Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals sections when appropriate, or at the help desk for assistance. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Wikipedia:About stat incorrect

It states there are 5,808,126 articles on Wikipedia, but that is outdated. I cannot edit the article so please fix it — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brainiac245 (talk • contribs) 18:23, 15 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

5,808,167 articles is the actual number — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brainiac245 (talk • contribs) 18:24, 15 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

5,808,172 articles is the last number I checked — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brainiac245 (talk • contribs) 18:31, 15 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

5,808,177 articles — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brainiac245 (talk • contribs) 18:35, 15 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to guess that this number is updated by a bot on a periodic basis (perhaps daily?)... and that the bot simply has not run its update yet. Give it time. Blueboar (talk) 19:44, 15 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- This is automatically updated by a variable, not by a person or a bot. Rmhermen (talk) 06:54, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About?action=purge. This will clear the page cache, which will force the number to update. Qzekrom (talk) 16:12, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

When will this article be indexed by Google?

I wonder if it could be explained how United States support for ISIS would be indexed in Google in order to get access comfortably? Saff V. (talk) 11:46, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New articles are generally indexed quickly. However, articles which are listed for deletion are marked as {{NOINDEX}}, which stops them being indexed by external search engines until the deletion template is removed. Andrew Gray (talk) 21:54, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The NOINDEX rule for AFD pages apparently only applies to pages that are less than 90 days old. There's discussion on the template's talk page about this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:51, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The page in question is less than 90 days old... so NOINDEX should apply. Discussion is currently leaning towards: “keep, but rename”. Blueboar (talk) 21:58, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Building relationships among Wikipedians

What initiatives do we have in place to help Wikipedians build relationships? I often feel alone while editing, and I realized that social capital might encourage new users to stay and contribute more. Qzekrom (talk) 18:35, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That I know of : not much, and the lack of interactions between users certainly is a major problem here... I think a factor is the extreme confusion (and age) of the community part of the website, and the lack of a real common place (even a subreddit) for wikipedians to come together, the village pump hardly filling this role. Louis H. G. (talk) 02:21, 18 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree more venues would be better, you can currently participate on IRC, Discord, mailing lists, and wiki meetups. Do you have any ideas for further collaborative environments? Killiondude (talk) 02:10, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried to compile a related list at mw:Talk pages consultation 2019/Tools in use. My immediate goal is less about social connections, and more about where/how you might talk to someone about an article you're working on, but this will often be the same place. Please feel free to contribute examples that you're familiar with – the more, the merrier at this stage. Also, there's a chance that you might find links to an example that interests you on that page. Louis H. G., I don't think that Reddit has made it onto the list yet, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised to find a subreddit or two out there. There are tens of thousands of editors here, and surely some of them are also Redditors. If you find a good one, then feel free to add it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:58, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to add a word of warning here. It's all very well to build relationships among Wikipedians, but no decisions about the actual content of Wikipedia should be made anywhere other than on Wikipedia. I have several times been on the wrong end of off-Wikipedia collusion, which for the most part I'm pretty sure has taken place on IRC. I'm pretty well versed in policy and guidelines, so have been able to respond robustly to such things, but many people who are not quite so Wikipedia-obsessed can be intimidated by such action. It would be much better if all discussion could be where we can all see it, i.e. on this site. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:36, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, but the confusion of wp paradoxically makes it very hard for someone to access these discussions, especially non-wikipedians. Despite the intention, transparency is a questionable reality here.Louis H. G. (talk) 22:47, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

re: "where/how you might talk to someone about an article you're working on"—I agree with that. I love WikiProjects as a concept because they're (at least in theory) a good place to find subject-matter experts to collaborate with, but I often can't tell how active a WikiProject really is; just counting the number of signatures on the page or the number of users in e.g. Category:WikiProject Computer science participants are very misleading statistics. I've been reluctant to take on large-scale article work because I fare better when I can get real-time feedback on my ideas, and I often don't know the best place to find that. Qzekrom (talk) 02:49, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Killiondude: So, a few iconoclastic thoughts, because I often suggest people in my academic field to improve articles and keep getting (very) negative views on the wp community. I would argue that none of the venues you mentions really work, regarding editors'sociability. I think wiki as a community is hardly enticing for newcomers, and remains more than discouraging for the advanced editor, for a few reasons :

1. Lack of accessibility. The online geography of the community is very confused. This falls under the general maze of this website, which is really outdated. It is very difficult to know where to go just to meet the people who write here. There should be a central square in this place.

