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Languages on sidebar

On the left hand side of any Wikipedia page, on the toolbar, there is a section devoted to interwiki links to other language versions of an article. I want to propose a small change to the mediawiki software wording here. At current it is simply named "Languages", which is rather ambiguous and vague name. I think that when somebody less experienced at Wikipedia, usually a reader or newbie, sees that and the links below it, that if they click it they can get the whole of Wikipedia translated into that language. I propose it is changed to something short but similar to "View this page in other languages". This clears up any confusion to what you may consider to be a very minor thing but could be very hard to get their head round for readers. Rcsprinter (talkin' to me?) @ 11:27, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"In other languages" would probably fit. But your solution does not solve the stated problem. I'm as likely to think I'll see a trasnslation of the EN page if we say "View this page in other languages" ... the operative problem being "this page". The interwiki link allows us to view the treatment of this subject in other languages. "Other language versions" might work. "Articles on other languages" also. But we're swapping brevity for perceived accuracy, which still might not be parsed by the user. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:53, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Why not "Other languages"? Tony (talk) 12:14, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Funny, in my toolbar it shows as "in other languages". Lectonar (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:20, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Are you using any custom code that might be overriding the default? —David Levy 12:59, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not that I am aware of; but still, it shows "In other languages", even on this page here. Lectonar (talk) 13:03, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I guess you have selected "en-GB - British English" as language at Special:Preferences. Then you see MediaWiki:Otherlanguages/en-gb instead of MediaWiki:Otherlanguages. en-gb is not recommended at the English Wikipedia. See Help:Preferences. The page history of MediaWiki:Otherlanguages shows some variation years ago but not since 2007. David Levy used the Simple English Wikipedia as reason for not saying "In other languages".[1] PrimeHunter (talk) 13:38, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for that; I guess I must have chosen it when I started may account, some 7 years ago. Never had any problems, though. Cheers. Lectonar (talk) 13:54, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I just harmonized MediaWiki:Otherlanguages/en-gb and MediaWiki:Otherlanguages/en-ca with MediaWiki:Otherlanguages.
If the British English and Canadian English options are to remain available, we should apply the various customizations (with changes in spelling/wording where appropriate). For the messages in which no English variety issues exist (presumably most), we could use redirects. —David Levy 17:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
One of the Wikipedias is written in simple English. —David Levy 12:59, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep "Languages". Apart from linking to this subject in another language, it also links to the whole Wikipedia in that language (with "whole" admittedly being smaller than English). You stay in that language if you follow wikilinks there, use the search box, click the logo, and so on. "Languages" is brief and about as clear or open to misunderstanding as alternatives that are not ridiculously long. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:38, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep "Languages". Agree with PrimeHunter - it is ambiguous, but it's short and it won't take the reader long to find out what is meant once he actually follows the link... --Philosopher Let us reason together. 19:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We will have a huge language button on top right.
The WMF is developing a huge button that says "English" on the right corner, so readers will find the articles in other languages easily. --NaBUru38 (talk) 20:09, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why not have it say "On Other Wikipedias"? Then it encompasses, say, Simple English, while avoiding the implication of translations. ∴ ZX95 [discuss] 01:00, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My preference is languages because that is more explanatory than other wp's. Technically simple is a subset of English. Apteva (talk) 02:53, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The issue was raised, however, that "Languages" is likely to make some people think that the linked articles are translations of the English one; that was why I suggested "On Other Wikipedias", which is much less ambiguous. ∴ ZX95 [discuss] 15:29, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note to keep archiving bot away. Rcsprinter (yak) @ 21:43, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Will this be affected by WikiData or will the wording change we are proposing still be changeable? Rcsprinter (whisper) @ 15:59, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is unrelated to Wikidata. I believe this is somewhere in Mediawiki and can be changed if there is consensus to do it.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:08, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Redirects don't work on MediaWiki interface pages, but you can transclude one into another. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:18, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Option to watch a Section of the Village Pump

Of all of us involved in the Village Pump, some might be watchlisting it only because they want to keep track of only one or two proposals at the Pump, and not all the rest (I know I do it). So I think an option to watchlist only a particular section of the Pump might be a good and relevant opt-in feature for anyone who does not want to see all the proposals, regardless of whether it involves that person's interest or not. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 15:10, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You can already do that: if you watchlist Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), for instance, you'll only get watchlist notifications if threads under the technical section change. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:25, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No. That means you watchlist only the technical. My point is that I am interested in only 3-4 topics out of 18 that make up a 200k "Proposals" page on the pump. I would want to see the changes in only those few of them, and not every time someone else changes something at the pump. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 15:38, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's something I'd support wholeheartedly. I made a similar proposal in the past, where I suggested that the Village pumps contain only transcluded subpages and when you edit a section, you automatically edit the subpage. (I'd need to look for the proposal in the archives). There was also a BRFA in the past for a bot that could mirror discussion threads on some other page (that bot never materialized, however). -- Toshio Yamaguchi 15:30, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My memory was incorrect. I was thinking of Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 89#Subpages at TfD and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 74#Change TfD to use subpages, both of which are concerned with TfD. However, I also found this. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 10:10, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, a capability along these lines could be useful in lots of places. There are times when I want to watch a thread at a particular noticeboard without watching the entire noticeboard. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:50, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Subpages are good, but they have some limitations -
a) For systems structured on a per-article basis, they have a natural structure - WP:AFD/ARTICLENAME, WP:RFC/USERNAME, etc. Any page titles which collide are almost guaranteed to have a meaningful connection in some way and can be dealt with by hand. For something like the VP, though, we have a lot of less meaningful section titles - "Option to watch a Section of the Village Pump" is good, but things like "Fonts" and "MathJax" are going to produce a lot of title collisions.
b) They're a lot trickier for new users. "Create this page, edit this page, and add a transclusion" is a lot more off-putting than "hit edit and add something". Andrew Gray (talk) 12:47, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
c) They make it much more difficult to casually watch all discussion on the page. Right now, I just load the diff since the last time I read the page and see what changed. With a subpage scheme, I'd need to be watching and unwatching subpages all over the place. Anomie⚔ 13:13, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I dont really think subpage is the best way to deal with this situation. Someone with more technical expertise on the same could really comment on what will be the best way to do it. What I intend is a button/star along with section headings (near the edit button) which could allow me to watchlist or unwatchlist only that section of the page. Whether or not it is done through subpages, or made opt-in (through Preferences), or be implemented on all pages could be decided by further discussion on the same. But as such, it would be a lot simpler for a lot of people if we could just have the option to watchlist only certain sections of the page. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 11:30, 9 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Subpages can be done as-is, but "proper" per-section watching on a single page would require some pretty heavy lifting on MediaWiki itself. This has been a requested feature since 2004 - Template:Bugzilla - and it seems that the lack of a practical way to do it is the major stumbling block. Andrew Gray (talk)
Is there any forum which might be useful to discuss if this and how implementation is possible? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 10:38, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Watchlist_changes. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:40, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd support this, and in fact I'd say this should be extended to everything outside article space as well (and maybe talk pages)! Lukeno94 (talk) 08:57, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support This would be very useful and enable one to better follow the discussions one is interested in without the need to use liquid threads (which I've never been a fan of). -- Toshio Yamaguchi 10:14, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I also support this because I know that Wikipedia:Mirror threads isn't going to happen (unfortunately), which would be even more useful. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 10:21, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support All notifications for changes I'm not interested in also increases the risk that I miss the ones I would like to see. Lova Falk talk 10:58, 9 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. It's not clear how one would implement this, but if it were magically possible to watch individual sections on these big noticeboard-like pages, that would be amazing, so I obviously support it. (On the other hand, had I only been watching one section of this page, then I wouldn't have seen this discussion!) Mark M (talk) 11:47, 9 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of how useful it would be, it's not technically feasible. The software can only tell you when a page is changed, not a sub-section of said page. As pointed out earlier, you really should look at Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Watchlist_changes, it's already been hashed out several times. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 22:47, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it IS technically possible, if the page only consists of content transcluded from subpages, thus any edit to a subpage would show up on your watchlist (if you have the respective subpage watched). Of course you would need to ensure that you have all the discussions you are interested in on your watchlist. I think adding a link like Watch this thread or something to any transcluded thread should also be technically possible. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 10:33, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Watchlist_changes. I oppose making the village pump pages a bunch of subpages, so that keeping track of the whole page will require me to add every single section (thousands of items over the course of a year) to my watchlist. Separate subpages work best for a process that is either enormous (AFD) or that has very few, very long sections. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:57, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Placing a "Travel guide" link to Wikivoyage next to the geographic coordinates in articles on cities and countries

Fig 1. Visitor traffic to Wikivoyage
Fig 2. Mock-up
Fig 3. Subtle version

Proposal

I want to propose to place a "Travel guide" link to Wikivoyage next to the geographic coordinates in articles on cities and countries.

We recently successfully launched our newest sister project Wikivoyage. During the week after its launch we ran a banner atop every Wikipedia article to inform the world about this endeavour. According to the regular editors at the site this resulted in a large number of constructive edits by new users. According to Alexa this promotional effort briefly put the site in the top 1000 of most visited sites on the Internet (see Figure 1.)

With the banner taken down a week later, visitor traffic remains far above what it was before the official launch, but nowhere near the level it was right after launch. Currently we link to Wikivoyage from our articles, as we do with most of our links to sister projects, from the See also or External links section. However, articles on cities and countries tend to be exceptionally long (Rome counts in at about 15 000 words) and readers are thus unlikely to scroll all the way to the bottom of these article and notice those links.

I propose we link to Wikivoyage from a slightly more prominent place: the top of the article. Mock-ups can be seen in Figures 2 and 3. I hope such a link will attract additional contributors to Wikivoyage and be helpful, or otherwise unobtrusive, to our readers. I would suggest starting out with the version in Figure 2 and move to the more subtle version in Figure 3 after we have managed to establish sufficient brand-awareness among our readership.

(The technical implementation would be realized by adding an additional field to {{infobox settlement}} and {{infobox country}}, and a small tweak to {{coord}} and {{coord/display/title}} to render the actual link.)

—Ruud 18:38, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

We don't link to Commons, Wikiquote, or Wikisource at the top of articles either. Why should Wikivoyage get special treatment? Rmhermen (talk) 18:43, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would not object to placing other sister links in a more prominent place if they are highly on-topic (e.g., wikisource:Bible (King James) from Authorized King James Version or wikibooks:Haskell from Haskell (programming language). As Commons and Wikitionary cover a very wide range of topics they might be less suitable.
Reasons for treating Wikivoyage specially would include, as mentioned above, the relative length of the Wikipedia article from which we link and the fact that there is more competition in the "travel wiki" market than in the "quotations wiki" market. —Ruud 18:51, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also, Wikipedia doesn't have issues with too many quotes, source material or media being added to articles. Many destination articles, however, get overrun with business links and touty tourist material. JamesA >talk 00:30, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Incredibly strong support I think this is an excellent idea. Ryan Vesey 18:54, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support We sometimes link to Wiktionary at the top of articles (e.g. see Rig), and we have Interwiki links down the side of articles. There is no harm in linking to, and raising the profile of other Wikimedia projects here in Wikipedia, and this is no different and I think that it's sensible. I prefer the subtle version though. Bazonka (talk) 19:00, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • If the wikivoyage:Iowa page is typical of a Wikivoyage page, I could support the "subtle version" listed here. As for the placement issue, placing it with the geolocation information makes sense to me. Having the information at the top of the page may or may not make sense, but it is the status quo ante and this discussion isn't the place to discuss/change that, imho. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:39, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I'll abstain from voting, being a new Wikivoyage administrator. Although this proposal primarily speaks about the benefits to Wikivoyage, I can think of a few notable benefits for Wikipedia. Before Wikivoyage launched, many country, city and Tourism in xx articles had issues with being too touristy. While any tourism section should be factual and speak about trends in tourism and government campaigns, often it devolves into a paragraph about the best places to visit when you go to this destination. By adding the link to the travel guide in a more prominent position, it may encourage users and businesses to go there and add travel information where it belongs. It will also help prevent unnecessary links under the External links header. JamesA >talk 00:30, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment It's very obvious when reading comments at the Help Desk, Teahouse, and article feedback tool, that many readers come to Wikipedia expecting information that an encyclopedia can't/shouldn't provide. Including the link will be beneficial to readers, and will also ease the strain on Wikipedia editors because misguided new editors who want to provide travel guide like information will be directed there as well. Ryan Vesey 04:38, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, I am not seeing a strong enough argument for privileging one sister project over all the others. All our links have so far gone at the bottom of the page (or sometimes the bottom of infoboxes.) Rmhermen (talk) 18:06, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not true. Wiktionary links often appear at the top of pages, like in the Rig example that I mentioned earlier. Bazonka (talk) 18:25, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That is a disambiguation page, not an article. See above where I linked to our standard advice on link placement. Rmhermen (talk) 06:40, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I never said it was an article, but a page, which is also the term you used above. Bazonka (talk) 22:29, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia rarely has issues with getting too many dictionary definitions plagued across an article. I haven't seen problems with too many quotes. However, articles getting bombarded with touristy info, business listings and other non-encyclopaedic content is all too common. Nearly every "Tourism in country" page is non-encyclopedic, rather listing all the best tourist attractions. This isn't just about helping out a sister project in getting more viewers. It's about trying to clean up Wikipedia and put content where it belongs. That is why we need Wikivoyage links underneath the headers. JamesA >talk 04:46, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I initially thought "this is so un-Wikipedia-like", but then I was convinced by JamesA's argument just above, and others.
    • Wikivoyage is a special case among our sister projects, offering prose information (just like we do) but of a different nature. Our other sister projects do not offer prose information (well, perhaps Wikibooks does, but I don't think I'd be alone in saying that I don't generally visit Wikibooks).
    • Reading a travel guide allows one to attain a greater understanding of the place in question, in a way that cannot be done through an encyclopedia article.
    • People wishing to visit a destination may look it up on Wikipedia, or reach the Wikipedia article through Google, and may find the link to the travel guide even more useful than our encyclopedia article.
    • Our other sisters provide content of a very specific nature (dictionary definitions, a collection of quotations, historical texts) but Wikivoyage's travel guides pack in a lot more detail from a wider range of areas (things to do, transport, safety, etc). WV's content is much broader in scope than the other sister sites, and is likely to be useful to many of our visitors.
  • ...and lots more reasons to support. — This, that and the other (talk) 06:31, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment:It should be all in or all out, nothing just for one of the sisters. Wikivoyage is not a special case. for example, someone looking up a book could equally expect to find that copy listed at the top for Wikisource, an annotated version at Wikibooks, etc. The management of spam is not a valid argument, and you cannot truly believe that it will stop the addition, and on a similar note we are not wishing to distribute the spam to Wikivoyages anyway. Quite a specious argument, some already spam both enWP and enVoy, and similarly across many of the languages (and to note that I see a fair amount of these sorts of xwiki link additions) Think encyclopaedic! Think what may be possible via infoboxes. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:33, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Your first point about not playing favourites is true. However, we must make sure we don't overdo it. I would find it very difficult to justify placing Wikiquote, Wikinews (it will often add little that is not already in the encyclopedia article and its sources) or Wikiversity in a "header" position under any circumstances. Wiktionary, maybe at the top. Wikivoyage and Wikisource, yes (although I still think Wikivoyage has the best case). Wikispecies has highly specialised content so it should go at the bottom. We should distinguish between "further reading", which users may want to look at after reading the article (use existing footer links), and "alternative" types of information, which they may be looking for instead of our article (use header links). — This, that and the other (talk) 08:53, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      Well, there is certainly a case for placing all sister projects on top − see for example « Guillaume Paumier and Elisabeth Bauer. “Strengthening and Unifying the Visual Identity of Wikimedia Projects: a Step Towards Maturity.” In Wikimania 2007, 1–10. Taipei, 2007 (slides). Jean-Fred (talk) 15:15, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • You seem to be missing a vital point - that travel information is particularly relevant to many readers of these country and city articles. In contrast, I don't see how a link to a Wikispecies page (for instance) would be useful in most city articles, but it could be relevant for readers of a species article (and Wikivoyage probably wouldn't be). --Avenue (talk) 12:43, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Wikipedia is to be an encyclopedia. It is not here to serve as promotion to other Wikimedia projects. These sorts of links are at best handled on a case-by-case basis for whether they are even suitable for the External Links section in the first place, but promoting them for special placement on article is simply not at all what we are here for. DreamGuy (talk) 03:40, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    With the suggested technical implementation it would still be possible to decided on case-by-case basis whether to link from the External links section, the top of the article or at all. In particular, this proposal, if accepted, does not address the question of whether it would only be appropriate to link from the top of an article if Wikivoyage guide is already well developed—to ensure the reader will be presented with useful information—or also to "stub" articles—to encourage additional contributions to our sister project.
    Additionally, I disagree with the statement that "[Wikipedia] is not here to serve as promotion to other Wikimedia projects." Wikipedia already does so an a wide scale. This proposal is merely a suggestion to do it in a more effective way, to the benefit of both Wikipedia and its readers. —Ruud 10:18, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I wasn't convinced by the main rationale given in the proposal. Wikipedia isn't here to promote sister projects, as others have said above. But making Wikimedia's travel content more prominent atop these articles will be useful to many of our readers, and should help improve both Wikipedia and Wikivoyage content by reducing misdirected edits (as explained by JamesA and Ryan Vesey above). I'd have no objection to similarly prominent placement of links to pages on other sister sites, where these are especially relevant. Disclaimer: I have made nearly 200 edits to Wikivoyage, so perhaps I'm biased, although I also have hundreds on Wikinews and Wikidata, and thousands on Wikipedia and Commons. --Avenue (talk) 12:30, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the "subtle" version. I think this is a great idea. Wikipedia is not a travel guide; many readers will come here looking for travel guide type information, and will be disappointed when they don't find it. So I think it is in the readers best interest to link to Wikivoyage at the top; it will also emphasize that travel guide type information is probably better suited elsewhere. Since it's a sister project with useful, relevant content, it's consistent with Wikipedia's aims to link to it. Mark M (talk) 13:40, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support if other wikis are linked in the same fashion as Ruud Koot describes. Pokajanje|Talk 05:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Exactly per Dreamguy. It can be a great external link, but is not always fitting so should be decided on a case-by case basis. Definitely doesn't belong on top but should be in the external links section. Same as Commons, WikiQuote, WikiSource etc etc Garion96 (talk) 14:42, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. This is an encyclopedia, where the encyclopedic information comes first and links to additional resources are footnotes, no matter how special one thinks they are. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:04, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Rmhermen. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:43, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Don't care. As a uniquely location-specific wiki, it seems sensible to put the link right there next to the location. The argument about all other subjects needing to be treated identically is fallacious: books don't have a special coordinates tag at the top, or anything equivalent, so there's nothing already there to attach a Wikisource link to. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:03, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Does not disturb the article in anyway (instead makes it more beautiful), helps the needed and curious readers in the way they want), creates more editors as practically anyone can contribute to Wikivoyage (unlike the [virtually] saturated Wikipedia with a set of never ending policies).···Vanischenu「m/Talk」 20:19, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support The job of Wikipedia is to provide people with information. Most people searching for a place would be interested in a travel guide. It makes sense. Mono 23:53, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. It will help direct readers and contributors to a more useful location. The same thing should be done with Species, Source, 'Tionary (for "the" and the like), etc. -- Ypnypn (talk) 19:29, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

