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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.

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 caption can be short: "This equation uses natural logarithms."
From my Google search for "equation annotation", the first result (of 943,000) is MathType: Tips & Tricks: Drawing attention to your equations with comments and annotations. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:56, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Actually, the implicit point sidestepped with far too little dissent above to me is this: for a long time now, I've felt we should put sister projects links up high, if not at the tip top of the article. Treating our sister projects as if second class citizens isn't cool, for starters and much resented, from what I can perceive. On the technical articles heavy in math, such as this began with, we don't have much in the way of infoboxes generally getting in the way, so why not link to the sisters in that quarterpage we're so used to not having available! I'm not referring to {{Commons}} or {{commonscat}} (since they essentially link to media—though on a few topics that might be a good idea as well— some galleries on the commons are "onto" with an articles subject matter, and that's preferable to cramming umptine pictures of ruins of Greek temples on the same page, for example), but Wiktionary, Wikiversity and Wikibooks topics coverages certainly ought be trumpeted, not buried down in a section someone may never see. Wikisource and Wikiquote if appropriate too, though I figure those are far less common "hits". By the same token there is a tension between adequately explaining a topic in words that convey the meaning (without links) per WP:NOT PAPERS and putting in too much per WP:NOT TEXTBOOK. There is however a happy medium that should be written into any good technical-topic page that educates (introduces material) walking the tightrope between too much and the too over-the-top. We've seen a number of complaints of that lately, and I agree daily in one edit or another when I find such pages. • Thanks to whomever started this topic... btw. These guidelines needs revisited periodically and as someone who spends a lot of edit time cleaning up intros that are too short, too obtuse, etc. this is a good topic to refocus us all a bit on the problem... a page written to read well to others educated in the field is rarely one that is a good article... quite the opposite from what I've seen in 3+ years here. In short, if an article can't be read and comprehended without links by someone without a great deal of specialized education in its first 3-5 sections... which should be building enough generalities for the reader, its not a good article from my point of view.Template:I • Wikipedia:LAYOUT#External_links needs revised anyway... External links AFTER footnotes is upside down. Footnotes ought be just that... last on the page, including navigation templates above. (Seems the current layout is for the convenience of editors, not readers, most of whom die of heart attacks seeing footnotes at all in an encyclopedia! How many other encyclopedias have footnotes in profusion? Ideally, they should be on a separate subpage or something. The current "standard" is sub-optimum for the user, and for some reason I've even run across pages wher the references (Books, journals list) are after the footnotes... another upside down thing.) // FrankB 19:55, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I myself have noticed this problem too. I am hoping to study Physics at University from October, so I would consider my "expertise" (if you can call it that!) to be in physics and maths topics, yet these are usually incredibly difficult to follow on Wikipedia, compared to other topics I like to read like Philosophy, Politics and History, on which I don't have a great deal of knowledge but can still follow. Deamon138 (talk) 17:30, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Large chunks of math articles in wikipedia *are* highly specialized. They cannot help but be -- it is not only the language and the notation, but the very concepts themselves that require mathematical maturity and repeated practice with the definitions and styles of a particular subfield, to understand. We cannot do otherwise - these concepts took hundreds of years to develop into their present form, and sadly their fundaments are often not in the culture, the way the fundamentals of things like laws and social norms are. It would be like trying to make an article on accounting understandable to somebody who can't add, or trying to make an article on civil procedure understandable to somebody from a tribal, pre-law society. To expect to understand a concept like special relativity on a quick, non-intensive readthrough for the first time is unreasonable. We do make efforts to make the articles accessible to technically literate laypeople (say, engineers with a mathematical bent), and goodness knows mathematicians are too frequently guilty of being more complicated than they need to be, but if you're going to create tags that essentially say "serious and arduous intellectual effort required to understand the full meaning of this article if you've never seen anything like it before," you might as well tag every non-biographical article in the math section, for all the good it will do. RayAYang (talk) 06:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

posted by Arydberg Much of the above would go away if there was a link on the title page to the "simple english wikipedia" and a explanation that it was for beginners. Arydberg (talk) 14:08, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wait!!!

We've had this discussion at the math WikiProject already. Before anyone starts editing based on the discussion above, please read Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive 38#article difficulty level. Ozob (talk) 18:28, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This a very old debate. So I'm going to go with Euclid on this one. I think adding templates and other flying widget spam to pages doesn't help anything. We try very hard to make our articles accessible. If, like King Ptolemy, you refuse to make the effort, I suggest you just tune the TV to the animal channel. Loisel (talk) 19:19, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RayAYang, while "the very concepts themselves that require mathematical maturity and repeated practice with the definitions and styles of a particular subfield, to understand" as I said above, this problem only seems to exist with maths, physics and maybe a few other science articles. When reading articles on philosophy for instance, a subject I wouldn't be expected to understand like maths/physics, the articles are readily accessible, but do go in depth. So if other subjects can do it, then maths and physics can to. Now, I haven't read all the above discussion, but I reckon we don't need any new tags or anything. I think it just needs every now and again an editor to look over the complex articles and using WP:COMMON SENSE, make them understandable to the layman. The thing is, this is already happening, and will continue to happen, it's frustrating for me and other users that it's taking so long. Unfortunately, we just have to let the nature of wikis run it's course and eventually the articles will be fine.
Loisel, looking over my copy of Elements, I would say that if the majority of maths and physics articles are written in the style of Elements, then that would be fantastic (so long as they are correct :P)! Deamon138 (talk) 22:03, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unsurprisingly, mathematics has become more difficult since Euclid... Also, The Elements is a masterpiece of mathematical writing that was unsurpassed for about two thousand years. Loisel (talk) 22:13, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well yeah it has got a lot harder since then, but I still think it is possible to make the maths/physics articles as easy to understand as the holy little geometry book. Deamon138 (talk) 22:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The initial poster wrote:

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.

Can someone PLEASE cite some examples of this? I have seen and edited FAR more math articles on Wikipedia than all but very few people. I've seen this particular complain stated repeatedly. I don't know any examples. I don't know of any ATTEMPTS to cite any. The initial poster above mentions only Lorentz transformation and special relativity. Those don't appear to be attempts to cite examples of the "catch-22" complained of. Is there some other that is? Michael Hardy (talk) 15:51, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well I took a look at your user page and it seems you do edit a lot of maths articles. One article you created is estimation of covariance matrices, where it starts with:

Given a sample consisting of independent observations X1,..., Xn of a random vector X ∈ Rp×1 (a p×1 column), an unbiased estimator of the covariance matrix

is the sample covariance matrix

where

is the sample mean.

NOTICE: I DID NOT WRITE THE OPENING PARAGRAPH ABOVE, and I disapprove of it. Michael Hardy (talk) 13:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That is not something the layperson would grasp in that form. Personally I've seen some of the symbols before in statistics, but I can't follow that. Bear in mind that is just one example I found with a quick look, there are hundreds more. No offence, but since you are a huge editor of maths articles you are likely to say "I don't know any examples" since I'm guessing you understand the maths already? Deamon138 (talk) 16:07, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That is not an example of the catch-22 claimed. The article can be understood by anyone (myself, for example) who has taken a first course in statistics. Many of these people (again like myself) would have no knowledge of how to estimate covariance matrices, and could learn a lot from the article. I too would like to see examples of this alleged phenomenon. Algebraist 16:26, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are plenty more examples, that was just one really quick one I found just by frequently someone's userpage. Imagine how many I'd find in a longer period of time. And btw, if you've taken a first course in statistics, then you are not a layman. The fact is that it shouldn't require people to take a course in anything before they can understand an article. This problem only exists with maths and physics articles. The most complicated parts of philosophical articles or other subject areas are still readily understandable for the most part. Deamon138 (talk) 16:34, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not asking for an article incomprehensible to laymen; I know there are many. I'm asking for an article which can only be understood by people who know the material already. For example, list of single-game baseball records is incomprehensible to those with no knowledge of baseball, but can be understood by people who do not already know lots of baseball records. Algebraist 16:46, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you can find plenty more examples, then do it. Find ten, list them here, and point out a specific paragraph or sentence in each. Otherwise this discussion is useless and finished. Ozob (talk) 20:25, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was merely responding to Michael Hardy's accusation that this problem doesn't exist, when it does. I would say that "I" can't possibly know how complicated article "X" has to be before it could only be understood by someone who had already studied X in great detail. I wouldn't know that to understand X you would only have to do a small course on X and then be able to comprehend X using your own deductive powers. How is a layman meant to know if estimation of covariance matrices is understandable to someone of some mathematical experience (like you), or to someone of great mathematical experience?
The original poster was merely expressing the point that the maths articles are very hard to understand and some might not even be understandable to anyone but someone who has studied that in great depth. It is just a (possible exaggeration) point about the fact that maths article are bloody hard to understand. Does it matter if there are only articles too hard to be understood by layman? Or is it because you are a "mid level" mathematician, and therefore YOU would get outraged at this only if there were articles that only experts could understand, but not if all articles were understandable to you but not to a layman? Basically I'm trying to get the point across to you about this poem: it doesn't matter if the problem affects you or not. It affects someone.
Also, if you read my original comments before Michael Hardy's comment, you will see that I said that nothing in particular needs to be done to solve this problem, it's just going to take a lot longer to make the maths and physics articles easier than for other topics' articles. Okay? Deamon138 (talk) 22:24, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hello again everyone, I'm the original poster of this proposal. I've read through all the new posts and Deamon138 has indeed understood my point perfectly. My point that only people with extensive knowledge of an article can understand the said article was indeed something of an exaggeration - I just thought it sounded more elegant - but my point is indeed that many articles on mathematics and physics are entirely inacessible to people without a relatively vast understanding of mathematics or physics (such as a degree in mathematics or statistics, if not a PhD on the specific subject matter of a particular mathematical article). Let me again flag up the Monty Hall Problem article and how it, in my opinion, is a perfect example of how to make maths-related articles easy to follow and accessible to the layman. Its explanations are clear throughout without being excessive or patronising, and the very low level of mathematical knowledge required to understand that article can, I would say, reasonably be expected of anyone who wants to read it. Moreover, it does include formulae towards the bottom of the article, but the explanation for the layman which preceeds them means that people can understand the article's subject matter even without that section which includes formulae. After this issue was raised on my talk page, I used this article as another example of a mathematics-related article which simply launches into obscure formulae with only a sentence or so for an introduction. Needless to say, I was lost as soon as the formulae started, which will be, I daresay, the case for most lay readers of that article. Hence, if we were to at least point people in the direction of appropriate Wikibooks or Wikiversity pages which would explain the concepts behind the formulae on that article and thus let people understand it (as long as they read through all the required material) then that would be a positive step towards making mathematics- and physics-related articles more accessible to the layman in general. It Is Me Here (talk) 07:25, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is a similar discussion (currently) on this page at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Wikipedia:Obscure topics. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:36, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That topic is effectively the antithesis of this one lol. Deamon138 (talk) 22:03, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see anything that you could do to improve the accessibility of that article that isn't a simple change to the lead. You might want to link number theory or prime number and maybe even modular arithmetic. Number theory should have a link to an appropriate Wikibook. But what more can you reasonably do? The article is about a primality test; the lead says so; and the first section of the article, "The test", describes the test. It would be nice if there were a history section in front of it, I guess. But you seem to want a layman's explanation, an explanation without formulas, and it doesn't exist. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest, I really mean it: It doesn't exist. The article is not obscure, not intentionally nor accidentally.
Let me give you the same challenge I gave Deamon138: Find ten articles where your proposal would help. Otherwise we're getting nowhere. Ozob (talk) 23:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, pages such as Wikipedia:Pages_needing_attention/Mathematics#Articles_that_are_too_technical are a good place to look, and here are ten examples of overly technical articles and where one should be directed in order to understand them (the article name comes first, followed by a semicolon and then any prerequesite material, with separate articles being themselves separated by commas):
  1. Equidistribution theorem; wikibooks:Calculus/Limits, wikiversity:Calculus/Limits, wikibooks:Calculus/Summation notation
  2. Error function; wikibooks:A-level Mathematics/C2/Integration
  3. MV-algebra; wikiversity:Introduction to boolean logic
  4. Martingale representation theorem; wikibooks:A-level Mathematics/C2/Integration
  5. Tricubic interpolation; wikibooks:Calculus/Summation notation
  6. Reciprocal rule; wikibooks:Calculus/Differentiation
  7. Hypercomplex number; wikibooks:Set Theory
  8. Size function; wikibooks:Set Theory
  9. Stokes' theorem; wikibooks:A-level Mathematics/C2/Integration
  10. Infinitesimal transformation; wikibooks:Calculus/Summation notation
Please note that in some cases I did not even understand the notation contained within some of those articles, and so even more prerequesite reading than I suggested might be required in order to understand the formulae contained within them.
It Is Me Here (talk) 17:05, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe that your proposed templates will help for any of these articles. The problem is that your templates are for notation. Notation is just shorthand. For instance, the reciprocal rule article includes the expression (d/dx)(1/g(x)). This means, "Take the derivative with respect to the variable x of the quotient of the constant function 1 by the function g(x). Without knowing what "derivative" means it is impossible to understand the article. A reader who desperately wants to understand the reciprocal rule but doesn't know anything to start with can still click on calculus, the second word in the article (after "In"). After reading calculus they will either be able to read about the reciprocal rule or they will know enough to click on one of the next few words in the article, derivative. Before they reach the end of the derivative article, they will understand what the derivative is and what the notation means. At that point—and only at that point—will the reciprocal rule article will make sense.
You say that you don't understand all the notation in these articles; this is because you don't have enough prerequisite education for the articles to be comprehensible. If you did, then the notation would not be so mysterious.
You might say, "Then we should use templates to indicate prerequisite subject material!" In that case you would end up with a list like this one:
  1. Equidistribution theorem is about analytic number theory. A prerequisite for analytic number theory is mathematical analysis, which is a more rigorous approach to calculus.
  2. Error function is a special function which turns up most notably in statistics. The statistics needed to explain the error function requires a knowledge of calculus.
  3. MV-algebra is about logics which have more possible values for truth than "true" or "false". It requires mathematical logic and abstract algebra.
  4. Martingale representation theorem is about probability. Again, it requires mathematical analysis.
  5. Tricubic interpolation is, as the article tells you, a topic in numerical analysis, which usually assumes that the reader knows mathematical analysis.
  6. Reciprocal rule tells you at the start of the article that it's a topic in calculus.
  7. Hypercomplex number is a topic in abstract algebra.
  8. Size function is about pattern recognition. Some parts of the article require mathematical analysis and algebraic topology.
  9. Stokes' theorem tells you that it's a topic in differential geometry (and, in its more elementary versions, vector calculus). Actually, it looks (upon a quick skimming) to be a very clear article.
  10. Infinitesimal transformation is a topic in Lie theory.
But all of this can be written into the lead; in fact I took a lot of these descriptions from the article leads. Adding subject prerequisite templates makes these articles worse: It disrupts the flow of the text and it is prone to rot as the article changes (and either becomes more advanced or has the more advanced material split off into a separate article).
If you still disagree with me, you should ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics, where you will get a more forceful rejection. Ozob (talk) 21:06, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"After reading calculus they will either be able to read about the reciprocal rule or they will know enough to click on one of the next few words in the article, derivative." Please read WP:NOT PAPERS where it says, "While wikilinks should be provided for advanced terms and concepts in that field, articles should be written on the assumption that the reader will not follow these links, instead attempting to infer their meaning from the text." Deamon138 (talk) 00:57, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The guiding principle of WP:NOT PAPERS is that articles should be comprehensible. Are you arguing that reciprocal rule would be more comprehensible if the lead recapitulated a large part of derivative? If so, do you also admit that your proposed templates would then be unnecessary? Ozob (talk) 18:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry what? My proposed templates? They aren't mine. I haven't even argued for them, in fact I explicitly argued against anything new being done. I reckon any problems with these articles (which I do say exist) can be solved by the natural course of Wikipedia. Eventually, the articles will be understandable, given enough time. That is my gripe: that the articles aren't all amazingly comprehensible now, rather than sometime in the future. But the articles will be fixed, given enough time. Deamon138 (talk) 18:11, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You're right. I stand corrected. Ozob (talk) 21:52, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's all right. No problem. Sorry for the confusion. Deamon138 (talk) 22:10, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WHICH problem???

It was complained initially that articles were written in such a way that only those who already knew the material could understand them.

I don't believe that.

Then it was complained that articles are written in such a way that lay readers could not understand them.

That is true. But it's not a problem.

Then it was complained that articles are written in such a way that lay readers couldn't tell what you had to know to read them and what the general subject matter area was.

That is too often true, and I am the foremost complainer about that problem on Wikipedia. I have probably also done more to remedy that problem than anyone else. Fortunately, however, it is a problem that does not afflict most articles. I'm talking about articles whose opening sentence is something like "Consider a sequence {Tn} of bounded linear operators on a separable Banach space B." The lay reader can't tell whether that's about theology or chemistry or psychoanalysis or international trade negotiations. I am foremost among those who have been objecting to that way of starting articles.

Someone blamed me for the abrupt opening sentence in estimation of covariance matrices, which said:

Given a sample consisting of independent observations x1,..., xn of a random vector X ∈ Rp×1 (a p×1 column), an unbiased estimator of the (p×p) covariance matrix[.....]
etc.... I did not write that and I disapprove of it. I have now replaced that with the opening paragraph I wrote when I first started the article:
In multivariate statistics, the importance of the Wishart distribution stems in part from the fact that it is the probability distribution of the maximum likelihood estimator of the covariance matrix of a multivariate normal distribution.

