reflected the whole of the projects. A few kids uploading pictures of themselves kissing their girlfriends for their MySpace page is no reason to not allow access to the many images which are on the projects to specifically to be accessible. Keeping images for use on our servers prevents the need to download and copy, breaking the history and license. Allowing other sites to use our images (even when we are not credited) just increases attention to our projects, even if it's just someone seeing that the URL leads here. Hotlinking costs us (currently) at most 10k a year, which is cheaper (and more useful) than many other forms of global advertising. Not to mention the technical problems associated, and the possibility of losing readers from image searches." My proposal is withdrawn, I am posting this here for those interested, and for those who might search the archives for "hotlink" some day. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 08:25, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so why not go the other way and do as many other sites do - provide an HTML snippet for embedding a picture, complete with title text that specifies the provenance/license, and a hyperlink straight back to the relevant wikimedia page? Pseudomonas(talk) 13:47, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC, users' signatures by default used to have a "contribs" link in addition to a "talk" link. I propose that this be reinstated, as it's hard to track down this link. Currently, the only method I know of is to view the history of an article the user has edited and get the link from the log of edits. SharkD (talk) 21:22, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The link can be accessed by clicking on either one of the links in the default signature, then looking for "user contributions" in the sidebar. Happy‑melon 21:38, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While I can't say with 100% certainty about how things have been done in the past, the history tab for MediaWiki:Signature seems to show no evidence that a link for user contributions was ever part of the default signature of registered editors. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:21, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The link is in the toolbox on users' talk pages. Prodego talk 01:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
My memory must be playing tricks on me, because I'm pretty sure it was there. And, the user toolbox link you provided is a good bit easier. SharkD (talk) 23:40, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, MediaWiki:Signature is fairly new (< 1 year). It was added so that we could add the talk link to the default signature. Before that MediaWiki page was introduced, I believe the signature was just a link to the userpage. Signatures for anons always link to contibs though. Mr.Z-man 23:57, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Pretty much. A lot of people have added links to contribs but some of us think links to talk pages are excessive.Geni 15:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorting of subcategories

It was pointed out to me that the recent discussion about subcategory placement within a category (alphabetically/at the beginning) is actually an open and really old bug. I have placed my vote there, and any still interested could do the same. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 08:30, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

comments, positions and responses to nominations for deletion

It occurs to me that while responding to comments and positions on a nomination for deletion page that the title of the comment or position on the issue is proceeded with a asterisk and made bold instead of being made a subsection enclosed with triple equal signs on each side to make it a subsection and thereafter using colons and asterisks for indentation within the subsection as on any discussion page. Doing this would make it much easier to go back and clarify wording, etc. for the closing administrator to read. Currently doing the editing under a single edit section means that it is very easy to get lost after only a few detailed comments or responses. Julie Dancer (talk) 12:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

for almost all discussions I would find the current way much clearer. The difficulty comes only when people start elaborate replies to each other and start wandering from the topic in excessive levels on indentation. DGG (talk) 08:26, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is exactly my point for this proposal... If and initial comment or position is made and it is set as a subsection the all of the point, counter-point discussions are indentations the at least all of the indentations, even if they are so elaborate the have to start over from the margin again are at least contained within the same edit block. With subsections limited to initial complaint and comments there is no way to stay organized when point counter-points get lengthy and elaborate. Julie Dancer (talk) 13:39, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Peer reviewing Wikipedia with digital signatures

I wrote an article about creating a new trust model to Wikipedia. Since the article is quite long, I'm just linking it here.

The idea is that an optional peer reviewing scheme could be integrated with Wikipedia. When a reviewer agrees that an article doesn't contain errors or misinformation or is otherwise of suitably high quality, the reviewer can just sign a particular revision of the article with a digital signature. Anyone can sign an article, and it's up to the reader to decide if the reviewers seem reputable enough. The idea is to help the reader to decide wherher or not an article is suitable for citing or other serious use.

