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Ban April Fools pranks

Because some people are too stupid to get them, such as myself. Wikipedia shouldn't be excludatatious. Equazcion (talk) 08:31, 1 Apr 2012 (UTC)

"excludatatious" That's not a word, at least until my link is no longer red. :-P --Cybercobra (talk) 08:38, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

*Support I like a joke as well as the next person, but it has gotten way out of hand, even by my wide standards. Too bad. Mugginsx (talk) 12:35, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose too severe. See alternate proposal more reasonable. Mugginsx (talk) 13:47, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment to all I see and understand that everyone sees this as immature or disruptive and that this year it got out of hand however as long as it doesn't disrupt the flow of information, an entire ban of gags and jokes for a once a year thing is a bit much. If this thing passes, administrators will have their hands full here on Wikipedia during April Fools. I would propose banning all jokes that disrupts articlespace on wikipedia or any other space that is accessed by everyday readers and those that do disrupt article space are blocked from editing for the duration of the day.—cyberpower ChatLimited Access 12:51, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given the time-stamp on the OP, how am I to know whether or not to take it seriously? FormerIP (talk) 13:51, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    True, but the bottom proposal I made is a serious one.—cyberpower ChatLimited Access 14:02, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - April Fools' Day is a widely acceptable prank day. While certain parts of Wikipedia (including the article namespace) need to remain intact, jokes in the "background" areas (Wikipedia: namespace excluding policy pages, discussion pages, etc) should be allowed within reason. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:02, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative Proposal Ban - only those who vandalize articles and guideline pages

Terms: All jokes that disrupts articlespace on wikipedia or any other space that is accessed by everyday readers are strictly prohibited and those that do disrupt article space are blocked from editing for the duration of the day without warning but a notice stating the reason for their block must be presented.—cyberpower ChatLimited Access 12:51, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. Support only the ones that affect articles and guideline pages. Upon reflection, that sounds more reasonable.Mugginsx (talk) 13:14, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support as proposer.—cyberpower ChatLimited Access 14:02, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Any joke that disrupts the wikipedia mainpage should not be allowed, this should not include certain AfDs or user made MFD's. For articles if they are to be done I suggest once Arpril fools is over worldwide these should be deleted right away and placed in an April fools day archive. Deleting Articles for a joke must not be people and must be respectful and clean and have the words "AF" in the deletion context (Example: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/AF2013Earth). Also if this proposal is adopted a eikipedia page be made up explaining these guidelines. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:34, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support The main issue is the article space disruption this brings. Sure, our reader's know this is April Fool's (or maybe they don't, depending on where they live), but they are still coming here to learn and use Wikipedia for some purpose. Disruption to articles is directing disrupting this purpose and shouldn't be allowed, no matter the holiday. SilverserenC 06:06, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support I'd like to see them all go away, since all these AfDs are of questionable humor at best, but this is an acceptable middle ground. Jtrainor (talk) 13:09, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support - we need Wikipedia to be useful as an encyclopedia, and to be welcoming to newcomers trying to learn our rules, all year long. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:58, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support. mabdul 13:01, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support - a terrible example. Rcsprinter (chat) 14:59, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh FFS, I did the same thing years ago. It's in project space, didn't disrupt mainspace a bit, and gave everyone a good laugh. See User:Seraphimblade/vandalbotjoke for the archive. There's nothing wrong with having a little bit of fun once a year, as long as it doesn't disrupt mainspace. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Seriously. I also must say it's very amusing to mess with the MW interface a bit; I rather like what Snowolf and I did. I also have a problem with "blocking without warning", because admins and non-admins alike are known to bitch at people who would dare report penis vandals to AIV who haven't inserted "John loves the cock!!!!" after a final warning. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:18, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support April fools pranks outside of the article space certainly lower my respect for the perpetrators, however they're not nearly as disruptive as messing with the article space. That's vandalism, and should be treated as such. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:44, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support when article/processes/tools are disrupted, especially if that will require more (long-term) fixing that just reverting an edit. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:12, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  11.  Sandstein  17:53, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support per User:Sven Manguard - April fools pranks that don't disrupt articlespace aren't really all that disruptive, but true disruption should be prohibited. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 16:49, 27 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
Comments
  • Looks a lot like september 11 where lots of new laws were invented, to restrict normal day-to-day life in a way that helped Zero people, but did give authoritarian types quite a trip. Same question applies here, for 911, wasn't there already a law on the books for hijacking, killing 3,000 people and so on, and aren't there already laws in place for dealing with disruption without creating new laws that need further advertising so everybody knows about them ? I mean just how diluted do the docs need to be ? How many laws are needed to define 'Don't disrupt article space' Don't do it on this day or this will happen don't do it on that day or that will happen blah blah blah. What happened to don't disrupt article space ? Yep I can see this bloating up the Docs and I can see the blatantly obvious solution too, I'll do my pranks on a different day 8-P
  • Wait, I already did that DOH! Better make an extra law for April 2, and 3 and 4, actually just let me know what days are OK on my user talkpage once you've finished OK ? Penyulap ☏

Alternative Proposal 2 - Delete editors without a sense of humor

We already have AfD and MfC; I hereby propose an EfD process where editors without a sense of humor can be nominated for deletion.

Support
  1. Support As proposer. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:57, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    So do we install the user merge and delete extension and merge them to ?  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  00:39, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support People without a sense of humor should not participate, especially on April Fools.—cyberpower ChatLimited Access 14:03, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Already exists ;-) Regards SoWhy 14:04, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support but it needs to implement the technical ability to delete users, which isn't possible atm Petrb (talk) 14:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support, but the ban should be lifted for one day each year (every April 1st) - if all editors without a sense of humour were banned all the time, who would be around to be fooled / annoyed every April 1st? Meowy 15:07, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

April Fools Jokes and possible guidelines

I'm starting this as per this thread at WP:AN. I realize too there's a small discussion above asking for a full ban; it's without much explanation and is neglecting the longer discussion that precipitated this.

It's inherently unfunny to propose something like this, so I'll first say that I'm not proposing it myself, so much as I'm trying to start a centralized discussion. There seems to be at least some concern that the perennial April Fools Day jokes on the encyclopedia occasionally get out of hand. These jokes have been a staple on Wikipedia since its early days, certainly as long as I've been seriously involved, and many older editors see them as a tradition. That's part of why an all-out ban seems, un-wiki. There have been attempts at guidelines before, notably WP:Pranking which failed around 2008 or so.

On the other hand the jokes have proliferated, and while they seem to be done without mal intent, they do begin to clutter up some areas of the site, most notable WP:Rfa and WP:Afd. The two most common forms are nominating clearly notable articles for deletion, or nominating one's self or others for adminship with.... novel... motivations.

First, some relevant links:

The AN discussion points seem to involve the following pro and con (this is a rough summary, and are not necessarily my views):

  1. Nominations can disrupt humorless bots, such as those that populate AfD tags
  2. One joke may be fine but many editors feel the need to replicate the same jokes and so the number of disruptions grows each year
  3. Vandalism on April 1 is still vandalism
  4. This is a 9 year+ Wiki tradition and we should be entitled to an annual bit of levity
  5. Mainspace jokes are the bulk of the controversy; few seem concerned about userspace jokes
  6. Some editors did not make just one joke but many
  7. A few, well thought out jokes are unlikely to stir controversy while many, unclever ones, will
  8. A number of editors expressed their concerns as things getting "out of hand" in terms of quantity of jokes

Possible proposals (these were made at the AN discussion; again, not necessarily my view) (some of these were deliberately tongue-in-cheek):

  1. Adopt WP:Pranking for April Fool's day (specifically see this comment)
  2. A single wiki-wide joke that's organized and meets some criteria (no BLPs, etc.)
  3. Change slogan "from saying "anyone can edit" to "no one can edit, ever," full protect the whole project"
  4. "Create an adminbot/cratbot that desysops and blocks everyone on Wikipedia, hard blocks all IPs and fully protects all articles."
  5. "Back up the database on March 31, then restore the backup on April 2."

I'll let others populate the more serious proposals below. Even if this doesn't lead anywhere concrete, we should have at least an organized, recent discussion. Shadowjams (talk) 15:33, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment – Well I don't think we should be adding AfD result notices to the talk pages of articles when the AfD is an obvious April Fool's joke. For example, see: Talk:Mars. Otherwise, I'm not all that concerned about it. Regards, RJH (talk) 20:55, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    That was happening because Snotty's bot applies AfD tags to articles if they are nominated and don't have one. To me that's emblematic of unintended consequences that happen... so it's not as though someone was adding the notices to the pages intentionally. On the other hand, it's almost funnier if the notice is on the page... but I'll digress. Shadowjams (talk) 21:45, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree but if it were up to some people, pranking would be gone fully from wikipedia. What people here are trying to do is meet in the middle for a consensus as this year's april fools got way out of hand, this includes an AfD joke attacking a living person. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:17, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment to all A proposal banning all jokes and pranks the interfere in article mainspace has been made above before this thread. I believe that would make a great in between. The main focus is the encyclopedia articles contained here and as long as those aren't allowed to be disrupted, editors can joke all they want.—cyberpower ChatOffline 00:23, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We don't need to "ban" April Fools' Day pranks from the article namespace. They already violate policy. (Wikipedia:Vandalism is quite clear and contains no "1 April" exception.)
And even if explicit agreement that the article namespace is off-limits were required, our annual discussions have consistently established this. Even among those who enjoy April foolery among Wikipedians, there's longstanding consensus that it shouldn't affect the encyclopedia proper.
We simply need to clarify this fact for the benefit of those who mistakenly believe that they're entitled (and even encouraged) to vandalise articles on 1 April. —David Levy 00:38, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is also why a villagepump/admin policy should be in place reguarding April 1st. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:41, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We don't need to "ban" April Fools' Day pranks from the article namespace. They already violate policy. (Wikipedia:Vandalism is quite clear and contains no "1 April" exception.)
Apparently we do as it still goes on and nothing is done. Mugginsx (talk) 19:04, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't say that nothing is done. But as noted above, we haven't done enough to clarify policy. —David Levy 19:37, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support a ban on all jokes affecting main or portal space (these are simply vandalism) and on joke nominations for things like AfD, RfAr etc., because these are not funny and clutter up the pages intended for actual work.  Sandstein  07:05, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support barring any jokes that disrupt any process, like AfDs and whatnot. While some written jokes might be considered funny, we are now stuck with former AfDs, MfD, bad entries in lists, confused bots, slightly altered statistics, etc. that need fixing. I can appreciate jokes, and frankly don't mind them, but I am strongly against editors who don't consider a long term impact of this seemingly innoxious exercise. A bot being blocked because someone made a "joke" is going a bit too far. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:33, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Apparently I was naively optimistic about this accomplishing something useful. That doesn't seem to be happening. We understand that Levy and Sandstein don't want any April Fools material. However I think the AN discussion and the broader quiet majority, as well as a decade of tradition, mean your interpretation of no jokes ever is a non-starter. I was hoping we'd find useful guidelines here about how to ensure the moderation necessary... but supporting and opposing when there wasn't even a real proposal makes me unoptimistic about reaching a useful guideline. Shadowjams (talk) 17:01, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You appear to have misunderstood, as I'm not arguing that Wikipedia should have "no jokes ever". On the contrary, I support the adoption of "useful guidelines here about how to ensure the moderation necessary". My above comments refer specifically to the article namespace, not the entire site. Opinions on how far to take the April foolery vary, but there's longstanding consensus that the encyclopedia proper is off-limits. —David Levy 19:37, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's true though. The links in my OP indicate a long history of tolerated pranks in the mainspace (I suppose I'm including Rfa and Afd in there, maybe that's the misunderstanding). In recent years there's been a proliferation of these prompting more concern. I don't think many people were changing the pages themselves... those edits were treated as vandalism. The AN issue was all about the AfDs, etc., if I remember correctly. Shadowjams (talk) 23:40, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, that's the misunderstanding. I'm referring strictly to edits to the articles themselves. My apologies for the confusion. —David Levy 04:27, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Compromise proposal on April Fool's pranks

Editors should be able to have fun once a year. However, some pranks are disruptive. I seek to strike a balance between those two aspects. I propose the following:

  1. There should be one April Fool's prank in article space. This should not involve a living person or an article about a living person. It should be clever, well-designed and funny, like Google's pranks. It should not be immediately obvious as a joke, but neither should it be so plausible that it lasts until after April 1 is over.
  2. Other pranks are OK so long as they stay within the community namespaces (project, user, and talk namespaces), do not affect article space and do not involve living people or articles about living people. For example, joke AfDs would be fine, as long as the joke-nominated articles weren't about living people and didn't have deletion templates on them.
  3. Ruining of (legitimate) jokes by exposing them can result in a block after a warning (but only until April 1 is over, as blocks are not supposed to be punitive).
  4. The best April Fool's pranks should be commemorated in an April Fool's Hall of Fame, the worst in an April Fool's Hall of Infamy.
  5. Editors should try to come up with original pranks, rather than repeating the same ones year after year.
  6. Standard vandalism remedies will be applied to violators of item 1 or the BLP clause of item 2.