Michael Hardy (talk) 13:43, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Then it was complained that articles are written in such a way that lay readers could not understand them.
"That is true. But it's not a problem."
How is this not a problem? There is even an official guideline which states that technical articles should be made accessible to as wide an audience as possible. It Is Me Here (talk) 16:00, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Writing them to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible often leaves them in a state where lay readers cannot understand them. Not always, and indeed sometimes articles can be improved in this regard, but still there are lots of cases where an article written to be accesssible to as wide an audience as possible is one that lay readers won't understand. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:17, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Again, as was requested of me before, could you give some examples, please? I am finding it difficult to follow your logic at the moment. It Is Me Here (talk) 15:20, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
May I propose as an example the article on fibred categories? While I would be very pleased to find a way to make it more accessible, I have to admit that I cannot see how the level of accessibility could be significantly improved (other improvements should certainly be possible!). I think the topic demonstrates two essential difficulties associated to most (not all) "advanced" mathematics articles:
  1. All examples that can illustrate the meaning of the concept are already fairly advanced mathematical concepts themselves, ones which non-mathematicians (perhaps with the exception of theoretical physicists) are very unlikely to have heard of (such as vector bundles, sheaves). Moreover, this same difficulty (as well as the next one) applies in turn to these basic examples themselves, thus further expanding the background needed to appreciate the basic applications of the concept being discussed.
  2. While by no means impossible to understand with suitable investment of time, the definition of the concept relies on in fundamental manner on other technical mathematical concepts (here concepts from category theory). (There would be much more extreme examples than fibred categories from the point of view of multilayered dependence of definitions on previously defined concepts and theories — an example, building partially on fibred categories, could be algebraic stacks). Moreover, a working knowledge of the basic examples is often of significant help to mathematicians learning a new concept such as this: it makes the technical definitions understandable, even natural. The flipside is that for a person without this background the definitions remain essential formal and much more mental effort is needed to digest them.
It needs to be pointed out that the accumulation of concepts and theories in modern mathematica makes these more involved definitions and whole theories often very difficult to understand for professional mathematicians working in another topic (even in a neighbouring field). Therefore often the ambition of explaining mathematics to general mathematical audience is already difficult: writing good survey articles is difficult!
As for the maths articles presented as easily accessible (e.g., Monty Hall problem mentioned above), they do not suffer from the difficulty 1 above but instead relate more closely to familiar and concrete environment that a lay person can relate to. Moreover, the amount of multilayered theory needed for their resolution is often low, thus making the explanation in lay terms possible. But, as said, most topics in "advanced" mathematics do not share these characteristics.
As this topic seems to surface regularly, I'm very much in favour of the proposals to prepare a FAQ to address this. Stca74 (talk) 08:43, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here is an assortment of points which may be helpful. Their juxtaposition with each other is not intended to indicate any particular interconnection beyond their common relationship to the problem under discussion.

-- Wavelength (talk) 17:42, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your input, but I am still somewhat confused as to what you propose should be done - do you want every mathematics- and physics-related Wikipedia article to be linked in a giant flowchart so that people could figure out what they need to cover before reading a specific article by using that chart? It Is Me Here (talk) 17:17, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

At this stage of the discussion, I do not have a preference from among the various options, which include the following.

  • linking to articles in Wikibooks
  • linking to articles in Wikiversity
  • linking to other articles in Wikipedia
  • linking to a very large prerequisite chart of articles (and/or to one of a number of smaller prerequisite charts of articles)
  • having a feature similar to the one currently used with articles about cities (where a mouse over a globe icon, in the upper right corner of the page, displays the expression "show location on an interactive map"), but with an interactive prerequisite chart instead of an interactive geographical map

Any one or combination of those options is acceptable to me. Also, the following may be helpful.

Category:Glossaries on mathematics
Category:Mathematical notation
Areas of mathematics
Mathematics Subject Classification


Earlier on this page, you gave an example of an annotated equation with links to other articles in Wikipedia. I have copied and edited it to appear as shown below, although the spacing still needs improvement. I have removed the first monomial of Euler's identity from the annotation. It is used in mathematics stubs. I removed it for two reasons: (1) in order to simplify the editing, and (2) because it seemed both inappropriate and unnecessary that an equation annotation have a stub symbol (either for a general mathematics stub or for any of the more specific mathematics stubs listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types).

For more information about this formula, see:
*Limit (mathematics)
*Infinity

For more information on how I did this, you can see HTML element and b:HTML Programming/Tables.

-- Wavelength (talk) 16:57, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some more links (a few of them internal, most of them external), some of them listed under headings composed of Google search terms. I am listing them here because I believe they have a possibility (even if small) of helping Wikipedia editors to make mathematics articles more accessible to readers. (Even if they do not help in that way, then their presence here could still be of interest in other ways to mathematics editors reading this section.)


"explaining difficult mathematics"










"gender differences mathematics"



-- Wavelength (talk) 00:38, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some more links which may help Wikipedia editors to make mathematics articles more accessible.


(Google search: "mathematics proof human computer")




-- Wavelength (talk) 02:52, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have sent a message to a famous educational communicator, requesting advice from that person to be given here to help us in reaching a consensus.

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:29, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting - keep us posted! It Is Me Here (talk) 11:12, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The communicator has a website with a program for visitors to send messages, and by means of that program I sent a message, identifying myself as "(Wikipedia username) Wavelength" and providing a fictitious e-mail address. Except for the two long blank areas, the message which I sent is as follows.


For a long time, editors of mathematics articles on Wikipedia have been having difficulty in reaching consensus on how to make those articles more accessible to the general public. Some of us have been presenting various ideas, and recently I presented some of my own ideas, but still the issue seems to be unresolved. Knowing of your interest in promoting intellectual abilities in the general population, I am guessing that you would be glad to assist Wikipedia in this matter. If you have the time and interest, please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals) (section "Easy as pi?") and offer whatever advice you can. If I understand procedures correctly, the discussion will be archived after a week of not receiving comments, but I expect to be making more comments, so then you will have more time to analyze the comments (or as many of them as you choose to analyze) and to add any comments of your own. If you choose to identify yourself by your real name, then your advice would probably be accepted more readily than otherwise; however, if you choose to be anonymous or pseudonymous, but if you choose to identify yourself to me in your comments, you can do so by ________________. You can find background information about Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About. Thank you in advance for any help you can provide. If I send you another message here about the same matter, I will identify myself to you as "________________". (The e-mail address is fictitious; I do not know how to configure my e-mail service not to show my real name.)
-- Wavelength (talk) 00:42, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Subsection 4

The following 17 pages are selected from the top 300 search results from my Google Advanced Search for all the words "wikipedia mathematics articles village pump" within the site "en.wikipedia.org", or, in a few cases, are pages linked from those results. I have left them in the order of the search results, because the first results seem to be the most relevant and most useful to this discussion.

-- Wavelength (talk) 16:27, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(If you are reading this discussion after it has been archived, please note that some of the pages in the foregoing list may also have been archived, in addition to the ones which are already archived at the time of this message being posted. You can probably find the information by following the link[s] to the associated archives.)
-- Wavelength (talk) 16:31, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From my Wikipedia search for "mathematics articles" by using the Search button, I selected 48 pages. In the left column, they are listed in the order in which I found them. In the right column, they are loosely sorted for convenience.


Although I found many articles about individual mathematicians among the search results, I singled out Paul Erdős because of his prolific collaboration with other mathematicians in writing articles about mathematics. If his collaboration was in many diverse fields of mathematics, then his work might provide some clues to making Wikipedia mathematics articles more accessible, not only to non-mathematicians, but also to mathematicians specializing in fields outside those of the articles.


A related challenge in explaining mathematics was met in one-room schools. In a one-room school, a teacher taught academic basics to five to eight grade levels of elementary-age boys and girls. Maybe an understanding of the skills used by the teacher in shifting attention from one level to another, while maintaining appropriate instructions for each intended audience, can assist writers and editors of mathematics articles for Wikipedia.


Because my search found the list of paradoxes, it seems fitting to include these other articles, which are closely related to that one and to this discussion.

-- Wavelength (talk) 22:04, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some more mathematics websites, which might help Wikipedia editors to make mathematics articles more accessible to a general readership.








(Incidentally, these together with others in the previous subsection of this section are probably sufficient
for a list of mathematics websites or a list of mathematical websites.)

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:53, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The list can be added to the lists of websites. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Subsection 5

From column 4 ("Proposals") of Wikipedia:Village pump archive#October 2004 - October 2007, I visited each page linked, searched for the character string "math", and selected the following 29 sections as having some relevance to the challenge of making mathematics articles more accessible to a general readership. The dates are from the discussions themselves, and do not necessarily agree with the corresponding wikified dates on the index page.



-- Wavelength (talk) 23:06, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki cache for references

There is a problem with material cited with an online reference, when that reference disappears, especially when someone then deletes the content on the basis it can't be verified. There are two situations: a) sometimes it is known, or can be suspected, that a ref will disappear because of the nature of the site (its practice is not to archive its own pages)—there is then the opportunity for pre-emptive action; b) it is unexpected—in this case it may still be available on google, but possibly only for a short time.

Some solutions to this might be:

1. An archive noticeboard, where editors ask for endorsement that the material they have used is accurately based on the ref. This would be viable for simple uses of the ref, such as straightforward factual material.

2. An archive noticeboard where relevant extracts from the ref are posted and endorsed. This would be useful when not a large portion of the ref is being used.

3. A Wiki cache, similar to google, where editors can cache a page directly. This would be particularly useful if it could also cache a google cache.

The best solution is 3, as it does not require any other editor participation or endorsement. 1 and 2 don't need any developer work, and could be instituted immediately. There could be a combination of these.