Ipuustin (talk) 13:21, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We could easily create a talkpage template that holds a (collapsible) list of revision signatures by various users. I am less sure about putting the info on the article page, but maybe we could have some little corner-icon akin to the "This article is a Featured Article" stars or "This article is protected" padlocks, that prompts an informed user to check the talkpage for the list. Users can keep their public-key commitments on their userpages, and if in-place creation of a signature is desired I'm sure someone can cook up a user-javascript solution and/or Firefox plugin, etc. In short, it seems possible to create an entirely optional infrastructure to do this without needing any changes to Mediawiki at all! :-) --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 15:24, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just as the featured articles have a little star at the top, I think this could somehow follow a similar, if not be integrated within the same format. --CyclePat (talk) 07:17, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand how it would work. I know quite a lot of articles that I am sure are both of high quality in what they do say and of poor quality in saying so little. (That's because they're mine, all mine and I created them very scrupulously and slowly and for this reason quickly got bored, tired or both and thereupon gave up.) May I certify them as authoritative stubs? However, when it comes to well developed articles, I don't know for sure that any article is good, because (even aside from questions of potential bias, etc.) I haven't gone through any article of FA length and checked its every assertion against its cited reference. I can see that certain articles appear to have been put together very scrupulously by people who appear to be scrupulous and knowledgable (editors in whom I have the same degree of confidence that many editors once had in the august theologian User:Essjay). Am I going to stake my own reputation on these articles (in reality, on these other editors' reputations)? Uh, thanks but no. What am I overlooking here? -- Hoary (talk) 09:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Like everything else in Wikipedia, the proposal is for a community-oriented voluntary effort. There would be no requirement for anybody to sign anything, but if, for instance, you yourself have certified a particular article, scrupulously checking it, then you might wish to state this by giving a "digital signature" for that revision. Other readers who value your opinion (or who value the opinions of other people who certify you yourself — see web of trust) would then have a bit more confidence in that particular revision. If several people a reader trusts have signed some revision, then that is even better. Obviously complete trustworthiness isn't achievable in this fashion — you could be wrong about everyone — but it provides a certain satisfactoriness in some cases. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 10:27, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here is an example of a talkpage box we could use (it could probably be improved a good bit). I also made an experimental {{has signed revisions}} template that adds a "topicon" on the article itself; again, probably a better image could be found. For reference, the below is constructed from {{signed revisions top}} and {{signed revisions bottom}}, with {{signed revision}} making up each of the body elements. Template:Signed revisions top Template:Signed revision Template:Signed revision Template:Signed revision Template:Signed revisions bottom Does that look any use? --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 11:16, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This looks quite interesting as a concept. If it's to be useful then there needs to be a decent way that a reader can tell who the signer is and what their credentials are. Also, I can see COI potential as editors sign their own edits. So long as we don't get too many people just looking at the last signed version (and hence not helping to improve the current live version) it would be useful as a reference. Pseudomonas(talk) 13:59, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, I think the main problem is not technical, but social - one of areas of expertise. There are some (few!) fields where I can read an article and verify that the information is pretty much OK. In most others, all I can do is check that it's well-written, and that the references say what they're being quoted as saying. Pseudomonas(talk) 14:22, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Like everything else in Wikipedia, the proposal is for a community-oriented voluntary effort. Really? I read it as a way in which I, "Hoary", were to personally guarantee that an article doesn't contain errors or misinformation. If I slap "Approved by Hoary" on a certain version of an article, this means approved by me, and not approved by Total Plastic. ¶ But then (let's imagine) User:Total Plastic is an old wiki-chum of mine: we go way back to the early 2006 defensive war against the "Tom Cruise is famous so his views on psychotherapy are noteworthy and he should be prominently quoted in pyschiatry articles" wacko; Total is always very congratulatory about my articles and I am about his, even though I secretly think he hasn't a clue about prosody and that his occasional, earnest efforts to edit articles on poetry are often to their detriment. To my embarrassment but secret delight, Total just stuck his seal of approval on my completed push to GA of Kanendo Watanabe (even though he hasn't actually read any of the source material, because it's all in Japanese), and he's just happily announced completion of his mammoth revision to Hudibras. My own limited understanding of prosody suggests that Total screwed up again; however, it's only one month since the FAC of Total's genuinely first-rate article on Nicaraguan English collapsed amid a pile-on of spectacularly silly objections from the kind of "English maven" who still takes Strunk and White seriously, so I don't have the heart not to stick my "Approval" on the wonky Hudibras. Whereupon User:Bituminous (who thinks Marjorie Morningstar is Great Literature, and labors under the delusion that I know my poetry) sees this "Approval" and therefore rushes to add his own; if asked, he'll swear blind tht he's read Hudibras whereas of course none of us has. ¶ There would be no requirement for anybody to sign anything, but if, for instance, you yourself have certified a particular article, scrupulously checking it, then you might wish to state this by giving a "digital signature" for that revision. I think it's extremely rare for anyone to scrupulously check any article. They'll attack it (or praise