Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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New ideas and proposals are discussed here. Before submitting:

• Check to see whether your proposal is already described at Perennial proposals.
• Consider developing your proposal on Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab).
• Proposed software changes that have gained consensus should be filed at Bugzilla.
• Proposed policy changes belong at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).
• Proposed WikiProjects or task forces may be submitted at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals.
• Proposed new wikis belong at meta:Proposals for new projects.
• Proposed new articles belong at Wikipedia:Requested articles.

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Make suppress redirect available to trusted users

Hi. Why not make the suppress redirect option available for auto-confirmed users? First of all, it is of great help to all users working in WP:RM. Secondly, that is going to make the names simpler. Consider on a bad name of a article; written professionally. Like: "Example is a bad guy" is the article title; but the article's content refers to the apple iPad, written brilliantly, without bias, etc. This would be of great help to all auto-confirmed users. Thanks. Dipankan says.. ^{("Be bold and edit!")} 10:20, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Misuse of the suppress redirect function will leave the editors who created the page confused and lost. Also, the potential for misuse by vandals, who have no trouble getting autoconfirmed would be substantial. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 11:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Then make it available for editors with 6 months and 1000+ edit's experience or something like that. Whatever, it's going to very useful for all workers in areas which requires moving of pages. Dipankan says.. ^{("Be bold and edit!")} 12:37, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

A better way might be to give the option to everyone when there are no links to or transclusion of the page. (May need some development work though.) -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:08, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. This will, for all intents and purposes give autoconfirmed users the power to delete articles. What's to keep someone from moving an article into their userspace, waiting a while, and then CSD U1ing a "userspace draft"? (or just leaving it there to rot) --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:24, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't move log still be there? Can't users abuse this approach already, or are incoming redirects checked when U1 is requested? Even if they are, the user can replace original article with a non-redirect. Isn't that why history/move log should always be checked regardless? Just wondering. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

As an admin, I can assure you that it's easy to overlook single entries when looking over a page history for a U1 speedy; I've made mistakes of this sort more than once. I've recently seen lots of pages get speedy deleted that didn't qualify even for regular deletion — they had been moved and then tagged, and there were so many of these pages that the deleting admin didn't realise that there was a substantial problem. That's the biggest reason I oppose this idea, but even beside that, I think it's a solution in search of a problem. Seeing how I almost never see any type of {{db-move}} situations at CAT:CSD, I believe that Dipankan greatly overestimates the number of times that this ability would be used. Finally, if just about anyone can suppress a redirect, we'd likely see lots of redirects getting deleted needlessly — I often see redirects up for deletion despite points 4 and 5 of WP:RFD#KEEP; if this proposal passes, we'd run the risk of breaking tons of incoming links and links in page histories. Nyttend (talk) 14:50, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

• Support, but I think users would have to meet a certain threshold. I recognize there are problems, but I'd submit that the great majority of them are from the incompetent children who do a month or two of playing policemen at NPP and leave; if we restricted it to more experienced users, I don't think it would wreak too much havoc. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:48, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
• Support as a userright that is no more controversial than Rollback, per The Blade of the Northern Lights. We have to be very careful about LTAs that use autoconfirmed sleeper socks.Jasper Deng (talk) 04:51, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose Per Ron, the risks of confusion or subterfuge outweigh the small gain of efficiency. MBisanz ^talk 05:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. Looking through my logs, I reckon I've made ~750 page moves as a non-admin and I can probably count the number of times I've had to tag the resulting redirect for deletion on one hand. This function is already misused enough by admins, I don't think giving it to more users would be a positive. Jenks24 (talk) 08:13, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

  Then you're exceptionally lucky, because before I was an admin I had dozens of page moves from startlingly hideous titles (I.e. Article writting to Tarkhan Mughals). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:40, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

  Yes, I agree that NPPers can come across some weirdly titled articles, but they are few and far between. Most moves I've made when looking through Special:NewPages are either capitalisation or style/MoS fixes, where a redirect should be left behind. The outliers, such as Article writting, can be dealt with by a R3 tag and don't do any harm if they are alive for a few hours longer (in fact, they could arguably help the new users find the article they created). Jenks24 (talk) 07:39, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