make "speedy delete proposal" and "prod" flags to be given by admins

Just saw an(other) example of a new, teen-aged "patroller" pissing off useful new older contributor with a good article (10 sources eventually) by proposing something for speedy in 2 minutes. Seriously...this is not a new record. Has been going on for years. Why not make this a flag to be added (or perhaps taken away) by admin fiat?

And I am really not into admins or trinket awarding or any of that. But since we need to have speedy and have patrollers (to fight the waves of crap), why not have some more accountability and organization. A flag would make things easy. Probably help with newbie attracting and making a nicer environment and less of a first person shooter that Sue complains about. Is a very easy fix too.

TCO (talk) 08:52, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct that this has been an issue for years. I'm not sure if it's technically possible to restrict this because it is just adding deletion templates to the articles. I've seen people propose that WP:NPP and WP:RCP should be userrights, which is possible but the idea hasn't gained any traction so far. Another proposal was that articles be given a grace period of X amount of hours, but this was shot down because of concerns about WP:BLPs and attack pages. The usual reccomendation is to educate the people that are doing it wrong. There may have been other suggestions, but I don't recall right now. 64.40.54.147 (talk) 01:33, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Bad speedy deletion tags will alkways be an issue, just as bad edits and creation of bad articles will always be an issue. Education is not just how we do we deal with these issues, it is how we should deal with them. We need CSD patrollers to find all the crappy articles being created every minute of every day. It never lets up, so making users jump through more hoops before we even let them tag an article would not, on the whole, be helpful.
I find it troubling that there seem to be an increasing number of users who apparently desire the creation of new policies preventing everything that they don't want to deal with. Wikipedia does not need to become a police state, there are more than enough rules already. Talk to users who are doing it wrong. (there are even templates for this if it is too much trouble to write a paragraph explaining the problem) If they won't listen, open a community discussion such as WP:RFC/U about it. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:54, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I did some data analysis on this recently in my official role; actual, undone reviews are few and far between. Novice patrollers are few and far between. Frankly, we need far more of them, and I don't quite understand how creating an additional hoop for potential patrollers to jump through will achieve anything except "you're less likely to have someone take issue with your article, because nobody will ever review your article, regardless of how terrible it is". I share Beeblebrox's concerns. Ironholds (talk) 00:30, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Oliver, as community liaison for the WMF, you have done an incredible job making things better, so I have faith in what you're saying. But I hope you will understand that I still have a concern. The general public knows that Wikipedia is a hostile place for new users. The news media has been reporting this for over half a decade. See Wikipedia uncovered (2007) and Editors depart as Wikipedia becomes 'hostile' (2009) as just two of the many examples. The community has known of these issues since at least 2006 when WP:QUIT was created. The community confirmed the problem with WP:NPP when it ran the WP:NEWT experiment in 2009. The scientific study in 2010 by the WMF at strategy:Editor Trends Study and specifically strategy:Attracting and retaining participants#Barriers to increased participation also confirmed the problems at WP:RCP and WP:NPP. And Sue reiterated the problems with reverts and deletions at RCP and NPP in the strategy:March 2011 Update. As an IP editor, the community treats me the same way as the general public or any new user so I am keenly aware of these issues. I prefer being an IP specifically for this reason, because it allows me to judge the health of the project and to see if it's getting better or worse. If you have new data that shows these issues are no longer a problem, it would be great news. 64.40.54.122 (talk) 14:56, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is true that we still get novice new page patrollers who learn on the job and in some cases commit seriously bad mistakes before they improve or go away. I recently came across someone who thought that if an assertion of importance was unsourced it was not credible, so he was tagging articles for speedy deletion simply because they were unsourced. In that sense the problems we found during wp:NEWT are very much still with us. I'm not convinced that the solution is to make prodding or newpage patrol a userright, though we could perhaps create some training material for new patrollers. We also need to simplify an over complex set of rules and make things less bitey. Delayed action tags for goodfaith articles would be useful here. That would enable us to give goodfaith articles a period of grace whilst at the same time zapping the badfaith stuff as fast as it comes in. I'd also like us to reduce template bombing by replacing some of the unnecessary templates like uncategorised with an auto generated hidden category for maintenance purposes. Easy ways to make things less bitey also include making it mandatory to at least tell someone that you'd tagged their article for speedy deletion, I recently came across an editor who regularly tags articles for deletion whilst leaving the author with a redlinked talkpage. Currently that sort of bityness is allowed - we don't allow people to file AN/I reports on each other without telling them and it seems inconsistent to me that we allow people to deletion tag without informing the authors. We could also go some way to reducing the problems at NPP by tweaking the Mediawiki code to resolve more simultaneous edits without rejecting so many edits as edit conflicts. But sadly the WMF gives a higher priority to bad ideas like the AFT than to important and useful things like resolving more edit conflicts whilst losing fewer edits. ϢereSpielChequers 13:54, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that a user right for WP:NPP and WP:RCP is not a good solution. I only mentioned that others suggested it in the past. Another suggestion that was made a few years ago was an NPP school for new patrollers. But that never got off the ground. I still believe that NPP and RCP are the most bitey places for new users and that we should try to fix that problem somehow. I would like to see WP:Page Curation for the front of the queue focus exclusively on BLP vios, attack pages, copy vios, and other urgent stuff. And that issues that are only Quality related would be on hold for a few hours so that the writer wasn't tagged in the middle of an edit session while still building the article. Best regards. 64.40.54.4 (talk) 18:16, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My experience in examining articles tagged for speedy before I delete them is very different from what Oliver reports, but perhaps that is because I try to work with the tricky ones, and am more concerned with catching errors than in doing the obvious. And I see at least as many errors in failing to tag the major problems, such as copyvio, as in over-tagging. I do not think there is an easy solution to be achieved by tinkering with policy. The only real solution is to identify patrollers who need education, and educate them, and very few of us actually work at that. I wouldn't want to restrict anyone from tagging--we must identify problems while we can catch them. But I think it would help is some minimal degree of experience were required before marking pages as patrolled, perhaps the level for review at PC.(and similarly for approving or rejecting articles at AfC) DGG ( talk ) 19:25, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Unsurprisingly, I find myself opposing another one of TCO's ideas. Simply put, restricting access to a suite of templates (aside from that it's likely to be impossible to do from a technical standpoint) just to combat one bad practice is terrible overkill. If you want there to be a grace period before things are put up for deletion, start an RfC and get it as policy, then convince people to enforce said change in policy. I can tell you right now that the RfC is going to fail, but nonetheless that's what you're going to need to do. That, or you can approach the people doing the tagging one on one and calmly explain your position on tagging for deletion so soon after an article is created. That might have slightly more success, although you're still not going to fix the situation entirely. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:41, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's already policy that certain CSD tags should not be added to minutes-old pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:09, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lack of comments and Problems

Click "show" to see the problem in detail.
I think, because of the lack of neutral members interested in controversial topics (Kashmir, territorial disputes, Human-rights, etc), there is currently a trend where more bad edits are justified easily and good ones are perennially in need of justification. Yes, I may seem simplistic. I intend to be.

I can only present one of my typical days of so-called "content dispute", it generally starts of by me making an edit in good-faith, an edit that is most objectively correct and intended to be a fair assessment of all the sources I have at my disposal.

Now, someone else notices my edit and right away reverts it, obviously claiming that it was not improving the article or something along the lines of "it is not needed". Frankly, these sort of rationale seem perilously similar to WP:IDON'TLIKEIT. I try and try to make them listen but it feels like (s)he is not interested. Meanwhile, an admin tells me to seek "wider input" — I like it, good advice. My input-request in WP:ORN/WP:RSN sits there like a lame duck - no comments - not for days, sometimes even 1 or 2 weeks without a single comment. Then, if I am lucky after a jolt or ardor on the talk page, one generous member (who apparently didn't read my request carefully) comes to give input. Sometimes I try to reason with him with a reply of mine, but he disappears never to be seen again on that thread. I am not allowed to go to ANI with only a request for comment.

I don't know how to solve this much apathy towards certain topics, do you?

I have deliberately avoided diff-hunting, I am not pointing at any special incident (there are multiple back-to-back incidents) and reeling off names. It is not the members, but the system.

Problem
With DRN a volunteer can suggest the next logical course in their closing comments. But I am talking about neutral and durable comments on the content not suggestions. Also requests for inputs and requests for comment, as I have noticed during my time here, rarely attract completely neutral editors because the editors who respond to such requests usually and unsurprisingly have some level of there opinions predetermined. I don't blame them; perhaps I would also respond to only those requests that resonate with me and about which I have some sort of reflection, reservation.
Proposal

Let us discuss and create some mechanism which will force other neutral and uninterested editors into commenting fairly. We are not a democracy, are we? At least create a special discussion board (similar to afd) that will notify neutral editors more flagrantly. Don't get me wrong, I don't want it to be disruptive. But surely we can find some way to simply fetch more neutral comments to avoid traditional but unacceptable bias. Thank you all.

P.S. please don't make it an issue about me. I didn't come here to solve my own problems, I am here to solve the apathy and the system at large. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 08:13, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • As long as there is controversy in the world, there will be controversy on Wikipedia. We have a variety of means, including RfC alerts and discussion listings, to attract neutral feedback. If one is not getting the responses one wants, one can either be bold and address the problem yourself or pursue dispute resolution. You're right, we're not a democracy, but we are a free encyclopedia. Editors can contribute in fields of interest to them, and there's no way people will be "forced" to offer feedback. dci | TALK 22:21, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That must have come out in the wrong way. I didn't mean it to be literally "forcing" someone, more like persuading them to comment just like we are notified of some of the more consequential discussions through our watchlists every once in a while. That is something not everyone can avail. Is this helping to clear what I am proposing?

P.S. I have collapsed the details of the problem to save space, albeit I encourage everyone to read it. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 16:55, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment There is a process in place for that now. Editors may sign up at the RfC noticeboard and be periodically dinged on random comment requests. It's just finding or encouraging more editors to sign up for this. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 22:22, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I didn't know that but how to encourage adequate number of people to comment? Any ideas? Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 18:01, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How many times have you commented usefully at RFCs on topics that you don't care about? What can we do that would convince you to spend your limited and precious time doing this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep overzealous editors in check to get more donations. Discourage deletion of contributions

You know, you probably wouldn't have to ask so many times for donations if you kept your more passionate users like Editor-A in check. Just take a look at his user talk page to see how many other ordinary and well-intentioned users he's pissed off. Each of those is a potential donor, as was I.

But why would we donate to something that seems to be controlled by a very small group of people who seem to enjoy enforcing their views, even on subjects in which they have less expertise than us. While that small minority seems to be your most passionate user base, it's the majority they are pissing off who are your biggest potential donor base.

Editor-B who just removed this proposal is another great example of the kind of editor who is killing wikipedia's credibility for getting donations from the general public. I have nothing to gain by spending my time doing this. But I believe in wikipedia and that it could work if editors like this are kept in check. And I just don't want to use my real id and risk it getting "banned" by going against these overzealous "moderators".

Feel free to delete this suggestion again. Just remember it the next time you plaster the site requesting us for donations.

  • Personally, I feel that encyclopedic quality should come before the $. If you feel that editors are making editor retention more difficult or have violated WP:NEWCOMER, I suggest you inform them of your concerns while logged in, and at their talk pages. This is preferable to sections at VPR which border on personal attacks. dci | TALK 12:45, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Bazonka and DCI2026. I have cleaned up the language a bit and added a suggestion at the bottom of this edit.
Note that a lot of us newbies genuinely want to contribute to wikipedia, in content and cash. But then our content efforts are rudely thwarted by those who seem to know less than us in our subjects of expertise (I speak from an experience over several months and 2 different subjects). Such behavior compromises not only donations, but also the quality of content.
Now we newbies may not know the right procedure but if wikipedia already has processes to control such behavior, shouldn't these regular editors know about them and be following them? If they are following them, then maybe the current checks are not enough to prevent such behavior.
As a suggestion, may I recommend that outright deletions of contributions by others be discouraged? Deletion is very discouraging for a contributor who doesn't know the politically correct wikipedia procedure; as well as downright rude. If an editor has a problem with a contribution, let him correct it, or at least tell the contributor how to. [OP]
I luv Editor-B. He's the kinda guy who thinks that a four letter reference to 1950s fantasy fiction is more descriptive than a geo-locatable number. And we all know how important it is for a serious reference work to have identified authors.. like.. well some guy named in the language of Mordor. Honest.
I don't want to make this personal. The intention was to make wikipedia easier for the general public to contribute to. But Editor-B is actually a great example of the kind of editor I'm talking about. His user page actually says "Though I do have an image to uphold as a dick who only deletes and rarely creates". A culture where a regular is actually proud of his reputation for deletions without contributions is truly disturbing. [OP]
  • Comment It is true that many, perhaps most, new editors find Wikipedia to be a hostile place. It is also true that we have been losing editors for years. Many of these problems are related to how users treat each other—and we should definately work on this issue. But it's usually not a good idea to name specific editors in a general conversation like this. If there are specific issues with a specific editor, it is best to let that editor know and try to work things out with them on their talk page. If that doesn't work, then follwing the advice at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution is the next best step. If we want to have a general conversation about the general problem, then specific names of individuals should be avoided. That way the conversation doesn't take a sour turn and, in the end, becomes much more productive. Now, having said all that, I can sympathize with your general concerns as I have run across these types of problems with many different people on the project. It is an issue that needs to be solved for the good of trhe community. So far, we have not been able to find a solution. Any suggestions you may have would certainly be welcome. 64.40.54.4 (talk) 16:09, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I thought of this too before I read your comment and I agree. Getting personal would be counter productive. I've taken the liberty of replacing the specific names with generic ones (all of them in my posts except one instance). I hope that's OK. [OP]
Thank you. I appreciate the update. Personally, I would like to see the WMF do a study on a group of 1,000 new users asking them to report if/when they felt bitten to see if there is a common demoninator. That way we could see if certain policies (or whatever) could be the underlying cause. Then we could make the required changes. It's just a thought I had. Cheers. 64.40.54.4 (talk) 17:47, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
One needs to remember that Wikipedians are real people, and there are lots of types of people in the world: helpful ones and rude ones, thoughtful ones and hot-headed ones, meek ones and strong-charactered ones. Some are welcoming and understanding of new users, and others are impatient and dismissive. Of course new editors can feel intimidated or discouraged by the less welcoming Wikipedians, but the helpful ones are out there - we have a welcoming committee for precisely this purpose, for example.
In terms of whether a new user's contributions should be deleted or not really depends on what they are. Serious copyright or WP:BLP violations should be reverted (as should obvious vandalism of course), but in other cases, perhaps the added text just needs tweaking or moving - the new users can perhaps learn by seeing what is done to it. At the very least there should be a decent explanation in the edit summary that explains why the text was deleted or changed. New users are more likely to ask questions and learn if the other editor is polite and/or explanatory when they delete the inserted text, rather than if the summary just says "revert" or similar. Wikipedia-style jargon in edit summaries (e.g. "rvt copyvio"), whilst well-meant, may also be confusing to newbies.
This is a big issue, and there is no simple way to resolve it. It will be impossible to change the personalities of the editors at large. I honestly don't know how to address it, but please try not to let the actions of a few cloud your experience. Bazonka (talk) 21:23, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's encouraging to see some editors who actually understand the seriousness of the issue. We can't change the people but we can change policy, which in turn will change people. The current policy seems to be "guilty until proven innocent", or to shoot first and ask questions later. My suggestion is to strongly discourage deletion of any edit that has content of any value, however little. The focus should be cleanup and integration of edits rather than blind removals which harm both content quality and participation. If an editor does not have time to clean up an edit himself, let him tell the contributor how to. What we have now instead is a culture that prides itself in removal and exclusion.
Then there is the issue of hostility towards newbies - both in process and by people. Just look at the number of links a non-wikipedian SME would have to go through to make a contribution. Complex processes and jargon simply make it easier for the regular minority to control the system and harder for the majority and the real experts to contribute. Again, I believe that a policy change from deletions to integrations will help solve this.
Ignoring or belittling the problem won't make it go away. There are numerous other websites that are also discussing this very same issue and advising against donations to wikipedia for the same reason. Only time will tell which side will be proven right. [OP]
  • Since when did the Village Pump become the Whinge Pump? Yes, I attempted to remove this section this morning, because it is the same nonsense that one sees crap up on Jimbo's talk page and elsewhere from time-to-time; a garden variety "someone removed my edits so I'm not gonna donate" bit. Always non-specific, always a generalised tirade against authority. We we eventually dig down to the actual details of the complaint, it invariably turns out to be someone who did not understand WP:NPOV, is mad that their favorite local bar band cannot have an article, and so on. If a user, new or otherwise, cannot understand what "rvt copyvio" means, then that is a person I would not welcome to the project in the first place. "Competence is required". Tarc (talk) 22:46, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if you have actually read the Newbie section of CIR? Bazonka (talk) 18:42, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • YAWN Same "Someone hurt me so I'm going to hurt wikipedia by not donating" that we see 2~3 times a week. You wouldn't expect to be able to jump directly into the NFL after watching a single game on TV, yet that's what a lot of the "Bit" editors try to do. When you're new in a community, you don't jump into the middle of a heated discussion, you observe from the sidelines to understand how things work. Hasteur (talk) 02:35, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • One thing is for certain. It is people like you, Tarc and Hasteur, who are bringing Wikipedia down. Newbies whine on the Village Pump because you are actually behaving like assholes towards them. (And I believe the word asshole is perfectly justified based on the content of the two entries above.)/81.170.148.21 (talk) 22:32, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also, newbie is misleading term. New to Wikipedia's complex rules perhaps, but some of us are experts in our own fields, sometimes with years of experience (12 in my case). That experience is what you lose out by having young and overzealous editors running around deleting whatever they don't agree with. All you'll get in such an environment is a giant magazine, not an encyclopedia of real value. [OP]