it) as a whole, they'll scrupulously check some particular part of it -- but a whole article, including a check of accuracy of citation (which would involve interlibrary loan and the rest)? I don't think so. ¶ No, this is going to need a bit more thought. I rather hope that there's some way to make it work, as I resent the strong suspicion I always have that what I'm reading could be wrongheaded, the fruit of a discredited theory, or plain fictional. -- Hoary (talk) 14:30, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've done a few interlibrary loans and checked a couple facts out. Never say never. I've verified sources and in fact I've utilized a template at one point in time that said something like "I'm CyclePat and I think this article is good" (on the talk page). nevertheless, lets play along with your idea that most people only check out a few facts. If you take a look at my currently working on user page, you'll notice I have a "My references" section. "Robert Tremblay reference for example links to several pages. I've even added a fancy [edit] button. I think a small verrified sign such as http://www.aperfectworld.org/clipart/symbols/check.png at the end of verified citation would be a better thing to consider. The facts in an article often come from various sources and often I disagree with many article because of the lack of proper referencing per WP:CITE. Not only does the lack of formating create a problem per wikipedia's guidlines and policies, it would create a problem, I believe for me anyways, to vote for an article as being good. Hence, given the complacency of many editor to add improperly formated references, I say this tool should concenctrate on evaluating "references", there verifiability, and trust worthyness. Nevertheless, nothing is stopping any user from presently doing this by creating a sub-page or a template on the talk page. So why not just start with that first and see what happens? Implementing, the works for security seems a little extreme... And by the looks of it, I think it's only going to create some "Poll" vote, so you or someone can have some weak argument that the status quo of an article is better than a proposed change. Essentially, I would see this being used as a type of weapon for Wikipedia article hogs to justify the current status of an article and to ignore change. B.t.w. thanks for trying to make this feel like our current political system in Canada! That is, like politicians, we usually let someone else read and make a decision for us...(sarcastically) Sounds good to me! No. Not really. Please speak for yourself. I think the idea is good. --CyclePat (talk) 19:39, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think we are talking at cross-purposes here. Let me try addressing how a "web of trust" setup works in more detail. First of all, the point of signing an item is not to rush around signing things willy-nilly, but that the signer actually be reasonably scrupulous in their check; after all, they are committing their word to this statement of trust. This leads to the next point, namely what if somebody does not follow that rule but signs whatever they like? This is where the inter-user trust comes in; the "web" part. The existence of the signed revision doesn't mean anything by itself; let me clarify that with an example.
  • Now, it's obvious that a given person — let's say User:NonesuchReader is reading the article about greater crested grabbarwobbits — User:NonesuchReader can't, philosophically speaking, ever really 100% know about another's motives and actions. Instead, there are certain people she trusts the opinions of. Let's say she trusts User:NonesuchPanjandrum, who she has interacted with regularly in WikiProject Grabbarwobbits, where he is noted for his careful and thoughtful approach. She also trusts User:NonesuchCharlie, who is an experienced vandal-fighter and a good judge of character.
  • She discovers that there is a signed revision of greater crested grabbarwobbits by User:NonesuchDoctor; who is he? Is his opinion worthwhile on this? User:NonesuchPanjandrum says, yes, that revision checks out, so he signs it as well for the sake of argument, and maybe after checking a few of User:NonesuchDoctor's verifications of grabbarwobbit-related articles, decides to "sign" User:NonesuchDoctor's ability to do so, adding him into the "web of trust"; he's proved his worth. User:NonesuchCharlie also decides to trust him, but based on an impression of his character rather than his expertise. This gives User:NonesuchReader two things she decides to rely on about him; that he is reliable regarding the verification of grabbarwobbit articles, and that he is generally of good character.
  • Now, User:NonesuchWanderer does not know either User:NonesuchPanjandrum or User:NonesuchCharlie. Therefore, she does not gain anything from this exchange; until she determines the nature of these users, their opinions regarding User:NonesuchDoctor are not very reliable to her. She subsequently decides to trust User:NonesuchCharlie's judge of character after seeing him defend a number of editors who were caught up in a large flamewar not of their own devising. Based on this, she is now fairly confident that User:NonesuchDoctor is, at least, of good character. However, until she forms an opinion of User:NonesuchPanjandrum, the existing statements of trust regarding his grabbarwobbitology knowledge and efforts aren't verified to her; she therefore reserves judgement on his signed revision to greater crested grabbarwobbits.
  • Note that the mere existence of a signed revision is meaningless. It is a starting-point from which you can determine who trusts that revision, and then you can start to determine if you trust their opinion in this matter.
None of that is absolute; it doesn't prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt. But used properly, it can be a useful tool for following lines of trust beyond the "first degree" of people you trust directly and doesn't, in the end, leave us any worse off :-). --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 15:36, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies for the huge wall of text. :-) The web of trust article has more discussion about the general nature of such arrangements, where you may find answers to general questions about the process. Essentially, nothing new is added; people still trust each other for particular tasks, including trusting their ability to evaluate the trustworthiness of others. We do it all the time. All such a system does is quantify that trust in a verifiable manner, such that you can tell who trusts whom for what, and on that basis decide if you also trust them for anything. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 15:42, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bot creation of disambiguation redirects

