Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 

• Table of contents
• First discussion
• End of page
• New post

The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas.
Before creating a new section, please note:

• Discussions of technical issues belong at Village pump (technical).
• Discussions of policy belong at Village pump (policy).
• If you're ready to make a concrete proposal and determine whether it has consensus, go to the Village pump (proposals). Proposals worked out here can be brought there.

Before commenting, note:

• This page is not for consensus polling. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them.
• Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through Wikipedia:Perennial proposals.

« Archives, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57

Translatathon (translation Wikipedia competition)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I'm curious if any editors would be interested in a Translatathon (portmanteau of "translate" and "marathon"), a Wikipedia competition encouraging multilingual editors to translate and promote Good- or Featured-class English Wikipedia articles at other language projects. For example, an editor might earn points for translating and promoting Grammy Award for Best Disco Recording ( at English Wikipedia) to quality status at Spanish Wikipedia (exists, but not quality status), or German Wikipedia (does not exist). This seems like a great way to get quality content developed at other language projects, and I'm not sure there are major translation competitions or initiatives hosted here at English Wikipedia. Might be fun to organize a one-month pilot competition. Of course, I'm open to other names, rules, judging, forms of recognition (barnstars?), etc. I just wanted to float the idea here and see if any other editors had thoughts or previous experience to share.

Thanks! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 22:58, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Given that the Village Pump is a page that attracts a lot of new and new-ish editors who aren't necessarily familiar with all our policies, just a few reminders to anyone considering taking part in this (or just inspired to start translating):

1. Don't even consider posting unedited machine translations into the Wikipedia article space unless you have a particular urge to be indefblocked (if you're not fluent in both languages, don't consider translating articles between Wikipedias);
2. Anything translated must credit what you translated it from in the first edit summary, or it will be treated as a copyright violation;
3. It's strongly recommended to put the {{translated page}} template on the talk page of any article you create here;
4. If you're translating from another language to en-wiki, bear in mind that our rules on sourcing are generally much stricter than those of the other Wikipedias, and you need to check the sources in the article to confirm that they actually conform to our definition of "reliable source" (and also that they actually say what the article claims they say);
5. If you're translating from en-wiki to another language, bear in mind that each Wikipedia has different policies and procedures for how they handle incoming translations, a list of which can be found here.

By no means let any of the above put you off, but be careful; translation has a long history of getting people into trouble very quickly if they're not sure what they're doing. ‑ Iridescent 00:44, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Iridescent, This is all incredibly helpful, thank you. I think part of what I envision is a relatively small but experienced group of editors who would be more than willing to adhere to these recommendations and organize their own activities, much like the Guild of Copy Editors, WikiCup, or some other variant of a WikiProject. I would not be opposed to having specific rules that require strict adherence to what you've outlined. The idea here is to establish a group of editors who are motivated to translate properly, support one another, and perhaps even form a sense of community. I'd love to participate in a project like this, but I only speak English, unfortunately. Thanks again for your feedback. I'm curious to read what others think as well. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 00:51, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@Iridescent: a few things to keep in mind:

1. Some projects (esp dewiki) make heavy use of transwiki history imports - so before starting over there get familiar with their requirements)
2. To create a new article with WP:CXT here you must be extended confirmed, but you can work around this by creating it in Draft: space. We will not heavily "advertise" this (such as by putting up a banner) but it can be useful for organizers.
3. If creating a page here, we can always bring in the original history from the other project (and again this is especially useful if it comes to here from dewiki). To do this, FIRST make your translated article here, THEN drop a request at WP:RFPI.

Good luck! — xaosflux ^Talk 00:56, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@Tdslk: I know we've discussed translation projects before. I'm curious what you think about this, and specifically, if you have any insight into how the GOCE model could be applied here. If you're uninterested, no worries, just wanted to invite you to the conversation. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 22:30, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Another Believer:! Yes, this is definitely something I am interested in. I think there is a lot of potential for projects and coordination of translation efforts across Wikipedias. I am a bit nervous about calling anything a "competition," though, except maybe for single best article. Anything that incentivizes quantity would run the risk of generating lots of poor-quality translated content. @Iridescent: points out some other important considerations around translation projects. Tdslk (talk) 05:45, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Tdslk, Totally understand re: "competition". But, isn't GOCE also a competition of sorts? Ditto the WikiCup, which seems to focus on quality. I'm just trying to think of a fun way to incentivize participation, and I'd definitely be open to whatever rules other editors think are best. Just getting the ball rolling here and trying to gauge interest. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 14:29, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

There are competitive awards associated with our drives, but they aren't taken very seriously by most participants. Even so, we still sometimes have problems when an editor decides to game the system for a barnstar. Policing a multilingual competition is inherently tricky; what if the winning editor is accused of making poor quality machine translations into, say, Esperanto? We'd need judges fluent in every Wikipedia language. It would be easier if we were only judging translations into English, but you suggest below that that is not what you have in mind. Anyway, I would be happy to discuss this further at another talk page as you suggest. Tdslk (talk) 19:20, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Another Believer, is your goal to "export" high-quality articles from the English Wikipedia? Or the other way around? The considerations are very different. For example, if you're "exporting", then none of the local rules about needing to make 500 edits before you can translate an article apply, and most editors will have access to machine translation (which is generally available English-to-other, but not other-to-English). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, I guess I'm open to whatever, but I had envisioned translating good English Wikipedia articles into other languages, and having them promoted to quality status locally as well. I realize the processes of promoting quality content are content consistent across all projects, but again, this initiative is really just about translating quality content and creating/improving content at other projects. Again, I'm just getting the ball rolling here and I would welcome all to continue the conversation and determine project/competition goals/rules. If there is enough interest, I would welcome forking this conversation to Wikipedia:Translatathon or wherever. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 17:39, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Right. So I think you need to talk to User:Amire80, who probably knows more about translation than anyone else.

As for the competition aspect, creating 'missing' articles is often more valuable than updating an medium-quality one to good quality. It's also easier to measure. The new m:Programs & Events Dashboard might be useful for tracking participants. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:12, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I hope editors don't mind, I'm archiving these comments and copying over to Wikipedia:Translatathon for further discussion. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 02:14, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

An option to hide page issues (infoboxes, stub notices, and inline templates)

Today, some Wikipedia readers which:

• Not interested to contribute and just read the article
• Not frequently or never doing major edits like adding citations and improving stubs (I’m also same here)

... are annoyed by the templates involving the issues on the page. They think the article editing is too time-consuming, so they are also simply dismissing the “page issues” and just reading the article. I want an option to disable them if they are reading Wikipedia for knowledge purposes. —Ijoe2003 (talk) 03:00, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Major issues with the article, such as a failure of basic verifiability or neutral point of view, should never be concealed from the reader. However, minor content issues could be hidden, such as stub status or a lack of incoming or outgoing links. – Teratix ₵ 04:42, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I wondered why the major issues mustn’t be concealed from the reader... —Ijoe2003 (talk) 05:32, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

 Note: I forgot about this. Does the “citation needed” thing is the one of the minor issues? —Ijoe2003 (talk) 05:42, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Major issues shouldn't be concealed because they have a serious effect on the reliability of the content and thus its usefulness to the reader. (Of course, Wikipedia should not be solely relied upon for a piece of information, but some articles are more reliable than others). A "citation needed" tag is an important issue because it indicates that part of the article is not verifiable. – Teratix ₵ 06:20, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is designed to turn passive readers into active editors. That's the entire paradigm of the website; every editor here used to be a reader who was initially uninterested in, ignorant of, or not bold enough to seize the opportunity to start contributing. Readers need encouragement to take that step. All of us here turned into editors by reading about something we are interested in, noticing something that could be improved, and realizing that there was nothing stopping us from becoming the person who makes the change.

But Wikipedia is about freedom, too. While I think it's a bad idea to advertise an option to hide maintenance tags, it exists. With some CSS hacking, one can hide anything they like, either at common.css if they are a registered user, or by using a browser add-on if they are not. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:50, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree with your points they should add this — Preceding unsigned comment added by Government Man (talk • contribs) 14:23, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

I want an example of the browser addon that hides them. —Ijoe2003 (talk) 06:25, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

@Ijoe2003: Stylish – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 09:49, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Finnusertop, I also want an example of the skin which hides them on Stylish. It’s too hard for me to find them. —Ijoe2003 (talk) 09:55, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Ijoe2003, the ping won't work if you insert it via an edit of a previous comment. You have to start a new line to make a ping work. --valereee (talk) 10:14, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I changed it to non-ping comment. — Ijoe2003 (talk) 08:58, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Ijoe2003, the Reading team re-designed the "Page Issues" stuff a little while ago, to make it more prominent. If you and your friends are finding that it's just in your way, then they'll want to know. Please feel free to post more details about your experience with it.

Teratix, I like to believe that our readers are smart enough to notice when those blue clicky numbers aren't present, even if there isn't a banner at the top that says an editor has noticed that they aren't there. We have never done any research to figure out whether those banners provide any value to readers; they might be as pointless as the one in the middle of this essay. It's also worth remembering that information can be verifiABLE even if it's not verifiED. This is explained more fully at the lead to WP:NOR, which IMO is worth reading in its entirety, including the footnote. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Okay, here’s the more details about that: I am actually reading Wikipedia casually with only doing a minor edits on the article. Therefore, I also thought that the “Page Issues” thing like “citation needed” is annoying. I posted that idea because I imagined that some Wikipedia readers may have a same opinion like this. —Ijoe2003 (talk) 06:25, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Ijoe2003, I'd argue that, annoying or not, a 'citation needed' tag is one of the more important things someone reading purely for information needs to see. It means at least one editor believes the assertion is not properly sourced and therefore may not be true. It means at least one person is questioning whether we should be including that assertion in the article. Many other things aren't as important, but that's one that I'd never support being able to opt out of seeing. I do get that seeing the reference numbers and inline templates can make articles more difficult to read, especially when you're not used to reading that way, but you get used to it, and it develops an actual skill. Eventually you start recognizing for yourself that, "Hey...that sentence doesn't have a citation. That might mean it's not really true. Maybe I should check further before relying on it." It's one of the things that makes reading on Wikipedia more valuable than much of what you can find on the net. valereee (talk) 09:06, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Semi-Protect All SPIs

Some sockpuppets are trolls.

Is it feasible to semi-protect all Sockpuppet investigation subpages? In the last few days, these pages have been under attack by new accounts that edit them to report that no match has been found and the investigation is being closed. The pages are then reverted and the new accounts are blocked. This appears to be the work of one trollsockmaster (except that trolls don't wear socks). Would automatically semi-protecting the pages when they are created, normally via Twinkle, prevent this vandalism? The trade-off is that new editors who are not autoconfirmed, and IP addresses, would not be able to report sockpuppetry. That seems like a small price to pay, since new editors and IP addresses are just as likely to be sockpuppets as to know enough to be able to identify and report sockpuppets.

Thoughts? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:26, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

This can be done with the MediaWiki:Titleblacklist (see rules with autoconfirmed and noedit) so that we don't have to apply protection individually. It would be for the best that non-(auto)confirmed users cannot edit them. — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:02, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I think we need some evidence that there are no good SPI edits by non-autoconfirmed users. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:32, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

As an interim measure, can each SPI be semi-protected each time that an admin reverts vandalism? Some of the SPIs have been vandalized 6 or 8 times, always the same. (It's one trollsockmaster.) Robert McClenon (talk) 15:03, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Trolls don't wear socks, but they do steal socks. Consider that the next time you have mismatched footwear coming out of your laundry. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:04, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

• I can't talk to whether there are any good IP contributions (thought participating in SPI is so complicated it nearly broke me both times I've done it). I did want to congratulate @Robert McClenon: for one of the great wikispace photos I've seen. And having a better laundry policy than me. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:08, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

It isn't my photo. And my laundry policy is to use sodium hypochlorite. Robert McClenon (talk) 10:49, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I support semi-protecting any SPI page once vandalized, but oppose blanket-semi-protection for the entire set unless evidence shows that it's needed in many cases. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:59, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Add dark mode option to Wikipedia

It would be easier on the eyes (especially at night) and waste less battery life. X-Editor (talk) 15:13, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Is mw:Skin:Vector-DarkCSS what you're looking for? You might want to go to your preferences and check "black background, green text" as an alternative. ‑ Iridescent 15:21, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

@X-Editor: You might also be interested in phab:T122924. Jc86035 (talk) 15:56, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

I want a button on Wikipedia that you can click to change to dark mode for the causal reader and editor, not something you have to download or something that requires multiple steps. X-Editor (talk) 21:57, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

You will likely need an account, but otherwise that is one of the tasks to watch. You can also watch phab:T26070 and children. --Izno (talk) 21:30, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

MusikAnimal was developing 'NightPedia'. When (and if) that is completed, it might be what you are looking for. 125.63.105.110 (talk) 15:15, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedian resource groups

Do we have anything resembling employee resource groups? My new employer has three: one for women, one for employees of color, and one for LGBTQIA+ employees. I think this is a good idea for Wikimedia projects to implement, and would add to it: lower- and working-class Wikipedians, and Wikipedians with disabilities. I think this could work especially if it's complemented by an off-wiki space like a new channel in our Discord. Qzekrom 💬 ^they_them 05:02, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Users here only disclose what information they want to, so they may or may not identify as members of some group you may be interested in. You can start navigating at Category:Wikipedians and expand out categories, you will see some of the groups you mention there. "Color" is a very American way to pigeonhole people, but there is Category:Wikipedians by ethnicity and nationality‎. I don't like the idea of these subsets being "resource groups", as if they are about to be exploited. Self interest in the Wikiprojects is where our users take their initiative at volountyeering for work. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:52, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

I, as a member of two of the groups identified above, also don't like this idea. Participation in any sort of group on Wikipedia, such as Wikiprojects, should be available to anyone interested in the relevant subject rather than just "insiders", and, as Graeme said, we have no means of identifying whether anyone is really a member of any group. There's also the danger that such groups would become a vehicle for advocacy rather than a means of improving Wikipedia. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:05, 9 April 2019 (UTC)