We're not the NFL. Professional level skill is not expected here, either initially or later. Nor are we a group of long-time associates who aren't going to let anyone else into their game unless they know the magic words. DGG ( talk ) 19:06, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As you can see from the comment just above yours, that is just what seems to be expected by a lot of the existing editors - not knowledge of one's subject, but knowledge of wikipedia's rules. Those rules are used as the excuse to remove any contributions that these editors don't agree with. This subjective censorship by a limited few with more time on their hands is what is making wikipedia increasingly known as good for casual reading but unreliable on any serious subject - more magazine than encyclopedia. Not my words, just look for any discussion on the topic online. [OP]
OP, did you consider looking into the Teahouse? Or maybe Project Editor Retention? We would love to hear your views on these two projects, especially if you make an account. Unfortunately, these two are the closest structures that we have to guide/protect newcomers, and to lead them correctly. And as much as i would like measures to keep "Overzealous editors in check", I am certain that those very editors would ensure shelving of any such proposal immediately. So I am not going to place my bets on that one. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 12:38, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have, TheOriginalSoni, and I already have an account. As I said, I didn't use it here because I didn't want to risk getting banned by these editors. Though it's encouraging to see the discussion being taken seriously now, it's still strange that using one's own time to make a contribution of any real value to Wikipedia is such a long, thankless and painful process. One would easily assume that making a donation will be a similar experience. It shouldn't be that hard to have culture that is helpful and polite. I've modified the heading of this section to highlight my actual suggestion. [OP]
Making people be polite in a large, busy, anonymous virtual forum is an extremely difficult task that AFAIK has only been achieved in the long run with very heavy punishments for anyone who is even slightly off the mark.
I'm not sure that it has a significant effect on donations. Most occasional users aren't donors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
These things are always debatable but I know it did affect mine. It also seems to be a pretty common complaint and the ones who actually say it out loud are usually just the tip of the iceberg. Anyway, natural selection will eventually take its course. Either the issue is not significant and won't affect Wikipedia. Or it is and something better will take Wikipedia's place. Let's see what happens. In any case, Wikipedia seems to have more donations than it knows what to do with so this discussion is pretty pointless. [OP]

Proposal: Add height as a parameter for all biographical infoboxes

Currently, athletes and a few other types of biographies accept height as a parameter. I propose that height be added as an acceptable parameter to all biographical infoboxes. Here are the following reasons why:

  1. It’s something people want to know, and not just about athletes
  2. It’s not really trivial. There’s a whole article devoted to how important a person’s height is to success in a number of fields
  3. Even if it was trivial, there are a lot of trivial things allowed as infobox parameters. Case in point: signature. How many curlicues are in a person’s signature has no effect on their success or failure in a particular field

pbp 15:47, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose unless reliable sources specifically mention a person's height as significant, which is usually the case for athletes and almost never the case for anyone else. In that case it should go in the article before going in the infobox. Regarding your points:
  1. You're asserting that with no backup. I could just as easily assert that nobody cares and nobody wants to know, and it would be equally baseless.
  2. That would be an example of WP:Synth. Just because height can contribute to success, and a person is successful, does not mean we can imply or assume that their success was related to their height unless a reliable source makes that connection.
  3. Signatures and height are both trivial and neither belongs in the infobox. I will happily sign onto any proposal to keep signatures out as well.
At the very least, I hope you agree that height should not even be brought up unless it can be sourced, not to some celebrity height list but a legitimate academic source. Internet-sourced height is very often estimated, and with very low precision. Designate (talk) 17:22, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We might want to take a hard look at the Wikipedia pages on this list... --Guy Macon (talk) 20:08, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure you could find a reliable source for hundreds of non-athletes with Wikipedia articles. And a few hundred articles is more than enough to justify the additional parameter. Heck, the heights of U.S. presidents alone gets you 10% there! I never said that it could be sourced for everybody or that the parameter needed to be used in every person's infobox. There are loads of parameters that aren't used in 70, 80, 90 percent of infoboxes, but still have the option to be used pbp 21:32, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I'd favor removing all of these things before adding another field, much less one as mind-numbingly trivial as height. Nothing attracts unsourced data as quickly as an infobox.—Kww(talk) 20:22, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please read point #2. How tall somebody is ISN'T "mind-numbingly trivial". People like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln had a leg up because they were tall; Washington was chosen as General of the Continental Army in part due to his commanding presence. You've also ignored point #1, the point that people are interested pbp 21:32, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are a few exceptions, but it's trivia for most of our biographies, and, when important, can be stated in the article where it can be explained exactly why it is important. Infoboxes are one of the worst features of Wikipedia. Their use should be discouraged, and I strongly oppose the addition of any more fields.—Kww(talk) 21:44, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - no need to add a field that will be just full of guess work all over the encyclopedia. Moxy (talk) 21:55, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As I said above, there are hundreds of them that can be reliably sourced. As with anything else in a template, stuff that isn't can be removed. I'm not seeing the problem here; there are numerous other fields that are just as bad and already existent pbp 22:03, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Feel free to use an infobox that does have height as a parameter, for those cases, like {{infobox person}}. Apteva (talk) 03:46, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Designate described the situation well. What next, favorite color? Name of pet? If a reliable source has written that Lincoln's height was significant the article should mention that (in the lead if it were really significant). But putting it in an infobox conveys the impression that this website is heading away from encyclopedia towards factoid collection. We do not need a new thing to argue pointlessly about: except for rare cases, it just does not matter. Johnuniq (talk) 22:08, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do not see any need for it to be in all biography infoboxes. We do use it for {{Infobox pageant titleholder}}, {{Infobox basketball biography}}, {{Infobox football biography}}. It is not available in {{Infobox officeholder}}, and it is pretty hard to get reliable height information for politicians. Apteva (talk) 03:46, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggest an RfC. There seem to be a lot of editors who think that some of the existing fields should not be there, and some unknown number (we have only asked about height) who want more. I suggest that someone (perhaps Purplebackpack89?) post a WP:RFC to get a wider community input on what should and should not be in the generic BLP infobox. You can put me down as wanting a Dalek Supreme Yes/No field -- I don't know how many times I have read a BLP that fails to answer the question "Is he/she a Dalek Supreme?" After all, isn't whether someone is dedicated to exterminating all organic life more important than how tall they are? :) --Guy Macon (talk) 11:18, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • 'Comment Normally an infobox has more fields than any one article uses, because we don't want to have a great number of custom-tailored ones, but rather a limited number that can be properly maintained. The general ones have all possible parameters; more specialized ones are built on the general ones and will have the appropriate parameters. Height can be important, and then the re is a general infobox available. But normally it is not, and we shouldn't be encouraging non- encyclopedic details in articles. It's relevant for athletes, and models, and some types of performers. It's rare important otherwise. DGG ( talk ) 03:03, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment My gut says to oppose this, largely based on my experience watching the population of birth date (as opposed to birth year), and the fair amount of horribly sourced junk that gets put into the field as a result, my favorite was the set of voice actors someone had sourced to a PDF stored in an upload directory of a fashion college. In general this information is not going to be significant to a brief summary of an individual, and including it infobox lends too much weight to it. (Athletes and models are sensible exceptions.) When well sourced it can always be included in-text. Ditto for blood type, astrological sign, weight, and so on. --j⚛e deckertalk 03:30, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Exterminate! I mean oppose. In most cases, this will be trivial. How tall was Charles Darwin? Charles Dickens? Plato? It doesn't matter. In those cases where it matters - as demonstrated by independent resources commenting that, for instance, "Napoleon's height affected his actions by..." or so-and-so was so influential partly because of a statuesque height - it can be added with appropriate explanatory discussion in the text. LadyofShalott 03:49, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Doesn't go far enough: Things like favourite colour and names of pets have already been mentioned above. But if we keep to the subject of bodily characteristics and measurements, there is no reason to limit them to length. Waist and chest circumference should be included, as should the length and circumference of upper and lower arms and legs, hat size and shoe size. These are all extremely important for properly understanding a subject. These measurements can then be extracted as machine-readable data (very important!) for historical purposes, for instance for analysing whether gymnasts or ballet dancers with a large waist circumference have generally been more successful than those with a smaller one, or the opposite. It can also make the job easier for tailors, hat- or shoemakers. In case one of these subjects would need a suit or a hat that is, or if someone (for whatever reason) would like to make a jacket fitting Lord Nelson, either before or after losing his arm (any relevant changes in measurements need to be clearly included in the box). And, oh! Optical data of the sort opticians use! We need that! Could be very useful in subjects like military history to know at what point a general would have been able to spot the enemy. And for writers on art history, it may be useful to know how clearly Monet could see his water lilies at different points in his career. And once all these measurements have been put in infoboxes, Wikipedia severely needs another large set of huge garish navigational boxes to make it easier for the reader to proceed from one article to any other article on a person with the same length, waist measurement or shoesize. I'm sure there is a way to add more succession boxes based on this data, even though I cannot think of one at the moment. All this work needs to be organized by Wikipedia:WikiProject Bodily measurements. The project members will add their tags to all the other project tags on the talk pages of articles and rate them according to the importance and quality scales of the project. --Hegvald (talk) 12:44, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thank you thank you thank you. If only I could be sure no one will enthusiastically embrace your proposal, I would thank you some more. Johnuniq (talk) 10:36, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What's in an infobox RfC?

(Moved here from my talk page Guy Macon (talk) 08:59, 5 March 2013 (UTC))[reply]

First off, remind me to add that "Dalek or not" quandary to Jon Pertwee's infobox. Anyway, should I start the "what fields should be in an infobox" RfC as: a) A subthread of the existing discussion, b) another PUMP thread, or c) somewhere else entirely pbp 14:49, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think the RfC should be at Template talk:Infobox and advertised on various other pages. I am not sure how familiar you are with RfCs, but if you need help, write up what you think it should look like in your sandbox and I will be happy to assist in tweaking it. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:26, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Uncolored duplicate wiki links

Wikipedia's policy to generally not duplicate wikilinks in the same article makes sense from a visual standpoint, but when you think of the way people tend to use Wikipedia articles, it makes less sense. People skip around for the information they need, far more than they read articles from beginning to end. Coming across an unlinked important term later in an article, one must search back for the link or hope the corresponding info is easy enough to find by searching Wikipedia manually.

I'd like to propose allowing duplicate wikilinks in articles, though perhaps still keeping them unique to each paragraph or section — while also providing wiki code to either keep the duplicate links uncolored, or imbue them with a more subtle color or marking than the default.

For example, an important term could be linked the first time it appears in each section, with only the first such link in the entire article actually being colored using default link coloring, and the rest being either uncolored, or more subtley colored, or otherwise marked, perhaps only upon hovering the mouse over them. Equazcion (talk) 03:01, 4 Mar 2013 (UTC)

It's a good idea, the trick is going to be in finding a method of pulling it off that won't start an angry mob. I, for example, detest anything involving mouse hovering, and I think that having links that are the same color as the base text is going to just be confusing, but am open to other ideas. That the popups tool exists and is widely used means that there's a strong likelyhood that other users won't have nearly the same issue with hover text as I do. I guess that the point that I'm trying to make is that even minor UI changes get people pissy, and there's no way to do this without it being a major change. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:33, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd oppose the introduction of different levels of wikilinks as making Wikipedia even more confusing. If a term should be wikilinked, it should be wikilinked, even if it already had been wikilinked before in an earlier section. Also you say "Wikipedia's policy to generally not duplicate wikilinks in the same article <snip>". Which policy is that? -- Toshio Yamaguchi 08:04, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to propose allowing duplicate wikilinks in articles, though perhaps still keeping them unique to each paragraph or section - my understanding is that this is a lot closer to the practice which actually exists than the strict wording of the MoS would suggest. A reasonable level of relinking - not as high as one per paragraph, but one per major section or per screenful of text - is usually seen as sensible. Andrew Gray (talk) 09:40, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Equazcion: Are you referring to WP:REPEATLINK? -- Toshio Yamaguchi 16:17, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I understand Equazcion's concern. I would support adding links on first mention per second-level section, but not more, so articles don't get flooded with links. --NaBUru38 (talk) 14:53, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a creative idea, but if I skip to the middle of the article, I'd rather have it be easy to spot the link. If the same link is provided a couple of times in an article, that doesn't usually bother me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:25, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think that important links should be allowed to be duplicated into the See Also section. And that each section be allowed to have a repeated link in the first instance. They should stay as blue links. The current guideline is just unhelpful to users of Wikipedia, instead being only useful to editors. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 04:03, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's no firm rule against repeating a link in See also. It's commonly not seen as necessary or desirable (think about how long Cancer#See also would be, if we listed every term that somebody thought was "important"), but it isn't absolutely prohibited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:27, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Restrict the granting of IP block exemption to CheckUsers