A discussion at Wikipedia:VPP#ALL disambiguation pages to end "(disambiguation)" did not reach any consensus as to whether or not to enforce a policy change in terms of naming conventions for disambiguation pages, although it was proposed that all disambiguation pages at Foo at least have a redirect to it created at Foo (disambiguation), where the latter does not already exist. It was also pointed out that this would be a suitable task for a bot. A request was subsequently made at Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Disambiguation_redirects. After reviewing the technical aspects of the request I have decided to bring it up here so that some of the concerns can be addressed by a broader audience.

As a quick summary of the rationale for this proposal, it is merely suggested that redirects be created where they do not yet exist, without enacting any page moves, changes to existing articles or changes to existing policy. It has been stated that this is for the sake of consistency and as a search aid. It was also pointed out that, while not particularly harmful, it may also be unnecessary to create these redirects.

I performed a survey of what articles use the {{disambig}} template (and its derivatives) and discovered that there are 114,402 disambiguation articles located at Foo rather than Foo (disambiguation). While some of these do already have an existing redirect, a quick look at the numbers indicates that, as a minimum, this proposal would create 88,043 articles. Given the scope of the proposal (the creation of 88,000-115,000 redirects) I feel it requires some scrutiny here.

Again, from a technical standpoint, this is quite simple - it is just the scope that is large. Therefore, I am seeking input of the community. I imagine that most opinions on the matter will fall in to one of a few different types:

  • That this proposal is beneficial and should definitely be implemented
  • That this proposal is not harmful and may be implemented
  • That this proposal is not harmful but not likely worth the effort of implementation
  • That this proposal is unwarranted and should not be implemented

If there is sufficient interest in implementing this proposal, I will follow up on the bot request by bringing it up with WP:BAG for approval with the technical implementation of the bot. If there is insufficient will to implement or considerable opinion that it should not move forward, I will recommend to the original requesters that the issue not be pressed further. Thanks in advance, Shereth 19:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I would be in the third or fourth group. If I'm searching for "Foo," I'm going to type "Foo" into the search box. Even if I know there's a high likelihood that there are multiple articles named "Foo," I'll take the risk that I might have to click a link in the hatnote on top of an article to get to the disambig page, if the "Foo" I end up on isn't the right "Foo." I'm not going to spend the extra time typing out "Foo (disambiguation)." Since the odds of people actually searching for these are low, and we should avoid purposefully linking to redirects, I would oppose creating the redirects unless many links to it (redlinks) already exist. If there's only a few links it would be better to just update them. Mr.Z-man 20:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC) — (amended) Didn't see the part about 88,000+ pages initially, that's just ridiculous. Mr.Z-man 23:30, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I fall into group 2 or 3... mostly feeling apathetic, but I don't see any harm that it can do. That is contingent that Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance applies to the creation of this many pages, though - do we know if there is any downside site-wise to it? -- Natalya 00:13, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Even if there are (which I doubt), the bot could be programmed to run slowly enough to remove any such side-effects.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 03:54, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While there are cases where performance could be a concern — gargantuan "Templatezilla" constructs, for instance — creating and editing pages are the two most basic functions of any wiki, and should be optimised enough to do more-or-less anything we want. I fall in one of your top two groups, I don't think it will cause us any disasters to do it. I have a feeling that ninety thousand (redirect) pages probably isn't the largest bot-creation run ever done, either.{{citation needed}} --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 09:12, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hello everyone, I'm the original instigator of this proposal and I'd just like to reiterate my arguments in favour of this bot being made. With my original proposal at WP:VPP#ALL disambiguation pages to end "(disambiguation)", I started off by suggesting that pages which contain {{disambig}} like Foo all be redirected to Foo (Disambiguation), but it turned out that that was against current Wikipedia policy and people were generally against that idea. The idea then became to create currently non-existent pages such as Bar (Disambiguation) and have them redirect to Bar which contains the {{disambig}} template. This would mean that if someone typed "Bar (disambiguation)" because they were unsure what the article about bars of metal would be called, they would always be taken to an appropriate page pointing them in the right direction (as opposed to being taken to the bartenders-and-bar-brawls bar article [or vice versa]). The example I originally gave was Taxi (disambiguation) which was a redlink when I first started the proposal but which was then created as a redirect later on. However, 60,000 or so such non-existent disambiguation pages still remain so there is still a lot of work that can be done.
If the idea of someone typing "(Disambiguation)" seems silly, I can assure you all that I for one do it for precisely the reason that I outlined above; and so, presumably, do other people. As for relying on hatlinks, they always have to be created manually as some human thought is required as to which template to use and what exactly to type; with redirects and disambiguation pages, however, we can be certain that a link to the page that a user was looking for will be there (as long as the disambiguation page is sufficiently detailed), and the redirects I propose can be performed by a bot, which gives redirects and disambiguation pages the edge over hatlinks, in my opinion.
My main argument for creating Foo (Disambiguation) → Foo redirects is that they will not do any harm. There are no companies, people or anything else with "(Disambiguation)" in their title so these currently non-existent pages will certainly not be needed for anything else in the future. Moreover, such links will either (at worst) sit there and do nothing or alternatively help someone find the article they need, and so they can only be benificial to Wikipedia.
And, again, let me reiterate the fact that the proposal as it currently stands will not involve any policy changes or page moves, only the creation of redirect pages.
Some people have suggested that there may be scope for debate with such redirects. For instance, there may be more than one disambiguation page for a certain topic, or the disambiguation may contain another template other than {{disambig}} (a full list can be found at CAT:DRT). These are all fair points but I suggest that, for the time being, our bot be made to ignore any pages with any template other than {{disambig}}, and also be made to ignore any pages with the {{disambig}} template and with either the ( or the ) character in their title. By my reckoning, that should stop the bot both from creating Foo (Disambiguation) → Foo (place) and nonsensical Foo (Disambiguation) → Foo (Disambiguation) redirects. Then, once the bot starts churning out easy, uncontroversial edits, we can talk about how best to expand the project. For the time being, however, I am only seeking consensus on the "barebones" bot, as it were.
It Is Me Here (talk) 09:23, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Blacklist words such as "recent(ly)" (or pop up a warning dialog)