• Comment I think a experienced user won't be damaging things around; if a strict set of guidelines is set. Dipankan says.. ^{("Be bold and edit!")} 15:35, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose Leaving a redirect behind isn't so bad. We have a procedure to remove a redirect when needed. Usually leaving the redirect is a good thing. (But I strongly oppose the suggestion that we introduce a new level of time+edits that gets the option to not create a redirect; this is instruction creep AND it creates another distinction between editors.) RJFJR (talk) 15:49, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose I have seen admins deleting (or surpressing) redirects that where needed due to incoming links because the article titles did not follow there prefered form. Too much damage can be done here - and who is is going to do a surpressed-redirect-patrol? Agathoclea (talk) 18:28, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
• Comment While creating a main space article by moving a page from user space or from AFC, we might need to delete pages by putting a housekeeping tag. That makes it a lot more easier. Dipankan says.. ^{("Be bold and edit!")} 04:11, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose too easy to vandalize. Mugginsx (talk) 16:10, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Just popping up again; just to remind that draft policy will include it for users with a certain requirement; like experienced; more than 6 months; and 1500+ edits or something like that. Dipankan says.. ^{("Be bold and edit!")} 13:36, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support user right Petrb (talk) 09:21, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose as it seems like an invitation to sock it up and wheel it out. Josh Parris 23:42, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment: No, despite your edit summary comment that isn't possible out of the blacklist, moreover that is trackable by the history; but I also oppose as autoconfirmed is a status which can be too easy to gain. mabdul 23:50, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
    • Make it available for file movers? They have to delete nonsensical redirects. Just to inform; I have changed the title - everybody thinks it's given to autoconfirmed, but no. Dipankan says.. ^{("Be bold and edit!")} 02:46, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose giving it to autoconfirmed users (open to a lot of abuse), but weak support for making a new usergroup and support for merging to groups such as rollbackers and file movers. (P.S. global rollbackers can do this)  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  00:46, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose per the comments I made above on 26 March 2012. Nyttend (talk) 01:07, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

User Right

After a community input it is decided that many users support a user right for this. Those who want to support making this a user right; give reasons for your support. Those who want to oppose that; also provide reasons. Please use the hash sign, put support or oppose.

Actually I see quite the opposite above. There were only a few supports and plenty of opposes, so I thing that "many users support a user right for this" is inaccurate at best. Clearly there is no support for this measure as shown above. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 14:16, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Most user's are thinking about auto-confirmed but it's not. Dipankan says.. ^{("Be bold and edit!")} 16:15, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support I think that most of admin tools should be available as a separate permissions in fact. I see nothing wrong on that. Petrb (talk) 09:25, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
• Comment (and oppose) WP:STRAW comes to mind in this section. Also '4 supports for user right' against '8 opposes' (Just counting numbers) does not constitute "Many users" as Snowolf commented above. I also challenge the validity of this poll in the first place as i don't see it listed on WP:CENT or similar. Besides that, i oppose. I see to many possible caveats with this specific user right. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 06:26, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Ban April Fools pranks

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

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

• Support Petrb (talk) 10:04, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

  This vote was an april fool prank itself, hoped you get it guys. Petrb (talk) 14:11, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

  Althought it was posted on 2nd, heh Petrb (talk) 14:12, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

  Depends on timezone  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  00:33, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support only the ones that affect articles.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 10:10, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose This is too severe. I support my proposal below.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 14:09, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support blanket ban on all pranks as disruptive to regular process, Main Page exempted. —Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 11:06, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

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

• Oppose too severe. See alternate proposal more reasonable. Mugginsx (talk) 13:47, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
• Comment to all I see and understand that everyone sees this as immature or disruptive and that this year it got out of hand however as long as it doesn't disrupt the flow of information, an entire ban of gags and jokes for a once a year thing is a bit much. If this thing passes, administrators will have their hands full here on Wikipedia during April Fools. I would propose banning all jokes that disrupts articlespace on wikipedia or any other space that is accessed by everyday readers and those that do disrupt article space are blocked from editing for the duration of the day.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 12:51, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
• Given the time-stamp on the OP, how am I to know whether or not to take it seriously? FormerIP (talk) 13:51, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