Ty 09:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I share Ty's concern about cited web pages disappearing. Some topics are mainly covered by web pages, and articles on these topics risk being left unreferenced in a few year's time.
Option 3 looks best, as it's hard to tell in advance how much detial wil be needed, e.g a Ga /. FA reviewer might want to check that an article paraphrases a source correctly and does not select only passages that favour a POV.
A wiki cache could be implemented by a bot. The bot should only cache pages the first time they are referenced, as they may be later taken over by advertisers / domain resellers. The bot should:
  • exclude citations that have an ISBN, DOI, PMID or other reference number that identifies an alternative route to the information.
  • exclude web pages that have an ISBN, DOI, PMID or other reference number; but insert these reference numbers into citations if they are not already present.
The greatest difficulty for a bot would be multi-page web articles such as those at Findarticles.com - I'm still trying to think of a solution for that. -- Philcha (talk) 09:54, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was envisaging a more modest proposal, where the wiki caching would only take place when a user initiated it, as there's no need to wiki-cache refs that are likely to be available indefinitely. In the case of manual caching, multi-page articles could be done one at a time. Ty 11:22, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How can editors judge which refs "are likely to be available indefinitely"? Some sites go off-line without notice. Many of the online mags drop pages completely after a couple of years; this is most common in "popular culture" subjects, e.g. computer games. A few academic mags move pages to archives, and I've recently had to contact one of these to tell them that the archive entry for the article I wanted linked to the wrong article. -- Philcha (talk) 11:44, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's up to editors to judge. You have given examples where they are not likely to be available indefinitely, so may well need to be cached. Likely to be available for example are Hansard and The Times (the latter available from more than one source from 1785). Items already cached in the web archive would presumably not need to be cached on wiki as well, unless there is a prospect of that project disappearing. Some refs are not particularly critical; some have information duplicated in other sources, e.g. a newspaper carrying a syndicated story. I'm not against caching every ref on wiki, but I don't think it's essential. Ty 12:13, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Also, not all editors will have the know-how or will to follow all these steps manually. SharkD (talk) 11:58, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There aren't any steps yet, as there isn't any system in place. It could be as simple as editing a URL and clicking a button. Ty 12:14, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't a cache cause serious copyright issues? I know Google is willing to push the boundaries of fair use, but since we're a free content project, we should take a more cautious approach. Perhaps a collaboration with the Internet Archive would be a better idea, where we could ask them to go through our references and make sure their archive includes those links. JACOPLANE • 2008-09-13 12:03
Far less copyright issues than google, which is a commercial entity. It's a service already offered by WebCite. Cached refs could be marked "No Index", and only be accessible to users when the original source became unavailable. Ty 12:20, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is an itneresting proposal; it would be possible to implement a very simple system whereby a source could be copied onto the toolserver – obviously the text cannot be released under the GDFL so cannot be placed on Wikipedia. (I won't comment on the potential space issues.) But I think that copyright is the main concern. Sites such as google's cache and waybackmachine are the only reason I think there's even the slimmest chance that we could take it further. Many papers are freely available for reading under the condition that "no further copies can be made". I would suggest raising a query at Wikipedia:Copyright_assistance, as hopefully an expert will be able to tell us how to work the loopholes. I for one would be reluctant to begin to create a bot for this purpose without assurance that I wouldn't be bringing on a huge copyright lawsuit from all the major publishers! Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was going to mention WebCite. If someone is concerned that a reference is going to go away, why not just use WebCite directly instead of reinventing it? Anomie⚔ 15:03, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some pages don't archive on WebCite. I've tried to use it to archive a google cache and it rejects it. Ty 15:23, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As a counterpoint, if a web site, which in all other ways is considered reliable, but yet does not archive pages as a matter of practice (this being different from an accidental loss of date) , can that site really be called "reliable"? There's a reason that print sources, whenever possible, are preferred over web ones in that there's always (at least, in the practical future) a copy of the print version. I'm not saying that sites that use robots.txt or other methods to block caches or archive.org aren't a problem, as long as they keep their own material around. Those that don't... that's a questionable issue. --MASEM 15:14, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reliability, in wp referencing terms, refers to quality of content, not whether or not a site then keeps that content forever. That's an entirely different type of reliability. Sites choose not to archive either all or some of their content, for a whole variety of reasons. Maybe it's no longer of use for them, but that doesn't mean it's no longer of use for us. Ty 15:36, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I do realize our current definition of reliability says nothing about archiving, nor am I saying it has to; I guess I'm bringing up the point for thought: should retention be considered as part of our definition of reliable? Should we be relying on web caches for reference content? --MASEM 16:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reliable sources can include difficult to access books and even user-generated translations of foreign language content, so I'd say no, retention and accessibility are not our primary concerns when judging if a source is reliable, just authority. It is, however, going to be an increasingly significant problem as time passes. Archival of the sources for at least our featured content should probably be considered an important goal. --erachima talk 16:16, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Print sources have their drawbacks, e.g. how often does a reviewer have the books already? More seriously Wikipedia has a lot of articles about notable topics in what could be called "popular culture", where most of the sources are web-based - the examples I'm most familiar with are computer games (and chess, to a lesser extent), but I'm sure there must be a good 100 other categories. FAs in these categories could be down-graded to "C" or even "start" class if cited pages vanish.
WebCite has 2 drawbacks from this point of view: it archives only pages that the authors / publishers have thought to archive; and it expects publishers to pay for at least some aspects of its service (WebCite FAQ), which will deter some.
From the point of view of coverage, I think Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) is a better bet: it's not academically oriented; it's free; and it's crawler driven, although the crawler is Alexa.
Re copyright, Internet Archive's info is rather scanty, but WebCite FAQ refers to a case Field vs Google, US District Court, District of Nevada, CV-S-04-0413-RCJ-LRL, which ruled that caching does not constitute a copyright violation, because of fair use and an implied license.
If we relied on either of these archives, there would still be a question of what monitoring would be required. 404s and other HTTP "error" codes are easy. The problem is URLs that are taken over by advertisers / domain resellers - these often use HTTP 301 redirects to a single "sales" page, so 301s can't be trusted. I can't think right now of a way to at least semi-automate this kind of checking, and hope someone else can. -- Philcha (talk) 15:48, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Options 1 and 2 seem like too much overhead. Adding refs is difficult enough, with the tags and templates. Making people "register" their refs on a noticeboard would be way too much work. There's no way to make it mandatory, and if its optional, it will probably be rarely used. Option 3 has issues with copyright, and also storage capacity. Wikipedia probably has several million external links, even if only 1% are references, that's still tons of server space. In some cases, such as an online version of print media, maintaining a link isn't necessary. Its helpful, but only the details of the original publication are necessary. Mr.Z-man 16:09, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not suggesting a mandatory system, but an optional one for editors who wish to use it and have a concern that an important ref may go missing and thereby cause an invalidation of content. This would apply where the only available reference was online, not to a duplication of print media. If it is rarely used, then 1 and 2 will have very little overhead, but can fulfil an invaluable function in certain instances. The web archive often does not deep index pages or has a gap in indexing which misses out an updated page. It is also not possible to tell for 6 months or so whether it is in the web archive or not. I don't see this as being a problem for server space, as developers have said that should not be a consideration for policy, and their job is to make sure the technical backup meets the needs of the project. If it is a problem, they can tell us. The bottom line is that there can be a perfectly valid ref with important content that suddenly vanishes (this happened to me with The Times and, despite emails, I couldn't get it fixed). The content shouldn't be compromised over a technicality, which can be easy enough to fix. Ty 22:56, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Server space shouldn't normally be a consideration for policy, but most policy proposals don't involve adding creating a massive database of text. Also, many newspapers remove articles from public access after a certain time, so that only people with paid subscriptions can read them. Bypassing this by storing an indefinite cache on our servers accessible to all seems like it would most certainly be illegal. Mr.Z-man 04:59, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was going to say this, but someone already did. Most proposals don't involve the sheer hugeness of disk space that you'd be talking about, especially if you're going to retain formatting. But, aside from that, remember that the content we are referencing is not free. It is written by someone with a copyright to that content; that is the bottom line, and we have to deal with it. We can't just copy other people's work without permission (even with permission, really, if we want to keep with our ideals) because it works best for us. Celarnor Talk to me 06:47, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Z-man. 1 and 2 seem like they take far too much overhead, and option 3 isn't very likely to work in the US copyright system. Celarnor Talk to me 00:58, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you agree with Z-man, it won't take much overhead at all, because "if its optional, it will probably be rarely used," so it will be a resource to save some rare refs. The precedents for use in the copyright system have already been pointed out, namely google, web archive and web cite. Wikipedia is in much safer position than a commercial entity such as google. Do you have a an alternative suggestion to deal with this issue? Ty 04:01, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note, where Google and Internet Archive have court cases and specific exemptions (respectively), neither WebCite (to my knowledge) nor Wikipedia have either of these. I'd rather not get into changing Wikipedia into a resource for copyrighted full pages: Just use links to archive.org if you must. Kylu (talk) 05:34, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That does not solve the problem of content created with valid refs that disappear and are not on archive.org. Suggestion 1 does not involve storing any material at all, and suggestion 2 only a minimal relevant amount. Ty 06:15, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Do you really think your first suggestion would be of much use? I don't imagine very many people utilizing it; however, I do think that is the only remotely viable one of the three. Celarnor Talk to me 06:43, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A 'solution' that opens the project up to civil suits from the owners of each and every external link cached in such a manner does not seem to be a solution in my eyes. Google has an exemption as a search engine; courts have specifically ruled that by putting your content up on the internet, you grant an implied license for purposes of locating your content via a search engine; I'm not familiar with the particulars of the IA case, but I imagine there are similar restraints regarding whatever implied license is granted for caching therein; Wikipedia would be using these for an express purpose outside of the scope of either one of those.
Please remember that that Wikipedia exists in the Real World (unfortunately, the United States), and we have to abide by whatever copyright laws, no matter how draconian, apply to where our servers are. We can't simply ignore them and store other people's content because it's convenient for us to do so. Celarnor Talk to me 06:43, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the motivation, particularly re. pages describing modern technology, since they are likely to become obsolete and be taken down or changed. (How many web-based references will you find for the ISA bus these days? What about MCA?) However, is there a reason that the archives at archive.org aren't suitable or sufficient? Perhaps WF could work together with archive.org to ensure that the pages referenced here, even the specific versions referenced here, are archived. Could WP's software automatically add links to the archive.org copies of linked pages? Jeh (talk) 17:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Archive.org is limited in that it won't necessarily cache the page you need, and that even if it does, the lag time before it becomes available can be critically detrimental; for example, an Edge ref went dead, and this affected 3 video game FAs; that was two months ago, and without a cache, we'd still be waiting for archive.org to (possibly) check it. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 22:59, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is why I suggested "perhaps WF could work together with archive.org to ensure that pages referenced here, even the specific versions referenced here, are archived." Let archive.org handle the copyright issues; they apparently are doing so already. Jeh (talk) 12:56, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I proposed this in WP:VG. If there were a way to predict beforehand what the URL to an archive would be, then we could simply add the link to the future archived version when making the citation. SharkD (talk) 01:54, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is a good idea. However, my original motivation was because of a ref that had disappeared but was still available on google, although not necessarily forever. I don't think webarchive caches the whole of the google cache. Could the people above who have opposed the intitial suggestions kindly come up with a solution themselves. Or do we just watch refs slip away in these cases and delete valid content? There is a relevant discussion at Citing sources. Ty 01:33, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Namespaces in Robot.txt

I'd like to propose adding the following namespaces to MediaWiki:Robots.txt to prevent their indexing by search engines

  • Image talk:
  • Help talk:
  • MediaWiki talk:
  • Category talk:
  • Template talk:
  • Portal talk:

There is no encyclopedic content on any of these pages and all but a tiny fraction are unwatched. Frequently drive-by vandals leave attack pages in these namespaces, knowing that it is unlikely anyone will see them. Since they are not used much for legitimate purposes (other than a few template and mediawiki talk pages), there will not be much collateral damage from adding them to the robots.txt file. MBisanz talk 01:50, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Should this be desired, a better way to implement it would be to get a dev to add them to $wgNamespaceRobotPolicies, as was recently done with the "User talk" namespace. The difference being that robot policies set via $wgNamespaceRobotPolicies can be overridden on a page-specific basis if needed. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:39, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I think we should do to those namespaces whaat Ilmari said we did to the User talk namespace. MBisanz talk 02:52, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mediawiki talk is kinda hand since it saves haveing to remeber all those codes. Template talk is usefull when you can't remeber which of the various inforbox templates you saw a discussion on. Image talk is sometimes needed due to copyright issues.Geni 02:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a problem with this. - Rjd0060 (talk) 21:38, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
MediaWiki's internal search is improving, though Google is very helpful at times.... I'll leave my comment on this proposal as a resounding meh.

As a technical note, though, Ilmari is correct. This would be implemented in the configuration files, not on a local page. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:46, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? I can't recall ever having seen "attack pages" left in any of the talk spaces you mention (though I have seen them in User talk). I don't spend much time with Help talk or Portal talk, but I've seen all of the rest used for legitimate encyclopedia-fostering purposes. By extension that implies it is potentially useful for editors to search them. Before we put an end to major search engines being used for that purpose, I'd like to see some evidence that there is a problem here. Could you provide evidence of actual harm (rather than speculation) and some idea of how frequent the problem is? In general I don't think the "free encyclopedia" should be hiding our back rooms without concrete evidence of need. Dragons flight (talk) 21:52, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
From today in the image talk: space alone: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Is the 'pedia actually improved by any of those pages showing up on google? MBisanz talk 22:03, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is indeed a problem, but I don't see how we can solve it through no-indexing. People will still add nonsense to such talk pages, after all, and none of the examples listed are BLP problems, so I don't see why it matters whether google should index those talk pages or not. Additionally, some talk pages in some namespaces (Especially template and mediawiki) are pretty active, and it would be a bad thing to no-index those. --Conti|✉ 22:20, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Most of those are "test" type edits of no consequence. A little messy maybe, but not harmful in the way an "attack page" is. Comment 8 is actually discussing the image, and hence using the page for it's nominal intent. Comment 2 contained a link to a different image in a similar style (probably not a good source, but still on topic).
But in general I don't think the harm of little talk pages like those (that Google would mostly ignore anyway since they have no content) is comparable to the utility associated with things like Image talk:Instrumental Temperature Record.png, Image talk:2000 Year Temperature Comparison.png, Image_talk:Replace_this_image_male.svg, Image_talk:Colonisation2.gif, etc. The problem with blocking the entire space is that you cast out both the good and the bad, and so you have to make a balancing test on whether we are better with them or better without them. Personally, my experience and the evidence so far, suggests to me that we are better off keeping search enabled. Dragons flight (talk) 22:33, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely oppose. Having a full and complete searchable index of wikipedia should be the norm, and only in a few cases where demonstrated and repeated harm has come to the project or individuals, and we're unable to contain it with normal editing, should we use sweeping technical measures like this rather than the usual revert and ignore. So, in absence of evidence of concrete harm google indexing of these namespaces has caused, I don't see any reason for a blanket prohibition on indexing. henrik•talk 22:03, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You are aware that the User talk: namespace and over 55,000 other pages are already de-indexed, including all RFAR, RFAs, and RFCUs? MBisanz talk 22:04, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and I don't necessarily think those de-indexings were a generally good idea either. They're a poor technical solution to a social problem. I'm not blindly opposed to de-indexing pages - there are some cases where it can be a practical solution, but I don't think we should do it on a whim and in the absence of demonstrated harm. Wikipedia should be open, warts and all. henrik•talk 22:14, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The rationale for deindexing deletion discussions, BLP noticiboards and user talk pages (along with a host of other user-related pages) is valid. The rationale for doing so here is not. I don't use google to look for encyclopedic content on the template talk pages. I use it to look for discussions about templates (and usually, alternate names for those templates that aren't redirects for one reason or another). The same goes for the other namespace talk pages. We shouldn't use robots.txt to control what is and isn't a "customer facing" portion of wikipedia (encyclopedic). It is a blunt tool for a subtle problem. Protonk (talk) 00:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose any further no-indexing. –xeno (talk) 03:19, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose no-index should IMHO only be used on places where there is frequent discussion of things that are better kept hidden from the public eye. Google was meant to search the entire internet, so let it. - Icewedge (talk) 03:38, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose any further no-indexing. Google works much faster and better than the internal search.--Patrick (talk) 10:06, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per above. Search engines search, it isn't our job to choose what is or isn't good enough for them. There is no reason to hide these pages from them. Prodego talk 21:11, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly support indexing all talk pages, including article talk. Search engines are a reality, and their policies and uses are not under our control. But they are very important in many contexts, and the usual way of finding topics in the web. The talk pages of any articles tend to contain material rejected from the article, personal abuse, and wild speculations. These pages are important in the making of Wikipedia, and also in their use in aiding interpretation of the material, but they are not the encyclopedia. For the same reason previous versions are not indexed, so should these. If there is important subject information there--it should be in the article. Fortunately, the major search engines do respect the noindex tag. A complete and searchable index of Wikipedia should indeed be the norm, and we should do it. We're responsible for it. Reliance on Google for indexing is like relying of Google for content.
  • Oppose pretty much any no-indexing — no-indexing doesn't actually hide anything from the Internet. Anyone who really wants to find this stuff will find it — everyone else is just inconvenienced. I know I'm not the only one who uses Google to search for old Wikipedia discussions (often to cite in current Wikipedia discussions), and anything getting in the way of this is bad. --Cyde Weys 15:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose more no-indexing, especially considering the sorry state of Wikipedia's internal search, and I'm not enthusiastic about some of the exclusions that have already been made, like the XFDs. --Groggy Dice T | C 17:47, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Atlas

Proposal; Adding Wikiatlas to Wikipedia's array of reference materials. Lack of an atlas is a glaring omission. Any basic personal library's reference section starts with an encyclopedia, a dictionary and an atlas. Slightly better ones add a thesaurus and a book of quotations and possibly a general world history, then other reference books tailored to the individuals interests. Wiki has moved on to the thesaurus and quotes before covering the basics. Wikibooks is even beginning to fill in the the individual interests niche. Done properly this is a big project, hence a daunting one. As atlas's are graphic by nature few of wikipedia's current resources can be applied to the project, although wikipedia does have some good maps available to it. Wikipedia itself was, and is, a daunting project, yet was deemed worthwhile enough to do. Another argument against taking up this project is that the resource is available elsewhere on the internet. This is simply not true. Google maps, mapquest and the like are great for finding an address or getting directions, the CIA site has very nice current political maps, and looking at satellite photos of your neighborhood or where the latest typhoon has struck is way cool. However these are only the smallest part of what a good electronic atlas could be. Try finding a elevation map of Europe and the Mediteranian basin without cities or political boundaries. Aside from being a good thing in and of itself wikiatlas would be a terrific support tool for wikipedia. For example there is a very nice map in wikipedia of ancient Greek and Pheonician colonies. The creator must have gone to a great deal of trouble to create it so he could include it in his article. If he could summon up a map of the area involved that was copyright free his task would have been much easier. The difficulty in finding appropriate maps has certainly caused some editors to skip adding a map altogether, or reduce the quantity of maps included in a given article. I am surprised I could not find a reference to the addition of an atlas in the wiki pages. I would be even more surprised if I was the first to suggest it. If there is a discussion of the idea somewhere in wikiworld a pointer to the area would be appreciated. For those interested in the idea this is how I think it should work, ideally. Opening page is a globe, that can be manipulated with the pointer to show any face. A button would allow the view to be toggled back and forth between a flat projection or globe view. A slider would allow zooming in or out. Another slider would be used to go back and forth in time. A series of buttons would turn on or off a number of filters for borders, roads, rails, cities, elevation, climate, population, language, satellite image etc. The borders of the map could be adjusted to show exactly the area of interest. A couple of buttons would allow printing or saving to an image file, at screen size or any scale multiplier the user selects. An area and time period could have specialty maps attached, and if browsing the right area a specialty map available button would appear. when pushed the specialty map pop up. For example; if browsing Asia in the 1250-1270 period a a button would appear that lead to a map of Marco Polo's travels. One more button would lead to the index page. A place could be searched for through all history or the search could be narrowed to a certain era, continent, or nation. An option to show the resulting place or it's location would be available. For example a search for Toronto would show a map of Toronto, or a map of southern Ontario and north eastern USA centered on Toronto. Links to articles in Wikipedia could be added, so clicking on a nation's name would link to the article about the nation. And naturally Wikipedia articles could link to Wikipedia.

--JoSo (talk) 07:19, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wall of text, tl;dr. Celarnor Talk to me 07:24, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously, though; I'm not sure how this works, to be honest. Is there a source of freely available GIS data so someone can produce public-domain topographical maps? Celarnor Talk to me 07:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've seen this idea suggested a half-dozen or so times over the years, but nothing has ever come of it to my knowledge. I know there is a project request someplace venue on meta:, perhaps you could find other supporters of the idea there? As for why there is no Wikiatlas, if I had to guess I would assume it's due to software issues. Programmer hours are the rarest of all volunteer resources, I recall reading that we write a dozen FAs for every fulfilled bug request (and most bug requests are quite minor). --erachima talk 10:09, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, here we are: meta:Wikiatlas. --erachima talk 10:21, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the problem is that this would require tons of development time to get something that's near as functional as Google Maps, and then what does the community do? Presumably map and aerial image layers would be added automatically from public domain sources, as that would be extremely time consuming and tedious to do manually. It seems very difficult to collaborate on something like this. Mr.Z-man 02:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Actualy not to bad. It helps of course that it has been done (or at least been given a solid start see openstreetmap OpenStreetMap. Elivation is more of a problem although for the UK it can mostly be pulled from new popular edition OS maps.Geni 03:43, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
See also commons:Atlas and commons:Category:WikiAtlas. --Groggy Dice T | C 16:38, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some other possible features are:
  • The use of a button to choose a map projection, and
  • The option of overlaying one map over another,
for example, a weather map over a topographical map, or
a multi-modal transportation map over a population map.
(Some people may remember seeing transparencies of the human body,
with skeletal, muscular, digestive, respiratory, circulatory, and other diagrams.)
-- Wavelength (talk) 23:40, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(I corrected my spelling: ---> "respiratory") -- Wavelength (talk) 03:54, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(in re: to the "more FAs than bugs" comment): Did enwiki churn out 1056 FAs last week? Because 88 bugs were marked as FIXED. :) ^demon[omg plz] 20:14, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

An alternative to continually relisting AFD nominations with little or no discussion.

Originally proposed and discussed here (WT:AFD).

If an article is listed on AFD for 5 days and...

1. Has never been nominated for deletion before.
2. Has few or no comments/!votes.
3. Has no "good faith" "keep" !votes or neutral comments leaning toward "keep".

Then it may, at the closing admin's discretion, be treated like an expired prod. The admin deletes it with no prejudice against recreation and the article is undeleted upon request, noting this in his closing statement and in the deletion log. I think this would be a better alternative to constantly relisting nominations over and over again until there are enough !votes to make a call. Note that this should only be one option available to the closing admin. He could still relist or close "no consensus" etc. if he feels that's best.

Of those who objected, the main concern was the short window available to someone who would wish the article be kept to participate in the deletion discussion. Other business might keep him away from Wikipedia while "his" article is silently deleted. I am assuming the same objection was raised when the proposed deletion system was first being discussed. The answer was to make such deletions very easy to undo. Such an article would be restored upon request or could be recreated without being subject to CSD G4. I'm proposing the same thing here. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:19, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't it possible that this AfD was already prodded, and was taken to AfD because someone objected? It doesn't strike me as impossible that someone contested a prod, and then didn't follow up on the AfD discussion. Personally, I think if something doesn't meet speedy deletion criteria and there isn't a discussion leading to a delete decision, then it should default to keep and not delete. Avruch T 00:53, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose per above, I agree with Avruch. Why delete something that nobody can find anything wrong with besides the nominator? The article can be relisted easily enough, and your suggestion seems like it'd make it a bit too easy to delete someones work without even discussing it. --Banime (talk) 18:46, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would oppose doing this in place of the first relist, but after that, support it. If after 10+ days no one comes to try to refute the nomination statement or at the least give some possible reason for keeping the page, it can probably be assumed that either nobody but the nominator cares, or they agree with the nomination. Mr.Z-man 18:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • That was one of my first thoughts, too -- would people be more comfortable with this if we waited and/or relisted before treating a non-commented discussion this way? I'm a bit dismayed to see so many of the comments here treating AfD as a war zone, with people "backing up" others and a general assumption that lack of comments indicates nobody could "find fault," as if that's the only reason for their being there or commenting. I take a lack of comments to mean "nobody much cares," which I believe is more or less the philosophy behind prod's time-saving system: save the discussion for when somebody does care. – Luna Santin (talk) 20:37, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per what Avruch said, as well as being too bitey to new users; it will require administrative intervention to undelete, and we should err in favor of keeping information anyway. This doesn't seem to be in line with that. If no one other than that nominator shows up after five days to come up with some more reasons to delete something, or even to just support the nominator, then it probably doesn't deserve to be deleted. Celarnor Talk to me 20:00, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, if no one has shown up to back the nominator, the article isn't obviously non-notable either. A proposal that will reinforce systemic biases towards what is current and popular and online. --Groggy Dice T | C 17:52, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I agree it reduces beaucratic relisting which solves little. If no one shows up at an AfD it doesn't prove the nominator's argument is weak any more than it proves the opposite. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 20:09, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I'm late to the party here, but since this concept defaults to delete in the absence of discussion, it strikes me as a non-starter of an idea and a rather stunning and newcomer-unfriendly change in policy. Why can't we presume the very creation of an article in the first place represents the first "keep" argument? If it's in AFD to begin with, that implies it's not an obvious (CSD) elimination candidate. Townlake (talk) 18:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlists

Do you know what pisses me off? When somebody moves a page to "Hagger!?!?!?!" and that nonsense gets added to my watchlist. I have to remove pages like that from my watchlist all the time.

I have a solution for this, make an option in "my preferences" that says "Add pages to your watchlist that somebody moves" and uncheck that box. Not only is this annoying me when somebody is vandalism-moving pages, also I want to MANUALLY add pages to my watchlist. I don't want it to be done automaticlly, because like I said, Hagger is bad, and is the main reason why I want to manually add moved pages to my watch list. TheBlazikenMaster (talk) 14:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, a number of the pages on my watchlist have been targeted recently, and it is a pain to have to wade through a mass of

on your watchlist. I imagine it is possible to do so, when you move a page, you get the option to watch it, why not just make that option more universal--Jac16888 (talk) 14:43, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question: What happens if a page you watch gets moved to something legitimate and you miss it in your watchlist? Then, effectively, you will no longer be watching that page. I think it is much better to have nonsense moves added to the watchlist by default, in case the move is legitimate. You'll only see that nonsense page appear twice in the watchlist (once for the move, once for the reversion). Also, moves and deletions are indented in the watchlist, making them easy to identify (or skip over, if necessary). — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 22:06, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I want to add those manually too. I will notice if a page move, the watchlist would still tell me. In my opinion it would work better if I could stop the system from automaticlly adding stuff to my watchlist. I'm suggesting a box since those that oppose can just use it. TheBlazikenMaster (talk) 00:26, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The page would still be watched after the move; it simply wouldn't report the move itself. SharkD (talk) 01:40, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Believe me I know that "(Move log) Page moved to a different location" would appear if you don't watch the page it's been moved to. That way I could do it manually. And it's not only vandalism moves that are bothering me, I also have to delete the previous article location from my watchlist, which is also bothering me, since I have other things to do. TheBlazikenMaster (talk) 16:37, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A feature to allow admins (or oversighters or whomever) to remove a specific title from all watchlists might be nice. There's likely a Bugzilla entry for it somewhere.... --MZMcBride (talk) 21:51, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That would be interesting. - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:54, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Enable extension for cleanup

I'd like to have this extension enabled on our wiki. It has proven to be an effective tool for cleaning up vandalism and quickly reversing disruption on other Wikimedia wikis such as Meta and Commons. Basically, the extension allows an administrator to delete in bulk, the pages created by a vandal. - Rjd0060 (talk) 21:38, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See bugzilla:11069 Prodego talk 21:51, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That bug is almost irrelevant here. I'm proposing it here, to reach consensus within out community to enable it.  :-) — Rjd0060 (talk) 16:53, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm hesitant to give the kind of power given by nuke to anyone, especially considering the abuse filter is under consideration. Other than massive potential for abuse and rapid-scale deployment, what does this provide that that the abuse filter doesn't? Celarnor Talk to me 18:25, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How is this related to the AbuseFilter? This extension just makes vandalism cleanup easier. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:55, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any benefit in it. I'll leave it at that. Angus McLellan (Talk) 16:40, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to rename the Notability guideline

There is a discussion going on here about whether to change the name of the notability guideline. —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 10:28, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Current suggestions for the new title include "Wikipedia:Inclusion", "Wikipedia:Viability", and several suggestions for more descriptive titles along the lines of "Minimum source requirements". --erachima talk 12:04, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I do not think that should be discussed here. A link is sufficient and we should keep the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability. SoWhy 12:13, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I know, I was just listing them here so people would see the options. --erachima talk 12:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

New favicon

I know we've talked about getting a new favicon before mainly because the current one is in use by Wiktionary and is not the most appealing, especially the white background. We didn't do anything before because of out lack of participation and good ideas. I took some of the criticism from last time and worked out a new one, how does it look?-- penubag  (talk) 00:58, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
→
Personally I definitely like it much more (cannot overstate how enthusiastically). Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 01:50, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While I like it from an aesthetic point of view, I'm not sure it's as clear as our current favicon: the classic "W" is both reduced in size and rotated in three dimensions and I imagine that greatly hurts its legibility from certain points of view. In addition, it takes away from the elegant simplicity of our current icon. My essential thought is this: how could such a change be justified by more than mere personal preference? {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 04:18, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate your efforts, but to me the puzzle piece looks a bit like an amoeba unless I squint pretty hard or put my nose close to the screen. I think the plain "W" is beautiful in its simplicity- kind of like Google's plain interface. I don't care Wiktionary uses it too; they're a sister project and I don't mind sharing. Also the current icon is well known and associated with the project (looked at Google Maps lately?). I think it would take a lot of time to re-buld that recognition with a new logo since we don't have big marketing pockets to dip into like when big corporations change their logos. I don't like to see your effort go to waste, maybe there's another part of the project we could use it? —Ashanda (talk) 06:10, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think it looks nice, I'd change it but it's just that. WP:ILIKEIT if you so will. But I think it is a good point that Wikipedia and Wiktionary use the same icon, I think one of them should be changed so that people can identify different pages in tabs easily. SoWhy 10:14, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Another favicon proposal

I've been thinking about the issue myself, and I myself dislike the traditional W because the white block background looks like someone who designed it has never heard of transparency. My proposal is that we keep basically the same logo, but utilise transparency and a bit of rounding. Like this:

→

Thoughts? — ^.^ [citation needed] 09:43, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It makes me think of a television screen. :-) To be honest, it makes the W look cramped. Waltham, The Duke of 09:51, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer it to the current block we have. I've always hated it, as I too think it looks horribly amateurish. As for this, I suggest making the W just a tad bit smaller. --.:Alex:. 10:07, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How about these versions?

→→

— ^.^ [citation needed] 11:54, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now the W doesn't look as clear; the right-hand lines of the "V"s are ready to disappear. My personal opinion is that having a special shape for the white part essentially makes it an element of the symbol, which is untrue and potentially misleading. I like the current icon, which makes it clear that the black W is the symbol, set on a simple white background. Besides, I think that if we adopted the proposed icon and Wiktionary kept the current one, the contrast would be too small for quick differentiation but still produce a strange image when viewed closely. Waltham, The Duke of 14:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who has a white address bar, the only difference between the old and new favicons is that the new ones are of lower quality. --Carnildo (talk) 20:27, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a nice improved favicon that I had made a while ago:

     

Cacycle (talk) 01:39, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How about ? --NE2 06:28, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:YFA & Category:CSD warning templates

I'd like to suggest that some mention of WP:YFA (hopefully avoiding being too patronizing, in case it hits experienced editors making a stupid mistake) should be added to most (not all) of the CSD warning templates. Any thoughts on which or inclinations against doing so? Seems like it might be more productive than just slapping users down without making any productive suggestions. MrZaiustalk 12:03, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oy. I was about to say several of them do include that link, but realized you're talking about the notifications. Your suggestion seems reasonable (maybe something to the effect of "if you are a new user, consider taking a moment to read..."). An alternative link, either in general or for non-article nominations, might be Wikipedia:Introduction. We could also encourage users on new page patrol to welcome newcomers in earnest, even when delivering bad news. – Luna Santin (talk) 19:24, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Admin bot proposal

There is a proposal to amend the bot policy regarding whether or not administrators need approval to run bots under their account. All are invited to comment. Prodego talk 14:51, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

zomg adminbots. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 18:42, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
August 29, 1997 was a long time ago. Skynet's running late (probably got snagged by the Y2k bug). EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:49, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Disallow users from deleting warnings from their talk pages

Currently, users are able to remove warnings that they receive from their talk pages. However, if they continue to do this, they could conceivably vandalize forever and nobody would know unless they were continually caught by the same user or the person reverting the vandalism checked the edit history of every user (which would be time consuming). I'd like to propose that users not be able to remove warnings from their talk page. It just makes it easier to keep track of how much vandalism a person has done without having to go through a contribution history.

(Note: I was told that they are allowed to do this by another user. If they aren't, then ignore this.) KJS77 Join the Revolution 00:08, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Prohibit removal of warnings. Anomie⚔ 00:17, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Acknowledged. KJS77 Join the Revolution 01:03, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Banning proposal

After seeing ban discussions like Koh's, Kurt's Scetpre's, Steve Crossin's, and Prom3th3n's, I've written up User:MBisanz/RfBan as a proposed way to better handle such discussions in the future. Please comment at the talk page. MBisanz talk 00:20, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Length limit for section headings

Recently, I posted a message at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language and, because of the length of the section heading, I did not have any space to provide an edit summary--there was not even enough space for one character. Should there be a length limit for section headings? What is the best formula for deciding what that length limit should be?


Here is a temporary link: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language#I am looking for a term that is used to describe the time wasting practice of pronouncing an acronym that takes longer to pronounce than if one simply pronounced the words that were initialized? {sic}.


Here is a perpetual link: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language (September 17) "I am looking for a term that is used to describe the time wasting practice of pronouncing an acronym that takes longer to pronounce than if one simply pronounced the words that were initialized?" {sic}.

-- Wavelength (talk) 01:11, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You can just delete some or all of the section heading in the automatically created edit summary. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:20, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Though this will break the edit-summary link. Algebraist 11:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It appears that the extreme length of this section header was done on purpose, as a witticism. If that were not the case, you could justify replacing the header with a shorter one to aid navigation. Continuing to crack this walnut with a sledgehammer, one could add a 'span id' to the page, which is a way of making section aliases. (This would allow making a short alias for the full section name). An example is at WP:EIW#Backlog. (Look at the wiki text to see how it's done). EdJohnston (talk) 13:42, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
See also Help:Link#Section linking (anchors). PrimeHunter (talk) 14:03, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you all for your answers.
-- Wavelength (talk) 15:47, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Intern for Wikipedia

Hello everyone!

I am a new intern at the Wikimedia Foundation and I have started a blog to keep everyone up-to-date with what is going on at the office. Let me know what you want to hear about and leave me feedback!


http://welcometowiki.wordpress.com/ is the blog. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.198.187.67 (talk)

Your blog is on WordPress.com with a yahoo.com email address. It has no link to a Wikimedia Foundation page mentioning you. You made an unsigned IP post to an irrelevant page. I have not found information about you at wikimedia:Staff or elsewhere. Can you or somebody else confirm you are an intern? In an article such a claim would require a reliable source and a selfpublished blog would not be accepted. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:31, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi "intern"! I haven't met you and don't remember your name, but perhaps we crossed paths on a day I was working from home. Can you tell me which staff member you are interning for so I can help provide some legitimacy to your blog? (Cary Bass) Bastique demandez 14:45, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The ever growing list of stub templates & categories

Problem. We have this huge list of stub templates, which seems to ever grow longer, and is basically used to categorize "stubs". However we already have a category system, which as far as I can tell is perfectly fine (maybe not browsing them though, see below). So in essence we have two overlapping categorization systems which leads to duplicate work by the Wikipedians who perform the already pretty tedious tasks of handling new/raw articles. Besides, the stub categorization is not as comprehensive as regular categories.

Proposal 1.

  • Divorce "stubs" from categorization. The relevant information is that the article is a stub, categorization provides the information for sorting.
  • Improve category browsing, so filtering stubs in & out is possible.

I would also like to point out that assessment of articles is pretty much generalized now to all articles on Wikipedia thanks to many wikiprojects, yet stubs seem to be a special case, which leads me to another related proposal:

Proposal 2

  • Harmonize the rating of articles. Stubs or featured articles, the idea is the same, it gives an indication as to the quality of an article. Sorting and browsing featured articles should be no different from sorting and browsing stubs. Withdrawn per NVO's rationale, I can see how that would not be viable. Equendil Talk 10:01, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I leave the "how" aside on purpose for now, however Wikipedia:Category intersection might be relevant here. Equendil Talk 10:49, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Proposal 1, and would support removing all the stub categories as soon as there is decent category-intersection browsing. Pseudomonas(talk) 11:37, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second that. As for "harmonization", it requires an overhaul of present-day practice when a B grade is granted by a single editor at will, and A grades are issued within wikiprojects (very small groups). As long as this practice continues, there will be differences in treatment of different groups. I don't see how this can be remedied - there's too many A/B articles to be handled trough wikipedia-wide channels like FAR. It needs to be decentralized, so accept the inevitable. NVO (talk) 09:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

An update on the proposal to move Main Page

I would like to remind people that the proposal to move Main Page is still ongoing. It is currently proposed that Main Page be moved to a new namespace. For more information, please see WP:VPR/PP#New namespace?. It would be good if more people are involved in this decision. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 14:29, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Listing the key signature of songs

It would be very informative (and benificial for musicians) if under the song details infobox the ability to list the key signature of a song was added for singles or individual song pages.

Apparently, most of the former featured articles got demoted because the featured article criteria get stricter, rather than because articles deteriorate. I think we should add a list in which all featured articles are sorted by the date when they were promoted, or when their last featured article review was closed. For example:

(This could be broken across several pages, one per year, if the resulting page were too big.) When an article is demoted, the corresponding item would be simply removed, and when it successfully passes a FAR, the entry would be moved to the current date. This way, people could easily look for the articles which haven't undergone a FAR for the longest time, and consider nominating them for FAR. --A r m y 1 9 8 7 ! ! ! 08:49, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comic book issue pages

As it currently stands, articles on individual issues of a comic book series are not allowed on wikipedia. I propose that this be changed. My principal reason is this: the current policies do not allow for adequate coverage of comics-related material.

There's only so much plot detail you can cover in a character or series page without that page veering off topic and becoming filled with extraneous detail. Additionally, if one wants to find information about a certain event in a comic book, they will have to spend time poring over multiple pages covering the series and characters in question; maybe they'll find what they're looking for, maybe they won't. A neat and tidy solution is to simply allow these pages. I think they would prove to be a valuable addition to this encyclopedia. In some cases, graphic novel pages fill this need, but this is an inadequate compromise because many fine comics have never been collected into a graphic novel and, in addition, graphic novel pages are routinely deleted on grounds of notability.

Further support: television episodes are widely featured throughout wikipedia, and in many cases have become featured articles. This is comparable to the issue of individual comic book issues. Yes, there are low-quality TV episode articles, but there are many more high-quality ones. I think most people would agree that these articles add to wikipedia quite a bit, and I think that, given the chance, comic book issue pages will do the same. Cerebellum (talk) 23:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a place for plot summaries. Individual comics issues would rarely contain more than a plot summary and would be impossible to feature because of their limited scope. It makes much more sense to address story arcs or series. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 00:03, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, point of fact, there's actually no policy or guideline prohibiting an article about a notable individual comic book issue. See, for example, Action_Comics_1. -Chunky Rice (talk) 00:25, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
David Fuchs: Could you explain how your logic applies to comic books, but not to TV episodes? The storyline suggestion isn't bad, I'm just wondering about this.Cerebellum (talk) 12:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Because due to sources such as episode commentaries, et al, there are many more sources available to write a TV episode FA. That's not to say all episodes should or can be stand-alone; the Stargate SG-1 crew has struck a good balance. As you can see in List of Stargate SG-1 episodes, only articles where enough sources exist (say, 200 (Stargate SG-1), are kept, while the rest are folded into the list, because as a whole the episodes are notable. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 12:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why not inform wiki editors of important news via administrator messages?

I use to contribute to a smaller wiki and think spreading new policies or agreed upon guidelines would be quite easy if administrators could simply type them (or a link to them) into an editor and then send them to registered users, who would see the news message appear on top of the wiki page they are watching in the same way they are notified of a new message on their talk pages. Just adding new policies or guidelines to the help section or wherever they belong might make them go unnoticed. I'm not sure if this made sense for the main wiki though.--Emaster82 (talk) 01:31, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's what MediaWiki:Watchlist-details is for. We also have MediaWiki:Sitenotice, but that's used less often. Algebraist 13:28, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I haven't experienced any kind of such notifications yet but going by what is explained on the talk pages of the MediaWiki pages you linked to they seem to be what I meant.--Emaster82 (talk) 16:17, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Statistics (again)

Resolved. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 15:36, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A week or two ago I proposed that the definition of "active user" on special:statistics was made clear, and some kind user did so: viz the template was edited to state that active means "has edited in the last 30 days". Just about as soon as that thread was archived from here, special:statistics was radically re-designed and the information was lost again. Can someone put it back? E.g. by defining the term in Wikipedia:statistics and linking to it from the special:statistics template (I have no idea where the latter is located or I'd do it myself). PaddyLeahy (talk) 15:02, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I added a description to the relevant statistics message. In the future, you can find particular interface messages by searching Special:Allmessages (warning: large page). {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 15:36, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

religion

why dosnt wiki cover the lesser religions like i'm the Alimbic religion theres only a little on it and i added that bit.--Mindoshawn (talk) 18:20, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia covers topics people have written an article about. If you want your religion covered, continue what you've been doing. I don't know where we draw the line between "religion" and "cult", probably at WP:NOTE, but how to determine that, I dunno. - Denimadept (talk) 18:45, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Including a link to your article here, so we know what you're talking about, might help too. - Denimadept (talk) 18:47, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mindoshawn created the since deleted The alimbic faith. It was unsourced and the only content was:
"The alimbic faith is a christian faith that consists of 8 elders who are the faiths leaders and 8 clans . maranshawn, tarin kamc, doranc kien mindo ,laitran kilraec,karack n tan lanak, sarkierin manakan, garic matax, and the navin kamical."
A bunch of terms with zero Google hits (including on "Alimbic faith" or "Alimbic religion") doesn't look good for Wikipedia:Notability, Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) or Wikipedia:Verifiability. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:34, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That explains why I couldn't find the article he failed to link with. Now he's posted an unpleasant comment to my talk page. (shrug) - Denimadept (talk) 18:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Enable mw:Extension:Nuke

Meta recently had a poll that passed that permits small wikis to enable the mw:Extension:Nuke. Due to its size, the English Wikipedia was not included in the poll and the decision has been left to us locally if we would like to enable such a feature.

In short, nuke permits administrators to delete all the recent pages created by a single user. This feature would be especially useful with grawp and spammers and would be easier on the servers than current deletion scripts used by admins to fight grawp (as well as more accurate). So I'd like to start a local poll on the question of enabling the nuke extension here.

Support enabling

  1. Obviously. MBisanz talk 12:16, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2. This would be very advantageous for admins and developers alike; both reducing server lag and helping with the mass reversion of spammers and vandalbots. — ^.^ [citation needed] 12:55, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Sounds like a good idea with no obvious negatives. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 16:35, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Looks good to me. Shereth 16:43, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  5. I agree, this could be very helpful. Mr.Z-man 16:53, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support, definitely. - Rjd0060 (talk) 17:07, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support; nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 17:12, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Mwawhawhawhawhaw... er, I mean Support... :D Happy‑melon 17:23, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Giving nukes to 1500 random people on the internet? What could possibly go wrong? Support henrik•talk 18:00, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:41, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Though I'd be even happier if there was an un-nuke option as well. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:41, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support. I've always wanted to have my own nuclear weapon. So long as I don't have to have the demon core on my desk as well.-gadfium 22:08, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose enabling

Questions

Since we've just had several issues with admins recently, including socks, and an arbcomm case, I'd like to know how easy it would be to reverse this. So, would these also be undeletable as a group? - jc37 17:24, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It would be added as a right to the admin group. Seeing as admins already have a large number of rights at Special:ListGroupRights and this feature can be duplicated by external software, there is really no more risk to an rogue admin with this tool than there is to an admin without it. Just that non-rogue admins will have an an easier time cleaning up with it. MBisanz talk 18:04, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Let me clarify: If User:nuker (an admin) "nuked" three pages with the tool, is there an "un-nuke" version of the tool for undeleting all three simultaneously (the way they were deleted), or would they have to be undeleted one at a time?
This becomes even more "fun" when hundreds of pages are "nuked". - jc37 18:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Currently, no, Mediawiki doesn't have an Un-Nuker, but many admins do have scripts that will do the same thing. So basically we'd be replacing Script-based Deletion and Script-based Undeletion with Software-based Deletion and Script-based Undeletion. MBisanz talk 18:16, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mk. Thank you for the clarification. While (presuming the trend continues) this is likely to pass, I think I'll stay neutral. Thanks again. - jc37 18:23, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Towards New proposal policy

Many community members strongly disagree with the current policy. We are proposing a modification of languages criteria to star a wikimedia project, with a community draft]. feel free to contribute with your opinion:


thak you, very much. — Crazymadlover

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