I have mentioned this sometime before, last year I think. There are MANY articles where people unintentionally use the word "recent(ly)" when describing events that have happened...err...recently. Problem is that a reader has no idea when "recently" is supposed to refer to. There are no circumstances (except for direct quotations) under which this word should ever be used in an encyclopaedia. We should always phrase sentences such that they are date-invariant.

A couple of proposals on the above spring to mind:

  1. Add "recently" to the spam blacklist (and monitor how many problems it creates i.t.o. inability to reproduce direct quotations). Requires no change to any software.
  2. Pop up a warning or dialog box on clicking "Show preview" and/or "Save page" when the word "recently" has been detected.
  3. Add "recent(ly)" and other such terms to the watchlists of bots (which ones?) that would flag them and either notify the editor/article talk page/special bot "recently" watchlist or some such.
  4. Add "recently" to the spam blacklist (or create a new "word blacklist") and create "per article" whitelists that would individually enable the word. The blacklist-whitelist approach has the advantage that it could be extended. e.g. we can block obscenities such as "fuck" or a phrase such as " is gay" (which is commonly intended as vandalism), except on articles where such are needed. Don't know how useful this will be as we have bots looking out for these things already.

Added the bot option as #3 which bumped the blacklist-whitelist option to #4. Zunaid©® I'd like to gauge support more specifically for the "recently" issue. The other uses which option 4 gives us can even be considered as a separate proposal if anyone wants to take it further. Zunaid©® 20:21, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comes across as somewhat creepy to me. Is the use of the word "recently" that egregious of an issue that a global approach needs to be implemented to attack it? While I do agree that there are very few legitimate uses of the word "recently" in the context of an encyclopedia, I don't see it as that big of a deal. I suppose it would not do any harm to add it to the blacklists of some of our bots, as the number of false positives is likely to be low - but again, I question just how bad the "recently" problem is and if it warrants this level of attention. Shereth 21:10, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, didn't mean to creep you out ;) This is only my anecdotal experience, but it does seem extremely prevalent - people always want to put the latest news into articles whenever something newsworthy happens (current food price inflation, U.S. sub-prime mortgage problems, etc. Just browse through any topical article at the moment and you will inevitably find "recently" cropping up). In itself addition of new events is not always a problem, but the phrasing of such additions inevitably is, and there are a LOT of them. Inevitably these are not cleaned up once the event has passed "recent" status. If someone could string together a Google search (I couldn't) that filters out non-article space results for "recent(ly)" that would help. I get 1.9 million results for "recent" on en.wikipedia.org/wiki, this includes WP, Talk and Template space so the actual number of articles should be a lot less. I do however think the false positive ratio will be EXTREMELY low. There are a few articles with recent(ly) in the actual title which will need to be excluded, but apart from these the success rate of any tool we may use should far exceed 95%. Zunaid©® 22:45, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How will this actually be tackled, then? Our spambots and the like are programmed to simply undo edits with blacklisted words, because the entire edit is likely to be spam. Simple grammatical/textual changes are easy as well. The problem is when a user updates an article with information and uses the word "recently" - having a bot-fix is not so simple. Reverting the edit is likely to redact useful information merely for the unfortunate use of the word "recently". Nor is there an easy substitution that works - the proper fix would be contextual and vary depending upon the word. The only solution would be for the bot to flag the article, in some manner. Is that what you would propose, then, a bot that flags articles containing "recently" for editor improvement? Shereth 22:50, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The term "recently" is obviously context-dependent but its use is perfectly acceptable in any usage where it won't date (i.e. anyplace where the reference time is not the present). Christopher Parham (talk) 23:50, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think we agree. However I like to use examples. So here it is : If for example I have an article whereas I cite someone, I think it's perfectly legitimate to use the term. However, if I'm making reference to a "new" law or "recent law" and the term recent is actually utilized to describe it then it is a POV. --CyclePat (talk) 23:56, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thousands of articles say "more recently" when comparing one thing to another. And in some situations, for example in geology, evolution and cosmology, "recently" may imply such a long period that it's likely to remain "recently" for a very long time. I don't think there should be any automatic software reaction to the word. It would cause more confusion and annoyance than it's worth. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:13, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Prime Hunter. Consider these sentences from John F. Kennedy assassination: 1) "There were concerns about security, because as recently as October 24, 1963, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, had been jeered, jostled, struck by a protest sign, and spat upon during a visit to Dallas." 2) "During the evening of November 22, the Dallas Police Department performed paraffin tests on Oswald's hands and right cheek in an apparent effort to determine, by means of a scientific test, whether Oswald had recently fired a weapon."The word recenly has more that immediate current recency as a meaning, so blacklisting it would cause problems when it is used in other, more Wikipedia-suitable ways. Grutness...wha? 00:51, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just have to say, when I think about it, the word recent(and *ly) is indeed very unlikely to be a commonly used word. All the same, the idea of seeking it out disturbs me. My problem with this is the fact that there are many words and phrases that could be the focus, but if you protected against them all eventually Wikipedia would become annoying to edit and I think it would hurt morale. What is great about Wikipedia is not that everything is worded perfectly from the moment a stub is created but that one author can start an article, and another can improve that article, and yet another can fix the mistakes that editor made and before them. (and so on) next thing you know you have an amazingly informational article that people all over the world can read and learn from. I think babysitting for words and terms makes the whole process too automated and takes out part of the value that goes along with Wikipedia's human element. So while I do agree with the idea that the word is rarely applicable I disagree that any process should be put in place to stop it %%-SYKKO-%% (talk to me) 01:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like something that is better done with AWB or twinkle or whatever (I've never really looked at these, so I don't know). Just search for the word, read the context, and change it if appropriate. Or, in that respect, you could use Google. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 02:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmm...I think the JFK and geological examples are good counter-examples that I hadn't considered. Although I do think an automatic way of flagging those articles would considerably speed up the process of finding and correcting inappropriate uses. Is there a bot that could do this and produce a list of articles that could be checked by editors? Zunaid©® 09:02, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cutoff date entry fields in article histories