  True, but the bottom proposal I made is a serious one.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 14:02, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose - April Fools' Day is a widely acceptable prank day. While certain parts of Wikipedia (including the article namespace) need to remain intact, jokes in the "background" areas (Wikipedia: namespace excluding policy pages, discussion pages, etc) should be allowed within reason. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:02, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

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

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

Support

1. Support only the ones that affect articles and guideline pages. Upon reflection, that sounds more reasonable.Mugginsx (talk) 13:14, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
2. Support as proposer.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 14:02, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
3. Support Any joke that disrupts the wikipedia mainpage should not be allowed, this should not include certain AfDs or user made MFD's. For articles if they are to be done I suggest once Arpril fools is over worldwide these should be deleted right away and placed in an April fools day archive. Deleting Articles for a joke must not be people and must be respectful and clean and have the words "AF" in the deletion context (Example: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/AF2013Earth). Also if this proposal is adopted a eikipedia page be made up explaining these guidelines. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:34, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
4. Support The main issue is the article space disruption this brings. Sure, our reader's know this is April Fool's (or maybe they don't, depending on where they live), but they are still coming here to learn and use Wikipedia for some purpose. Disruption to articles is directing disrupting this purpose and shouldn't be allowed, no matter the holiday. Silverseren^C 06:06, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
5. Support I'd like to see them all go away, since all these AfDs are of questionable humor at best, but this is an acceptable middle ground. Jtrainor (talk) 13:09, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
6. Support - we need Wikipedia to be useful as an encyclopedia, and to be welcoming to newcomers trying to learn our rules, all year long. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:58, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
7. Support. mabdul 13:01, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
8. Support - a terrible example. Rcsprinter (chat) 14:59, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

   Oh FFS, I did the same thing years ago. It's in project space, didn't disrupt mainspace a bit, and gave everyone a good laugh. See User:Seraphimblade/vandalbotjoke for the archive. There's nothing wrong with having a little bit of fun once a year, as long as it doesn't disrupt mainspace. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

   Seriously. I also must say it's very amusing to mess with the MW interface a bit; I rather like what Snowolf and I did. I also have a problem with "blocking without warning", because admins and non-admins alike are known to bitch at people who would dare report penis vandals to AIV who haven't inserted "John loves the cock!!!!" after a final warning. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:18, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

9. Support April fools pranks outside of the article space certainly lower my respect for the perpetrators, however they're not nearly as disruptive as messing with the article space. That's vandalism, and should be treated as such. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:44, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
10. Support when article/processes/tools are disrupted, especially if that will require more (long-term) fixing that just reverting an edit. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:12, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
11.  Sandstein  17:53, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
12. Support per User:Sven Manguard - April fools pranks that don't disrupt articlespace aren't really all that disruptive, but true disruption should be prohibited. - Jorgath (talk) ^(contribs) 16:49, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Comments

• Looks a lot like september 11 where lots of new laws were invented, to restrict normal day-to-day life in a way that helped Zero people, but did give authoritarian types quite a trip. Same question applies here, for 911, wasn't there already a law on the books for hijacking, killing 3,000 people and so on, and aren't there already laws in place for dealing with disruption without creating new laws that need further advertising so everybody knows about them ? I mean just how diluted do the docs need to be ? How many laws are needed to define 'Don't disrupt article space' Don't do it on this day or this will happen don't do it on that day or that will happen blah blah blah. What happened to don't disrupt article space ? Yep I can see this bloating up the Docs and I can see the blatantly obvious solution too, I'll do my pranks on a different day 8-P

• Wait, I already did that DOH! Better make an extra law for April 2, and 3 and 4, actually just let me know what days are OK on my user talkpage once you've finished OK ? Penyulap ☏

Alternative Proposal 2 - Delete editors without a sense of humor

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

Support

1. Support As proposer. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:57, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

   So do we install the user merge and delete extension and merge them to ?  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  00:39, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

2. Support People without a sense of humor should not participate, especially on April Fools.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 14:03, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

   Already exists ;-) Regards SoWhy 14:04, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

3. Support but it needs to implement the technical ability to delete users, which isn't possible atm Petrb (talk) 14:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
4. Support, but the ban should be lifted for one day each year (every April 1st) - if all editors without a sense of humour were banned all the time, who would be around to be fooled / annoyed every April 1st? Meowy 15:07, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