I know I'm playing the Jimbo card here, but Jimbo said: "That's 100% correct. The idea is not to censor things, but to actually be funny. To actually be funny takes more than cheap sex gags. We should always aim higher." --Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:31, 2 April 2012 (UTC) Apparently, Jimbo is fine with April Fool's pranks in moderation. Also, see above for my main support. "Jimbo said" is just a spare card I've decided to play. Your thoughts? ChromaNebula (talk) 00:56, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that April Fool's pranks in moderation is fine we just need to agree on some guidelines is all. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:57, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Copying/expanding my reply from WP:AN (where this proposal was posted previously):
  • Main Page (on which we feature humor of the "strange but true" variety) is in the article namespace. Apart from that, no, absolutely not. Wikipedia has enough credibility issues already. The idea of designating an article in which vandalism is permitted and encouraged on 1 April is unacceptable. (And as discussed in the AN thread, because anyone can edit a wiki, if we condone the existence of one such article, we'll end up with many more.)
  • I'm okay with #2, provided that article talk pages (important, first-line resources for readers and inexperienced editors) are off-limits.
  • This is an encyclopedia, not a playground. Any amount of fun and games permitted is purely a perk, not an entitlement. Politely asking users to go along with a joke is fine, but threatening them with blocks would be absurd. If a prank fails, oh well, better luck next time.
  • The rest seems fine, provided that it's worded in the context of what April foolery is tolerated (not encouraged). —David Levy 03:43, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: these antics cause no long term damage to the pedia and they are great for morale. The real issue is improving the funny-quotient of the pranks per Jimbo. That's what we should we working on.– Lionel (talk) 05:02, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Whose morale? Mine is fine thanks, without the idiocy. THAT depresses me. HiLo48 (talk) 06:00, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The real problem with April Fools

The real problem with April Fools is that the jokes aren't funny. (Except mine of course. Swapping Obama's pic with a caricature is a classic for the ages. user:LioneltBot is also a great one. My bot helps win edit wars and will create undetectable sickpuppets! One editor who was taken in wrote "is it even legal?!?!?!" [1] Priceless.) We should have a list of the best gags so April Fools revelers know what the standards are. We have FA, what about FG (Featured Gag)? Jimbo says "but to actually be funny...We should always aim higher."– Lionel (talk) 05:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, your defacement of reader-facing material about a living person is not "a classic for the ages". It's vandalism, and it won't be celebrated. —David Levy 05:51, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And did the "editor who was taken in" enjoy it? It obviously didn't make his day more productive. HiLo48 (talk) 06:03, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And this [2] wasn't funny either. Given that LionelT is clearly an opponent of Obama, it's hard to see these two edits as anything but vandalism using April 1st as an excuse. Maybe if he'd done it with someone he supports it might be seen differently. LionelT, try that again and you will probably end up blocked. Dougweller (talk) 10:45, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. (1) You don't know my views regarding Obama and (2) I added eight caricatures of all of the GOP candidates to the conservatism timeline. I think you'll agree that the right wingers got the worst of it. – Lionel (talk) 11:55, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
WP:DEADHORSE. Time to move on, Lionel. —Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 12:25, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal

Task WP:Department of Fun with creating and maintaining a list of exceptional gags, e.g. user:LioneltBot, to establish a benchmark for April Fools Day merrymakers.

  • Support: as proposer.– Lionel (talk) 05:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support provided that it's bound by a policy to prevent things like BLP-violating RfAs.--Jasper Deng (talk) 05:16, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional Support There needs to be a help group for people who are not capable of being funny on April fools day, and I'm quite serious here. I was at a complete loss for the entire day, you look at my editing and it's bland and lifeless for the whole day. Most people are serious everyday of the year except for April fools, but what happens to editors who are goofy everyday of the year like me ? It was awful, how are you supposed to act like an idiot on a day when it's made the fashion ? I mean take my Bot, PALZ9000 he might be considered amusing any other day of the year, so what can you do with it on April fools day ? It's like being emotionally bankrupt and unable to smile or joke for the entire day. Then to make it worse, they give PALZ9000 his official approval as the first order of business on 1st April. That was a crushing blow, to take him seriously on the epitome of stupidity day. I haven't been right since. Next day it's like I'm looking at a vandal who has removed a space from the ISS article, and he is thinking he will destroy wikipedia, I'm not going to fix it, it's stupid, it's even beneath contempt for cluebot, he is too dignified to fix it, and I'm not going to. So I turn to vandalism too, I blast away at wikipedia one space at a time as well thinking I'm some character out of star wars. This is the worst possible thing that can happen, because I'm crap at vandalism, I mean, I'm just one person, I can blast away adding extra spaces at two per day for years and it won't destroy wiki, even if I rallied support in the endeavor, it still sucks mathematically. My vandalism is lame, my editing is lame, even my lamest edit war is not lame enough to be lame.

So what am I supposed to do on April fools day to keep myself together emotionally ? I mean even my bot won't talk to me anymore, he talks to his programmer but not to me. I just don't know what to do. Penyulap ☏ 12:57, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just in case anyone else is/was confused, the above questions were directed at Lionel Penyulap ☏ 00:13, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Stay out of MediaWiki namespace

I personally love the humorous-but-true homepage on April 1st. I also think a little lighthearted fun in the project space or user space is probably ok too. However, the one thing that has irked me about April 1st for years (and years) has always been when Administrators decide it'll be fun to muck about with the MediaWiki namespace. Changing a page for you or your friends is one thing, but changing parts of the UI for potentially millions of people is very disruptive.

I propose that we set some standards for sysops to stay out of the MediaWiki namespace on April 1st, nothing else.

  1. Support as proposer. ^demon[omg plz] 01:20, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support per proposer.--Jasper Deng (talk) 01:33, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Limit number of watchers to those active in the last ?? days

This is regarding User:MZMcBride's "watcher" tool, which shows the number of people watching a page. The tool is currently linked from all page histories. In this discussion, MZMcBride notes the following:

  • "The Toolserver masks the necessary field to look up which users are viewing a particular page. So it's impossible to assess whether a page is being watched by all active, inactive, or even bot users. A proper solution could possibly be coded into MediaWiki, though you'd have to find someone willing and get developer consensus that it's a good idea."

I'd like to propose that the necessary MediaWiki changes be made that would allow this tool (or a similar one) to show us a number based on the number of active watchers. Currently the number includes inactive users and bots -- even those who haven't edited or even logged in in years. Limiting to active editors would provide a better picture of how many eyes are actually on a page.

I think "edited within the last 60 days" is a decent figure -- but before even choosing a limit, the MediaWiki changes need to be made. Of course, whatever changes are made, the toolserver should still be blocked from seeing which particular users are watching. Equazcion (talk) 16:51, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I like, I expect centijimbinarians like, I expect peasocking centijimbinarians don't like it. I extrapolate anitpeasockingcentinjimbinarians would like it too. I suggest I should round down my extrapolationdefiningjargon vocabulary to a less significant number of decimal phrases. Penyulap ☏ 18:50, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is it difficult to give us a choice?

  • Total watchers
  • Watchers active in the past ^ days
  • Watchers who have ever edited this article
  • Watchers who have edited this article in the past ^ days

Jim.henderson (talk) 19:00, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The easiest way to add this functionality would be to allow Toolserver users to see who is watching a particular page. Then you would just need to look at the individual users' last edit date and determine their activity level (or look at whatever other metric you wanted). Because you're proposing a specific time period (and masking it), I'm not sure it'll be very easy to get implemented (if not impossible). The MediaWiki and the Toolserver folks will both buck. Maybe it could be implemented in a MediaWiki extension? That's the only hope, I think. If you can convince someone at the Wikimedia Foundation that it relates to editor retention, you'll have much better luck at getting resources devoted to the idea.
Dispenser has been doing some work using an anonymized "active" users table (I think it relies on a masked copy of user.user_touched), but you'd have to ask him for details. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:39, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
tools:~dispenser/view/Watcher is my version of a watcher tool after Template:Jira was implemented. Active users are those have logged in or performed an action in the past 30 days (to match $wgRCMaxAge). — Dispenser 20:27, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be a bad idea to allow users to see who is watching a page. People watch each other's talk pages, often because they are not friendly. Think of the conversations which will start "Why are you watching my talk page?" and degenerate from there.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:53, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Looks like that does the trick, Dispenser, awesome. Question, is it be possible to have the definition of "active" accepted as a URL token, like 60 days instead of 30? Or is your tool working off a pre-built table? Equazcion (talk) 20:54, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)
Brilliant stuff Dispenser, that needs to go on the history page, bump off the fossils. Penyulap ☏ —Preceding undated comment added 21:32, 15 April 2012 (UTC).[reply]
In the meantime I made a script to insert this. It doesn't replace MZMcBride's, just adds a new link after his: User:Equazcion/ActiveWatchers.js. Equazcion (talk) 22:43, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)
I originally used 30 days to match the automatic log out period, but that's since increased to 180 days. Look at the distribution there is a very rapid fall of watchers after only a few days and a spike around August 27, 2010 which is most likely the WMF Usability update. There's nothing here that operates on 60 day period so there's little point in providing the option. — Dispenser 01:02, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
60 days was just an example. I think people have varying definitions of "active", so the ability to provide that as a parameter would make the tool more versatile. I'm just not familiar with how this works, so I'm wondering if the time period is submitted with the query (meaning it wouldn't be that big a deal to make it variable), or if you're querying some sort of cached table that already has the the total watchers logged in with 30 days. Equazcion (talk) 01:18, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)
The default for the history page needs changing, whatever the period is, it is better than what is the current calculation done on, 7 years ? more ? If it includes dead wood that is years old, then the current situation is totally pointless, except as an option. The new idea, for a short period, needs to be implemented as the default now and the length of time is better left up to the people who notice the change and then come and comment on it, you'd get a better scope of what people are after that way. Better to speedy do this one, and discuss time and so forth once people take an interest in the change. Penyulap ☏ 02:48, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if this is something admins have access to change, but if they do, there's no reason not to do it immediately. Unfortunately nothing is speedy on Wikipedia though, except maybe response to copyright paranoia. If developer intervention is needed it'll take eons. I'll change my script to replace the link instead of add, in case they want to gadget it and enable by default. All I can do. Equazcion (talk) 04:18, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)
...done. Equazcion (talk) 04:21, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)
here, let me lend you a little train, it worked for me when I railroaded my bot proposal through early, and this train I will lend you is an extra fast train, so it should railroad your brilliant idea through that much faster. Stands to reason. When you are thinking up blatantly good ideas like this one, you shouldn't be forced to stop everything to lecture and teach, you should be out there doing more. Penyulap ☏ 05:48, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Its at MediaWiki:Histlegend, but MZMcBride's watcher lets trusted users see the raw results. It's all dynamic, it could count today's users or those who's last activity was January 9. But a good justification is needed as this could be used as a stalking tool (Are you cheating on your wikibreak). — Dispenser 05:57, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps then a few preset choices could be offered, like 30/60/90/180? If MZMcBride's tool provides functionality that's only accessible to developers, it should continue to be included in their interface, while everyone else should have it changed to the newer tool. Equazcion (talk) 15:03, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)
It provides a functionality provided to trusted users (as Dispenser said): m:Toolserver/watcher. It would be nice if the two tools could merge into a supertool (so both benefits are provided). Killiondude (talk) 17:19, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I didn't know about that list. I'll have to change the script to link to both again, though I'll keep it compact. Until one combined tool exists, I think both should be linked. Equazcion (talk) 17:49, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)
I updated my script to display both links. Equazcion (talk) 18:00, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)
I've started using Equazcion's script, and I'm pretty happy with it. Perhaps someone would update Help:Watchlist to let users know about Dispenser's tool? WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:03, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've look at implementing TUSC support and I do not like what I see. The passwords are stored md5(password+tusc_salt), not hash(hash(username+password)+salt), which requires software to work with the password in plain text rather (as opposed to hashing and discarding ASAP). I found a few username/password in the web server's logs. At least one tool stores the password in the cookie (as to keep state across pages). MZ's watcher is smarter, the user is given watcher's internal token which is then hashed with their username. However, the token is the same for all users and doesn't change, allowing replay attacks. And since the backend's written in PHP, I'm suspicious of make_db_safe() function. Lastly, TUSC isn't designed for SUL.