Pretty uncontroversial stuff here. I propose that the assigning of IP block exemption is restricted to CheckUsers. It makes no sense whatsoever for administrators to hand out what is technically an administrative flag based on information that they inherently do not have access to and have no means of verifying. This would have little change in operations — the vast majority of IP block exemptions are granted by CheckUsers anyway — but just like how administrators are instructed not to lift a {{checkuserblock}} on their own terms per WP:CUBL, this would be a welcome and manifestly obvious clarification of policy. WilliamH (talk) 18:07, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. There a legit circumstances where an admin can grant it and they shouldn't be prevented from doing so.©Geni 18:10, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Such as? --Rschen7754 18:12, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) What are those legitimate circumstances? From my understanding of how IPBE should be being used, it has to be applied in conjunction with CU know-how if it's going to be used responsibly. An admin working alone has no way to know whether the user to whom they're giving the ability to evade blocks is someone who has a legitimate use for that right, or an illegitimate one, or none at all, so the best an admin working without CU input can do is close their eyes, click, and hope it doesn't turn out to be the wrong call. Is there some case I don't know about where IPBE should be given that way, flying blind without CU input? A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:16, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well for example, several years ago I was travelling and staying at a hotel in Denver. As it happened that particular hotel routed all of their traffic through a single IP address, and some current or recent guest had been vandalizing, so the IP address was blocked from editing Wikipedia. Obviously, this had nothing to do with me, so I made an inquiry, and had IP block exemption added to my account for a while to get around the fact that my hotel was blocked. While a checkuser might have been brought in, I don't think it is really necessary when users in good standing with a long history happen to get hit by blocks intended for simple vandals. Dragons flight (talk) 19:00, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If a checkuser had been brought in, the chances of the block on the IP address being lifted or altered to anon-only would have been significantly increased, thus not just benefitting you, but also anyone else who was staying in the same hotel. Risker (talk) 19:05, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia talk:IP block exemption/log is really only proof that the vast majority of IP block exemptions logged on that page were granted by CheckUsers. :) If I tally the IPBE grants since 2011-04-09, over two thirds were given by users who have never been CUs. Amalthea 23:13, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support though I'm not sure it will pass. There's too many administrators handing out IPBE like candy without knowing what they are doing (having the technical knowledge to do so) or whether said user really needs the exemption. Note that this will need to go to Bugzilla should it pass. --Rschen7754 18:12, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It won't. I anticipate it being like unblocking CheckUser blocks: technically possible, but in principal, never done. This would be to allow admins to revoke IPBE if requested by the user holding it that they no longer need it. WilliamH (talk) 18:33, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That is still possible through Bugzilla, I believe: you can allow a user to remove a right but not add it. --Rschen7754 18:47, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That is correct, the ability to grant and the ability to remove a right as not linked in mediawiki. Snowolf How can I help? 21:06, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it would probably result in a change in the configuration of administrator permissions. This would be fairly straightforward to accomplish, once consensus is reached. Risker (talk) 18:56, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I too agree that this if approved would go on Bugzilla. It was my understanding that we already should be checking with checkusers in most cases. Snowolf How can I help? 21:06, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Over the course of the last few years, we have seen IPBE granted in situations where there are active sockpuppetry investigations going on off-wiki, and when the reasons users have given for IPBE are highly questionable. Administrators granting IPBE generally do not keep track of the permissions they have granted so do not lift the IPBE in a timely manner; the current reviews are finding accounts granted IPBE where the block that affected the account was lifted long ago, and accounts that have not edited in over a year. As well, administrators are generally not providing sufficient information to editors to whom they grant IPBE, including the increased risk of being blocked and the fact that they are likely to be checkusered regularly as long as the IPBE is in place. But bottom line, administrators do not have access to the checkuser data that is usually necessary in determining whether or not granting IPBE is the appropriate action in addressing a user access request. Risker (talk) 18:56, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ambivalent. I can't envision many circumstances where I would do this, but there are some rare ones. Can someone document that this has actually been a source of trouble? I'm seeing statements above that it has been, but nothing specific enough for me to decide whether there really is problematic granting of IPBE.—Kww(talk) 20:57, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I can think of at least three cases, just off the top of my head and one of which involved me back when I was a new admin, in which admins gave out IPBE and had to have their choice corrected by a CU. Admins tend to assume that since we can give IPBE, that means we're, you know, qualified to decide whether to give IPBE. Usually it turns out that we've done it wrong somehow - either we've granted it without adequate investigation (it can't just be "sure, user isn't visibly in trouble, looks fine" - that's the pit I fell into, for example), or we've granted it to someone who turns out to be using it to abuse, or we've granted it to someone whose situation would be better remedied by something other than a high-powered potential-block-evasion tool. As things currently stand, it's just far too easy for an admin to make an entirely-good-faith mistake and not realize that CU evidence is important for determining whether IPBE is a good option. That's leaving aside the other problem common to admins who give the bit out, which is as Risker says, a failure to tell people with IPBE that the right means they will be investigated more often than normal, and may be subject to wider-than-usual blocks. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 21:07, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support it's already best practice on the English Wikipedia to go bug a checkuser before granting IPBE and I have no issues formalizing this. I also have to say that indeed IPBE should be granted only after detailed explanations, and it seems best to defer it to those who are already expected to know about the technical side of things rather than expect an admin to handle it. Snowolf How can I help? 21:04, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Although this is a legitimate reason to leave the ability technically open to administrators. The original granting of IPBE by policy should be restricted to CU's. Crazynas t 06:05, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The underlying assumption of the CheckUser tool is that 1 IP addressdevice = 1 user. That has not been true for quite a while, due to Network Address Translation, Mobile computing, Proxy servers etc. I think that many, many, users edit from multiple devices in different locations. Granting IPBE is a statement of trust - that a particular user is not a sockmaster. That judgement call is better made by an admin who is familiar with the particular user account in question, rather than by a neutral CheckUser on the basis of outdated technical tools. --Surturz (talk) 10:22, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • .... what? That has never been the assumption of the CU tool. --Rschen7754 10:26, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • 'Internet device" then. The underlying issue is that one device likely has multiple users, one user likely has multiple devices, and device info in HTTP headers isn't even that reliable. Unless we implement social-media-website levels of privacy invasion, the CU tool will become less and less useful. --Surturz (talk) 12:16, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • You clearly do not understand how the checkuser tool works. No checkuser worth anything at all will ONLY use the IP address data in determining whether two accounts are related. The conclusion is made based on the exact circumstances of the IPs involved, the typical characteristics of the internet provider(s), the user agent(s) involved, the edits made, the timings of the edits, the typical characteristics of the sockpuppeteer (if known), and a host of other things that taken together paint a unique picture in each specific case (and the picture is not always a straightfoward one - indeed, it very, very rarely is). Let me be clear: If checkusers blocked accounts based only on IP information alone, at least 50% (likely more) of all user accounts on this site would be blocked. J.delanoygabsadds 15:48, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • One of your statements concern me. You state that "That judgement call is better made by an admin who is familiar with the particular user account in question, rather than by a neutral CheckUser on the basis of outdated technical tools." The way I can interpret this is that let's get a person who may be involved rather than someone who is a neutral party. This is not how it works here. Actually, most of the IPBE flags I've seen has been given by neutral parties. So ask yourself then, who would be better at giving out the flag? A neutral admin or a neutral checkuser (who is most likely an admin as well) who has an extra set of tools to aid them in deciding whether or not IPBE is necessary? Furthermore, IPBE is treated as an administrative tool. Taken from the IPBE policy: This is a level of trust equal to that given to administrators. So why don't we have administrators have the technical ability to promote other users to administrators instead of restricting the ability to bureaucrats? Elockid (Talk) 21:30, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • That is not my argument at all. Let's be clear what this policy change is about: the CheckUser team is asking for more power. I've no doubt that this is done in good faith to assist in their mission of stamping out sockpuppetry, but the CheckUser team is very small compared to the number of administrators, so the net effect is that IPBE will be much harder to get. IPBE allows editors to contribute from more locations, so the follow-on effect will be to reduce the amount of contributions to WP. IPBE also helps users proactively remain anonymous and private by enabling them to use WP:TOR etc. (rather than relying on WP's functionaries to protect their privacy). WP's original strength was that it valued the contribution over the contributor - you could edit from anywhere without logging in. From a CU's perspective, doing that is sockpuppetry! In the end we are here to build an encyclopedia, not to assemble a group of trusted encyclopedia editors. In fact, "assembling a group of trusted encyclopedia editors" is complete anathema to Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. If an editor has a sock account with IPBE and uses TOR so he can feel free to edit the Justin Bieber article without giving away that he's a fan, that's a good thing. --Surturz (talk) 01:04, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
            • Well, IPBE is not meant to be easy to get. From the IPBE policy page: The right is given exceptionally and only for good reasons. Furthermore, handing out IPBE for privacy reasons (non-related censorhips, etc) or to have the ability to edit through more locations are not valid or exceptional reasons to having to use IPBE. Elockid (Talk) 02:01, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
              • "Let's be clear what this policy change is about: the CheckUser team is asking for more power." I am almost lost for words at such a enormous sweeping assumption of bad faith. The reason for this policy adjustment is simple: the community has the right to expect that the decisions its administrators make rely on information that admins have access to. When admins hand out rollback, they are not prevented from checking the user's contributions; when admins hand out autopatrolled, they are not prevented from ensuring that the user complies with WP:BLP; IP block exemption should not be an exception to this principle. WilliamH (talk) 10:58, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as useless - What are you going to check? I want IPBE, so I ask a CheckUser to check my account whether I have socks .. no, I don't, so the IPBE gets granted. So, now I can sock, because I can edit through any Proxy I want. What is a CheckUser now exactly going to do to when granting an editor IPBE? Checking whether the editor was before using a proxy that needed IPBE .. wait, that is impossible because that editor would be blocked when he edits through that IP anyway. Whether he lives in an area that requires IPBE or is in a situation that requires IPBE? That is something that anyone can do (including WP:AGF that someone is living in China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia ..). Additionally, are we going to make this a global policy, because any user who is editing on 2 or more wikis will not ask IPBE on the local ones, but globally, which you can't even detect here locally.
    Additional point, 'I need IPBE because I am flying to China next week for <whatever>' - do I now need a CheckUser checking my current position etc. to find out whether I next week need it? --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:51, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To echo Risker, CheckUsers would check the data that is usually necessary in determining whether or not granting IPBE is the appropriate action. As for your additional point, it's irrelevant — a request preemptive of circumstances would never be granted. WilliamH (talk) 14:18, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
'.. the data that is usually necessary in determining whether or not granting IPBE is the appropriate action' .. what exactly would you want to check. If the editor socked before, if the editor is editing regularly through those blocked proxies and needs it, whether they are in a geographical area that would make it reasonable for them to have necessity of them editing through a proxy, what?
A request preemptive of circumstances would never be granted. You say that we should not WP:AGF and assume that that editor genuinly wants to use it? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:49, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I said no such thing. IP block exemption is not granted to individuals before they need it. WilliamH (talk) 14:01, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question, are CheckUsers now also going to check Administrators and others with advanced bits that automatically give IPBE before they are promoted to admin (or whatever)? --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:45, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Since admins are granted IP block exemption purely by virtue of becoming an admin and completely regardlessly of whether they need it or not, this question is irrelevant. WilliamH (talk) 14:18, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, it is not. If a 'normal user' gets granted IPBE it needs to be checkusered, but for becoming an admin, which includes the IPBE it is not. The admins are trusted by the community, and normal editors are not? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:49, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, that's obviously not what I'm saying and my previous comment already gives adequate explanation, but now at least the straw man of the original question has been spelled out. WilliamH (talk) 11:01, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • When this discussion started, I actually checked my user rights to see if IPBE was separable from the admin package, since I don't need it. It's currently not removable from admins, but if it were I see no reason why it shouldn't then be on an as-needed basis for admins as well. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:19, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I would not oppose separating it from the admins, though it is there for the reason that some do edit through general ranges (with changing IPs) and may run into blocks where they are obviously not the 'next account' of the editor, or the 'new account' of the editor, who got blocked before. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:49, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. This would save on a whole lot admin errors/misunderstandings, and I've yet to see anyone present a legitimate situation where a non-CU can adequately determine whether IPBE is a good call. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:19, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per reasons given by Dirk, but also regarding new users who simply have no other way to edit. CheckUser blocks should indeed be checked by CheckUsers to make a full determination, but with open proxies, they must be blocked. No ifs or buts. There may or may not be sockpuppetry going on, but given their open nature, a sockpuppeteer can easily switch onto or off of the IP at will. It is to override these blocks where CheckUser data would not be helpful. I shall illustrate with an example. A user in China wants to edit sensitive political topics, and so must use Tor. They need to prevent their true IP address from being connected to their account in any way. If they try to establish a reputation, get IPBE, and then edit sensitive topics, the government will already have his IP and know who the account belongs to. Let's say he makes a request to UTRS from his true IP. In that case our best bet is to create an account for him with IPBE per AGF and monitor it for abuse. At no point of this process is CheckUser useful. He doesn't have an existing account, so we can't run CheckUser on that. As for his existing IP, we just need to run WHOIS on it to make sure it is really from China. And as for monitoring the account, what's the worst that CheckUser could reveal? A bunch of Tor nodes? That's exactly what we'd expect. Now, on the other hand it could reveal a match with a static IP used by a sockpuppeteer. But if some sockpuppeteer is willing and able to go to such lengths, is he really dumb enough to edit on this account without a proxy, especially since he can? Ultimately, if the user turns out to be a sockpuppet, it will be based on behavioral evidence alone, and not IP addresses used. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:41, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • THIS. My argument exactly, except in coherent and logical form :-) --Surturz (talk) 01:15, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • What has left you with the impression that those users are either (a) refused IPBE by checkusers if they already have an editorial reputation or (b) granted IPBE by anyone if they have no editorial reputation? Unfortunately, Chinese IPs are one of the biggest generators of spam accounts on Wikimedia projects, and anyone who's handing out IPBE to any China-based accounts without an editorial reputation is opening doors that really shouldn't be opened. Risker (talk) 01:27, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • An admin who is friends with the Chinese user in real life could hand IPBE to a new account. That's the point. --Surturz (talk) 01:41, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Requests for IPBE from China are also rare enough (maybe one or two a month) that they are easily monitored. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:51, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Dragons flight. I was unable to edit a while back while travelling due to my IP. I only had a short amount of time available so I did not seek the flag; however, had the block been at my final destination, I would have desired to be unblocked as soon as possible. I see no reason why an admin should not be allowed to give me the flag immediately on review of my unblock request. Ryan Vesey 01:49, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support IP Block Exemption isn't something we hand out very often. Certainly as an admin, I wouldn't grant it without asking a CU to check to make sure I'm not about to give the keys to the kingdom to a prolific sockfarmer. If a legitimate user wishes to be granted IPBE, they should have no reason to worry about a CU checking up on them. This seems an utterly reasonable and sensible thing to do. —Tom Morris (talk) 13:33, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support The current system is too vulnerable to social engineering. Recently there was an example of someone who got IPBE because they might go to China some day. The more important thing we need is a centralized system to track why IPBE was given to each user - which blocked ranges should they use. (IPBE is not a license to edit over arbitrary proxies and ranges.) Having fewer people grant the IPBE bit will be important for keeping that documentation correct. I think we have adequate checkusers for rapid processing of valid requests. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:59, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: I've seen too many instances where IPBE was given out like candy. I'm sure for the most part they were given at good faith but one time flings like getting caught in an autoblock is not something I would call an exceptional or compelling reason. Expanding further, blank reasons such as this or this or not leaving a reason on the IPBE logs page is not acceptable practice. Elockid (Talk) 18:52, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Checkusers already have enough to do, and are also subject to the same mistakes that an admin may make. It would be better to focus attention on the mistakes and have them and their makers corrected. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:59, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support sounds logical. --Guerillero | My Talk 21:21, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - the fact that some admins have incorrectly assigned the exemption doesn't mean that the ability should be removed from all of them. Making it checkuser only introduces an extra layer of bureaucracy and makes it more difficult for a good-faith user to get the help they need. If someone is being given the exemption because they might go to China some day (to use the above example), then that's a training issue for the admin, not a reason to take it away from all admins. --B (talk) 21:41, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question How much damage are admins causing to the project by handing out IPBE too freely? IPBE is the only check and balance non-admins have against problematic rangeblocks. I've shown a number of problematic rangeblocks in the #Restrict rangeblocks to CheckUsers section below. It would be helpful for the community in analyzing the extent of the problem if we could get some examples. Could somebody please list some diffs showing the damage admins are causing by handing out IPBE inapproriately? Thanks. 64.40.57.72 (talk) 03:04, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Because admins are able to make rangeblocks, they should be able to make exceptions from those blocks. Ruslik_Zero 19:09, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question Did anybody ask the CUs if they want their workload increased? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • This proposal was floated on the functionaries mailing list (which includes all CUs) before it was made here. All the CUs (and non-CUs) who opined supported the idea. T. Canens (talk) 19:56, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Can I respectfully suggest that in the future the functionaries mailing lists should refrain from discussing proposed policy changes? It's a violation of the "Stealth canvassing" provision of WP:CANVASS. --Surturz (talk) 23:23, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • Uhh...the proposal floated the list before it got here, and in that thread, someone said we should post it here. So naturally everyone can come here to comment, but not all have. We are allowed to have our own business happen and have a proposal come out of it. It's not called canvassing. -- DQ on the road (ʞlɐʇ) 23:39, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • The proposal was born out of organizing an IPBE cleanup effort and was then brought to the community quite quickly. I understand your concern and it should have been made clear at the start, both to prevent a few misunderstandings and to be transparent about the explicit pointer to this discussion at the "noticeboard" for the affected users. Sorry about that. Amalthea 23:42, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • Indeed, as Amalthea and DQ say, this proposal came from a "How can we fix the IPBE situation? Hm, what about proposing X to the community?" discussion, and we're here to see what people think about it. It was not a canvassing situation, but rather the reverse: an idea conceived on a mailing list, brought public for discussion. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 23:51, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • It's a bad look: a proposal to increase the power of the CheckUsers is proposed as an "uncontroversial" change (when it clearly isn't, given the number of Oppose votes), and then it is revealed later that there were private discussions off-wiki among the beneficiaries of the proposal before it was made. The functionary lists are there to assist the functionaries enforce existing policy, not to facilitate bloc voting on new policy. As Amalthea says, the origin of the proposal should have been declared up front. --Surturz (talk) 01:01, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Risker. There are occasional situations where it would make sense for an admin to be able to hand out adminship to others, yet we do not allow admins to do that. In the vast majority of situations, admins should not hand out IPBE without checking with a CU first; we might as well cut the middleman. T. Canens (talk) 19:56, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support  Roger Davies talk 07:09, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Restrict rangeblocks to CheckUsers

Restricting WP:IPBE to CheckUsers makes sense because only CheckUsers have to proper information to make that judgement call. The same is true for rangeblocks. Since IPBE is often granted to good users caught in rangeblocks, and only CheckUsers can see which good users will be collateral damage, it makes sense to restrict rangeblocks to CUs. Blocking good users causes much more damage to Wikipedia than the vandalism it prevents because of all the good users that leave. In fact, the blocking policy actually says to have CheckUsers check for collateral damage before making a rangeblock of any significant duration, which most are.