April Fools Jokes and possible guidelines

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

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

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

First, some relevant links:

• Wikipedia:April fools
• Wikipedia:Rules for Fools
• WP:Pranking

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

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

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

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

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

• Comment – Well I don't think we should be adding AfD result notices to the talk pages of articles when the AfD is an obvious April Fool's joke. For example, see: Talk:Mars. Otherwise, I'm not all that concerned about it. Regards, RJH (talk) 20:55, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

  That was happening because Snotty's bot applies AfD tags to articles if they are nominated and don't have one. To me that's emblematic of unintended consequences that happen... so it's not as though someone was adding the notices to the pages intentionally. On the other hand, it's almost funnier if the notice is on the page... but I'll digress. Shadowjams (talk) 21:45, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose all April Fools Day material If any of it fools anybody, it's vandalism. HiLo48 (talk) 22:07, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

  Not really. Anything that disrupts the flow of accurate information or destroys wikipedia is vandalism. Not fooling.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 22:28, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

  Hmmm. I'm trying hard to think of a situation where someone is fooled, and the normal flow of information is not disrupted, at least for a tiny bit. I'm struggling. HiLo48 (talk) 22:44, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

  A fake new messages bar placed on your userspace does not disrupt the flow of information but, still fools the editor clicking on the links. I can think of more. Anything article space related will of course disrupt the flow of information and should be prohibited.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 22:51, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

  A fake new messages bar will waste an editor's time looking, thereby disrupting the flow of information. Got any better ideas? HiLo48 (talk) 23:49, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

  What information? Userspace isn't article and therefore doesn't have important information to give. It's not like everyday readers will go to my userpage just to look up stuff about me.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 00:26, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose I'm sticking to my stand above.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 22:28, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

  Oppose what? There is no proposal yet. Shadowjams (talk) 22:34, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

  I'm opposing the possible proposals. I considered that a proposal.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 22:51, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support the tradition of April Fools nonsense and the subsequent discussions on April 2 about ways to curb said nonsense. Killiondude (talk) 23:42, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support I support banning all pranks that disrupt the wikipedia mainspace, this does not include usermade MfD's or articles. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:08, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
• Comment Isn't this getting a bit old? I mean, it's been going on since at least 1752. C'mon. - Denimadept (talk) 00:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree but if it were up to some people, pranking would be gone fully from wikipedia. What people here are trying to do is meet in the middle for a consensus as this year's april fools got way out of hand, this includes an AfD joke attacking a living person. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:17, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• Comment to all A proposal banning all jokes and pranks the interfere in article mainspace has been made above before this thread. I believe that would make a great in between. The main focus is the encyclopedia articles contained here and as long as those aren't allowed to be disrupted, editors can joke all they want.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 00:23, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

We don't need to "ban" April Fools' Day pranks from the article namespace. They already violate policy. (Wikipedia:Vandalism is quite clear and contains no "1 April" exception.)

And even if explicit agreement that the article namespace is off-limits were required, our annual discussions have consistently established this. Even among those who enjoy April foolery among Wikipedians, there's longstanding consensus that it shouldn't affect the encyclopedia proper.

We simply need to clarify this fact for the benefit of those who mistakenly believe that they're entitled (and even encouraged) to vandalise articles on 1 April. —David Levy 00:38, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

This is also why a villagepump/admin policy should be in place reguarding April 1st. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:41, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

We don't need to "ban" April Fools' Day pranks from the article namespace. They already violate policy. (Wikipedia:Vandalism is quite clear and contains no "1 April" exception.)

Apparently we do as it still goes on and nothing is done. Mugginsx (talk) 19:04, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that nothing is done. But as noted above, we haven't done enough to clarify policy. —David Levy 19:37, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support a ban on all jokes affecting main or portal space (these are simply vandalism) and on joke nominations for things like AfD, RfAr etc., because these are not funny and clutter up the pages intended for actual work.  Sandstein  07:05, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support barring any jokes that disrupt any process, like AfDs and whatnot. While some written jokes might be considered funny, we are now stuck with former AfDs, MfD, bad entries in lists, confused bots, slightly altered statistics, etc. that need fixing. I can appreciate jokes, and frankly don't mind them, but I am strongly against editors who don't consider a long term impact of this seemingly innoxious exercise. A bot being blocked because someone made a "joke" is going a bit too far. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:33, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
• Comment - Apparently I was naively optimistic about this accomplishing something useful. That doesn't seem to be happening. We understand that Levy and Sandstein don't want any April Fools material. However I think the AN discussion and the broader quiet majority, as well as a decade of tradition, mean your interpretation of no jokes ever is a non-starter. I was hoping we'd find useful guidelines here about how to ensure the moderation necessary... but supporting and opposing when there wasn't even a real proposal makes me unoptimistic about reaching a useful guideline. Shadowjams (talk) 17:01, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