I would like to request that start and end cutoff date fields be added to articles' History pages. It's currently a very tedious task to locate old diffs for frequently edited pages (such as Talk pages). I know you can enter the dates in your browser's address bar, but this requires the additional step of clicking the "older 100" link first. Also, in my browser (Avant+IE7) the address bar resets itself when the browser looses focus, so this can cause problems when copying/pasting from a text editor. SharkD (talk) 03:00, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Copy histories when moving talk pages to archives

This proposal is related to the one above, but I am less sure about its validity. I think there should be some automatic method of moving a talk page's history along with the talk page when creating an archive of the talk page. Is this already possible? I have a hunch this is the case. If so, I think this action should be more prominently proscribed in the archive help or archive template docs. SharkD (talk) 03:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you talking about copying histories (per the section heading) or moving histories (per your actual post)? For article talk pages it is generally suggested that the history be kept in one piece on the main talk page and not broken up between multiple archive pages. See: Help:Archiving a talk page to quote the key point:
it is widely preferred to use the "cut and paste" method described below, which retains the talk page history in a single location. Do not use "move page" archiving for article talk pages unless there is a countervailing consensus on that article's talk page that it would be more appropriate.
Dbiel (Talk) 03:20, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
One way to achieve this is to move the page (instead of copy-and-paste) in order to archive the page. I'm not sure why this is a desired method of archive, though. -- Taku (talk) 03:23, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If the talk page is large enough to warrant moving, then presumably people are discussing the subject frequently. If people are discussing the subject frequently, then moving the talk page will probably disrupt ongoing discussions. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 05:33, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to nulify or reverse WP:N

The reason I use an encyclopedia is to have a brief but in depth look at a topic. In most cases the very reason I need an encyclopedia is to find sources and expansion on a topic which may or may not be notable. The current idea, however, is that an encyclopedia should only cover notable topics versus touching briefly on any topic that at least one person has found notable enough to edit. It is this fundamental difference in concept that sends me first to Google to find out if a topic exists, to the Wikipedia or other online source to get a complete summary and next to sources and expanded works via links and citations within the online summaries. In other words Google to search for something, Wikipedia to find a complete summary (if the issue of notability were reversed or nulled) and to books and other sources to explore greater depth. That way, as a reader or researcher, I get everything I need. The current way I get nothing from the Wikipedia if a topic is not considered to be notable by users who have absolutely no interest in the topic I am researching. Julie Dancer (talk) 03:49, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think any proposal to simply strike down the notability guidelines is going to get very far. I'd suggest you look at WT:N to see some ongoing discussion on potential changes to them, however. Shereth 03:55, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am so glad you got to this before me, Shereth. You are indeed very kind. S. Dean Jameson 04:21, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, but other users who participate in a deletion discussion may indicate support for a DELETE or a KEEP based entirely on what they feel is interesting and with a majority of DELETEs posted in the discussion an article may be deleted due only to how interesting a majority of deletion discussion users feel the article is. Find a way to prevent mob rule and I might fully agree. Julie Dancer (talk) 05:56, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Have you actually participated in many AfDs? In the scenario you describe (people commenting "Delete, I've never heard of it) the article would be kept. It's becoming apparent that your position in regards to some obscure subject having its article deleted is what precipitated this. Just as IDON'TLIKEIT isn't a good argument for deletion, so IREALLYREALLYLIKEIT isn't a good argument for inclusion. S. Dean Jameson 13:03, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But the admin reviewing such a discussion looks beyond that, to opinions that use policy or guidelines to back them up. So an opinion of "Delete. I have never heard of it." is going to be outweighed by "Keep. These reliable sources show notability." Admins are more than just vote counters, even suspected Communist Chinese cabalists like myself. (Julie asked if I was one in an email) Kevin (talk) 06:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The question of your political affiliation or allegiance was raised externally in private, not within the body of the Wikipedia itself because it may in the real world not be taken so lightly as it would be here. It is the same reason email addresses are deleted here to keep the real world from sneaking in. That said, you have not actually read the primary reference and looked up the references it contains or visited the Lovelace Center where the method is used extensively everyday or for that matter visited any of the institutes in Russia who's scientists came to the Lovelace Center and helped develop the method as well. You have not corresponded with the publisher of Dr. Rypka's work or with other users of the method to see how even with high speed computers the method, a method developed in 1971, still has major application today. The question now is who can trust the Wikipedia if its administrators consider such methods unnotable on the basis of Wikipedia user opinion on either side, including their own that would prevent future researchers from becoming aware of the method. Shame on you. Thank God such a method is welcomed for publication somewhere else. Julie Dancer (talk) 06:21, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot believe this proposal is ever going to be implemented, but I still want to make a response. As I understand (and this isn't necessarily official or anything), the "notability", our inclusion criterion, essentially follows from two things (i) the fact that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (ii) verifiability or attributability (see Wikipedia:ATT for definition). (i) is the founding principle, and isn't subject to change, probably. If (i) were to change, for one thing, our very slogan has to change: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. But since we are thinking about adopting Creative Commons license, this might not be out of possibility; if enough Wikipedians think Wikipedia should become something more than an encyclopedia, then this can happen. So, (i) isn't quite a strong argument, I think. I know you can start a fork, as many have already done. (Knol can be seen as an example of the approach along this line.) But that's missing the point: a significant number of people want "Wikipedia" (not anything else) to become something beyond an encyclopedia, something fitting to the digital age, not restricted by an old-fashioned notion invented in the era of enlightenment. (I wonder what is a procedure to make a proposal of a constitutional amendment. This page isn't for that, for sure.)

Moving on. (ii) is probably a more sever constrain, necessitating notability. In my view, this is exactly what Citizendium calls "maintainability" [4]. I don't know about your experience, but it is very hard to maintain articles on non-notable topics, because by definition, a topic is notable if and only if it has sources that can be used reliability to write an article that is not a joke or junk. Local newspapers or small obscure academic journals contain a full of non-sense, so they cannot be used reliably. Since Wikipedia doses contain a fair amount of jokes as well, it cannot be reliable, either. To relax (ii), in other words, we need some kind of quality assurance mechanism. Maybe Wikipedia:Flagged revisions is the answer, since we pretty much reject the idea of experts or real name verification, etc. I started contributing to Wikipedia when there was no "notability" criterion, so I won't be surprised if Wikipedia drop "notability" criterion in the future. -- Taku (talk) 04:35, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So, aside from the wonderful suggestions that previous editors have mentioned (such as pointing you to the ongoing discussion possible changes), you think we should change WP:N because it currently interferes with your ideal of "Google for a search, Wikipedia for a summary, and books for depth"? I think the cabal that makes such decisions will need more compelling evidence than "because this is how I want it". − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 05:44, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I can only speak for myself, even though my opinion is likewise limited to my online experiences going back to the old dial-up message boards days of... lets see that would be about 1978. Julie Dancer (talk) 06:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Article and User Policy Compliance Score Card (template)

Rather than rely on arbitrary nomination for deletion or arbitrary user blocking I propose that a Wikipedia Article and User Policy Compliance Score Card (template) be used to provide a running status of both articles and users where policies are listed with a dynamic compliance rating shown as a sum of positive and negative ratings on the score card entered for a user or article by users and administrators. Deletion and blocking decisions can then be made by several administrators who can reach consensus more easily. (Numbers in the table below are merely random numbers generated by computer)