2. Theres is too many venues, none of them being on point. The sedimentation of layers and layers of cubbyholes over the years is perhaps the most noticeable feature of the website : I think it really is detrimental to the general communication, and, on another level, make the functioning of the website very obscure and aristocratic, especially for the general public. Only those who master this labyrinth can really contribute.

3. Technically, the venues are inconvenient, and tend to desynchronise wp with the rest of the web. This is just not how people get together online, which makes wp pretty repulsive to newbies. Editing a source code to reply, as i'm doing rn, is quite a tedious way to communicate.

I think this is a great problem for the future of wp, and should be addressed.Louis H. G. (talk) 22:47, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with (1) and (2), but I'm confused about (3). What do you mean by that? Qzekrom (talk) 02:54, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Qzekrom: Well, for example, I did not see this reply, because there's no real notification system, except ping. If I want to build discussion with anyone, I have to keep track and get back to everything I write on every project in every language. However the main flaw is the source-coding aspect. It's incredibly tedious, antiquated, and, most of all, it prevent people from entering the project. It's a 90's website logic.Louis H. G. (talk) 22:11, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Louis H. G.: I kind of agree with that. I think it has some strengths. For instance, I'd like to be able to collaboratively edit outlines or research notes on an article talk page, but I can't trust that others realize that's my intention because the expectation that talk pages be used for convos is so great. Also, <aside>it's really easy for discussions to happen all over the place instead of in an orderly manner, as is currently happening at Talk:Rent regulation. We've been reviving months-old threads left and right.</aside> Qzekrom (talk) 22:38, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think they work but are not perfect. A top 5 website has been built and thousands of volunteers have participated across the external social venues (non-wiki) that I listed. In any case, it seems like the participants of this thread might be interested in mw:Talk pages consultation 2019. Killiondude (talk) 17:16, 21 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Killiondude: This website was created 18 years ago. The question is not how it succeeded in the 2000's with this system (which was still frequent then) ; the certainty is that it won't attract people for much longer if it remains in this sad state. The consultation is indeed very welcome, and hopefully will lead to some change. Louis H. G. (talk) 22:11, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is a problem with both retention and effective indoctrination, in a project with such a large amount of rules that one needs to familiarize oneself with in order to contribute effectively. The English Wikipedia very much caters to the type of person who is fine working alone for long stretches of time, and the vastness of the project means that, unless you edit in hot-button areas like modern politics, you can do so for weeks at a time without ever really encountering another person. It's not that way on all projects, for example, on projects that are small enough that you don't need a watchlist, because recent changes passes slowly enough for you to keep up with, it's difficult for everyone in the community not to be aware of every talk page discussion going on everywhere.

I don't have a solution for it, but I would be interested in anyone that had any novel ideas. GMG ^talk 23:39, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have some ideas policy-wise and some thoughts on the community (which I'll share later when I have them more fully thought out):

Do an annual (or every two years) review of Wikipedia's sitewide policies as well as individual WikiProjects' policies to see what provisions ought to be added, updated, refactored, or "repealed" (i.e. archived and retained for "historical purposes", but deactivated as official policy).
Encourage more content and policy disputes to be resolved through RfCs etc. so they can set sitewide precedent. Furthermore, make it easier to find relevant "case law" for specific types of disputes. Right now, I'm involved in an (imo) unprecedented POV dispute on an econ article, and I feel that similar POV disputes on similar econ articles haven't been fully resolved, at least not transparently.

Qzekrom (talk) 06:32, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

An update on templates on mobile web

Hello,

A few months ago we mentioned a change that was coming to how certain templates appear on mobile web. I just wanted to drop a note that this change is now in effect here on English Wikipedia. This is the result of a request from 2016 to better display templates on mobile. As you may be aware, since early 2018 mobile traffic counts for the majority of traffic on English Wikipedia (and more than twice as many unique devices access the mobile site over the desktop site), so making templates present on mobile is important.

We've deployed this update to all other wikis and ran A/B tests to measure the impact (Summary: Users interact with the new treatment more frequently than the old. They interact with higher-severity issues more than than lower-severity issues. The new design does not cause more frequent edits).

For template editors, we have some recommendations on how to make templates that are mobile-friendly and further documentation on our work so far.

If you have questions about formatting templates for mobile, please leave a note on the project talk page or file a task in Phabricator and we can help.

Yours, CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 18:31, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Talk to us about talking

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.

We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.

We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.

We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.

You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:

First, sign up your group here.
Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
1. When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
2. What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
3. What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
4. What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
5. What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.

You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.

Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.

You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.

Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.

Trizek (WMF) 15:01, 21 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What if a Google search won't work? Hatnotes could help

This is just one example, but it is something that could happen with other search terms. I made a note several months ago about an article in an actual newspaper about "WALL-E" that I wanted to learn more about. I forgot to make a note about which newspaper figuring it would be easy enough to find the information, but every single Google result for "WALL-E" is about the movie or the character. Had I made a note about what it was about, I might have had better luck. Guessing which newspaper didn't help since a search of its web site didn't work, but another resource I could access this week gave me what I needed, and I made an improvement to a Wikipedia article and was able to link to it, after which I was reverted, along with a change that would work better. Well, maybe. It depends on whether a person would actually look at "See also". If you remember only that something else is called "WALL-E", Wikipedia is not very helpful at this point. Although maybe that is unlikely. Either the WALL-E article needs a hatnote or there needs to be a disambiguation page. Also see this discussion.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:46, 21 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Notification for a survey

Hi everyone! This is Isaac from WMF Research team. In a nutshell: We are planning to run a survey of Wikipedia readers as a follow up to two previous studies communicated on VP:EN (previous post; previous post) on English Wikipedia and 13 other languages (https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.00474). We expect no disruptions in the workflow of editors during this study. The Wikimedia Foundation Research team is continuing the project on understanding the motivations, needs, and backgrounds of the different populations of people that read Wikipedia. The current state of the project aims to improve our understanding of the diversity of readers as well as how the needs and experience of Wikipedia readers varies across different populations. Some more information about this research on the project page.

To be able to do this, we would like to pilot a survey asking readers about their motivation (using the three questions we have asked in the previous surveys) and demographics (age, gender, education, locale, native language as described on our project page). The plan is for the survey to go out around 2019-02-27, at first to just a few hundred randomly-sampled readers on English Wikipedia. Based on the outcome of the pilot, we will consider expanding to a larger sample of readers and more languages. We will keep this thread posted with changes if they occur, and we will update our project page. To follow the progress of the project and monitor our research results, please also look at this task. If you are interested to know more, or if you have any question, or any observation, please ping Isaac (WMF) or leave a comment on the project page. Thank you! --Isaac (WMF) (talk) 20:51, 22 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Page for deletion requests on Wikipedia

I was just wondering... does Wikipedia have a page where requests for deletion are made? Just curious, to vote on them and perhaps better understand the deletion policy.

I searched to try and find the page, but I couldn't. I'll try again.

Thanks.

--Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 06:11, 23 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@SelfieCity: See WP:AFD --DannyS712 (talk) 06:13, 23 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 06:15, 23 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Talk pages consultation 2019

The Wikimedia Foundation has invited the various Wikimedia communities, including the English Wikipedia, to participate in a consultation on improving communication methods within the Wikimedia projects. As such, a request for comment has been created at Wikipedia:Talk pages consultation 2019. All users are invited to express their views and to add new topics for discussion. (To keep discussion in one place, please don't reply to this comment.) Jc86035 (talk) 14:57, 23 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Video tutorial regarding Wikipedia referencing with VisualEditor

Hi, I have received a grant from WMF to support production of a video tutorial regarding creating references with VisualEditor. I anticipate that the video will be published in March 2019. Depending on funding considerations, this tutorial might be published in both English and Spanish. If this tutorial is well received then I may produce additional tutorials in the future. If you would like to receive notifications on your talk page when drafts and finished products from this project are ready for review, then please sign up for the project newsletter.
Regards, --Pine^✉ 06:03, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I signed up. You might want to post directions on what to do here ... it's "non intuitive" ☆ Bri (talk) 03:35, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Captcha

I just tried to log in as usual and I get a flippin' captcha! Please forgive my vulgarity but SOD IT! I will not fart around with trash like that every time I want to log in. I care not whether this is a mobile thing or a test thing or the magic future to die for. I do not need this SHIT. I am outta here unless and until I can log in without morons pissing me off. Your problem is how to let me know when sanity finally prevails, if it ever does. Goodbye Wikipedia. Cheers 83.104.46.71 (talk) 22:10, 26 February 2019 (UTC) (aka Steelpillow (talk · contribs))[reply]

If there are too many recent unsuccessful login attempts from an IP or for a user name, a captcha will be served. Anomie ⚔ 00:19, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If morons don't piss you off when log in, morons will piss you off shortly thereafter. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:34, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not what actually happened. But if you are more interested in being right than listening, I'll leave you to it. 83.104.46.71 (talk) 06:34, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]