You appear to have misunderstood, as I'm not arguing that Wikipedia should have "no jokes ever". On the contrary, I support the adoption of "useful guidelines here about how to ensure the moderation necessary". My above comments refer specifically to the article namespace, not the entire site. Opinions on how far to take the April foolery vary, but there's longstanding consensus that the encyclopedia proper is off-limits. —David Levy 19:37, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that's true though. The links in my OP indicate a long history of tolerated pranks in the mainspace (I suppose I'm including Rfa and Afd in there, maybe that's the misunderstanding). In recent years there's been a proliferation of these prompting more concern. I don't think many people were changing the pages themselves... those edits were treated as vandalism. The AN issue was all about the AfDs, etc., if I remember correctly. Shadowjams (talk) 23:40, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, that's the misunderstanding. I'm referring strictly to edits to the articles themselves. My apologies for the confusion. —David Levy 04:27, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

• The issue of simple - what was happening on Sunday was Vandalism, pure and simple, and those who were carrying it out were and are Vandals - they should be treated like vandals are every single other day of the year - warn/block them.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:10, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

  Are you referring to the Afd / RfA stuff or other edits? Shadowjams (talk) 23:40, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Compromise proposal on April Fool's pranks

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

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

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

I agree that April Fool's pranks in moderation is fine we just need to agree on some guidelines is all. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:57, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Copying/expanding my reply from WP:AN (where this proposal was posted previously):

• Main Page (on which we feature humor of the "strange but true" variety) is in the article namespace. Apart from that, no, absolutely not. Wikipedia has enough credibility issues already. The idea of designating an article in which vandalism is permitted and encouraged on 1 April is unacceptable. (And as discussed in the AN thread, because anyone can edit a wiki, if we condone the existence of one such article, we'll end up with many more.)
• I'm okay with #2, provided that article talk pages (important, first-line resources for readers and inexperienced editors) are off-limits.
• This is an encyclopedia, not a playground. Any amount of fun and games permitted is purely a perk, not an entitlement. Politely asking users to go along with a joke is fine, but threatening them with blocks would be absurd. If a prank fails, oh well, better luck next time.
• The rest seems fine, provided that it's worded in the context of what April foolery is tolerated (not encouraged). —David Levy 03:43, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose: these antics cause no long term damage to the pedia and they are great for morale. The real issue is improving the funny-quotient of the pranks per Jimbo. That's what we should we working on.– Lionel ^(talk) 05:02, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Whose morale? Mine is fine thanks, without the idiocy. THAT depresses me. HiLo48 (talk) 06:00, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• Just stop the vandalistic nonsense altogether. Once you have to come up with policy this detailed to circumscribe them, the jokes are guarenteed to be unfunny anyway.  Sandstein  07:07, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

The real problem with April Fools

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

No, your defacement of reader-facing material about a living person is not "a classic for the ages". It's vandalism, and it won't be celebrated. —David Levy 05:51, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

And did the "editor who was taken in" enjoy it? It obviously didn't make his day more productive. HiLo48 (talk) 06:03, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

And this [2] wasn't funny either. Given that LionelT is clearly an opponent of Obama, it's hard to see these two edits as anything but vandalism using April 1st as an excuse. Maybe if he'd done it with someone he supports it might be seen differently. LionelT, try that again and you will probably end up blocked. Dougweller (talk) 10:45, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Nope. (1) You don't know my views regarding Obama and (2) I added eight caricatures of all of the GOP candidates to the conservatism timeline. I think you'll agree that the right wingers got the worst of it. – Lionel ^(talk) 11:55, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

WP:DEADHORSE. Time to move on, Lionel. —Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 12:25, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposal

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

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

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

• Oppose. What are you trying to accomplish? Still trying to insist you were in the right, and should be allowed to make similar edits in the future? Seriously? —Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 21:14, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose - I can find no reasonable argument that this would improve the project. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:40, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Progress-Mir collision

I propose two articles, the first one about Progress M-24 collision with Mir and the second about the Progress M-34 collision with Mir 1997 which resulted in 70% depressurization of the Spektr Module

These are the name for the proposed articles

Article No 1: 1994 Progress-Mir collision Article No 2: 1997 Mir Depressurization collision

Hope you support the proposals. Regards--Monareal (talk) 16:46, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Hey, you're dead?--Al Sheik!Woiu!I do not fish! (talk) 13:22, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

No man has ever replied!.--Al Sheik!Woiu!I do not fish! (talk) 16:45, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Maybe because this is absolutely the wrong page for your request? Read the big shaded box at the top of the page; it says: "Proposed new articles belong at Wikipedia:Requested articles." Alternatively, you could try WikiProject Spaceflight, of which you seem to be a member. Nageh (talk) 19:31, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

That has a CRH. That means it has been mainly let un attended and I had already asked for an article here an got green signals.--Al Sheik!Woiu!I do not fish! (talk) 03:41, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

And what is to discuss here?--Al Sheik!Woiu!I do not fish! (talk) 06:29, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

This page is for proposals to change Wikipedia's processes. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 16:36, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Watchlist notice guideline

The watchlist notice facility is very useful, but in recent times has become utterly cluttered. The one that has just popped up on my watchlist is just pure spam;

The annual Wakefield Show invites you to share your knowledge of Acorn Computers and RISC OS with Wikipedia (entrance fee £5)

This is advertising. What is it doing on Wikipedia? And why can't I see it at MediaWiki:Watchlist-details? Why is there no discussion on the talk page? I think it is time that there was a guideline in place for this facility. SpinningSpark 11:26, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

It's not a watchlist-notice, it's in MediaWiki:Geonotice.js. I'm guessing you're in the UK... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 11:33, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

The other geonotices seem fairly innocuous. This one though, appears to be advertising in nature. Was there a discussion of adding this someplace?--Wehwalt (talk) 12:04, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

(ecx2)Ah...thank you. In that case, I propose that there should be a guideline covering both watchlist and geonotices, possibly could be generalised to all Software notice. PS, I have now removed the item. SpinningSpark 12:10, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support creating a guideline. A technology show shouldn't have been placed there (diff). Looking at the talk page, most of these things don't seem to be discussed before adding. Not that I think they should be, but in that case, there should be a guideline in place. Equazcion ^(talk) 12:09, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)
• Support - from the very small discussion, this actually seems to relate to a proposed Wikimeet at the Wakefield Show. Trouble is, it sounds like it's advertising the Wakefield Show, which is unconnected to WMF. Guidance on how to write copy would probably fix this. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:58, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
• Please move this discussion to WT:Geonotice because the initial scope of this discussion was ill-defined, and so that admins handling geonotices will actually read the discussion. Deryck C. 16:08, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I dropped a notice there linking here. This page has more eyes, and the watchlist notices affect everyone, not just those who post them. Equazcion ^(talk) 16:27, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)

There already are informal guidelines at Wikipedia:Geonotice and there is a history of rather limited use of geonotices, almost exclusively for meetups or major events. It's not watched by a huge number of admins, though, and maybe that would help. It appears that you received a message that you felt was irrelevant to you. The best response would have been to raise your complaint to the Wikipedian who requested the notice or to the admin who added it or at the request itself, not to complain on a noticeboard that it is "spam" ("pure spam," no less!) and call for some undefined new policy.

On Wikipedia, "spam" is unsolicited commercial advertising, not a message targeted to your geographical area by an editor who believed in good faith that it was relevant. The editor even gave a detailed rationale for the message; what we have here is a difference of opinion. It's probably worth discussing that specific message further. Maybe the message is indeed irrelevant—mistakes happen!—but I don't see what is worth getting so worked up over. Dominic·t 01:49, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Editor notifications are rather broken at the moment. There isn't a good way to subscribe or unsubscribe from "feeds" (WikiProject notices, geonotices about meetups, fundraising messages). The Wikimedia Foundation is working on this, maybe. mw:Echo is the page describing it. Same basic problem applies to Wikimedia-wide notices (CentrallNotice), site-wide messages (Sitenotice), and watchlist notices.

In the meantime there should be an opt-out mechanism for geonotices (or perhaps all geo detection/collection). Work toward that. It's a better use of time than trying to police usage. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 01:59, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree with what Dom said. I don't see what the fuss is about. Killiondude (talk) 03:49, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I think most of us were unaware of WP:Geonotice, and that these notices were proposed/discussed/approved prior to posting, since MediaWiki Talk:Geonotice.js doesn't contain that stuff (at least that was my issue). However rarely it becomes an issue, though, I think it might be a good idea to propose and approve wording as well in the future. Equazcion ^(talk) 04:05, 16 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Right, but I'm sure if someone talked to the guy that added it, rather than simply reverting, they would have been informed of that page, which is where it should be discussed. I don't really understand what you are asking for. As you said, there is already a page where these are proposed, discussed, and approved prior to posting. So, yes, it might be a good idea to propose and approve wording in the future, but you can do that now. (In fact, I would say that the admin who reverted not only can, but should do so.) Dominic·t 06:33, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

In this particular case, no one involved here was aware of the process. The reverting admin didn't know where these things were discussed, as it's not immediately evident from the .js page. What I'm suggesting is that watchlist notice wording be submitted for approval along with the notice proposal itself prior to implementation. Of course we can do it after the fact, but I think it should be part of the required process in order to get a notice up in the first place. Equazcion ^(talk) 06:36, 16 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I seem to have talked past you. I see what you're saying, that the reverting admin should have asked the admin who added the notice. But this is an interface notice, something more of an emergency, for lack of a better word. He saw something that looked like a corporate advertisement and was looking for a way to remove it as soon as possible; and it's no big deal if a notice isn't there anyway. In the case of these notices I can understand wanting to get it down first and discuss afterwards. I would've done the same thing. My suggestion for changing the process for approval does stand. Equazcion ^(talk) 06:48, 16 Apr 2012 (UTC)

There's a notice on the js page that says "This is JavaScript for the geonotices" (emphasis mine). Have you looked at WP:Geonotice? Submitters are asked for wording and admins can accept or decline. Really, not a matter of legislating policy. It's about being respectful of the people receiving the notices and using your head. Pretty much like all the other pages in the MediaWiki: namespace. Killiondude (talk) 06:51, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I seem to have missed both of those things (the fact that wording is already discussed and the link existing at the JS page) -- though in my defense, I appear to not be the only one. I looked at that JS page a few times during this discussion and apparently missed it every time. It's possible I just wasn't using my head, as you suggest, but I think I was. One can never know. Equazcion ^(talk) 06:57, 16 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I stand by my removal of this item. Whether or not it was intended to advertise a wikimeet is another question, but what it actually advertised was the Wakefield show, an event entirely unconnected with Wikipedia. In any case it was never proposed as a Wikimeet - when this question was raised in the discussion, more or less as an afterthought, we got the rather weak reply "I'm sure the hotel wouldn't mind people gathering in the bar". Not that I was aware that there had been discussion at the time I reverted - I looked at the obvious place: the talk page of the interface page and didn't find anything relating to Wakefield.

I did not in any sense delete the entry because "I received a message that was irrelevant to me". It was entirely because the message was inappropriate. Whether or not I am interested in going to the Wakefield show is beside the point. It is worth noting though, that the intended target seems to have been the North of England, if it had been accurately limited to that rather than almost as far south as Dieppe, I would never have received it in the first place.

Getting back to the question at hand, that of guidelines, thank you for the link to Wikipedia:Geonotice. While that page does have a section on guidelines, it is almost entirely concerned with the formatting of messages. It says nothing about what is acceptable content which is the thing really at issue. Further, what is being proposed here is guidelines for all site-wide notices, or at least watchlist notices, not just geonotices. SpinningSpark 13:37, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately it is technically impossible to subdivide the UK when creating geonotices. There has been extensive discussions about several notices competing for the UK geonotice space because of this technical limitation, and there is an informal guideline that there should be no more than 2 UK geonotices running at any time. Deryck C. 11:23, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

What would have happened if the lower limit of latitude had been set north of London? Do we know what percentage of the intended target would be excluded? The answer is of interest for the purpose of writing a guideline. SpinningSpark 12:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the Wikimeet, I contacted WP:YORKS last year, with no result. I wasn't sure it'd be appropriate to pester them again this year... however, I'm now pointing them here for info. -- Trevj (talk) 12:33, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support creating a guideline (Geonotice requester). If I'd been notified of these discussions via my talk page I would've probably commented sooner. To quote a comment from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Watchlist spam, There's no villainy here. It's not like it's advertising Mousecorp - it's the type of show put on by a local club at a Town Hall, with the suggestion that a bunch of editors meet up there. It's just phrased badly. Therefore, guidance on rewording this current request and for any future requests made by all would be most welcome.

As a brief history:

1. The notice was proposed in connection with Project representation at the show and running a workshop related to WP:RISCOS. The innocent intention was to try to attract local Wikipedians to take part.
2. The proposed notice period initially clashed with the Wikimania UK request, which was then amended and delayed due to issues unrelated to this notice.
3. Whatever the usual discussion of such notices is (it's the first time I've placed a request) was perhaps hampered by the above clash and delay.

I'd like to apologise for the poorly chosen wording and also like to please propose new wording for potential approval at Wikipedia:Geonotice#WikiProject RISC OS in Wakefield, UK at the earliest opportunity, e.g.

• Wikipedians near Wakefield, UK are invitied to share their knowledge of Acorn Computers and RISC OS via WikiProject RISC OS on Saturday 28 April at the annual Wakefield Show (entrance fee £5, external link).

If the inclusion of an external link is still seen as spam, then it could be linked to from WP:RISCOS but such a link needs to be in place before the Geonotice, in order that those following the links understand the relevance. Comments welcome, in advance of the Geonotice request being amended. Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 11:12, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

(ec) I still don't think this is a suitable notice for inclusion. I can see no actual Wikipedia related event here. Sure, it might be a show which may interest members of WikiProject RISC OS, but the Wikiproject would be a more appropriate place to trail it, if anywhere. If every show, exhibition, conference or seminar of interest to every Wikiproject were to be trailed as a geonotice the facility would rapidly become swamped. SpinningSpark 12:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

The external link formatting problem comes from the fact that geonotices do nothing but inject (almost) raw HTML into the watchlist notice space, hence the problem with all links being formatted the same. I was actually rather surprised that someone complained that the external link is "formatted like an internal link" - none of the links look normal anyway! Deryck C. 11:32, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

For info, the use of a Geonotice arose during private email discussions with WMUK: In terms of finding local wikipedians, you could try a geonotice over a small geographic area: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice These are normally used to cover the whole of the UK; I don't know how well they work locally, but perhaps this is a good opportunity to find out. -- Trevj (talk) 13:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I've now added the above proposed wording at Wikipedia:Geonotice#New Wakefield wording proposed and would welcome comments there. Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 07:31, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

• Comment Please see Wikipedia talk:Geonotice#Draft guideline. -- Trevj (talk) 08:40, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is it difficult to give us a choice?

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

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

The easiest way to add this functionality would be to allow Toolserver users to see who is watching a particular page. Then you would just need to look at the individual users' last edit date and determine their activity level (or look at whatever other metric you wanted). Because you're proposing a specific time period (and masking it), I'm not sure it'll be very easy to get implemented (if not impossible). The MediaWiki and the Toolserver folks will both buck. Maybe it could be implemented in a MediaWiki extension? That's the only hope, I think. If you can convince someone at the Wikimedia Foundation that it relates to editor retention, you'll have much better luck at getting resources devoted to the idea.

Dispenser has been doing some work using an anonymized "active" users table (I think it relies on a masked copy of user.user_touched), but you'd have to ask him for details. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:39, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

tools:~dispenser/view/Watcher is my version of a watcher tool after Template:Jira was implemented. Active users are those have logged in or performed an action in the past 30 days (to match $wgRCMaxAge). — Dispenser 20:27, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be a bad idea to allow users to see who is watching a page. People watch each other's talk pages, often because they are not friendly. Think of the conversations which will start "Why are you watching my talk page?" and degenerate from there.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:53, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Looks like that does the trick, Dispenser, awesome. