Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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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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RFC: Overuse of "stop hand" images

I find File:Stop hand.svg, File:Stop hand nuvola.svg, and their derivatives overused and bitey. Can we try to replace them with more appropriate images? KMF (talk) 04:15, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

• No. Most of the time it takes multiple attempts to get their attention with lower level warnings before a "stop hand" warning is applied. The situations that warrant a stop hand earlier definitely deserve it. Attack articles being a great example. It is supposed to get their attention as a last ditch effort to avoid having to block them. The whole point is to get them to STOP. --Majora (talk) 04:44, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• No for context, this conversation where I gave KMF a level 4 warning for using homophobic slurs in edit summaries while reverting vandals is likely what caused this RfC. I'm very much a DTTR type, but I consider usage of slurs to be one of the few occasions where it *is* warranted and the exact opposite of bitey. Especially when a user had already been given an NPA warning in the last month mentioning that blocks could be in the future. The final warning is meant to make a point and draw attention to behavior in order to prevent a block and stop disruption. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:53, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• No. The stop symbol is only used on the higher level warnings. It is used as a last resort and is perfectly appropriate. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Union of Opposites ‖ 04:56, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• No As it is not used until other warnings have been issued it is entirely appropriate. MarnetteD|Talk 05:04, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - ^[Humor] I agree that it is best not to send level3-4 warnings immediately, but when required I think that it is appropriate. —PaleoNeonate – 05:17, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• No It's only used when the person is nearing a block, it's almost bitey not to have it. Btw, PaleoNeonate barely beat me to the joke :P Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 05:19, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• No I also agree with the previous comments, especially with Drewmutt. --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 06:32, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support, not any undesired action requires a red card. --NaBUru38 (talk) 22:01, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
• No. It's misleading and therefore harmful in trying to be polite when the action in question has very serious consequences. --A D Monroe III^(talk) 02:33, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
• No. The suggested replacement is less clear and less appropriate. --Pipetricker (talk) 22:21, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
• It might well be that we are sometimes too quick to escalate up to warnings containing a hand stop image... however, once warnings DO get to that point, the image is appropriate. Blueboar (talk) 22:32, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose: I've always been a fan of Commons Emblems, e.g. File:Commons-emblem-hand.svg, but clearly, this is an abolition RFC. The overuse, if indeed exists, is wrong. Abolition of the emblem is also wrong. And unlike the mathematical negative signs, two wrongs don't cancel each other out. FleetCommand (Speak your mind!) 06:35, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

checking if ref is called

Is there a way to check if a particular page uses the REF tag system? Like #ifexistrefs then do something. -- 70.51.45.76 (talk) 06:05, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

You're probably more likely to get a useful response at WP:VPT. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 19:51, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I've now crossposted it there -- 70.51.45.76 (talk) 06:18, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

New print to pdf feature for mobile web readers

New print to pdf feature for mobile web readers

The Readers web team will be deploying a new feature this week to make it easier to download PDF versions of articles on the mobile website.

Providing better offline functionality was one of the highlighted areas from the research done by the New Readers team in Mexico, Nigeria, and India. The teams created a prototype for mobile PDFs which was evaluated by user research and community feedback. The prototype evaluation received positive feedback and results, so development continued.

For the initial deployment, the feature will be available to Google Chrome browsers on Android. Support for other mobile browsers to come in the future. For Chrome, the feature will use the native Android print functionality. Users can choose to download a webpage as a PDF. Mobile print styles will be used for these PDFs to ensure optimal readability for smaller screens.

The feature is available starting Wednesday, Nov 15. For more information, see the project page on MediaWiki.org.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Possibly sexist disambiguation/redirect muddle

I have discovered a confusing situation for anyone who searches Wikipedia for "Duchess of Sutherland". The intended target of my search was Elizabeth Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland, notable for her role in the Highland Clearances, but instead you get a redirect to Duke of Sutherland. There is a disambiguation page for people with this title: Duchess of Sutherland (disambiguation), but the redirect means that you never find it (unless you make a typing mistake, as I did).

(Another notable Duchess of Sutherland was Harriet Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland - notable for her position of influence, not just having a title.)

Sutherland (disambiguation) does not mention any females with a "Sutherland" title - one would expect, perhaps, to see "Countess of Sutherland", "Duchess of Sutherland" and, since many contemporary and historical sources talk about both these 2 titles in this way, "Lady Sutherland".

I note that "Countess of Sutherland" redirects to Earl of Sutherland. This is not helpful if you do not know that a Countess is the female counterpart of an Earl.

Two thoughts on this:
(1) It is difficult to use Wikipedia to find anyone with one of these female titles (because you have to search through each article that you arrive in to find what you want - and note the Countess/Earl situation mentioned above).
(2) It seems to be a sexist policy to refer those with a Wikipedia article on them to the page of their husband or a male holder of the equivalent title.

I am guessing that there is some biography convention on dealing with this. Has it been applied in this case? If yes, are the rules appropriate? Is this a matter that should be in the "policy section"? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:03, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

The only potential "sexism" here is the fact that the articles about the titles themselves are titled using the masculine form of the titles. Is there any reasonably common convention for referring to the title "Duke of Sutherland" (rather than to any particular holder of that title) that is more gender neutral?

As for improving navigation from the article about the title itself to a list of articles on specific individuals who've held that title, feel free to make proposals on the appropriate talk pages for the articles and/or relevant WikiProjects. Anomie⚔ 16:19, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I think an important part of the solution is this [[1]] and some better content on Sutherland (disambiguation)#People - i.e. putting the women with Sutherland-related titles and their own article in the list. Once the move is complete, it is probably appropriate for the Duchess of Sutherland page to have a "see also" directing to Duke of Sutherland, just as Duke of Sutherland should have a link to the Duchess page.

The sexism problem is repeated with Earl/Countess of Sutherland, with everything directed at Earl of Sutherland - which is a little bizarre as (a) probably the most (in)famous holder of this title was habitually referred to as the Countess of Sutherland by her tenants and (b) the current holder is a Countess. Looking at the remarks of User:Anomie, I think there is a choice: either the article title that covers the (hereditary) title needs to be clearly gender neutral - which would give some horribly clumsy article titles, or there is a page for each gender version (presuming that there are notable persons of each gender) with appropriate links between the two.

I am no expert on all this sexism stuff, but if something seems wrong to me (I'm normally the person getting it wrong!!), I suggest that it needs a bit of looking at by someone who does have a good understanding of the subject. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:32, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Net neutrality

The FCC here in the US is about to change the net neutrality regulations. What does this mean for Wikipedia and our access to it? Jcwf (talk) 05:37, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

probably not much. Fairly low bandwidth, limited commercial competitors and popular with customers. We're the kind of site you give people free to try and look good.©Geni (talk) 08:54, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

We are doing everything we can to make sure Wikipedia and her sister projects reach as many people as possible. This includes partnerships with ISPs to be included in all package levels. Additionally, we have incredible support from launching and running the zero rated Wikipedia Zero initiative from users. In many places where Wikipedia Zero operates Internet access is expensive, generally costing in PPP$ 50% of an equivalent US plan. (ITU 2015)

We are looking forward to bringing Wikipedia to more people in the coming years. Cheers, — Dispenser 16:06, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Well there are pros and cons. While it is true that most operators in the US would have no reason to restrict people's access to Wikipedia regardless of states related to net neutrality registrations, and in other countries WMF have gained from cooperating with carriers that welcome positive data discrimination, lack of net neutrality could also mean if someone wrote something on wikipedia that are not favorable to network operator then the network operator might want to throttle people's access to the site or some particular pages. Internationally, if net neutrality can become a standard, while projects like wikipedia zero would be affected, perhaps it might also make Wikipedia less likely to be banned by states or operators.C933103 (talk) 19:50, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Please, particpate

Probably this is not the forum to seek such help, but Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Isa ali pantami has been lying around for sometime without any hope of further participation. Please, people, take a look at the discussion. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 19:04, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Looking for a Greek speaker

Currently we're down to the last several thousand Neelix redirects (we just passed the 2 year mark!) and a small chunk of those remaining are Greek language. If someone who knows Greek would care to take a look through them, they're here; if you're not familiar with redirects and/or the ongoing Neelix cleanup efforts, read over the instructions at RfD and WP:X1. It'd be hugely appreciated. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:31, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Worth noting that the redirects appear to be in Ancient Greek. – Uanfala 18:06, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

The largest number of articles that will be affected by an event

I remember asking in village pump a long time ago what would happen if the Queen dies but I can't find it in the archives. Anyway, the reason I asked this is because she would most likely be succeeded by a male monarch, but many articles use "the Queen" (including article titles like Queen's Counsel) to refer to the monarch and a lot of changes will have to be done (probably manually because bots can't tell where the word has to be substituted for "King"). Now though my question is what foreseeable event will cause the most trouble for Wikipedia and would require the largest number of manual changes to articles. The Average Wikipedian (talk) 02:53, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 19#What if the Queen dies? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:04, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

• There's definitely going to be a lot of fussy work if a major country split up in two. – Uanfala 17:46, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Category:Entertainment events by year and category:Events by year

Category:Entertainment events by year has been newly created. It already existed earlier in some other wikis such as the German and Dutch version. By the way I was really amazed that category:Events by year has actually been deleted - what's the idea behind this? It exists on all other wikis, see d:Q7214926. The Wiki ghost (talk) 17:39, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

@The Wiki ghost: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2017_September_24#Events_by_year ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:41, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Sorry but in my opinion this decision is crazy and should be reconsidered. Who would mark for example Category:Art museums and galleries by year as an event? Even worse, Category:Technology by year is now categorized as an event too. The Wiki ghost (talk) 17:56, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. There are a lot of CfDs that I think are wrong-headed. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:54, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Women in Red World Contest spam

I, and judging from my watchlist a lot of other people, have just been spammed with a mess age about the "Women in Red World Contest". No indication who sent it or why it was sent to me. The only link is to Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/The World Contest which does not tell me why I received it. I would normally as the sender but the message was unsigned, and I can hardly complain to the bot (and the bot offers no way to find out who is sending these messages).--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 03:25, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

You can check the mass message log. This one was sent by Ser Amantio di Nicolao. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:42, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Also, the wikitext delivered to your user talk included a hidden comment, tweaked to:

Message sent by User:Ser Amantio di Nicolao using the list at permalink

where the permalink is the 03:04, 26 November 2017 revision of WiR list 2 which appears to be in the wrong namespace, and which apparently came from a massive list at User:Ser Amantio di Nicolao/sandbox.

That doesn't explain how you got on the list, but it is a step closer. Johnuniq (talk) 03:48, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I did not think of checking for hidden comments. I would have seen it if I replied but there was neither a sender or bot to reply to.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 05:28, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

@JohnBlackburne: You're a member of one of the WikiProjects I targeted to let know: one of the subprojects of WikiProject England. As for the signature, my apologies about that...I had thought that the MediaWiki message system autopopulates that without prompting. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 03:51, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Apart from your sig there was no indication why I was selected in the message. I am a member of WP NE England: searching the linked page (as it’s far too long to read - it takes a while to display) I see mentions of Welsh, West Country and SE England but nothing on NE England. I think you are thinking of sub-projects the wrong way – being interested in local history does not mean I would be interested in any other area of England.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 04:55, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

@Ser Amantio di Nicolao: You also somehow ended up targeting subpages like User talk:Koavf/Userboxes. You should look over your edits. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:56, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

That's interesting, as I followed the procedure I've done before, which is how I was told it should be done. I'll look into it for future, certainly. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 06:36, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

New Page Patrol

New Page Patrol Needs YOU!

• We are the firewall that protects Wikipedia by identifying spam and malicious new submissions.
• Currently our backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed new pages stretches back to March and there are currently a lot of pages in the backlog that have passed the 90 day Google index point. This means that are many thousands of pages that are indexed by google, but have not been reviewed at all!
• We currently barely have the capacity to keep the backlog steady, and reducing it has been very difficult.
• Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines; currently Wikipedia needs experienced users at this task. Please see the granting conditions.
• If this looks like you, please review our instructions page and APPLY TODAY. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 09:23, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

I dunno about this claim that thousands of articles are getting "indexed by google, but have not been reviewed at all". Here's the five oldest at the moment:

• List of compositions for saxophone, piano and percussion: edited by three different New Page Patrollers plus several experienced editors
• WBC Beroe: edited by two experienced editors
• Moharajpur: edited by one admin, one New Page Patroller, and two experienced editors
• Windsor Borough Police: edited by two experienced editors
• Embassy of Australia, Ethiopia: edited by one New Page Patroller and one experienced editor