Since I'm hesitant to endorse TUSC and WMF's years away from anything, I'm looking into identifying users with their watchlist token. This method is technically less secure than TUSC can be, but uses a randomly generated token rather than a valuable likely-reused-password. The whitelist will still be around for quickly eliminating comprised accounts. I will consult the Toolserver admins if this is acceptable. — Dispenser 05:32, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Added Authentication with valid watchlist token. TS roots tell me I answer directly to wikimedia-tech if they don't like it. If you're on m:Toolserver/watcher, then Sign in (top right of tool). — Dispenser 21:33, 25 April 2012 (UTC) (Corrections 14:21, 2 May 2012 (UTC))[reply]
Who cares who is watching a particular page? I have never understood that and perhaps someone will explain it to me. Thanks. Mugginsx (talk) 10:55, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Generally it's inversely proportional to the mischief you can get away with on that page, the more people watching the less chance you have, or, the better the chance someone will answer your question, consider your proposal and so forth. For users, it's straight infamy, (cough) I mean popularity ? Either people watching to see what you mess up, what you do that's charming, where you need assistance, that kind of thing. For articles, it's to keep an eye on work being done to that article. Either it allows you to check and see each edit is a good edit, and fix up the ones that are not, or just own an article and revert everything that you didn't do. (sigh). I just recently started using it, so I don't return to pages weeks later to find a conversation I started has a response, but rather I can return straight away. It works like that.
So as you can see, it all counts for nothing if the watchers are old ones who have left wikipedia. So Equazcion's has about 100 watchers who wait to see his next brilliant idea, but some of those 100 are going to be found by police slumped over their keyboards in the coming months after the neighbours notice that there have been no signs of life from that apartment for a very long time. You read about it all the time, there are 5 like that watching me, and I need them to stop following me, it's spooky ! (argh! I have to get off the computer. ARGH!!!!) Penyulap ☏ 00:23, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I tried to use it in deciding whether or not to quit watching a page, on the theory that if someone else is watching, I needn't. However, it turned out that every page I considered dropping was being watched by nearly nobody, so I no longer check; just drop if vandalism or interesting changes have become rare. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:39, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
How can one tell who is watching their page - or is this something only administrators do? Mugginsx (talk) 11:20, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think anyone but developers and system admins (not to be confused with wikipedia admins) can see that, but generally if someone is watching you, it means they commented at some point on your talk page, so you can get a rough idea that way.
I've found it useful to know how many are watching a page when I'm trying to decide whether I should suggest a change on the talk page first, and if so, how long to wait for comments. If a page has very few watchers, I might be more inclined to implement changes quickly since I anticipate little participation/argument/potential for reverts. I've also checked the number in order to see how much attention I should pay to a page that's been getting vandalism or questionable edits -- if there are lots of watchers I don't have to worry as much, someone else will probably catch things. Just a couple of examples, you get the idea. Equazcion (talk) 11:30, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Evidentally, I stumbled into a discussion that has nothing to do with me. Nevertheless, thank you for your tolerance and your explanation.Mugginsx (talk) 13:12, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It involves you as much as anyone else here, and your question was perfectly relevant. No worries :) Equazcion (talk) 00:38, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This idea would make sense. To limit the number of watchers to those active in the last thirty days would help to improve parity between this function and the "Page View Statistics" function. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:14, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reference Tooltips

I propose that the Reference Tooltips gadget be enabled by default on the English Wikipedia. The gadget allows users to roll over any inline citation to see reference information. The displayed information is clickable and selectable. If enabled by default, an option to disable it would be available in Special:Preferences. --Yair rand (talk) 21:40, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support Had it for quite a while now and I think it constitutes a significant step forward in Wikipedia's usability. I just hope enabling a gadget by default means unregistered users also get it. Equazcion (talk) 21:46, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)
    Yes, gadgets enabled by default work for unregistered users. --Yair rand (talk) 21:56, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Yes! This would be extremely useful, rather than having to hit back to go to the spot you were in the article before you clicked it. This way, yu can tell beforehand if it's a reference you will actually want to click into. Furthermore, it lets you know directly which reference that number is referring to, without having to go to the reference list. Helps you understand the narrative of the article and its references without a bunch of back and forth clicking. SilverserenC 22:43, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, seems to have few problems about it. (I wonder if existing popups can be disabled by preference for refs - this one's nicer?) Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 22:45, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support; I'm a fan. I don't know if there is any technical downside to this - will it work on all browsers, does it degrade gracefully? --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:47, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, the point is to make the Reference tooltips a normal feature that even unregistered readers can use. But that's a good question on whether the tooltip and popups works together or if one of them breaks. You might need to uninstall Popups until it's upgraded to work with Reference tooltips. SilverserenC 23:39, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I just tried using both and tooltips appears redundant to popups, which already does the job, so I disabled tooltips. Why would you want or need both? Viriditas (talk) 00:48, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    You wouldn't. However, the overwhelming majority of our readers do not want to have a large box pop up whenever they hover over any kind of link, so having popups enabled by default is not feasible. --Yair rand (talk) 01:17, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    The tooltips box was larger than the popups box, and popups can be enabled by default and easily disabled. I really don't see any benefit to tooltips other than a pretty interface. Viriditas (talk) 01:43, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreeing with Yair rand below that it's not "easily disabled". I mean, yeah, a mouse click is easy to do, but I don't think we can assume that most users know about preferences and such, particularly non-Wikipedians who just read the articles.I myself have been editing articles on Wikipedia for years but never noticed the reference tooltips (until I came across this discussion). Well-restedTalk 03:47, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Not really "easily" disabled; pretty much none of our readers have accounts, and they wouldn't care to create one, and they wouldn't be able to figure out how to modify their preferences even if they did have accounts. Do you want to go ahead and propose that popups be enabled by default? Do you think that proposal has a realistic chance of succeeding, and that the change would improve the experience of our readers? I suppose we could temporarily close this discussion, and then resume this after the popups proposal is closed if it fails... --Yair rand (talk) 02:40, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Nonsense, popups is a vast array of tools, and a bit much for enabling by default for everyone. We generally want to keep things simple when we're talking across-the-board changes, and reference tooltips is a simple feature that makes things easier. It has nothing to do with being pretty, though that is something of a prerequisite for default features. Equazcion (talk) 02:44, 19 Apr 2012 (UTC)
Simple, as in duplicating an interface that is already in wide use? That's not simple, and doesn't make anything easier. Viriditas (talk) 02:57, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Last statistic I heard on that was that it was enabled by 34,000 users, which is what, 00.01% of our readers? The popups users are not a substantial portion of the user base. The use of a tool by a minuscule amount of people is not really relevant here. Do you want to propose that popups, or perhaps just part of popups, be used instead? If not, I don't think continuing discussion of popups makes much sense here... --Yair rand (talk) 03:12, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
See the screenshot above your comment. You are going to duplicate an interface we already have in wide use by our most active registered users. We already have a tooltips-like interface and it is called popups. Viriditas (talk) 03:26, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If it creates a conflict with popups, perhaps something can be worked out where it's automatically disabled for popups users; or maybe the script code itself could disable the tooltip if popups is detected; or it could be done in the popups code. Equazcion (talk) 03:35, 19 Apr 2012 (UTC)
Agreed. Thanks for recognizing my concern. Viriditas (talk) 07:44, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Viriditas, I don't understand what is the point you're trying to make. Yes, we already have a tool that does something similar, and it's probably been a great deal of help, and it's used by a large portion (most?) of the active editors. How is this relevant? Sorry, I didn't understand that you were worrying about having multiple boxes showing up at once. --Yair rand (talk) 07:53, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
slightly off topic, but is it out of the question to enable the popups script by default? I think it (a)deals with footnotes with references better (b) more readable text. on a downside, it's (c)not as good looking and (D) heavier.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Staticd (talk • contribs) 10:41, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The vast majority of unregistered readers give a damn about references. They just want their information and they are done. Also, popups can easily become an annoyance, and they usually annoy me, too, even though I actually like this tool. That does not mean it should be activated by default. Leave it as an opt-in tool, as it is now, and anyone registered and really interested in this additional functionality can easily activate it. Nageh (talk) 11:23, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry, but this is an utterly ridiculous comment. References are more useful than the content itself, in many cases (it depends on the subject area, but that's generally true everywhere).
    — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:00, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Ohm's law, I have very rarely if ever criticised other Wikipedians' comments, but it is not right to call someone's comments ridiculous when he is simply stating his or her opinion on a topic for which opinion is being gathered. Give everyone a chance to air their views so the consensus can be properly observed. Well-restedTalk 03:40, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    To you, maybe. I did not make this claim out of thin air, I have watched enough people browsing Wikipedia articles, they never look up references unless they are students doing homework, and they take everything literally. We, editors, and researchers are in a vast minority when it comes to the general public. So do not come up with "this is an utterly ridiculous comment". Nageh (talk) 21:30, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Critics will probably appreciate, then, that we're seeking to make the sources of Wikipedia's info more apparent to everyone, by showing it to them as they read; rather than keeping it easy to overlook and ignore. Perhaps people will grow to care a little bit more about sources if we make it easier to see. Equazcion (talk) 21:39, 19 Apr 2012 (UTC)
    This is actually a pretty good argument. Nageh (talk) 22:02, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    → Weak oppose/neutral under the condition that registered and unregistered editors can easily turn it off. Nageh (talk) 10:47, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional Oppose – pop-ups have the annoying habit of getting in the way of what you actually want to read. I prefer them off by default. If that is not acceptable, then it should be made trivially easy to disable them. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:51, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unsure: Based upon both arguments, on both sides, it seems like a reasonable tool to enhance verifiability, however, popups can indeed be annoying. If anything, I would say that there should be a substantial delay, say, 1½ seconds, to where they do not pop up accidentally and slow peoples' computers down or interfere with navigation. I do not usually use Google anymore due to my frustrating experience with Google Instant, where they refused to save my preferences to disable the feature, and every time I had exited and returned later, it was reverted back to its original state of being enabled. That's why I now use Yahoo! Search and Ixquick. 75.53.218.81 (talk) 01:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Quick note on Google Instant: It was sufficiently annoying to me, too. I have long set the browser's start page to www.google.com/webhp?complete=0 since. Nageh (talk) 09:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Unlike popups that are new windows, you can get rid of these by simply moving your mouse away. It's a great idea to simplify access to the citations for our text. Nyttend (talk) 01:01, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Just to clarify, popups in this discussion were referring to WP:POPUPS, a gadget that offers a similar tooltip feature along with many others. It didn't mean new windows. Just mentioning that in case there was some confusion. Equazcion (talk) 01:35, 20 Apr 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. I think that this emphasizes that citing sources is important to Wikipedia, and will hopefully encourage others to cite the things that they post, when they might not have before. The only condition is that it should definitely be able to be easily disabled if one should so desire. Falconusp t c 17:24, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Have something similar. Mugginsx (talk) 19:59, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't quite see how this is relevant... --Yair rand (talk) 22:02, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per comments by Silver Seren, Equazcion (particularly those in response to Nageh, above) and Falconus. Agree that it would emphasize the importance of citing sources. Also agree with others who have posited that users should have the option to easily disable if they so desire.--JayJasper (talk) 20:11, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. As User:Yair rand has pointed out, many users are unaware that Special:Preference exist. Important for the text select-reading style people that this may interfere with who'll want it off. Like popups this cover up the read text, better to stick the reference on top or bottom. It lacks caret browsing support. Finally, Backport improvement to popups. — Dispenser 04:32, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Support, excellent idea. Ironholds (talk) 20:48, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Reference tooltips is a great feature for editors and researchers, but would probably be irrelevant at best, and downright annoying at worst, for many general readers. I don't think we should be imposing a feature on readers which they may not want and cannot turn off. SpinningSpark 21:39, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The only readers that will notice the feature are those that are interested in references, since the tooltip appears only when pointing to a reference link. Diego (talk) 09:44, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support I have been editing articles for a few years now and spend quite a lot of time dealing with references, and only on reading this discusion found out that it was possible to enable the reference tooltip in preferences, which I then did. It has been very useful over the last few days, and to me a it is a great feature. It is not obtrusive, as you have to hold the cursor over the reference for anything to happen, and as it is a small target this does not usually happen unless you are actually trying to put it there, and it goes away effortlessly. I think the annoyance factor for the indiscriminate consumer will be small, and the usefullness to the rest of the world quite significant. Anyone who is sufficiently put out can switch it off, once they find out that it is possible. I would not support a proposal to make pop-ups a default setting. Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:57, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support - this feature greatly improves usability for references in an unobstrusive way. It should be made default because currently it's too difficult to discover. Also per Equazcion argument, enhancing the visibility and accesibility of references is a net benefit to the project itself.
However the tooltip should have a link to the configuration page so that it's also easy to deactivate it for readers that don't want it. Implementing this change and enabling it by default, it would be easy to set up both for users that want it and for those who don't; the reverse is not true. Diego (talk) 09:44, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Like many of the other supporters, you are missing the point that a user needs to be registered before they are able to disable the feature. Things that popup on mouseover can be irritating for those who have no use for them. Registered users are nearly always also editors and will find the tooltip useful, and if not they can turn it off. A large section of our readership, however, possibly the majority, will not find it helpful. SpinningSpark 12:06, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is a technical detail with a technical solution; you can set up a cookie so that unregistered users can disable the tooltip on their machine with just one click (or maybe two, the second one for requiring confirmation) - not different to the current interface for disabling the mobile view in tablets and smartphones. "Like many of the other opposers", you are missing the point that the current interface already has tooltips for most links and images; the reference links are almost the only ones missing them. The target link for references has a quite small area and so it's unlikely to be targetted by accident, and for most references the size of the tooltip would be similar to the ones for wikilinks or images. And I doubt that the majority of readers won't find them helpful; but those who don't will likely not have problems because of them, and the percentage of readership that is interested in references is likely to find them invaluable. For those who don't, an easy way to disable the feature (providing a disable link in the tooltip itself) would be enough to avoid all possible remaining irritation. Diego (talk) 12:37, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reference Tooltips. Part 2

  • Comment As this change would affect everybody who reads or edits wikipedia, I listed it on wp:CENT. Yoenit (talk) 13:01, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support As some comments above show, many people where not aware of this tool before and consider it a significant improvement once they start using (myself included). I expect the response from our readerbase will be much the same and the large majority will see it as improvement. No doubt some will not like the change for various reasons, so it is important there is an easy way to turn it off/on through a single button click, as Diego says in his comment directly above. Yoenit (talk) 13:01, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Too much click-scroll for me recently. 50.22.206.179 (talk) 14:25, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment Anonymous proxy server. Hipocrite (talk) 14:49, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the change should be decided with people using Anonymous proxy servers in mind, if that's what you mean with your cryptic comment. Those that know what an Anonymous proxy server is wouldn't have problem creating an account or installing GreaseMonkey to trim the tooltip from references. Diego (talk) 22:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Useful to many readers, not a detriment to readers who don't care (some have mentioned text-selecting readers as a possible group to be annoyed, but I select text as I read and these don't interfere with my view), will help Wikipedia's reputation as a sourced encyclopedia and emphasize references for editors (particularly new editors). Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:57, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. This discussion is flawed. We are discussing about a change that primarily affects unregistered readers, yet all the persons that are commenting here are registered editors. Nageh (talk) 21:53, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
How come? All registered editors would be equally affected by the default setting. And there's nothing impeding IPs from joining the discussion if they wish, so where's the flaw? Diego (talk) 22:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A practical problem is that IP's can't use the extension, so they wouldn't know what they are supporting/opposing. Yoenit (talk) 22:49, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That could be said to be a problem with all proposed changes to Wikipedia. A site's serious user community is generally the group that makes decisions that affect everyone else (well usually it's not even those, but some designers in a back room). Unregistered users are fortunately welcome to comment, which is much more than can be said for other sites. It's still not perfect, but it's the best we can ever do. Equazcion (talk) 23:21, 23 Apr 2012 (UTC)
Why do people always (seem to) avoid responding to the essence of a statement? The problem is that we don't know whether readers will appreciate the change. It is true that this applies to virtually every platform, but if we claim that we are working for the readers then this is not quite true. Nageh (talk) 23:30, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think I responded to its essence. This isn't an argument that would apply only to this particular change, but to nearly any. We could post a survey (via banner?) after a month or two asking for feedback on what people think of reference tooltips, and consider changing it if most people don't like it... Equazcion (talk) 23:35, 23 Apr 2012 (UTC)
You did. My comment was more directed at Diego. A public survey is what I am hinting to, it would be the only way to assess whether readers will appreciate it. Whether the community considers that it is worth it is another thing. Nageh (talk) 23:41, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I didn't even know about this until I saw the WP:CENT notice for this discussion. I wish that it were the default sooner—it would have save me a lot of scrolling. There are so many good reasons already mentioned for this, not the least of which is demonstrating to users that we care about references, and for the user's ability to easily access them without mindless scrolling or clicking back and forth. First Light (talk) 22:08, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Incredibly practical. Right now any editor questioning a source while reading an article would have to click a link, check it, scroll up and try to find where they left reading. I can't see it being in the way either, so i have no issue with seeing this enabled by default. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 23:02, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Actually there's no need to scroll up, just hitting the back button works fine. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:26, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • At least for me it never really occurred to me that I could use the back button - I always click the "back up"-type button associated with the reference, and if there are multiple lines linked to the same reference I often click the same one. I imagine that many other readers have had the same issue. Calliopejen1 (talk) 03:35, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • True, the link is just a relative link inside the page so the back button works. But i gamble that most editors are not aware that they can use the back button for this since it will (normally) take you to a previous page. And even so, you will end at the bottom of the document, which is still quite inconvenient most times. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 08:07, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Very useful, as it brings attention to the fact that we do indeed rely on third-party sources, and makes it much easier for casual readers to identify whether a cited source is reliable or sketchy. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 00:55, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This is an incredibly useful gadget, and surprisingly unobtrusive. I think enabling this gadget by default would be beneficial for Wikipedia and everyone who reads the encyclopedia. Maybe our references would get a lot more attention if we improve their accessibility, as the current system is honestly quite clunky. --Dorsal Axe 09:06, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, if it does not conflict with popups (i.e, enabling popups must disable this feature).  Sandstein  16:03, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support—this is one of those things that once you turn it in, you wonder why we didn't have this a long time ago. So long as the technical details are worked out, and I have confidence they will be, do it! Imzadi 1979 → 20:37, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support Useful tool, and will increase confidence of general public in reliability of WP.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 18:36, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional Oppose. Unless a slight delay is added to the trigger, as I've suggested previously. (200 or 300 milliseconds should be adequate.) Otherwise it gets accidentally triggered constantly. Kaldari (talk) 09:04, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Strongly oppose any delay. That's my pet peeve in the Windows user interface right after Windows popping up taking away the input focus from another window. If supported, make it user-configurable. Nageh (talk) 11:32, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • What does that possibly have to do with adding a trigger delay to referenceTooltips? There's no focus event involved here. Kaldari (talk) 22:16, 27 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • Huh? I did say nothing like that. Delayed pop-up bubbles and windows popping up unexpectedly are two separate annoyances in Windows. Nageh (talk) 19:08, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • Yes you did. You said "...Windows popping up taking away the input focus from another window". As there is no focus event involved in this script, I don't see how that specific comment is relevant. As to delays in general begin an annoyance in Windows, you should realize that 200 milliseconds is 1/5 of a second, i.e. a very insignificant delay. Kaldari (talk) 19:53, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose (unconditionally :) ). I'm pretty sure that this is one of those things that look like great ideas when you don't see it from the typical user's point of view. Those of us voting here are definitely going to be biased towards a tool like this because we're likely to be the ones most interested in references, i.e. selection bias. The average user or even editor is just going to find this downright annoying IMO, and it won't be immediately obvious to many people that it's a feature that can be turned off. I certainly wouldn't want references popping up depending on where my cursor goes, delay or no delay, and I'd consider myself very interested in the references. Well-restedTalk 22:54, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I did not know that tools of this kind existed until I read this proposal. It looks immensely useful, and I would have loved for it to have been enabled throughout my time here, before and after I made an account. Shirudo talk 22:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I don't think we should be imposing a feature on readers which they may not want and cannot turn off. Mugginsx (talk) 15:42, 30 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I love this tool, and have wondered why it isn't enabled by default myself. Zach Vega (talk to me) 16:43, 30 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support People need to care more about references, this is a way to make references more visible without being too intrusive. Also, we need more people to check the actual validity of the references, so it should at least be by default for logged-in editors. Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:22, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Highly annoying feature. I hate pop-ups, if its SPAM or references. Night of the Big Wind talk 07:29, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support if a few changes. Making refs more visible is good. May be getting feedback from our readership first (a pilot). Just turned it on to see how it works. The click to put up option would be nice.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:47, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Even I, who has lupin's popups activated (providing this functionality), will often find it annoying. I've always found unexpected, and always unwanted similar popups to be an unsufferable plague on every other sites I have encountered them. Besides, tehre are widespread corner cases (cf., anything using the {{sfn}} templates) where the popups are useless. Circéus (talk) 16:27, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support In paper media, one needs to flip to the last page to see a reference. This distracts from the flow of reading. This isn't paper media; there is no need to suffer through a major shortcoming of paper media. Blevintron (talk) 17:16, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support checking references may be useful but far more useful is the ability to see the first few lines of any wikilink. This nearly always includes a definition of what the term means so you can check what an obscure term (i.e. any term you don't understand) means without having to leave the page. This is useful to far more people than the references thing. filceolaire (talk) 19:32, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support provided there is a way for logged-in users to opt out. I don't see how this could really cause much disruption, as moving the mouse away from the bluelink makes the window disappear. So with minimal disruption and great increase in visibility of references, I see this as a no-brainer. -RunningOnBrains(talk) 06:42, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support -- only if it works by clicking, not hovering, or if there is an easy way to tell it to behave that way. --Waldir talk 15:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support' make sense -- Taku (talk) 13:34, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support For me the main issue is that I'm a little concerned that this might give problems in certain browsers/for certain users (particularly with the spread of non-PC-based devices), as on some websites pop-ups don't work properly, refuse to go away. For this reason, making click-to-view an option is useful (how does it work on iPads, etc?) But if they work well across different devices and they're easy to disable, that's not a problem. It's a very useful tool in other respects. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:42, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question This sounds like a very good idea. However, how does it improve the current behavior of clicking on a reference tag and then using the browser's 'back' button to land at the original place? EngineerFromVega★ 17:57, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly support. Anyone who finds the tooltips annoying (and I believe that will be a very small percentage) can simply make sure the pointer is not in the part of the window where the text is, and can navigate the page (scrollbar, slider on the right, etc.) without putting the pointer in the page. Right now, it's a real pain for readers to look at footnotes (click to go there, click to go back, then time to regain the focus on where one is within the article text); this change solves that problem. Any negatives are hugely outweighed by the advantages to readers. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:51, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose hovering, support clicking. I'll change it to support if the reference tool-tip is displayed upon clicking the reference number, and not upon hovering over it. Displaying pop-ups or large tool-tips is not a good web design practice and should be avoided whenever possible. EngineerFromVega★ 05:20, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reference tooltips. 200 millisecond delay

  • Support if 200 millisecond delay (see below). Also, there might be a button in the sidebar or in the tooltip to change it to right-clicking, and/or to turn it off. Similar to the on-off button for watching a page. Cookies will remember the setting even for non-registered users in most cases. The 200 millisecond delay prevents the spam popup effect (see below). --Timeshifter (talk) 16:17, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I created a version with a 200 millisecond delay on the pop-up, if anyone wants to try it out. Just add "importScript('User:Kaldari/ReferenceTooltips.js'); importStylesheet('User:Yair rand/ReferenceTooltips.css');" to your vector.js file (and make sure you have the regular gadget turned off). It's still virtually instantaneous, but prevents the pop-ups from being activated by just moving your cursor across the page. Kaldari (talk) 19:53, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely better. Would still like the click version though.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:38, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
200 millisecond delay is much better. That is one-fifth of a second. There is no perceptible delay. But the references no longer pop up just by reading and scrolling through a page. One's cursor has to land on the reference link in order for it to popup. Just having one's mouse cursor pass over a reference link by scrolling does not cause it to popup. Perfect. I added the JS to common.js and it works fine there. Go to Special:MyPage/common.js - for me that ends up here: User:Timeshifter/common.js - and then add this:
importScript('User:Kaldari/ReferenceTooltips.js'); importStylesheet('User:Yair rand/ReferenceTooltips.css');
And of course, make sure you have the regular gadget turned off. For more info: User talk:Yair rand/ReferenceTooltips. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:45, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A thought: to be tablet-friendly, it should be tap-activated.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 05:42, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is a good point. Is there any way to detect whether a browser has an actual mouse that could hover or not (on tablets and such)? --Yair rand (talk) 23:25, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
How about making it click-only, even for computers with a mouse? EngineerFromVega★ 05:44, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm really liking the idea of a click-only version of this (with an arrow in the box that when clicked will jump to its place in the footnotes as usual). Plus we could kill two birds with one stone (as touch users could simply tap the ref). It's certainly worth testing it out. --Dorsal Axe 15:44, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Using works from the public domain

A question I've been wondering about: can you copy the entire text of a public domain source (such as from a Jewish encyclopedia from around 1890 that I was using for Missing Encyclopedia Articles) into Wikipedia? Or does it still need to be written in my own words? There just seems something wrong with control c, control v-ing it.--Coin945 (talk) 16:59, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if there is a formal policy, but there are attribution templates to indicate the source of public domain works, such as {{Jewish Encyclopedia}}. Maybe someone else will know the specific policy to point you to. Monty845 17:09, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Also, some discussion of it at Wikipedia:Public domain resources. Monty845 17:10, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
From the point of view of copyright, you can copy it. From the point of view of attribution, you need to add a note to the article stating that some text came from that source. That is what the attribution templates are for. One of the goals of free content is to let us reuse other free content, not as a reference, but as an actual part of our own articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:28, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Some editors believe that such uses require WP:INTEXT attribution as well as license-related attribution, i.e., that you say "According to the Jewish Encyclopedia" in the text of the article. This does not appear to be what the majority of editors actually do, however. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wikisource has a project to upload the entire s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. They are starting on the s:Jewish Encyclopedia from 1901/1905 too . I remember, years ago finding pages on Wikipedia that were straight imports from the 1911 Britannica like this one.
My suggestion: Copy the stuff straight in; add a template in the references, like the ones Monty linked to above, saying where it came from; save. Then go back in and start editing to make it more WP style. That way the original text is available in the history. filceolaire (talk) 20:05, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Re WhatamIdoing: that is only needed if the JE is being used as a reference within the article and is listed as such in the references. If instead the JE is being re-used as free content within the article, it gets attribution, but it is not a reference. This is no different than if we copy text from one wikipedia article to another. We wouldn't say "According to Wikipedia" when we do that, either, we would just use the appropriate attribution for the text we are using. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:17, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  Seems to me that there are two different cases here. In the first case ("quotation"), unaltered text taken from other sources is set off in quotation marks (and cited) to distinguish it from the work of the article's editors (the WP "in-house staff"). By the same principle, when an entire article is taken shouldn't it also be placed in quotes? It was done "out of house", by non-WP editors; we don't know (generally) who they were, anything about their editing standards, or even their references. For whole articles it would be more appropriate to provide just an "out-of-wikipedia redirect" to www.1911encyclopedia.org. For a WP editor to just copy in an entire article is to entirely abandon the editorial function, to entirely abandon any responsibility for the content.
  Which leads us to the other case: writing an article. It is expected that Wikipedia articles are written by Wikipedia editors according to Wikipedia standards. The editors are expected to exercise an editorial function in organizing the content, evaluating sources, etc. If an editor wants to use someone else's work as a model or rough draft, fine, but we should expect that the material has been gone over line by line, sources checked, etc. If that is not done, then it's just a very big (and probably inappropriate) quotation — and should be quoted. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:10, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Carl, I happen to agree with you. I'm just saying that there are a couple of people who hold a different view, and who have held that view very loudly and at great length in previous discussions of this exact point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:00, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WP:PLAGIARISM is a pertinent guideline. We have imported verbatim many thousands of pages of public domain work; so long as we do not try to pass it off as our own work, it's fine. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:04, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Make sure the the ancient content is still "valid" in any sense for the area you're importing it into. I wouldn't trust an encyclopaedia from 1890 on medieval history, for example. Fifelfoo (talk) 23:10, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed blocking

As persuant to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive235#Orange Mike, I propose Proposed blocking – a system similar to Proposed deletion but with regards to blocking accounts that are clearly not suitable here (i.e. violate the username policy) as opposed to deleting articles that are clearly not suitable here (i.e. goes against WP:NOT). This process would give a person with a problematic username (read, not blatantly disruptive) 7 days to get the account renamed, or it will be indefinitely blocked as a username violation.

A person who sees a username violation would tag the talk page with {{subst:prob}}, at which point the user would have 7 days in which to request a rename through WP:CHU. If not done within 7 days, the account can be indefinitely blocked until that is done. This would prevent administrators from making blocks on problematic usernames. Thoughts? --MuZemike 23:56, 27 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Question: I indicated oppose, but just to clarify: what happens to administrators who ignore this procedure and block straight away? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:48, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Seven days of license to spam? Have you never seen the damage a corporate PR spammer with a sense of entitlement can do to an article in seven hours, far less seven days? --Orange Mike | Talk 00:06, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as a formalization of what I normally see for username violations, especially good-faith editors.--Jasper Deng (talk) 00:09, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. What good exactly would a delay of 7 days do? People are supposed to take care of this kinda business straight away; after all, they were given notice before they created the account and for some reason ignored it. If you wanna be more friendly, reword the applicable templates. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:12, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not a terrible idea, but not the best idea either. There probably should be some central place where blocks are discussed and reviewed though. The ad hoc use of AN/I for that purpose seems a bit lacking. That and block logs kinda suck, anyway.
    — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:19, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Much better idea then our current system, where, assuming the editor has already edited the topic their username is associated with, they get blocked and then request unblock so they can file a name change request. And if they start spamming, or blatant POV pushing, there is nothing stopping an admin from blocking as soon as warranted based on their editing rather then on the choice of username. Monty845 00:39, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm kinda leaning toward what Seb said above. Killiondude (talk) 03:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. If a user's name or conduct are problematic now, they should be blocked now rather than in a week. If they are willing to resolve the problem with their name or conduct, they can always make an unblock request.  Sandstein  04:45, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Doesn't a username like that make it harder to go un-noticed, is everyone on Wikipedia sick in bed, retired or homeless ? They are going to edit anyhow, so I imagine that there are pros as well as cons about usernames. Penyulap marketing watch me closely 05:04, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Who knows if the proposed tag will even be understood -- I foresee many instances where the user will wait out the 7 days, get blocked, and then say something akin to "Oh I didn't realize what that meant/that this was so serious, can't you just unblock me now and I'll get it changed?" And since blocks aren't punitive, there will be no good reason not to unblock. In effect we'd be doing what we do now, only delayed for a week. An immediate block, on the other hand, has less potential to be misunderstood. They're very motivational. Plus this seems like an unnecessary bit of added bureaucracy to keep track of. Equazcion (talk) 06:08, 28 Apr 2012 (UTC)
  • Support the general idea, but Oppose the 7 days part. I would say they need to ask for a rename in their next 2 edits. Give one edit in case they say "what does this mean?" and then a second edit to go to WP:CHU. This obviously would require bot assistance or a change to the software. In general, I think this is a good idea that should be explored further and refined to get all the bugs worked out. 64.40.54.80 (talk) 12:39, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. We have too many procedures already. Rmhermen (talk) 18:59, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Unnecessary. This can already be done by leaving a message on the user's talk page and following up to see if they've made the request. —C.Fred (talk) 19:04, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. We get all kinds of spammers, but we have enough different ways to deal with them:
  • For "User:CheapBluePills" and "User:DiscountLouisVuittonHandbags" who are clearly not here to help, there is {{spamublock}}. No point giving them a week to carry on spamming. This is also appropriate for "User:XYZcorpPR" whose user page is blatant advertisement - any unblock request dialogue can be used to make sure, by questions like {{coiq}}, that he understands what is acceptable.
  • For "User:XYZcorpPR" or "User:MyUpandcomingBand", whose entry looks something like an article rather than an advert, there is {{softerblock}} - the username is never going to be acceptable, but he is invited to set up a new account while being pointed to WP:COI. One needs to watch here to make sure that any new account is not accused of socking.
  • For "User:SaveThePigeons" from a charity of that name, there is {{causeblock}}.
  • For "User:UnivofXLibrary" or other organization name where edits are not spam, there is {{uw-username}}.
I do not think building in a week's delay will help in any of these cases. All except the first are courteously invited to set up an individual account, which they may as well do at once.
What would really help these people is to explain before they create accounts what Wikipedia is not for. I made a proposal at VPR, now archived to here, that the sign over the gate should not read "Everyone welcome, come on in and edit!" but "This is a project to build an encyclopedia. If you would like to help with that, you are very welcome, but if you looking for somewhere to write about yourself, your friends, your band, etc, this is probably not the site for you." That got some support, not as much discussion as I hoped, but no serious disagreement, and I plan to ask the WMF how to make a formal request. Support welcomed if that turns into a dialogue. JohnCD (talk) 21:37, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The practice at UAA for borderline or potentially good-faith usernames often involves the little clock thingy and the "discussing with user" option. This allows time for the user to change names or a discussion on the issues. For names like "NlargYrslf" with histories of adding links to penis pill pages, there is simply no reason to wait. Bad faith editing, immediate indef block. These people are not going to be disillusioned with Wikipedia after having a spam account shut down. They probably will have more respect for us, knowing we make an effort to patrol our content. Talk page access is there if there is a change of heart. The Interior (Talk) 13:12, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak oppose I think that it is generally a good idea, but it may get abused too much. As per the above comment, I think blatant spam and corporate accounts are definite blocks, but may be prolonged to spam even further. Unfortunately, this seems to hurt the good-faith editors who get caught up in this sort of thing. I know that this policy would constantly be abused on Negapedia, simply because of the nature of editors there, but I still say it has a chance here on regular Wikipedia. One pier (Logbook) 23:30, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the idea, but it would be enough not to block the ip address used and to permit account creation--this allows them to easily rename. The present defaults for this first tell them to rename, and then prohibit them from doing so--why are we then surtpised people get confused about how to do it? DGG ( talk ) 03:30, 30 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, they should not be confused: {{softerblock}} and {{causeblock}}, which invite them to set up a new account, do not turn on autoblock or prevent account creation (at least, they don't if done with the User:Animum/easyblock.js script: Twinkle may be different, but if so it should be changed). {{spamublock}} does prevent account creation, but that is (or should be) used where not only is the username unacceptable but the edits are blatant spam. We don't want that user just to create a new account and carry on spamming: instead, the block notice tells him how to request an unblock to change username, which means that reviewing admins can make sure before unblocking that he understands what is acceptable and plans constructive contributions. JohnCD (talk) 11:45, 30 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for reasons stated above. There are enough measures already in place. Mugginsx (talk) 11:36, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. WP:ORGNAME and WP:UAAI both state that " Users who adopt such usernames, but who are not editing problematically in related articles, should not be blocked. Instead, they should be gently encouraged to change their username." So instead, we have admins who hard-block everyone who admits they are working for a company, in effect even preventing them from registering a compliant account? Cf. User:Admarkroundsquare – "14:06, 26 April 2012 Orangemike (talk | contribs) blocked Admarkroundsquare (talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite ({{spamusernameblock}})". And all because some admins think "everyone who works for a company and admits it is evil"? This is insane. --JN466 20:58, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, per all the reasons stated above.--Deathlaser :  Chat  12:18, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Admin elections

I propose that admins be given rotational adminship which is up for election every so often (the terms can be discussed later). As it stands when an admin is made, he keeps the title indefinately and often times there are abuses of authority with insufficient recall methods and self-supports within the community. This way knowing they are up for election they will have to be more accountable and responsible. At any rate, the majority of good admins would likely get elected anyways. There are also many admins who are not active but come on to use the privilege once in a while for minor tasks and often without getting the consensus discussions. It also allow for different adins or for some to take a term off and then come at a nother election. Something like the US Senae elections where a third are elected at one go, and then another third. We could do a third every year for three year terms?Lihaas (talk) 20:05, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose - I think this is a perennial proposal. Inactive admins are already desysopped after inactivity for a year. However, I would support a proposal to clear up desysopping of established admins without having to go through arbcom. Besides, we don't use votes, only !votes, so it wouldn't be an election. I would also support a proposal to force all admins to be open to recall discussions.--Jasper Deng (talk) 20:13, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The latter sees like a good accomodation. But it would be the similar sort of method as currently used to promote an admin.Lihaas (talk) 20:18, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
All that would have to happen is a post at ANI or a new noticeboard with the normal kinds of proposals, with support/oppose !votes similar in format to what happens here.--Jasper Deng (talk) 20:20, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Reconfirm_administrators. When you can overcome the mathematics—annual reconfirmation would require the community to process about thirty (30) admins per week—then I'm sure that people would take the proposal more seriously.
As it happens, all admins are subject to recall: the community has the practical power to demand that someone be desysopped whether that person is "open" to the discussion or not. A typical process is a complaint at AN or an RFC/U about administrative actions, followed by a trip to ArbCom for confirmation. The major problem is "political" abuse, i.e., demanding that someone who takes well-deserved action against a powerful user be shamed and desysopped. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I sympathize with the proposal, but as WhatamIdoing points out, it's simply not practicable that way. I'd propose an alternative process altogether to replace RfA and recall: a community-elected (and thus again directly accountable) committee of sorts with the power to grant and revoke admin privileges on the community's behalf. It would save us tons of time and drama, as well as POINT-!votes. --87.79.130.145 (talk) 02:35, 30 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, what I'm thinking is that the community is wary of the power of the Arbitration Committee, especially the fact that the community cannot override its decisions. That doesn't have to be the case, however, for this new committee, provided that we have enough bureaucrats willing to participate.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:43, 30 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • First, in most cases admins stripped on the bit by Arbcom are allowed to go back to RFA at some point, so the community can already restore the bit if there is sufficient consensus. Why would the community trust this new body to remove the bit any more then it trusts Arbcom to do it? Seems dubious for going through the effort of maintaining another elected body with regular elections. Also, why would there be a need for bureaucrat participation? This new body would make its decision, and then tell the crats to carry it out, why would that require much crat involvement? Monty845 03:55, 30 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • The new committee could be overridden by arbcom or anything else, and is far less likely to be as busy as arbcom. Bureaucrats are the ones who are best at judging admins, so that's why I suggested that they serve, but it's not mandatory.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:05, 30 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think its a bad idea to tie it to crats, most current crat responsibilities are, well, bureaucratic. The only big judgement call they make is in judging RFA consensus, but thats a far cry from judging if an admin deserves to be de-sysoped. Also, restricting membership to crats will invite accusations of elitism. Far better to have the membership be open to anyone who can get elected, though its likely that the electorate will select many candidates with advanced permissions. Monty845 04:12, 30 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, then election can be open. However, I think it might be smart to have a minimum number of editors without administrative permissions, as to avoid COIs by admins.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:15, 30 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • RFA is a heavily political rectal examination because it's for-life, and re-elections are unfeasible. Personally I'd just make adminship much more tenuous. Make it much easier to become an admin by letting ~voters know that it'll also be much easier to de-op them later if need be. Admins can prove themselves as they go, instead of candidates having to explain every little thing in their past, and not have the impunity to know they can act badly once in a while as long as no one can show a pattern worthy of ArbCom. Rather, if they start slipping, they're gone (not necessarily permanently), and we let someone else have a go. Of course there would still be prerequisites: a minimum length of time between requests, still a !voting process, and we'd need to create a recall process that ensures uninvolved people make the decision. But, I think making adminship a revolving role rather than this permanent political title is worth examining. Equazcion (talk) 04:00, 30 Apr 2012 (UTC)

All I know is that I would feel sorry for any admins who will have dealt with tough cases requiring admin attention right before such an election. (But I suppose one can argue the same for sitting Arbitrators.) --MuZemike 18:44, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If they care that much about being an admin or an Arbiter, they shouldn't be an Admin or an Arbiter. Hipocrite (talk) 18:58, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I will keep that in mind when I'm up for reelection right after I've forced some neutrality into several Indian caste articles and infuriated dozens of social groups with several editors each. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:38, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Elections are fine for political roles where you want to limit the number of people elected. Adminship is not a Political role as the whole community makes policy, not just admins, and there is no shortage of mops - the more qualified, clueful editors willing to occasionally wield a mop the better. But also, we have a declining number of admins and RFA has almost dried up. Many perhaps most of our admins were first appointed many years ago when the arbitrary criteria were not so inflated. If we implemented annual or even triannual elections there is a real risk that many would not volunteer to go through another RFA as currently constituted - so this proposal is almost guaranteed to exacerbate our admin shortage. We need to remember that admins are volunteers and that RFA has degenerated into a deeply flawed process that very few people are willing to subject themselves to. ϢereSpielChequers 21:03, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - AFAIK the number of administrators is not finite, so I'm confused as to why have elections at all. What would it become if not a popularity contest? Also, check out this graph of the US Senatorial re-election rates: [3]... it'll almost make you swear off elections! Best, Markvs88 (talk) 21:29, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

talkpages

Would these two sections be heading in the same direction, that is, the name of the 'talk' tab.

There is a scattering of different kinds of banners and little pics that say 'improve this article' and such things, (there seem to be a few), I probably haven't seen them all, wouldn't the purpose of those promotions, the drive to get new editors involved, be something to discuss combining into the talk tab ? along with the current lack of roadsigns, demonstrated by these two sections, mean that the label 'talk' should be discussed ? Penyulap ☏ 14:19, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed Standard Article Element: Questions of Merit

Wikipedia Developers,

If a topic naturally invites questions ( say cosmology, etc.) it would be very beneficial to have a LINK to something like “questions” or “info request” (maybe this could instead become an OUTLINE element,i.e. a standard article sub-heading). This would be an extremely valuable addition to the standard format of Wikipedia, inviting comment and participation.

EXAMPLE

Subject: COSMOLOGY Question / Request: Propose a unifying cosmological theory assuming the following:

  • Time is infinite.
  • Space is infinite.
  • Energy and mass can trade places.
  • Variation (possibly even chaos) is allowed.
  • Intelligent mind exists / emerges, whatever its capacity.

In other words, many subjects on Wikipedia are presented as “fact” when there may be many alternate interpretations / theories, in which case posing a difficult question might be very stimulative and ultimately edifying to all.

Michael Kasten — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kolombangara (talk • contribs) 05:06, 2 May 2012‎

Wikipedia's discussions are mostly limited to development of the encyclopedia and its content. Aside from the reference desk, we actually don't seek to stimulate discussion of our topics just for the sake of discussion alone (we have a rule that states Wikipedia should generally not be used as a forum). If you come across a topic where you think all prominent viewpoints aren't being displayed, you can leave a message on its talk page to make suggestions -- or you can edit the article yourself to start expanding on whatever you think is missing. Just keep in mind Wikipedia's rules about weight, verifiability, and fringe theories. Equazcion (talk) 06:51, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions...

I found it very difficult to find a way to suggest some additions to the page/topic I was researching. Primarily, I would reccomend a "SUGGESTIONS FOR THIS SITE" tab, so users can suggest ways for the more educated to add wanted detail to articles; which I could not find. Specifically with regard to the site I was researching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_band ; I wanted to see the millimeter relationships to frequency (Band/Hz/MHz/GHz). Regardless of whether this particular is updated in this way, I belie3ve having a suggestions tab would benefit Wiki, as a general addition.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.175.28.30 (talk • contribs) 13:32, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can do that on the article's talk page. --85.210.1.233 (talk) 14:09, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There is talk page; but WP is not a forum. Well though suggestions are encouraged, and since this is a wiki, why don't you edit? Remember- you can edit even if you have not created the account. Dipankan (Have a chat?) 15:50, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's a bit hard to add questions to the article. Just add the question to the talkpage or ask at the helpdesk, the helpdesk is meant for exactly that purpose. Offhand though, the distance light travels in one second divided by the frequency equals wavelength. Penyulap ☏ 16:49, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
from the speed of light article, multiplied for millimeters, 299,792,458,000 is the number to divide by frequency to get the wavelength in millimeters. Penyulap ☏ 16:53, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
'Talk' is a remarkably vague and ambiguous title for the tab at the top of the article. I would wonder if it does a poor job of describing itself. I see a whole lot of 'WP:NOTAFORUM' yelling going on(I don't mean you, Dipankan), maybe something less ambiguous would help there, rather than setting a BITE trap. I mean, if there is just so much NOTAFORUM going on, should "talk-(notaforum)" help or something better ? maybe separate links to the helpdesk and to the talkpage.Penyulap ☏ 17:27, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well of course it USED to be called 'Discussion' but consensus decreed that 'talk' was better. *shrug*. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 17:59, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
oh no, where did that happen, if we carry on the tradition by first merging the word talk with edit, then calling every single tab 'click here' it won't do. Where is the conversation about that, perhaps they didn't monitor for unintended consequences like this. Penyulap ☏ 03:42, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I think that "talk" is a very appropriate title for the page (although I didn't take part in the discussion to rename it). With cautious reference to your comment on "NOTAFORUM yelling", it really is worth noting that Wikipedia isn't supposed to be a forum, and that's the way it's going to stay unless consensus changes it. There are other places for people to discuss contentious topics, and if they want to talk about the content in the articles, there is a talk page precisely for that purpose. Well-restedTalk 15:14, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"Not a forum" doesn't extend to article suggestions. Suggestions are always welcome at an article's Talk page -- in fact, that's what talk pages are there for. Simply click the "Talk" tab at the top of any article, then place a comment there (much like you did here). :) Equazcion (talk) 04:24, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A new venue for discussing userpages

This proposal is inspired by the current controversy surrounding the content of User:Cla68 but I've been thinking about this ever since the last MFD on User:Dream Focus. Cla68 put a controversial statement on his userpage wrt paid editing and it's been discussed at WP:ANI, User talk:Jimbo Wales, WP:MFD and now at WP:DRV. The last discussion was due to the MFD being speedy closed as "forum shopping". One thing that was obvious was that User:Cla68 had a long history and was not going to be deleted. The most that could have happened is that he would have been asked to remove the content in question.

What I propose is a separate venue only for the discussion of content on a user's main userpage ie what someone sees if they type User:Foo. This could be set up as as an XFD called Wikipedia:Userpages for discussion or alternatively it can be patterned after WP:RFCN and called Wikipedia:Request for comment/Userpages. To repeat, it should only be for a user's main userpage unless it redirects to somewhere else. One example would be a redirect to a user's talk page that has questionable content not part of normal talk page posts. If such a venue existed then there would be no doubt as to where such issues should be discussed. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:16, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have no particular opinion about it, but I forsee that responses to your proposal will be slow in coming and you might wonder why. So running simulations of what other editors might say if they had to say something, I believe many would suggest that we already have the boards that you mention, and the proposal itself could be considered 'forum shopping'. I'd suggest not including, or spacing those points further apart in a proposal, I notice that I get less negative comments about my art if I don't prefix a request for comments with my own criticisms first, because some critics just parrot my remarks back to me. Penyulap ☏ 19:50, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Click and drag sections in revision diffs

example of how to hide text in an edit war. (why didn't I think of this ?) here is the normal unhidden text Penyulap ☏ 07:43, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

When I check the diffs of a revision to see the changes made, I frequently see entire sections highlighted on both sides suggesting changes when in fact they are just moved. This can make a really small edit potentially appear as a major rewrite, wasting chunks of my (somewhat important) time and messes up my understanding of edit wars I see. I think there should be an option to click and drag sections up and down to line changes up with their origins... will this work? 173.180.202.22 (talk) 23:28, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand what you mean, the comparisons made in diffs attempt to show changes made to the text, but when a section is moved, changes within the moved section are hidden from view, so you can't see changes easily, and further functionality would improve the situation by highlighting those changes within moved sections of text, or allow you to move the sections within the diff display to allow making a visual comparison easier. Penyulap ☏ 06:42, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Version history tables

I personally think that all software Articles should have color-coded version history tables, not unlike that of DreamWeaver shown below:

Provider Major version Minor update/alternative name Release date Notes
Macromedia 1.0 1.0 December 1997 First version. Mac OS only.
1.2 March 1998 First Windows version.
2.0 2.0 December 1998
3.0 3.0 December 1999
UltraDev 1.0 June 1999
4.0 4.0 December 2000
UltraDev 4.0 December 2000
6.0 MX 29 May 2002
7.0 MX 2004 10 September 2003
8.0 8.0 13 September 2005 Last Macromedia version.
Adobe 9.0 CS3 16 April 2007 Replaces Adobe GoLive in Creative Suite.
10.0 CS4 23 September 2008
11.0 CS5 12 April 2010
11.5 CS5.5 12 April 2011 Supports HTML5.
12.0 CS6 21 April 2012
Color Legend
Red Old version, no longer supported
Yellow Old version, still supported
Green Current version

What does everyone else think? Let's do it. (I realize that discontinued programs would be all red, so obviously this gives priority to Articles on programs that still release new versions.) The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 12:16, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WP:COLOR: "Ensure that color is not the only method used to convey important information. Especially, do not use colored text or background unless its status is also indicated using another method such as an accessible symbol matched to a legend, or footnote labels. Otherwise, blind users or readers accessing Wikipedia through a printout or device without a color screen will not receive that information." ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:24, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say anything about the table being the only indicator. That's what the whole Article is for, and a table is only a summary anyway. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 14:48, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Why shoudl Wikipedia note if something is 'still supported' anyway? That's getting into WP:NOTGUIDE territory, it seems to me. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 15:32, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If you're going to that much trouble then it's easy enough to include an alt description, so that is no problem, and tables like that are easy to find on the internet, so referencing is easy too, it's a good way to visually convey the information, so I like it and think it would help lots of people. I suggest putting it in yourself in a number of places and see how you go.
That said, you should change 'no longer', 'current' and things like that to actual dates. That is very important, there is no such word as 'current' in an encyclopedia, you would just say 'after may 2012' for example. Generally discussion of this nature is suited to the wikiproject noticeboards, pick a suitable article and bring it up on the noticeboard of the wikiprojects listed on it's talkpage banners. Penyulap ☏ 19:41, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There is a certain level of common sense to apply, though. We don't need to say that Barack Obama, as of May 7, is the President of the United States. --Golbez (talk) 15:47, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Directly making money through stored information

An API should be done out of this website, so that applications can externally access information in your articles. I mean, important things from certain people, such as birth dates & said person's article's sections, could be turned into some sort of externally accessible variables. You would obviously do this with all sort of articles, somehow, not just people. Now, where's the good part of the deal for you guys here? Privatize it. Make it available to only certain prestige donators (or however you choose to call it). This is obviously non-elaborate, and ideas are encouraged.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Likamawa (talk • contribs)

The core of the idea sounds good, but I'd oppose in very strong terms restricting any feature, current or future, based on donation. I understand the motivation, but the harm that would do would greatly outweigh the gain in terms of increased donations.--Fyre2387 (talk • contribs) 21:10, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Add source button

we should introduce an add source button to the top of each page, so that if a busy person comes up with a good source they can add it on.--Deathlaser :  Chat  16:45, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty good but where would they be added to? Which reminds me of another idea I had: highlight pieces of information in-text when you hover over them so you can see what sources each datum corresponds to. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 22:35, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Pretty good although not sure if you mean a source to use for new content or for existing unsourced content. For new content there's a couple of possibilities, neither as quick or simple as your idea. Have you seen {{Expand-further}}? Or sometimes people add a Talk page note like I did [4]. --92.6.211.228 (talk) 16:37, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Deletionpedia