Some people would have you believe that Admins are perfect and never make a mistake, and that good users are never blocked. Unfortunately this is not the case. By 2009, we had more than 6 million IP addresses blocked in rangeblocks. The problem was so bad that Newyorkbrad (talk · contribs) had to ask admins to monitor the problem because of all the good users being blocked.

Concern about excessive rangeblocks
A few weeks ago I guestblogged a series of posts on The Volokh Conspiracy. Since then I have received e-mails from several readers of that blog on various issues. One of the most frustrating was from an eminent retired law professor, who indicated that he has attempted to contribute to Wikipedia articles several times, but has been blocked from doing so. He summarized the message that he receives when he tries to log in, and it turns out to be a Scibaby rangeblock. I have written back and explained how I can go ahead and create an account for this editor, but he seems to have moved on and I fear that we have lost the possibility of his contributing permanently.

In the wake of the publicity surrounding the ArbCom decision in the Scientology case, I was asked to appear on a radio show. There was a short call-in segment in which three people called in, and one of them also complained that he too has been caught up in longterm rangeblocks. Again, I offered to explain to him how to get an account opened if he would e-mail me, but I never heard from him, so he may have given up as well.

It is understood that rangeblocks, particularly ones placed by checkusers, are intended to address long-term abuse situations and are sometimes necessary. However, if they are overused, we risk cutting off our nose to spite our face, and there are also times when semiprotection or just dealing with petty nonsense is a better answer than blocking tens of thousands of IPs. I think we should all please make a point to use rangeblocks as narrowly as is reasonably possible. (diff)
— User:Newyorkbrad 15:00, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

By 2011 we had gone up to 7 million IP addresses blocked and by 2012 it was up to 8 million.

Today, we have 14 million (14,009,294 to be exact) IPv4 addresses blocked and 1.1092E30 IPv6 addresses blocked in a total of 1,356 Range blocks

Anybody that tells you that good users are never blocked and that there is no collateral damage in rangeblocks is sadly mistaken. 64.40.54.138 (talk) 08:54, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is almost always collateral damage with range blocks, that's a given. But there are many occasions where there is no other choice. Restricting range blocks to only checkusers is foolish and unnecessary. Anon-only range blocks are often necessary to deal with vandals editing from educational institutions with lax IP allocation policies. I have made many, many (short) range blocks of this type, including many before I was granted access to the checkuser tool. There are many similar cases as well. Unless you're going to be hard-rangeblocking, the chechuser tool is not going to tell you anything more than the javascript CIDR contribs gadget available in your preferences if you're logged in (although I will admit it is far easier to read the results in the CU tool). Range blocks already should only be implemented as an absolute last resort, and only for a short period of time without asking a checkuser. Forcing all range blocks to only be implemented by checkusers is excessive. I would at least tacitly support a proposal to ensure that admins consult a CU before making a long-term range block, or a hard range block, but really, people shouldn't be making that sort of block anyways before asking a checkuser to look for excessive collateral damage.
Also, I want to point out that the number of IP addresses blocked has very little correlation on the amount of collateral damage caused. I have seen many IPv4 /22s with more edits than probably 80% of IPv4 /16s. J.delanoygabsadds 15:35, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that restricting it would be foolish. There are many admin who know more about rangeblock appropriateness than some CUs, and most admin who aren't familiar with rangeblocks will just ask someone else to look at it. Being a CU doesn't mean someone is necessarily more network savvy. That said, it would be nice if we didn't INDEF block IP addys, or at the least, had an automated way to list rangeblocks (or any IP block) after they have been in effect for one year, for review. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 17:21, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Example I am sorry to have to correct my well-respected fellow Wikipedians above, but they may not completely understand the situation. This is understandable because they do not look for bad blocks. On the other hand, I do.
In 2006, 65,536 IP addresses were blocked when 67.18.0.0/16 was indeffed. In 2011, 67.18.92.167 (talk · contribs) asked to be unblocked (diff). Three well-respected admins reviewed the unblock request and all of them denied it (diff). I asked the original blocking admin to review the block (diff). The blocking admin agreed to lift the block (diff). This was 2 years ago, and there have been only positive contributions since then as one can see by checking the range contribs for 67.18.0.0/16. This is only one example of literally dozens. I would ask my fellow Wikipedians above to please look in to the situation before calling it foolish. We have an significant editor retention problem at this time and I am simply trying to help. Thanks. 64.40.54.254 (talk) 20:19, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement for how we do rangeblocks, I'm just saying that limiting them to CUs isn't a guarantee of better results. Fewer blocks don't guarantee better results either. Like I said above, I think the software should not allow indef blocks for IPs and we need a mechanism to auto review all blocks over 1 year. We will never "get it right", we can only hope to get as close as we can, while blocking problem editors AND causing the least amount of collateral damage. Collateral damage will always be >0 as long as we allow IPs to edit, forcing us to sometimes do range blocks. Doing them smarter is a good idea, limiting them solely to CUs isn't the best way to do them smarter, however. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 22:20, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Dennis, the root of the problem is that we don't really have a system in place to review long term IP or Range blocks. They really aren't very visible until an IP editor starts pushing over a particular instance. I started looking at Indef IP blocks a few months ago, and started a list of particularly old indef IP blocks at User:Monty845/Indef. They range from blocks with little explanation, to blocks by advanced permission holders that would require investigation by a combination of checkusers, arbs, OTRS agents, as well users with with Proxy check and WP:LTA expertise to conduct a review. Such a review really would need to be an organized group, prefarably with a mandate from the community to tighten things up to a certain standard. Monty845 23:08, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose, especially since rangeblocks of around /64 and smaller in size in IPv6 rarely will need CheckUsers to clear. There are many admins I know who know how to make rangeblocks but are not, and often don't want to be, CheckUsers. Any IPv6 rangeblock larger than one user's subnet (typically /64 to /56) and any IPv4 rangeblock can and quite often will cause collateral damage, as subnets of those sizes are to be sure to be used by more than one user. If rangeblocks are overused, which I'll say is somewhat true to a very slight (and hardly problematic) extent, this is not the solution.--Jasper Deng (talk) 23:24, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I've been thinking about this problem, and wondering, why do we apply ACB (account creation block) by default for pretty much every softblock? I think it often creates more problems than it solves. If we're blocking a single user who's vandalizing, sure it makes sense, we don't want to let them create an account while still allowing people with existing accounts to edit to prevent inadvertent collateral damage. But if we're blocking, for example, a school or library, we should block the IP to prevent drive-by vandalism but allow account creation for legitimate uses. A more determined vandal might create an account to vandalize, but then we just block it as soon as it starts editing as a vandalism-only account. Pretty simple. Also, I oppose this proposal per above, given the many reasons why non-CU would need to use rangeblocks. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:07, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can't count how many times bored schoolchildren have taken advantage of the fact that account creation is not blocked for their school. I would say on average, if ten accounts are created from a school almost all of those ten accounts are VoAs. The only accounts that are not VoAs are the ones that haven't edited yet. It is extremely rare to find a legitimate person editing from schools (I am not talking about colleges or universities). Elockid (Talk) 00:20, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Guilty until proven innocent, eh? --Surturz (talk) 01:12, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Legitimate user who edits from school right here. I agree though that is a problem. My school's IP is currently under a 6 month block (JamesBWatson (talk · contribs) assigned it, second block with the first being one week set by JohnCD (talk · contribs)) so no problems in that direction, at least until April, sometimes though I use the IP on Simple English and Meta because of the load lag the computers get it's faster to do edts as the IP, Look at my WikiVoyage user page, I admit to using the IP there. MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 17:09, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rangeblocks are a significant problem I guess the reason people don't understand how big this problem is—is because I didn't provide enough examples. So here are the rest of the first dozen.
In every one of these cases, all the unblock requests were denied and it took a third party to intervene to get them unblocked. WP:IPBE is one of the ways to help good users caught in rangeblocks. If IPBE is going to be restricted then rangeblocks also need to be restricted for the simple fact there are hundreds of bad rangeblocks. I can post another dozen if people still don't understand the situation. Just let me know. Thanks. 64.40.54.79 (talk) 05:07, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The main problem is hard rangeblocks, which I strongly oppose and think should almost never be used. For soft rangeblocks, IPBE is not necessary, and thus can be used more liberally (but still with great caution). In my opinion, if you have a range of 256 IPs of which 200 are open proxies, surely it won't be too hard to get ProcseeBot to block all of them individually rather than slamming a rangeblock on it? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:49, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
ProcseeBot can only check the small subset of proxies which are open HTTP proxies. Range blocks are not generally implemented, or useful, for these types of proxies. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:28, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as it is unlikely to solve the problem. Personally, I don't think I have ever done a range block because, frankly, I don't understand them. But there's no reason an admin who does have the technical knowhow shouldn't be able to perform them. Also, in the specific example given above of an innocent person being caught in a scibaby block, that's been a long time and please forgive me if my memory is wrong, but I'm pretty sure the person doing most of those was himself a checkuser. So I'm not quite sure how preventing non-checkusers from doing range blocks is going to stop people from being caught in a scibaby range block. --B (talk) 21:35, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"I'm pretty sure the person doing most of those was himself a checkuser" - this is correct. J.delanoygabsadds 22:14, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • What about some sort of solution that limits large rangeblocks to checkusers, but lets admins carry out the smaller ones ones (an obviously dynamic IP user repeatedly vandalizing a talk page, for example?) --Rschen7754 22:18, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
King of Hearts points raises the point that most range blocks should be soft blocks, in the case of a soft block, it seems like a regular admin should be able to evaluate things without the additional checkuser tools. I could see restricting hardblocks of large ranges to checkusers though. Monty845 22:26, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is there not already something in place that prevents range blocking large ranges? Like 1.1.1.1/0 (I think that's every IP address in existence, right)? I'm hoping/assuming that there's already something restricting the number of IP addresses you can block in one action. --B (talk) 22:47, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    It is not permissible to block a range larger than /16. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:50, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Just for clarification for me, is it merely not permissible (meaning if you do it, you invite the wrath of the community, Jimbo, arbcom, and the cabal) or is it actually prevented by the software? (No, I don't propose to delete the main page and find out.) --B (talk) 00:44, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry, I meant technically impossible, as in the software will not permit it. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:46, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose but worth commenting. Indeffing IPs is a bad idea and I think the practice has more or less been terminated (well, maybe not [2]) voluntarily due to the problems outlined by the IP above. A multi-year rangeblock is better in extreme circumstances or proxy hosting, since it will eventually expire, and won't be re-applied unless the abuse resumes. Rangeblocks are necessary in many run of the mill situations where CU is unnecessary (school blocks, IP hopping , IPv6 anything). I would comment that hard rangeblocks are necessary for proxy-hosting ranges because of throwaway accounts (why hard) and the fact that it's very very hard to detect every proxy (why the range) and there's no need to edit via an open proxy unless someone is trying to evade scrutiny (why nothing of value is lost). Sailsbystars (talk) 01:05, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I just thought of an additional reason: They may be a minority right now, but as IPv6 addresses proliferate, many of them will simply assign an entire /64 block to a single individual. /64 IPv6 rangeblocks may become a routine part of an admin's arsenal at WP:AIV, depending on how IPv6 addresses are handed out. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:01, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per King of Hearts. Elockid (Talk) 14:30, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose and strongly so. Many admins have the know-how needed to perform rangeblocks. At times range-blocks are crucial to stop a problem and have to be applied swiftly, and not always finding a checkuser is possible, tho not being able to find any checkuser online is now a much more uncommon scenario then it used to be once-upon-a-time; it wouldn't fix anything, as checkusers use wide rangeblocks just as much as non-checkusers do; /64 subnets are assigned by many, many ISPs/hosting providers/whatnot by default for IPv6; if all rangeblocks had to pass by checkusers, we'd have to double the checkuser team's size at least. Snowolf How can I help? 06:06, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate Proposal

I think the OP's main concern is the number of innocent bystanders who get caught in those rangeblocks, unable to ever return again to editing Wikipedia. I suggest that we can do it by one other way -

  • We unblock every rangeblock which was placed over a year ago (or some other time period as decided) , except the most nefarious of cases. All these recently unblocked users shall fall under a special category where their edits shall be monitored by other willing editors and admins to patrol such high-risk account edits. If the editors shows consistent reasonable good-faith edits over a period of time, admins can remove their names from this category. Editors showing bad-faith or disruptive edits can be indef-blocked again with a nuking of their contributions without warning.
Thanks for the suggestion. I appreciate the help. In the 5 years I've been working the issue, the community has never cared enough about good editors being blocked to do anything. It doesn't appear that this time will be any different, but I'd love to be proven wrong. 64.40.54.205 (talk) 12:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

About a survey

I am going to make a survey about WP anti-vandal tool and WP, vandaliam. Shall I proceed?--Pratyya (Hello!) 05:14, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Knock yourself out PG. Seems like an okay idea to me. I for one wouldn't mind giving you input. MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 16:48, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Talk to CVUA too so that they can join it/add input! --Tito Dutta (contact) 16:54, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

LibriVox

I've recently come across LibriVox (http://librivox.org). Since they share similar principles to ourselves, how would folk feel about linking to them from articles on books they have published (e.g. The Prince)?

If there's consensus to do so:

a) would an mention in the external links section be appropriate;
b) would anyone object to me writing up a bot to do so?

(The bot itself would need to go through a separate approval process from a bot stand-point so the ins-and-outs of the bot process can be left for there.) --RA (talk) 14:15, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have seen way too many poor quality, or Microsoft Sam recordings. I dont think this should be done automated. Werieth (talk) 20:29, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are few articles where it is already being used. Nothing stops you to add it if you are sure that the content will increase article's quality! --Tito Dutta (contact) 16:59, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Disabling HotCat for non-autoconfirmed users

I've recently encountered a lot of new users who use HotCat to add empty or inappropriate categories to user or user talk pages. It becomes a nuisance when somebody keeps adding Category:Sorry all around. Can the gadget be turned off until users are autoconfirmed? This would deal with 90% of the problem. Acroterion (talk) 22:13, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

One problem is that autoconfirmed kicks in silently and very early; users don't get notified that they've been confirmed or told there's anything different, and it almost always happens before they've fully figured out how the interface works.
Switching hotcat on at this point will mean that we suddenly have a new part of the interface appearing with no explanation, which is potentially going to be even more confusing... Andrew Gray (talk) 23:24, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How about someone make a bot to inform users that they have obtained the right? It could say something like this.

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia and your patience to edit, your account has now been promoted to autoconfirmed which gives users the ability to use tools which can be found in the Gadgets section of Your preferences. These tools should prove to be much more useful in your contributing.

Happy Contributing. (Bot name)

Something like that maybe? MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 16:33, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the whole concept of autoconfirmed alone is confusing to new users. I'm not sure why I'm seeing this spate of HotCat (ab)use right now - nothing's changed that I know of. Acroterion (talk) 01:40, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
...on the other hand, if we actually made autoconfirmed A Thing, with a bot-generated "hi, glad to see you've stuck around" message, it might be a good idea - "thanks for contributing to Wikipedia, we've now turned on [hotcat and edit SP pages], please ask here --- if you've any questions"... I can see this working. Andrew Gray (talk) 09:52, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
See also Wikipedia:village pump (proposals)/Archive 99#HotCat misunderstandings.—Emil J. 15:10, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If I had never edited Wikipedia before I'd assume that the plus sign I see at the bottom of a talk page is a way to add a short comment or reply, since many other websites work that way. Yes I know it says "Categories" next to it but that isn't going to make the point clear to most people. I think Yunshui's ideas deserve another look. —Soap— 01:27, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think the the contextless + that's confusing people - they think it's an editing box. No new person's going to understand (or care) about categories. Acroterion (talk) 03:49, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It seems I replicated Emil J's idea without even realising it o.o Just shows we have a bit of consensus for such a bot huh? heh heh. MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 16:38, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like this idea, because of the changed interface confusion, although I'm sympathetic to the problem.
Maybe what we need is a bot that reverts non-autoconfirmed users when they've added a non-existent category, and leaves them an explanation, like XLinkBot (talk · contribs). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Best practices with fictional elements

Recently I decided to get involved once again with the merge process, and the backlog of articles at Category:Articles to be merged. I've come across several examples where there are a bunch of articles related to a fictional work all nominated for merge; various anime/manga, several fantasy and science fiction books/films.

A reading of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction gives a brief overview about how to write about fiction, but doesn't go into detail about how to structure content across several articles. What I mean is, I can see no guideline to help editors organize subarticles about a work of fiction. I consider an article class like countries, where we have established an acceptable hierarchy. Consider the subject France:

I don't know if this kind of hierarchy for Nations is set in stone, but clearly it has been accepted as a best practice and is widely used. What I would like to do is identify those best practices for fictional elements, keep a record of them and popularize their use. It would greatly consolidate the fragmentation we have in our coverage of fiction and fictional elements. --NickPenguin(contribs) 23:37, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You might consider surveying video games navboxes for how video game fictional elements are dealt with. In summary, it's usually one series article (if there are >=3 games usually), several games articles, a list of characters article, a handful of characters, occasionally a 'universe' article (these are usually plotfests), sometimes a list of media article (sometimes merged in the series article, sometimes split), as well as developers, publishers, and other miscellaneous information related. See e.g. Template:Warcraft universe and Template:World of Warcraft. In the case of the former template, several of those books are tagged for WP:N(BOOKS); I've been meaning personally to merge them, I just haven't had the will to do so. (See start of that list article at User:Izno/Sandbox/Warcraft books.)

That said, from my obersations, WP:VG takes better care of their space than a number of the anime, manga, film, and television projects do, with respect to WP:N at the least. Your mileage may vary.

Just to give you some ideas to work from. --Izno (talk) 02:34, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem I find with fictional characters/fictional elements pages isn't so much the structure but how horrible the writing is. Sometimes jargon from the book or television series is used informally (I went through the character pages for The Bill recently and removed countless "coppers", "guv'nors" and other similar British police slang which was used freely as if it were appropriate terminology for encyclopedic writing) or without any suitable context for people who are unfamiliar with the fictional universe.
Plot summaries are often written with all the skill of a shopping list of events, without any real use of language to form a readable narrative. Instead of "John woke up, kissed his lover and then cooked him some eggs" we get "John woke up. Then John kissed his lover. Then John prepared some eggs to feed to his lover."
It'd be great if any guide to writing about fictional characters or fictional elements gave editors (who are often enthusiastic about the subject matter of TV or video games or anime or whatever) advice on how to write about those things in a more lively but encyclopaedic way. —Tom Morris (talk) 13:51, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WP:WAF doesn't do it for you? --Izno (talk) 13:50, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This kind of information is usually available in a {{WikiProject style advice}} page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:40, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Page layout

Hello,

First, thanks for all that you at Wikipedia do. I appreciate the resource you provide.

For future planning, I hope that you will consider dividing the content up into columns. I realize this would be more work but it would make the content so much more readable. Visually tracking across a paragraph that is almost the width of the screen makes it more tiring to read.

Thanks,

Estefan

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Estefan en pensamiento (talk • contribs) 23:16, 5 March 2013‎ (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I suffer the same problem. Some time ago I proposed adding an option to reduce column width to 80-120 characters, but I got no aswer. Good luck! --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:33, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Vote for the most exciting research work about Wikipedia

Dear all,

Wikimédia France launched an international research award aiming to reward the most influential research work on Wikimedia projects and free knowledge. After the initial submission of research papers by the community of researchers who study Wikimedia projects, a jury have selected five finalists among a thirty proposals. You can find summaries and full texts below :

It's now up to you to choose the most influential. For that, please visit the voting page. Voting will close on Monday, March 11. The announcement of the winner is scheduled for the end of March.

If you have any question, please use the project talk page, thanks ! (do not hesitate to move this post to a more appropriate section)--CarolAnnO (talk) 11:24, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]


New article/template/page creation overwriting redirect etc

In such situation the editor does not get article creator's credit which they deserve. Therefore, I suggest to delete the redirect page first or do something here! Example this editor and this editor etc should get the credits! --Tito Dutta (contact) 01:47, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a point in collecting new page creation credits? I thought WP:NOT a social club would apply to collecting points/barnstars/whatever. WP:NOTSOCIAL would seem to illustrate what Wikipedia is for (the creation of knowledge compilations) and what it isn't for (the creation of social identities) -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 01:52, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's about keeping record! --Tito Dutta (contact) 03:20, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's about collecting points. Several articles have been merged to be split out again at a slightly different title. If we extend your proposal, we end up having us search out all of those and get histmerges, to get the first mover attached to the current article name. (and remove the points from the most recent split-out creator, so that only the first creator has the points) Why would a split-out creator have an article creation point, instead of the first creator? If an article that covered several topics was split apart, why would you need to credit points to the split-out creator, instead of the people who actually worked on the article content before it was split? How is that any different from keeping the page creation points with the redirect creator? Credit should be given for useful content addition, not page creation -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 03:53, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't it NewPageItis, a form of WP:Wikipediholicism (related to WP:Editcountitis and WP:Barnstaritis) ? -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 04:05, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If the authors who replaced the redirect want to say that they are responsible for creating the page, then I don't think anyone is going to care. However, I don't think we want to be the habit of deleting content just to help someone score points. In a case like your first example this is doubly true since there was meaningful content there before the redirect was created. Dragons flight (talk) 04:17, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is going a bit over the top. It's not as if there was something there before that I'm trying to claim credit for. It was a redirect which I turned into an article which is classed as new under DYK rules. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 07:13, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The point is being misunderstood here! We have stopped WP:CUTPASTE. It's all about giving the "real" article creator the credits he deserves. The C and E did a brilliant work in the stadium's article, but, you can't find it in the list of pages he created. C and E, your article is being used just as an example. Both your article and DYK is fine! --Tito Dutta (contact) 09:27, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you think that tool is miscounting the "real" number, then the solution would be to patch that tool to include created-from-redirect articles. I don't think we need to start building a complex system of automatic deletion, with all the hassle and problematic side-effects, to fix these few cases. Andrew Gray (talk) 09:46, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd agree with that. No need to delete redirect pages just to recreate them again. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 12:42, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you delete the two letters "no" from near the end of the address in the output of the tool, don't you get the count you are looking for? Rmhermen (talk) 16:21, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Offensive picture warning

This will probably be rejected,but maybe all images on mediawiki:bad image list, when viewed on articles, have a popup saying "this image may be offensive, press OK to view it. It wouldn't stop people from seeing it, complying with Wikipedia policy on censorship, but some people may want to find info about something offensive without seeing the picture. 92.25.55.153 (talk) 13:10, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

An IP with a good idea, now i've seen everything XD Support. MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 16:26, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I proposed this a year and a half ago. It was rejected per WP:NOTCENSORED. Ryan Vesey 16:28, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Yes! Some pictures like (might be offensive in nature) this has some warnings added! But, I don't know the importance of this warning when you have actually seen those picture! And I want the same warnings for categories and few Commons imgaes, categories too! --Tito Dutta (contact) 16:50, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose First, that is not the purpose of the list. The list is not a comprehensive list of offensive images. Instead, it is a list of images that are both offensive, and that have been abused by vandals, trolls, or others with the purpose of shocking, offending, or upsetting viewers. This would create a confused system where one picture is censored, BECAUSE it had been used abusively in the past, but another, potentially more offensive image wont be, and will appear immediately. It would also lead to fights over whats included at bad image list, which is currently uncontroversial BECAUSE any legit use should be authorized. If logged in editors want a gadget to enable such a functionality, it should probably be doable without censoring everyone else. Monty845 16:59, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What is offensive? A naked baby? A Mahoma drawing? A woman wearing a bikini? Someone will complain about any picture we have. --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:36, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the search engines including the giant Google is not confused on what is offensive and what not (ref: Safe Search settings)! Recently Google disallowed option to disable safe search for US users! I don't know if they followed any US law or rule, anyway, and "we are not censored"! --Tito Dutta (contact) 17:48, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Perennial proposal. See 2005's WP:TOBY. May have merit, but its a complicated issue not likely to be solved so easily. This was discussed in 2010's white paper on offensive comment (it's on meta somewhere). Herostratus (talk) 19:38, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    meta:Controversial content has a list of past research and major proposals. Speaking in broad demographic and cultural terms, the proposals have failed because of opposition from childless white males who believe that their right to show you a picture is more important than your right to control what pictures appear on your screen. Asian, African, and Latino users tend to support these proposals quite strongly, as do most white women and most parents. (The parents, however, may be thinking that the WMF would implement a childproof lockout, which has been formally rejected by the WMF board and staff.) Everyone worries about the details of implementation, naturally, because there are smarter and stupider ways to go about it.
    In the short term, see Help:Options to hide an image. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:53, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No "childless white male" is forcing anybody to view anything. People use the Internet and Wikipedia on their own volition. Talk about a "right to show people a picture" as if it's being forced on others is non-productive slant. Attacking computer nerds like this is a pet peeve of mine because to a large extent, these "childless white males" built the internet, built the web, and built Wikipedia. The rest of society seems to think what they built is pretty cool because they use it so much. I think instead of mocking them we should show them a little respect for trying to change the world for the better and all. Part of that plan is lack of censorship. The people that support an uncensored Internet do so for good reason, and if every culture and demographic were to have its way, there'd be practically nothing left on the internet except maybe Bible or Koran sites and an IRS webpage. On top of the practical difficulties of satisfying every group, a content-warning is solving an issue that isn't really a problem. The Wikipedia has been uncensored since its inception and yet the world has continued spinning and children have continued to grow and be fine. No harm is occuring, only better informed readers, and, yes, "better informed" sometimes means seeing shocking images. If an image belongs on an article, it belongs there. Nudity belongs in some medical articles. Gory images belong in some news and historical articles. Putting layers between the images and the reader is hindering the flow of information and would ultimately be the start of a slippery slope, which is why people stand so firm against censorship. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:02, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Unless you are tied to a chair with your head in a clamp, your eyes taped open, a self-refreshing Wikipedia feed on a monitor, and the Wikipedia Song blaring into your ears, nobody is infringing your "right to control what pictures appear on your screen".
If you are tied to a chair, etc., let me address your captors: First, keep up the good work. Second, please take away his keyboard. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:05, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Neither of you were involved in those discussions, so it's not really surprising that you don't know what people were saying. We had multiple editors, largely from the USA and northern Europe, claim that if the WMF installed a feature that allowed a woman or child to visit the article Penis without every single image loading, then the WMF was interfering with the editors' divine right to make every single person visiting that article (or stumbling across it via Special:Random) see whatever pictures the editors wanted to put on the readers' screens, regardless of the readers' preferences, bandwidth, or personal safety.
Some of our readers face serious consequences over images. Right now, a girl who reads our articles about sexuality at an internet cafe in some parts of the world could be prosecuted for committing sex crimes. Right now, the WMF is giving readers in that situation a choice between being arrested or maybe beaten, and remaining ignorant. Without pictures, Penis on the English Wikipedia is going to look just like any other article to the local busybodies. With pictures, the subject is obvious even to an illiterate person. A sizeable minority of our childless white male editors—but none of our developing world editors or women editors or anyone in a country where a woman showing an ankle, much less a picture of men having sex with each other, could get put in jail—prefer that anyone in that situation simply remain ignorant, or if it's important enough, to go ahead and risk getting arrested or raped or beaten or kicked out of school. Because, you know, nobody's tied those girls in Pakistan or Somali or other repressive countries to a chair with their heads in clamps and forced them to read these pages. They've just maybe blamed them for being rape victims or arranged a marriage for them and refused to tell them what they need and want to know about sex, and what some of our editors apparently don't want her to be able to learn without risking her personal safety.
Those of us in wealthy countries and with our own private internet connections need to remember that not every reader is so fortunate as we are. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:48, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Was that feature not produced? I thought it was practically finished over a year ago. Ryan Vesey 05:02, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The feature was not produced.
The original plan was to set up a couple of general groups (e.g., pictures offensive to some religions, pictures of people having sex, pictures that get a lot of complaints that they're disgusting), to be populated by editor consensus. Then individual users could reversibly click a button to filter only those groups that were of special concern for them (so you could choose to see everything except Mormon temple garments and drawings of the prophet Mohammad, if that's what you wanted, or everything except sex pictures, or whatever, with the default being that everyone sees everything unless they take specific, deliberate action to filter it.
The original plan has been completely scrapped. No design or coding work was ever done on it. No replacement has been approved. AFAICT, no replacement plan is even being contemplated at this time.
The only alternative that hasn't caused a panic in the "the readers are censoring me!" camp is a suggestion that there could be a button that allows readers to block absolutely every single image, from the Wikipedia logo at the top right on down to "Powered by Mediawiki" button the bottom of the page. IMO this is overkill, but AFAICT, even this isn't being accepted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:02, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WhatamIdoing is misrepresenting the discussion and reality.
1) Everybody can currently choose to read Wikipedia without images, just a couple of clicks needed. Go to Wikipedia "mobile view", mobile site "settings" and then click images "off", done. You can easily enable the images again, if your done browsing penis etc. (and there are countless other ways to hide images for yourself in your browser etc.)
2) The image filter, if it would work and be usable, would be used to censor Wikipedia. Look at your example of girls in Internet cafes in Pakistan or Somali or other repressive countries, being enabled to exercise benign, optional selfcensorship... - in reality they can disable images of syphilis today (see 1), but not anymore if this "offensive" content is on the filter list. If this image filter were built and working, it would take very little time for content filtering software companies to integrate the (free!) filter into their products for schools (US and beyond) - and for ISPs and for censorship authorities of whole countries (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India, Indonesia ...) And why wouldn't they use a filter of "offensive" images, if Wikipedia itself says so and supports using it? And it's free, you don't need to invest expensive manhours, just create a rule to use the user-generated filter for your purpose (why not block the questionable articles that include the offensive images too? easy, done). And if someone accuses repressive countries of censorship, just point to Wikipedia: it's their filter and their content decision. This, and the undefinable scope of "offensive" and "objectionable" images and ensuing moral arguments, were excellent reasons to scrap the project. --Atlasowa (talk) 09:31, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Do you recognize the ironic contrast between "this feature already exists" and "this self-censorship feature must never be implemented"?
What exactly would be the harm to readers in putting a button on a page that says "don't bother loading images today" without having to switch to the awkward mobile version? Surely the argument about the-evil-school-administration-will-get-you (the same school administrations that don't allow Wikipedia at all, because of this issue) doesn't apply to the suggestion to allow individual readers to suppress 100% of images without having to magically know how to switch to the mobile version and enable it there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:08, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for two reasons: 1) There is no good way to judge what does and does not belong on the 'restricted' list (without causing massive fights and culture wars), and 2) sexual content isn't just strewn about haphazardly on the project, it's on pages related to said content, so people should know that there's going to be sexual content there. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:16, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    This may surprise you, but sexual content isn't necessarily the most important issue for our readers. Many of our readers want to have sacred religious images filtered, and figuring out whether an image does, or does not, contain a very short list of sacred religious items related to a religion that verifiably opposes these images, is remarkably simple. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:08, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Pretty much any image could be potentially offensive to someone; the usual example is that people with arachnophobia might find this offensive, so where do we draw the line? The last time this sort of thing came up, I created a simple userscript that will hide *all* potentially-offensive images (unless the user finds offensive, although they could always pick a different replacement image) until each is individually clicked. Someone concerned about seeing potentially-offensive images could install that. Anomie⚔ 13:27, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Providing exactly that kind of option to 100% of users, rather than just the tiny number of registered users who happen to know about it and can figure out how to install it, is one of the rejected proposals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:08, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for using the overflow property on tables and other features in the mobile version

I originally posted this on VP(t), but, I now realise it probably belonged here...

Working a bit on a wide table, I found out about the overflow property of CSS. And, I finally decided to test how "overflow:auto" would make the table look like in my smartphone (a Windows phone). To my surprise, it worked pretty fine, making otherwise inaccessible areas of the table, scrollable and readable (whereas at present, almost any table appears clipped in the mobile version on my phone). As even Microsoft has implemented support for such a feature, wouldn't it be a good idea to add (conditional) code on everything other than text so that it would appear scrollable in the mobile version if overflow is clipped? Or at least incorporate such a change in the wikitable template? The "auto" value means that the table will only become scrollable if it doesn't fit on the screen, thus not affecting at all users who access the mobile version through systems with screens wider than a phone's one.

Example to be viewed with cell phone:

  • without overflow tag:
Signatory Conclusion date Institution Majority needed In favour Against Abstentions Deposited References    Implementation law Balanced budget amendment
  • with overflow tag (can be touched and slided although no bar appears on my cell phone):
Signatory Conclusion date Institution Majority needed In favour Against Abstentions Deposited References    Implementation law Balanced budget amendment

Heracletus (talk) 15:53, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I like this idea and think it would help with a nunber of pages I've come across. 64.40.54.70 (talk) 07:12, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You have to be careful with overflow CSS per accessibility concerns. --Izno (talk) 14:23, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Izno, those accessibility concerns are about the very example I make, i.e. people using browsers that do not support css, like most mobile browsers used not to. But, today, it's really hard to find an updated browser that does not support css or javascript. In either case, overflow:auto leaves the affected field unaffected(!) if it is not already cropped. If it is already cropped (because it does not fit in the screen), it only, then, adds a sliding bar.
To phrase it better,
  • If the user has no css support nothing happens, apart from the overflow:auto field appearing as text.
  • If the user has css support and the affected field (in this case a table) does not fit in the screen, then, that field (the table) can now be slided and seen fully, a feature which is not otherwise supported on most mobile browsers.
  • If the user has css support and the affected field (the table) fits in the screen, nothing happens.
I think the improvement is clear. I modified the tables above to make much more evident what i mean. Using the overflow property set to auto makes wikipedia more accessible than it currently is, especially to mobile users, because their screens are small enough to make most tables appear cropped, even if those are not wide enough to appear cropped to other users. Heracletus (talk) 23:34, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WP:GLAM, and how to solicit for content

If you haven't heard of the GLAM initiative, is the Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums outreach program. The general idea is to connect with cultural institutions, collaborate with them, and create a simple avenue to provide content. I think everyone can agree that this is a good idea, but how are we supposed to attract their attention? For example, in my region there are about 200 museums listed on the relevant Wikipedia page.

If the idea is to ask cultural institutions to write articles for us, I do not think it will be met with great success. They might even get blocked when they do write articles. Thus I ask: What content are we asking institutions to give us? How are we going to convince them to give us that content? How can we get content without the institution being bitten? --NickPenguin(contribs) 15:39, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's also the issue of perceived cost. Some organisations in my end of the world are now of the opinion that they have to fund a wikipedian to get coverage. WMUK have totally dropped the ball on this issue. 8-( Andy Dingley (talk) 15:53, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Can you show me the example you speak of? To me that sounds like the wrong approach. Wikipedia is a foundation yes, but at it's heart it is a volunteer service. --NickPenguin(contribs) 16:01, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Any discussion of this gets blanked by those concerned and blocks are threatened for raising it. Still, blocks and bans aren't any barrier to high office at WMUK! Take a look at the murkier corners of Monmouthpedia, QRpedia and some of the off-wiki press coverage of this. I'm unconnected with Monmouth but I live "over the hill" from it, so it's a high-profile issue locally. I organise some decently large public events, I also have IRL business connections with museums. Unfortunately I've also let it be known that I'm an editor here (I edit under my own, unusual, surname). In three different towns and cities I've now run into non-WP people from museums etc. who, when the subject of WP is raised, get very frosty about the topic and there are dark mutterings about what a low regard they now have for WP, particularly in relation to a lack of financial clarity concerning Monmouthpedia. I find that my connection with WP (which is trivial) is becoming a slur by association on my own character. If I have a commercial meeting with any new museum, WP is the last topic I'd bring up. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:15, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I took a cursory glance at Monmouthpedia, but I can't seem to see what you're referring to, so I will instead ask clarification about the money thing. In your experience, you have found museum folk to be unresponsive to helping with Wikipedia because they don't get funding to do it? Or because they feel funds are not being appropriated well with existing projects? I'm not understanding the connection clearly enough. --NickPenguin(contribs) 16:38, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
He seems to be saying that Museums etc in his area are of the opinion that if they want to do anything with WP, then they have to give money to some ranking WP editor. Either as a bursary (wikipedian in resident) or in the form of some consultancy/training fee. That they think that the WP system as manifested in Mononmouth and Gibraltar is corrupt. John lilburne (talk) 20:38, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
* Compass Partnership (January 2013). "Review of Governance of Wikimedia UK" (PDF).
Andy Dingley (talk) 21:45, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Andy, sorry to read your concerns about Wikimedia UK. I have just dropped you an email using the "mail user" function - I would certainly be interested to discuss your concerns with you. Certainly as an organisation, Wikimedia UK doesn't feel Wikimedians in Residence are the only way for GLAM outreach to work or that museums need to pay anyone to work with Wikipedia. We're keen to work with partners institutions of all natures in all kinds of ways. Do email me back. Regards, Chris Keating - Wikimedia UK chair. The Land (talk) 12:24, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Shouldn't you be asking members of GLAM this question? Since they're the ones that have experience with this and all? Clearly, they've managed to figure out how to do it, since GLAM organizations are working with such museums all across the world right at this moment, whether it be with use of a Wikipedian-In-Residence or some other method. SilverserenC 20:41, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The GLAM page seems not to get many visitors, and the Talk page has had no posts in three months. Unless there is some forum I am not immediately seeing, I felt this would be the best place to generate a discussion. And other than being a Wikipedia-In-Residence, what are these other methods you speak of? Surely there must be something that can be done without having to go work at a museum. --NickPenguin(contribs) 21:44, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The Case studies page might help you. Along with the Best practices page. SilverserenC 21:51, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Those pages do not exist... wrong link? - Nabla (talk) 22:03, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Was in a hurry and didn't notice they were on another Wikimedia project. Links fixed. SilverserenC 22:18, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As a first step I'd narrow down that list of 200 to museums that cover subject that you personally are interested in. Then go and talk to them.©Geni 21:55, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Mr. Penguin -- the gist of Mr. Dingley's comment is this: The museum managers in his area have gotten it into their heads that promotional/archival assistance from Wikipedia is a "pay-to-play" proposition. That is, you have to hire a Wikipedia insider to get stuff done (actually a "Wikimedia UK" insider, but outsiders do not make this distinction). This got into their head because some Wikimedia UK board members were -- suggesting various pay-for-play ventures around GLAM, et... Google on "Monmouthpedia" and "Gibraltarpedia" for background.Dan Murphy (talk) 22:06, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
He is saying nothing like that - what he is trying to say is unclear, but I rather doubt it is that. What that is is what you always say - from the other side of the world isn't it? Johnbod (talk) 21:18, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, as Andy said I "got it in one." You misunderstood him, and snarked at me when I explained the issue. The Derby Museum venture and the promise to "put the city on the tourism map" with good SEO stuff is also instructive here. This stuff does ripple out.Dan Murphy (talk) 17:08, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Though both of those had nothing to do with museums, but with cities and governments. He just needs to tell them that, no, that's not true. SilverserenC 22:20, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually the last time I mentioned WP in a museum, in the west midlands, their response was more about Jim Hawkins, and in a far from complimentary manner. They didn't even realise how closely the two issues were related. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:45, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't there a PoTW connection between the two? John lilburne (talk) 00:11, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Given that you've just admitted to pushing their POV in a certian direction I think we can conclude that your credibility as a source in this area is limited. Can we now return to the original question?©Geni 06:11, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WTF are you on about and who are you accusing of bias?
I have two concerns about GLAM, both of which are UK specific. However they're serious problems for WM in the UK (which has to be seen as distinct from WMUK).
  • The perception of WMUK, post "Gibraltargate" is not only unfavourable, but now sufficiently well-known that museums and town marketing groups (I'm a member of such a group for a town near Monmouth) are bringing up WMUK's disrepute themselves in early discussions about WP. This is tarnishing WP's perception in such groups. It's even tarnishing the good name of unconnected people (i.e. me, which rather annoys me), such that I'm now hiding any involvement I have with WP when I'm doing my regular business with museums.
  • One active WP editor (Who I've been threatened with bans for "hounding", so no names but it's rather obvious) is also extremely active in museum projects, yet their involvement with a locally publicised BLP issue (don't annoy local media types, they have an obvious channel for making their grievances public) has dragged WP's name further through the mud. A museum in that area, and an obvious and important candidate for GLAM, brought this issue up when I talked to them about WP. Yet they're now likely to find themselves with the UK's default Wikimedian in Residence, and the same editor behind much of the Hawkins debacle.
WMUK is a blot on the good name of WM. yet any discussion of this is blanked or whitewashed, and those raising the issue are treated as those causing the prroblem. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:12, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The statement that "they didn't even realise how closely the two issues were related" makes it pretty clear you were trying to influence their POV. Your backpedaling at this point just further harms your credibility. In this case since the question related to Alberta (you may not be aware of this but Canada has been an independent country since at least the 1930s) your poor choice of venue is a problem.©Geni 06:10, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Dan - got it in one Andy Dingley (talk) 12:53, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I work with GLAM projects in Mexico, principally with the Museo de Arte Popular, Garros Galeria, the Salon de la Plástica Mexicana and I do projects with the school that I work for. (Hang on before you scream COI!) There is no one way to approach GLAM. Some WM-UK projects have had some controversy, but just about all the rest have gone along with no problems at all. So what kind of content? In my case, I usually talk with institutions about photo donations first. This is relatively easy way to get started and have a big impact, not only in terms of number of photos on Wikimedia Commons but also in illustrating numerous Wikipedia articles in various languages. One of the first examples of this type was the Federal Archives of Germany, which put about 80,000 up on Commons in low resolution. Requests for images in high resolution have increased 300% since this because people know the images exist. Article creation is usually done through edit-a-thons, where volunteers come to the GLAM partner and work on articles related to it, often using research resources available there (especially true for libraries). I have done these kinds of things and more. I am not paid for the work I do with the museums and the work I do for my campus is not part of my contract. So what do I get out of it? First of all, it is a wonderful networking tool and way to get out from behind the screen and do something different. (not that there is anything wrong with editing... I have over 500 articles under my belt) I have met tons of ppl this way and get invitations to all kinds of wonderful cultural and educational events. As far as my teaching job. My boss's boss's bosses know who I am and in a good way. That's certainly not a bad thing! I also get to do all kinds of creative stuff and reinvent my job (e.g. creating assignments for my students). Now if this makes me evil for some people, so be it, but Im not breaking any rules.Thelmadatter (talk) 22:25, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The key thing to remember about GLAM is it's all about local content, local interest, and local benefits. Most GLAMs receive local municipal funding and for them, gaining visitors or media attention affects their income directly. This is why sometimes Wikipedia GLAM initiatives get a bum rap, as people who are not involved in the sector see "Wikipedia promotion" as a conflict of interest, which as Thelmadatter explains above, it is not. Most GLAMs are attempting to offer the public the "sum of all knowledge" on their particular collection, which overlaps with Wikipedia's mission in uncountably many ways. All of that said, I will tell you the secret of attracting Wikipedians like Thelmadatter to your GLAM. It's easy - all you have to do is ask them. Any relatively good GLAM has got some savvy friends with Wikipedians among them who can lead you through the GLAM pages and start your own project. The case studies is a good place to start. Good luck and happy editting! Jane (talk) 09:57, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A message from the Wikimedia UK office

Hello everyone. My attention has been drawn to this conversation from the cultural partners mailing list where this issue is raised. It is really important that Wikimedia UK addresses some of the points raised here. The key point is that it seems that some GLAM institutions feel that they are only able to participate with, or engage with, Wikimedia projects if they are willing to make some kind of payment or by dealing with an unnamed Wikimedian in Residence. This is absolutely untrue. Wikimedia UK is very happy to engage with any GLAM institution that has an interest in Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons or other Wikimedia projects and there is no charge for this. We have been training volunteers to deliver introductory sessions on how to edit and we can arrange training for your institution. Again, there is absolutely no charge for this. I'm not sure from where this idea has arisen that GLAMs have to fund a Wikipedian. I'm also quite alarmed that "Any discussion of this gets blanked by those concerned and blocks are threatened for raising it". If anyone can point me in the direction of any examples I promise I will follow this up. Wikimedia projects are volunteer-driven efforts. There is absolutely no need for any GLAM to have to pay to engage with the projects and certainly no need for "consultancy fees". Wikimedia UK has just appointed a GLAM co-ordinator who takes up post in April. He will be working to reach out to as many GLAMs as possible to engage with them and encourage them to get involved in Wikipedia, Commons etc. However, in the meantime, if anyone has any concerns about any of the above, or represents a GLAM instution that would like to participate or engage with any project, please do contact me directly. You can do this either by leaving a note on my talk page or by emailing me directly at stevie.benton -at- wikimedia.org.uk - I promise I will address any concerns that I am able to and pass on those I'm unable to address. I'll also keep an eye on this page and follow up any further messages left here. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:05, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

SVG editor

I'd like to suggest that a request be made to add direct SVG editing to MediaWiki. Since SVG files are just text files, it should be possible to edit/revert/preview images from the WikiEditor. MediaWiki already converts an uploaded SVG file into a rendered PNG file for display purposes, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to not have this functionality as well. Perhaps a separate SVG namespace would be needed. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 04:07, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What for? • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 11:28, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Usually people want to translate captions in the image, or enable the image for multi-lang usage. Jane (talk) 12:13, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's a good idea. In fact, if it the MW software could be integrated with an open-source WYSIWYG image editor, it would be even better. Kayau (talk · contribs) 12:38, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Someone worked on an extension for their Google Summer of Code project last year which allows for translation of SVGs in the interface, if I recall. Not sure of a link to that. --Izno (talk) 02:51, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We directly code EasyTimeline extension images in the WikiEditor, I dont' see why we wouldn't do the same with SVG. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 01:27, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikinews

Hi I have an idea could we create a page called daily wikinews so that it is updated daily with news around the world so each one has a table the first one could be home so new around the work and the second one could be uk and so on and then sports and technology tabs please 46.45.182.142 (talk) 19:42, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It could look like this? 89.242.92.134 (talk) 20:05, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
it will be different to the main page it will have tabs and have more news and would look like similar to daily mail but different 46.45.182.142 (talk) 20:07, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Do you mean Portal:Current events ? (and associated WP:WikiProject Current events) -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 01:28, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
yes tiny bit but we would create a page called daily Wikinews and we update it daily with news and would shows world wide news accross the country 46.45.182.142 (talk) 07:37, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I'm not understanding the issue here. Is it just really, really, really important that the page title be called "Daily Wikinews", so just plain Wikinews:Main Page isn't good enough? Notice that's the main page for Wikinews, not for Wikipedia, and it's already updated daily with news and already shows worldwide news. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:17, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
no it's not important i just would like to suggest it and it would be a page full of news 46.45.182.142 (talk) 16:06, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We already have that. It's called "Wikinews"; there is also "In the News" which is accessed from the Wikipedia Main page. The regionalization of news you seem to be requesting as well would probably never happen, as the primary reason we're all here is for building an encyclopedia, not a news-service. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 16:37, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Have you examined Category:Current events portals ? There's the breakdown by region for Current Events portals. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 00:07, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I don't think this fits in well with our mission or our strengths.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:07, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has and should have a pro-academia bias

I don't know if this was discussed before, so I apologize if it was already discussed. What I want is to propose the statement that "Wikipedia has and should have a pro-academia bias". I had many discussions on this issue till I got the idea of settling it once and for all, cast it in stone as it were. The last discussion about it was at Talk:The Bible and history#Anti-Biblical Bias?. As far as I see, from the already approved Wikipedia policies and guidelines it follows that Wikipedia always takes and should take the side of academia. It pertains to the basics of Wikipedia. Wikipedia editors don't create their own sort of knowledge, but render the viewpoints expressed by academics. In respect to present-day biographies, entertainment and politics, reliable press is also included. I think that it is obvious that Wikipedia has and should have a pro-academia bias. According to some scientific knowledge theory, knowledge is forged by the academic community, i.e. a "disinterested community of scholars seeking truth for its own sake" (Sheehan). If something can't be taught at an reputed university, then it does not belong in Wikipedia. According to Rick Roderick, the only people who buy the idea that all opinions are equal (i.e. have equal value) are those permanently committed to the insane asylums.

I want to obtain consensus that this should be stated as a matter of Wikipedia policy, or at least receive good arguments why it shouldn't. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:50, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that why Citizendium exists? Written by experts, curated by experts, using only expert sources. Though, several WikiProjects on Wikipedia have problems with your proposal, as it has resulted in conflicts between ethnic/cultural/regional editors and topic editors, who come to the same subject from different points of view, and some claims of racial bias in that the sources used by the topical editors are English, while the others are not, and that the "experts" do not take into account actual usage, only academic papers from foreigners who do not even speak the local language. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 00:12, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that this principle is incorporated through WP:NPOV, one of the Wikipedia:Five pillars. Praemonitus (talk) 00:18, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The policy WP:GREATWRONGS says that Wikipedia is not meant as a remedy against the side effects of the peer-review system. Or, as I put it there, according to WP:GREATWRONGS Wikipedia does not have the task to redress unjust exclusion from the academe. So, arguments about the "other" (i.e. excluded) academia are void by default. Wikipedia does not buy tragic stories about how the truth about God gets nailed through peer-review. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:19, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GREATWRONGS is an essay, not a policy. Thus the basis of your argument is invalid. Praemonitus (talk) 00:21, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, touché, it is an essay. By the way, WP:SOURCES says that in principle Wikipedia uses only expert sources. So there is no comparison to be made with Citizendium. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:23, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WP:Use common sense is also an essay. WP:Bold, revert, discuss is an essay. WP:Tendentious editing is an essay. In fact, it is our actual WP:POLICY that the tag at the top of the page isn't what determines whether an idea is relevant, appropriate, or the actual practice of the community (which is, by the way, the True Policy: we have a "British constitution" system, not a statute of laws labeled 'policy' and optional musings labeled 'essay'). See the supplement to that policy for more details. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:28, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're right that it's not about the tag. That's not the point at all. Policies and guidelines are supposed to have consensus. If they don't, they will be changed. Essays, on the other hand, need not have consensus, and may indeed severely oppose it. That's why essays are absolutely correctly given less weight. --Trovatore (talk) 01:14, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The bigger quote from Sheehan is:

Heir to a great ideal of the disinterested community of scholars seeking truth for its own sake, the university has become a central institution of the modern era.

— Peter Sheehan, Universities in the Knowledge Economy
My proposal is about recognizing the importance of the university (or universities) for the build up of human knowledge, which Wikipedia has to render. We know the boiling point of mercury, the chemical formula of water and we heard about Julius Caesar from people who got such information from scholars. So, scholars have created most of our explicit knowledge, at least the explicit knowledge of encyclopedic value. We have to recognize how dependent is Wikipedia upon the academe. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:56, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"If something can't be taught at an reputed university, then it does not belong in Wikipedia." As far as I have seen, virtually any topic can be taught at a reputed university. This doesn't narrow things down much, if any. "My proposal is about recognizing the importance of the university (or universities) for the build up of human knowledge, ..." Nobody is denying this. But what you seem to be attempting to do is to constrain what can be covered on Wikipedia. The existing policies already do that. In particular, see WP:VALID which gives all due accord to the scholarly mainstream perspective. Whether editors follow those is another matter, but at least you can wave around the published policies in an attempt to forge a consensus. Praemonitus (talk) 04:09, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a limit for the topics, it is a limit for content, i.e. about the quality (intellectual level) of information and reliability of the sources. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:35, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Then perhaps then you could clarify your intent with a specific case: would you exclude content based upon a reliable journalistic source like the New York Times? The reporting journalist may be university educated, but the information source is a non-governmental commercial enterprise. Praemonitus (talk) 01:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As I said before, for certain stuff, reliable press is good enough. I.e. for writing about Justin Bieber, we may expect that the press gives us more information about him than articles published with peer-review in scientific journals. In fact, what academics are in respect to scholarship, journalists are in respect to everyday events. They are professionals with a reputation of fact-checking and their area of expertise consists of everyday events like political events, disasters, crime, entertainment, etc. Plato and Aristotle did not have a diploma, because it was not usual for those time to have such credentials; meanwhile academics and journalists became specialized professionals, i.e. their activity got standardized and professionalized. Tgeorgescu (talk) 10:16, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Wikipedia is successful because it is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The concerns of the OP are adequately addressed by WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:RS, etc. and is (indirectly) a re-hash of the WP:VNT argument. --Surturz (talk) 02:38, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It already exists, but it's mostly phrased in the negative. Things like WP:FRINGE. But if you read WP:IRS, you'll see this is true. If you check out WP:MEDRS you'll see one of the strongest sourcing guidelines (although that's specific to medical articles). I seem to remember WP:PSTS taking a much firmer line in favour of scholarly sources, though it's possible that has changed. Guettarda (talk) 03:29, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, to abstract the gist of the arguments, my proposal is superfluous since Wikipedia policies, guidelines and essays already support/affirm it. In this case, I would simply like to add a hint in some policy about sources or about NPOV that "a pro-academia bias is no violation of WP:NPOV, but a straightforward consequence of how scientific research and philosophical/theological debate work". It would be restating the obvious, but it would have an educational (pedagogical) value, like "verifiability not truth" has educated thousands of editors into prioritizing reliable sources over their own musings about what the truth is in the edited matter. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:48, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This seems pretty obvious and is clearly true. It is the academic community that produces the science and history other information that is used in our articles. Academic sources are also the highest quality sources we can use. Being "pro-academic" essentially means being "pro-information". And, really, you could technically argue it means "pro-truth" as well, since academics sources are the most likely to be correct and accurate. SilverserenC 17:01, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - This is clearly not in keeping with the spirit of wikipedia since the beginning and would be better suited to Citizendia. "Bias is something Wikipedia can do without." Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 01:45, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Except we already have a "pro-academia bias". It's called our "proper sourcing bias". The only major difference between us and Citizendium is that they required experts to actually write their articles, while we don't (as that would constrain the creation and expansion of articles). But, other than that, we both still have the same types of sourcing. SilverserenC 02:55, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Except the whole thing is ridiculous since it relies on some big-n-scary definition of the word "Academic" that you must have invented. According to dictionaries, an academic is "anyone connected with any institute of higher learning, or otherwise engaged in scholarly pursuits." The International Central Politburo of Accreditation is a pipe dream. Like the title says, this is all about "bias" plain and simple - getting someone's personal bias enshrined as "neutral" by applying some litmus test that doesn't exist on the English word "academic". Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 03:01, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The OP said "If something can't be taught at an reputed university, then it does not belong in Wikipedia." This. Is. Clearly. Wrong. --Surturz (talk) 04:04, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I definitely agree with that, Surturz. Or disagree with the OP on that, I mean. But there is clearly a focus on high level sources, whether that means reliable news institutions or scholarly sources, such as published books or journal articles. My understanding of academic extends beyond just institutions of higher learning, but I understand how most people would constrain the meaning to just that. SilverserenC 05:08, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • In order to be able to identify reliable sources, we have to have some rule of thumb for who is an academic and who isn't, about who is an authority in his/her field and who isn't. So, sooner or later, it is unavoidable to pass judgment about who's who in the academe. "I like how he/she writes and I believe him/her on his/hers word of honor that he/she has checked the facts" is too subjective for WP:RSN. In fact, I ask for no more than what is being practiced daily at WP:RSN, it just has to get a formal recognition which will end nonsensical discussions like "your pro-academia bias is a violation of NPOV". Tgeorgescu (talk) 10:24, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • And of course accreditation matters, I would not want to be taught by someone who got his diploma through mail order or got a PhD for writing three essays on alternative medicine. But you should not turn it into a global conspiracy meant to silence the politically undesirable. Credentials matter and accreditation is there in order to prevent fake credentials. Tgeorgescu (talk) 10:57, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Missing articles treat improvement

Sometimes there is a red link (no such an article, it opens an editor). Maybe it will be better to get a list of languages in which the missing article does exist? — Preceding unsigned comment added by IKhitron (talk • contribs) 10:38, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That will be problematic because when there is not even a local article in English, how are we supposed to know how the subject is called in other languages? E.g. the interwiki links you find in many English articles have all been inserted manually either here at the English Wikipedia or most recently at the Wikidata project, but there is no standard database of all possible subjects in multiple languages. De728631 (talk) 14:18, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is already guidance on how to integrate interlanguage links and red links ]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Interlanguage_links#Inline_links here]. My preferred method is to create a redlink followed by a parenthetical reference to a foreign language wiki, ex: No link exists here in English (de). Andrew327 19:59, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

COI Template

Template:COI editnotice is a short template intended for the Talk page of articles about organizations to provide clear, concise, straightforward advice from WP:COI directly to the article, where PR people will see it. This started as one of a batch of village pump ideas that gained the most traction. We got a lot of feedback in user space, before it grew stagnant enough to attract an AfD, but there was strong consensus in its favor. It's been RfCd and incubated further, applied boldly to articles with support thus far and re-written a dozen times over.

Since I am myself a PR person and a COI contributor I am less bold here than I am normally. But I think it's ready and I would like to see if there is consensus to apply the template more broadly. There has been extensive discussion on whether it should be an edit-notice or a Talk template with no consensus, so I'm proposing, at least to start out, it be applied to Talk as the path of least resistance to make progress and perhaps later discussed whether it should be escalated to an edit-notice. It has also been suggested we roll it out in test phases to avoid an overwhelmed Request Edit queue. Please provide your support or objection below to a roll-out of the template or if there is a better way to make the proposal than the instructions I was provided here, let me know. CorporateM (Talk) 19:31, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Amended per Ironholds: Proposing initial deployment to Category:Companies based in Idaho on a trial basis. If successful, expand to Category:Companies based in California for phase 2 before Category:Organizations.

The template is as follows:

Support. I think that there are many organizations that want to correct legitimate issues with their articles but are not sure of how to do it. Giving such users a place to edit other than the article is a terrific idea. Andrew327 19:55, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: what are you actually asking us to support or oppose? A trial, a full deployment, a....? Whatever it is, the terms of the discussion must be made clear. Ironholds (talk) 19:59, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Basically support trial deployment - but the language is not firm enough. I'd suggest replace "advised" with "strongly advised", with the word strongly maybe in a contrasting hue such as green or at least bright orange. Are you contemplating a kindred template for COI editors from non-profits who just want to enlighten the yearning world about their noble institution or cause? --Orange Mike | Talk 20:06, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Intended for all organizations, not just companies. The language is based on the WP:NOPAY section of WP:COI, but can be modified if WP:COI is updated. We can't create new policies through templates. Although some parts of COI use "strongly discouraged" - I'm not sure that's actually firmer, since "discouraged" is very weak. CorporateM (Talk) 20:09, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support (Trial deployment). I'm fine with the language. We actually do accept that if a company saw a pure factual statement, such as a relocation, and the article had the wrong city, they could edit it without opprobrium. I get a lot of questions along this line at OTRS, and have worked out a short templated response with instructions on how to edit a talk page, this will make it easier, although I'll have to watch to see if the template is in place and modify accordingly.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:04, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support Trial - Novice COI editors frequently complain about Byzantine navigation paths to find help. This template should help considerably. In fact, we might want to generalize this notice to all COI editors and make it part of the main space talk page design. Rklawton (talk) 21:13, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. 1) I'm not opposed to a trial of this, but it probably needs to be discussed at WP:COI not just here listed at WP:CENT. 2) Which article's talk pages would receive this page, all corporations? All corporations and non-profits? Why are public figures such as celebrities, politicians, authors, and/or performers, etc. excluded? 3) Could we preload the new section box with an edit request template to improve the chance of someone actually seeing and responding to it? I'd be happy to try and code that for you. 4) Could we slip in a link to WP:PSCOI as well, since it's more instructive/explanatory than WP:COI alone. (Or link to PSCOI from the WP:NOPAY section too rather than just the top of the WP:COI page?) Thanks for this idea. Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 21:25, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Intended for all orgs, as oppose to just Cos. I dropped a notification at WP:COI. Regarding WP:CENT, hopefully the template is not proposing a new policy, rather than just summarizing WP:COI. If it is proposing a new policy, than I think we would need to change the template to not do that. CorporateM (Talk) 21:43, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support trial. Would encourage the word 'strongly' be added to 'advise', DVMt (talk) 22:10, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
 Done Added "strongly" per feedback from DVMt and OrangeMike. CorporateM (Talk) 22:11, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support Trial - I spend a great deal of time dealing with conflicts of interest, as do many other commenters here, and throughout the years, I have noticed that many COI editors are simply not familiar with our policies and guidelines let alone WP:COI. Furthermore, I find that helping COI editors to understand our policies and guidelines and turning them into productive editors is what's best for this encyclopedia and what's best for them (although, I care more about WP than what's best for them). This talk page notice is just another way for us to help funnel COI editors into a system where we can help them understand the issues with editing with a COI and help them become a productive member of our editing community. I support a trial because there's really no way for us to know how this will turn out. While I don't anticipate any negative repercussions, monitoring its use will be important as the template could theoretically be placed on every single article talk page in the encyclopedia. There's really nothing keeping anyone from posting this to any page, whether or not a COI is declared or suspected and pointing the COI gun can be damaging to the encyclopedia when there's no evidence to support the accusations. OlYeller21Talktome 22:17, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support Trial with parameters suggested by Ironholds. Idaho, then California, then Planet Earth. A formalized talk page notice and links to resources for COI editors seems like a very good idea to me. Is there a more comprehensive resource about COI editing other than WP:NOPAY that we could link to in the template? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 23:36, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Question Is this specifically targeting businesses/corporations? or anyone who may have a COI with an article? GenQuest "Talk to Me" 00:23, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
All organizations, not just corporations. And for those "Acting on behalf of" (PR/marketing) as oppose to COI in general. CorporateM (Talk) 00:47, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Trial implies that some data collection and analysis will occur before the California deployment. What will be measured and who has volunteered to measure it? Do we even have baseline stats on COI editors' ratios of talk page/article/reverted article edits? I'll support provided "trial deployment" isn't just a euphemism for a plan to ignore consensus. Kilopi (talk) 04:45, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Increased use of Request Edit. Baseline use today is very small, so it'll be easy to see if more people use it. Whether more people don't edit at all or only edit on Talk can't be measured. CorporateM (Talk) 05:32, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, i've only ever see it get to 20-30 at most. I think once it was at 42, but that might just be wishful remembering. Of course, with increased use of the Request Edit template, we also need to make sure that people keep up with going through them. SilverserenC 06:45, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Good enough for me. I support. Kilopi (talk) 10:14, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support test. The preloaded requested-edit link is absolutely a good idea. I am agnostic on everything else, but this is great :-). Let's try it. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:17, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: brief article summaries for Wikilink hovering

It would be helpful if Wikilinks in articles could, on mouseover, provide a small pop-up, "tool tip"-style definition or succinct and incisive summary of the article or term that the link points to, perhaps limited in length to 200 or 300 characters. The content of the summary could be written in association with existing article text, perhaps in a separate section or text field called "Wikilink Summary Content", or whatever. This would be particularly helpful in technical articles or in articles about less familiar subjects, and would spare the reader being diverted by having to open and engage with entire other articles to find out what terms means, sometimes repeatedly in a technicality-rich passage, while trying to stay focussed on reading the original article.

Thus, a Wikilink to County Galway would offer pop-up text such as "A county on the west coast of Ireland"; a Wikilink to Albert Einstein would offer "A twentieth century physicist who developed the theory of relativity"; a link to flavonoid might offer "a class of plant metabolites that offer dietary benefits in humans"; a link to string theory could say "a theory in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity"; a link to meteorite could say "a rock from outer space that has fallen to the surface of a planet".

I propose that such brief summaries be written separately from article leads, rather than simply "popping-up" the existing article lead itself, as the latter often contains a jumble of non-succinct and distracting etymology, eye-tangling pronunciation symbols, alternative similar terms, and other eye-bothering clutter.

Perhaps a new template at the beginning of an article might look like this: {{article-summary|text}}, where the text is what would pop-up on Wikilink mouseover elsewhere. — O'Dea (talk) 01:10, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You could use {{tooltip}} (a.k.a: {{abbr}}) -- for example: County Galway — Albert Einstein — But this is probably not considered good practice - or is it?   ~E:74.60.29.141 (talk) 05:07, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
However, if I catch your drift, you would like to see an automated process, perhaps a hidden parameter with a one-line description at the top of each page, which would appear as a tool-tip (as above) whenever one hovers on a link to an article with such parameter specified. Right?    ~E:74.60.29.141 (talk) 05:41, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
While I like the idea, I'm guessing you might not know about the Navigation popups tool that can be enabled from the Preferences->Gadget menu. On hovering over a link, it pops up the lead and provides a nav menu with other important links – a really great timesaver. It doesn't generally render the pronunciation stuff, though this is probably an unintentional side-effect of it simply ignoring templates. Certainly, some changes could be made to it to look for an {{article-summary}} and render that if it exists, and/or filter out other undesirable stuff. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 05:40, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My prayers have been answered. Wow, I had no idea about that Navigation popups tool. It's pretty much what I wanted, plus it even pulls out a photograph from the article to illustrate the pop-up. It's the story of my life – I have invented a number of useful devices in the past that could have made me some money, but I always find out that someone else thought of it before me. Thank you for the replies. — O'Dea (talk) 06:07, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We need a guide on how to edit wikipedia from a mobile device

Wikipedia:Editing on mobile devices is useless. It comes in Google as the first hit on "how to edit wikipedia from a mobile device" but fails to deliver anything substantial. We need to have a how-to guide, with pictures, on editing from a mobile devices. I am in fact teaching a class about Wikipedia now; and a number of my students ask me how to edit Wikipedia from a smartphone or a tablet. Having tried to do so a number of times on my Android devices, and even with pretty good Wikipedia-fu and Google-fu skills, the best I can tell them is to activate the "view the desktop version", and do edits from that. Particularly for smartphones, this is far from being friendly. If there is a better way of doing so, it is very, very well hidden (I cannot find it; no of my students can find it). I hear a lot about WMF pushing for Wikipedia friendliness for mobile devices. While viewing mobile Wikipedia may be friendly, mobile editing is still attrocious. At the very least, we need a good guide on how to do it! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:07, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I had a problem a while back with a cellphone that didn't seem to know what a tilde was, making it impossible to sign talk messages. So I created a template Template:Mobilesig (Mosig also works) that can be entered in the cellphone with subst: and produces a signature. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 04:11, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That should be linked from that page, although for most new users, signing is not high on the list of their priorities - such as "how can I edit at all?". --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:34, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I created a documentation for this template explaining how to use it. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 10:37, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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