See: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Wikipedia

Wikipedia policy Dynamic Compliance Rating
Article User
What Wikipedia is not 41 -18
Ignore all rules -80 5
Neutral point of view 7 71
Verifiability 75 86
No original research -49 21
Biographies of living persons -34 -1
Civility 8 53
No personal attacks 24 56
No legal threats -7 21
Consensus -47 -32
Dispute resolution -16 -12
Conflict of interest 46 -50
Do not copy sources -50 46
Disambiguation 24 24
Do not create hoaxes -1 -28
Patent nonsense 50 -55
Reliable sources 14 38
User page -44 15
Notability -8 52
Be bold 55 1
Build the web -13 -9
Edit summary 14 -65
Article size -52 63
Etiquette 57 -7
Assume good faith -1 -58
Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point -23 37
Do not bite the newcomers -27 37
Do not "game the system" -52 7


Julie Dancer (talk) 05:46, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure your intentions were good, but I think this actually makes things more arbitrary. A "value judgement" is still needed to, for example, decide whether or not to increment the "Do not game the system" column; was the user really doing so? This is the same as the current setup. However, the difference with this would be that it removes any context; when was the value incremented? Was it a long time ago? Did the user subsequently apologise? What is the relationship of the incrementing user; were they involved in the incident? There is all sorts of context that should be taken into account in order to more fairly evaluate users' activities; and the same goes for articles. This is similar to the concept that Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion. Sorry! --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 10:27, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is nothing wrong with prior discussion to help a user or administrator decide whether to enter a negative or a positive value following the discussion. The only difference is that the table affords a current status summary following each discussion on the discussion page rather than the table replacing any discussion. Think veggiesaurous, Lex, veggiesaurous! Julie Dancer (talk) 14:17, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request for flagged revisions

Let's face it, flagged revisions will not be implemented on the English Wikipedia because of lack of consensus. (At least I'll be very surprised if it is.) And maybe that's a good thing, it's impossible to tell now, there's a lot of convincing arguments on both sides.

My proposal is to make flagged revisions available for certain pages. Admins would be able to set a page to flagged revisions with a process similar to WP:RFPP. This could be used as an alternative to semi-protection. One page that could use this that comes to mind is evolution but I'm sure there are many others. (It wouldn't replace semi-protection, just be another alternative.)

Under this way, the majority of Wikipedia would be unchanged, just a few articles would have it; Unregistered users would be able to edit some pages they previously could not, albeit it would take some time before their changes appear. Every page would require consensus on whether or not to have flagged revisions.

To keep things simple, I would recommend against making a new user group, and would give the new rights to rollbackers, admins, etc..., but I am open to a new user group if consensus goes that way.

This proposal has a much better chance of gaining consensus, I believe, and would also allow us to see flagged revisions in action in a non intrusive way. If it turns out to be really helpful and is implemented on a lot of articles, people would be more open to the full flagged revisions. If it doesn't, then we can just go back to the status-quo.

Please let me know what you think. Jkasd 07:05, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I just brainstormed up an idea: what about some kind of poll of anonymous readers/editors? Since flagged revisions, as currently proposed, won't affect logged-in users at all, it makes sense to seek input from the people it will affect. We could stick a link in MediaWiki:Anonnotice. The question is, a link to what—we could do just a standard project page, but I'm not sure if the opportunity cost of looking at the page, going to edit, and typing out a response would lead to low interest (and sample bias). A simple click-and-submit poll might be better; maybe the devs can hack up Special:Boardvote, or something could be put up on the toolserver. --Slowking Man (talk) 10:05, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's a good idea; such a system is probably gameable. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 11:47, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's probably even more 'gameable' to have a discussion about a feature that affects only anon users and then basically not tell them about it. --VectorPotential Talk 11:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, personally I think flagged revisions should be enabled with the only real effect (i.e. what anons see) being for those "flagged-protected" pages, so this sounds like a great idea. Adding the basic support for flagging of a) featured articles (just as markers, give ability to set to admins +perhaps a new usergroup) and b) clean of vandalism (just as markers, give to either rollbackers or a new group, and admins) would be a bonus that wouldn't have much effect on what anons see but would be useful to the community. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 11:47, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal so that talk page cannot be edited by own user

I was wondering if there would be a kind of protection where the user (example: User:Example) cannot edit User and User talk:Example, but anyone else can, so they can be warned of future discussions (ex. Sock tagging) Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 09:21, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A user can be banned from editing certain pages, but this isn't a technical nor physical mechanism. But I've never known a situation where a user is prevented from editing his/her userspace unless that user is indefinitely blocked or is abusing {{unblock}} templates. For one thing, one needs to communicate on Wikipedia and their userspace is used for that, irregardless of whether or not they reply on their own talk pages or someone else's. x42bn6 Talk Mess 09:26, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well I was thinking about that. Alright. LEt's STop this. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 09:28, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Add "Welcome-auto", "Welcomeusername" and "uw-coi" to Friendluy

It would be nice if these would be in Friendly, so we can place it there better. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 09:32, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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