Does anyone here know what's up with deletionpedia? It was such a brilliant, useful concept that ran for most of the way through 2008, and then disappeared without a trace. Why is it inactive? Is there some way we can get it up and running again? It is so intriguing for people to see deleted articles, and to cut a long story short, various news articles commented that the site was a place for analysis on the way deletionists and incluisonsists behave. Fascinating stuff. It would also allow there to be a record of controversial deletions or in many cases, deletions that at the time noone ever knew about but would have objected to if given the chance (I would be in that position with a few of the 2008 deletionpedia articles). Obviously the copyvio ones can be scrapped, but I don't see why the others can't be stored and kept. It's 4 years hence. I truly think this is a very worth-while endeavour. Who's with me..?!--Coin945 (talk) 17:11, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It would definitely be interesting to get this going again, but only if any legally-tricky content is, as you said, scrapped. dci | TALK 18:11, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. That way people's work isn't lost forever.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 07:11, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Deletionpedia is a place that enshrines copyvios, defamatory attack pages, utterly incorrect, unsourced biased information, hoaxes, blatant advertising, utterly non-notable subjects, mixes of the all of the above and more. There's good reason deleted content is not accessible to view here and this end run should be burned to the ground with extreme prejudice.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:25, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ummmm.... the point is that all that's stuff is not suitable for Wikipedia, but they are suitable for Deletionpedia. Many people find it intriguing to see what sorts of articles never made the cut. What articles were so specific, or on such a trivial or bizarre topic that they were deleted, but still have intrinsic value or are entertaining to read. It is also a way to preserve controversial articles so all parties involved are content. When people's articles are deleted, they get pissed. It they plead to the people in power who savagely deleted their articles for a copy, and get downright refused, they leave in a huff. It's too late, most of them've gone. Newbies with bad experiences never come back. If you had the power in your hands to help solve this problem, I would press the big red button. Also, during the massive Pokemon article deletion of 2008, many of the articles ended up in deletionpedia. Even today, there are articles sprinkled across Google that discuss various articles that were deleted unfairly because they were rushed into deletion by "uppity high-horse bureaucrats" or something along those lines, while the defenders were relatively newbies who didn't even know the deletions were going on, or know how to fight back. I've had a bit of a hop through the archive and read the deletion discussions and I've found at least a few that seem unfairly deleted. We can bring these back from the dead. Another reason is it would help provide actual examples of what not to do. Another reason is it would help preserve the full story of Wikipedia knowledge. Despite popular opinion, it is not true that the only things that matter in the Wikisphere is the notable stuff. It's all the little things that make a difference too. Articles like Disambiguation (disambiguation) List of lists of lists are a few of the remaining fragments of the once rich joyous landscape, now rotten, stale and quite frankly horrible environment to be in. Deletionpedia may very well help to put the spring in Springfield (as it were...) I don't think my thoughts are articulated *that* well here, but the basic point (to put it rather bluntly) is: you're wrong and deletionpedia is a valued asset to the Wikisphere.--Coin945 (talk) 15:45, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Looks up and running to me. There are notes on the home page about maintenance. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 19:26, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Which has existed since 2008 [5]. In other words, you're right, the site is running. But from an update/doing something POV, I agree with the OP the site is dead. Not exactly uncommon that someone gives up on a site but doesn't bother to take it down. Nil Einne (talk) 04:05, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Looking more closely there has possibly been some edits [6] although it's difficult to say since [7] shows stuff from December 2012 and other months in 2012 that haven't been yet so there was clearly some misconfiguration at one stage. Either way, a look at the more 'recent' edits of Sysop are revealing, many of these are dealing with problematic (generally non copyvio) articles, seemingly quite a while after they stopped updating. Nil Einne (talk) 04:27, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have never heard of it. I have heard of something called "Includipedia" - I always understood it was the saviour of those who consider themselves inclusivists, as it was an on-line encyclopaedia to include deleted articles from Wikipedia. Does any one know what has become of that? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:24, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's been a lot of these sort of things. I seem to remember a few months ago we had to deal with a problematic site trying to preserve wikipedia articles but weren't complying with the licensing terms since they weren't including the contrib history. I think eventually they worked out with the help of various wikipedians (possibly including Moonriddengirl) what was required of them, but I don't know what happened after that. Nil Einne (talk) 04:29, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Deletionpedia, and its variants, are independent projects so nothing we propose here matters. That said, they've mostly died off because of their entire purpose for existing: hosting articles not suited for Wikipedia. Keeping up with the sheer flow of such articles must be time consuming, for very little reward. Factor in that you're paying for a server simply to keep cruft most readers don't care about, plus the legal issues if defamatory & copyvio articles slip by the screening process (assuming there is one), and it's no wonder they're short-lived. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 13:05, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion: Change the "administrator" title to a more suitable one

The title "administrator" does not adequately represent an admin's responsibilities and position. Its confusing for newbies (who typically associate an administrator with a website administrator) and there's no denying that it adds a certain aura that makes the position more of a reward than anything else. RfAs !votes are then based on who deserves adminship, rather than who can be trusted to not abuse it. Here are some possible alternatives:

  • Librarian -- per es.wp, better indication of what admins do.
  • Helper -- also better, and would change the ambience of RfAs.

Just something I've wanted to bring up for a while. FeromoneFly (talk) 03:50, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose these alternatives. I would support "moderator". Simply "sysop" could be better, but not everyone knows what that means.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:07, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I've been thinking about this, too. "Admin" is confusing to newbies who think ANI is part of dispute resolution. But I don't care for "Librarian" or "Helper". I'd support "sysop". That not everyone knows what "sysop" means is a good thing, as newbies will be less likely to report someone to admins instead of following WP:DR. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 04:17, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Administrator sounds officious and officey. Librarian is quirkily apt for wikipedia, I like the idea a lot. I do not really like sysop, it sounds Orwellian and un-English. Good luck in trying to change the system, though... --Squidonius (talk) 04:23, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - This is kind of perennial and never goes anywhere. As far as these examples, "Librarians" and "Helpers" help people find/do things, and admins don't really do either of those primarily. Other suggestions have been "janitor" or "custodian" which were somewhat popular. Personally I think the admin position should be done away with -- just because someone is good with content doesn't mean they'll be good at blocking or judging speedy-deletes. There should be "blocker/protectors", "deleters", "interface editors", etc instead. The job is too prolific right now and aside from making RFA even more sucky than it already is, we don't have a way of gauging who will be good at all these things. And why should anyone have to be anyway? Equazcion (talk) 04:28, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Words like 'Administrators', 'Bureaucrats', 'Arbitrators', etc. are now woven in the Wikipedia framework and they should not be changed without a very specific reason. Personally I find Moderator to be a better option, but it goes against the spirit of NOTFORUM. Also, everything we do on Wikipedia is with the intention to make it a better encyclopedia and I do not think that changing the hard-woven wikispeak is helping us to achieve that goal. EngineerFromVega★ 06:12, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with change of how user permissions are granted Agree with Equazcion. It is ridiculously easy to create user groups with different powers in mediawiki. Just edit Localsettings. There is no reason not to create groups which can delete, or have other powers separately. Be——Critical 06:20, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, there exists no word in the English language describing "people who can block, delete, and protect". Any choice different from "administrator" will be just as arbitrary, and many are worse: "Moderator" implies more content control than admins should have, "sysop" sounds like we actually have deep access to the system, and "librarian" like we're in control of research. We're not precisely in control of administration either, but at least that's the word we have agreed to use for the last couple of years. —Kusma (t·c) 07:21, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop the voting to allow some discussion

Would someone please close the 'vote' so that the idea can be discussed in the form of a discussion, which is more likely to be productive than voting on it, which will inevitably deadlock. Penyulap ☏ 08:51, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:VPD. Equazcion (talk) 10:26, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
sweet, no problem. Penyulap ☏ 02:47, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, because I'm feeling ironic. RJH (talk) 14:40, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Indefinite Block for RJH, for being difficult. As for the name issue it's irrelevant really, "administrator" is engrained in the community's collective mind, change it to "Cheese-eating block-monkeys" if you like, (which btw I would Support), people would still say "admins"--Jac16888 Talk 14:52, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

another possible name

What about Custodian. Someone charged with looking after the place and keeping it running. filceolaire (talk)

I quite like Guardian myself, for some role somewhere, I should suggest it to Pesky. That'd be a cool name for the likes of her :) Penyulap ☏ 10:18, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
FeromoneFly, your suggestion of librarian would be ideal for many of the admin jobs on commons. It should take hold there first before it takes hold here. Penyulap ☏ 10:40, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Librarian denotes a Masters Degree or higher in Library Science. That is out;
Custodian in this context, denotes an Archivist - PhD in some cases. That is also out;
Helper?' Reminds me of elementary school;
Guardian? I am all for a Friendly Wikipedia but I do not think, in this case, there is anything unfriendly to remove;
Hey, I know, what about Administrator? If someone does not know what an Administrator on Wikipedia is, all they have to do is check it out. Mugginsx (talk) 13:35, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I use the term "Janitor." Carrite (talk) 23:47, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Infrastructure engineer. Actually I like using custodian in the context of an article's primary authors. Regards, RJH (talk) 14:30, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The problem here is that the term "Wikipedia administrator" has been around for such a long time now, that it would mean quite radicala changes to Wikipedia if we were to change the name. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:26, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

propose rename to "men in white coats"

rather than 'blockers' Penyulap ☏ 14:16, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Introduce "blockers"

We should introduce blockers who specialize in only fighting vandals. A good alternative to them becoming admins.--Deathlaser :  Chat  12:16, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

proposal to introduce blockers who can only block for 6hours

Admins are given many other rights like file mover, autopatrolled, same of which are not needed by a vandal fighter, specially if that's what they only do

So I suggest we introduce blockers who can only block for 6hours., as nom


support, as nom.--Deathlaser :  Chat  15:10, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

oppose In the end it will only make MORE work for the administrators who will have to intervene.Mugginsx (talk) 15:24, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why? How often do we block vandals for 6 hours? What exactly does this or the proposal above achieve, I wasn't aware we were so overrun with vandals that we so desperately need more people to block them. Not to mention this is a perennial proposal: Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Hierarchical structures--Jac16888 Talk 15:27, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose One of the reasons vandal blocking is uncontroversial is that it is restricted to users who have passed the high bar of RFA. The comparative error rate among less experienced users with Rollback or Huggle in handling vandalism reversion is significantly higher then the rate of error in vandal blocking. MBisanz talk 16:41, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No one suggested Rollback or Huggle rights would be the bar-to-entry for this rights group. Equazcion (talk) 19:13, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment People are terrified of splitting the admin tools away from the oh-so-pleasant gauntlet known as RFA. Look at WP:Tool apprenticeship, which got shot down like a pay-raise for teachers. Angryapathy (talk) 17:29, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Withdraw and I wish I never started it.--Deathlaser :  Chat  19:41, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Nah. That's the nature of new ideas; sometimes they pan out, sometimes they don't. As Edison allegedly said, "We now know a thousand ways not to build a lightbulb". Regards, RJH (talk) 00:31, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
edison ? eww see my userpage please. Penyulap ☏ 16:17, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Also I can attest to having been through more than a few proposals that got rejected again and again but eventually did get implemented once people got more used to the new concepts. People are resistant to change. Letting a non-admin perform blocks is one of the biggest changes you could've possibly proposed. Even if it winds up being a good idea, it'll probably take at least a few tries before people start to consider it seriously. You might try WP:VPD which was started to overcome some of the closed-mindedness that occurs regularly on this page. Equazcion (talk) 00:40, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Straw poll

You may only !vote for one of the following:

  1. Whoever can be trusted with any of the tools can be trusted with all of them - regardless of the reason he/she becomes an admin.
  2. A new usergroup for vandal-fighters is needed (you do not have to specify the tools) and should be assigned in a process no more controversial than a simple RfP
  3. A new usergroup for vandal-fighters is needed but should be assigned in a process similar to RfA.
  4. An existing usergroup like Rollback should be given the block button (specify the group).
  5. It's unnecessary bureaucracy.

Wikidata: mockups for linking Wikipedia articles up for feedback

The Wikidata team has worked on mockups for how we think linking of articles between different Wikipedias should work with Wikidata in the future. You can find the mock-ups and explanations on meta.

It'd be great if you could have a look and give feedback either on wikidata-l or on the discussion page on meta. This is the one important UI change in the Wikipedias that we plan to do in the first phase of Wikidata and we'd like to make sure this is solid. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:13, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

New BJAODN Page

I would like to request the CAT:BJAODN project be relived. I had read some talk pages of WP:HUMOR and I believe that something is correct: Such pages proves that Wikipedians are not robot and have such funny humor and introduces the history of Wikipedia in a funnier way. I believe that the edits of vandals deserves a cemetery which will make them remembered even if the creator was already blocked. Kj plma (talk) 12:09, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The new article will be titled Wikipedia:Truthfully the Best of BJAODN. We all want humor, and Wikipedia really needs a page like this. And another reason is that I am very lazy to search for old vandalisms so I need your help... please enter funny vandalisms you did saw, reverted, or deleted or are in your user talks.Kj plma (talk) 12:18, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We don't all want humour. We certainly don't want to memorialise vandals. Oppose. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:23, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suspect that the best thing to do here, if you haven't been banned would be keep most of it in your own userpages, they are more flexible on what is tolerated because what you find funny goes on your user:page, and what everyone seems to think is funny goes in community pages. For the community spaces like wp:humor it's best that it doesn't have things that are personal attacks, there are some funny visual things there which fail because they are personal attacks. That kind of stuff goes on other projects like unencyclopedia. Penyulap ☏ 12:32, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You can ask to have it certified as comedy-free in the next humor eradication drive, pages like that seem more tolerable. Penyulap ☏ 12:34, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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