So unless someone wants to make the rather insulting claim that all of these people are editing articles without looking them over, I'd say that they're getting reviewed. The problem is convincing those admins and NPPers to actually click the "Yeah, the rest of you can probably stop worrying about this one" button instead of actually reviewing them, actually editing them, and still leaving the "I looked at this" button for someone else to click. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:14, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Editing character boxes need tooltips with character descriptions

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T5550

The other day I was editing a section and I wanted to insert an "e" with an acute mark, so I selected "Latin" from the drop down list below the editing textbox, and I saw a bunch of various letters. That's good. But I found it hard to distinguish between certain letters, like an "e" with a grave mark versus an "e" with an acute mark, for example. So I idly hover the mouse cursor over the letters, and I then noticed that all of them have the same alt text that reads "Click on the character or tag to insert it into the edit window". It would be really nice to have each show exactly what it is, like "Click on this character to insert a lower case e with an acute accent" for example. I would imagine this would be helpful to those with some vision problems as well. By the way, I had to use the magnifier program to view the characters in question and picked the right one. So...what do you think of that? I expect it to be a fairly easy fix, say one week top :-) --TheBlueWizard (talk) 18:27, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Agreed--that is much more helpful text. Something like "Click here to insert [description of character] ([actual character])" is much more useful. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:59, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

This concerns the CharInsert extension and gadget. Terminology: What you call "alt text" is what's commonly called "tooltip" (which is defined by the HTML title attribute, not the alt attribute) (topic title changed accordingly).

See: T5550: Character insertion box should have titles for the characters (open since 2005)

--Pipetricker (talk) 01:48, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

IMDB character entries

I don't know where to report this, but IMDB is discontinuing (most) of their character entries on December 6. A quick survey shows that there are at least 2000 links, at least some of them (probably incorrectly) used as references. I don't know what we can do. A bot marking all of them in article-space as dead? In any case, I don't know what board to report this to. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:41, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Use archived links. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:38, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Go drop a note on User talk:InternetArchiveBot (may redirect). --Izno (talk) 13:07, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Nagware

The way the current donation drive is being handled is very annoying. After closing the large donation-request banner at the top of the Main Page, I have had to close smaller versions that slide in from the side on four other occasions (basically, every time I visit a new page). Dismissing the side-box once should be sufficient to get the point across that the user does not wish to donate at this time. We should not be hounding users incessantly about donating, otherwise they might elect to avoid Wikipedia entirely (at least while donation drives are under way). - 72.182.55.186 (talk) 21:25, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Change to the edit submission button label

In consultation with the Legal team, and after several years of discussions, the devs started changing the old "Save page" button to "Publish page" last year. MediaWiki core has been updated, and almost all Wikimedia wikis have been converted to the new labels already.

Right now, at this wiki, editors see "Save page" (or "Save changes", if the page already exists). In the future, editors will see "Publish page" (or "Publish changes"). This will affect all standard editing environments, including WikEd, but not including scripts or gadgets such as HotCat.

When I talked to experienced editors at other wikis earlier this year about this change, they generally had two main concerns:

• First, some help pages will need to be updated. This is true, and it will take some time. For example, Wikipedia:Tutorial/Editing#Save the page will need to be updated.
• Second, some editors worried that this change would confuse new editors. There have been no indications so far that this is the case.

In addition to the concerns raised by editors, it is my experience that the change temporarily startles a few editors. I hope that this feeling will be much less than when they changed the color and size of the buttons. At the other wikis, most editors seemed to get used to it fairly quickly.

Please note that any changes to the wording on this label, because of its legal implications, must be agreed with the Legal team in advance. Please let me know if you believe that a change is necessary, so that I can connect you with them. Very few other wikis have requested such changes. For example, the German Wikiquote requested permission to have both labels say only "Publish" instead of "Publish page" and "Publish changes", and the Hebrew Wikipedia asked to change from "Publish changes" to the longer "Save and publish changes". The Legal team did not object to either of these changes.

The plan: I will ask the team to schedule the change here for Monday, 11 December 2017. That should give this community a couple of weeks to consider updating the help documentation. If you have questions, please ping me. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:29, 28 November 2017 (UTC)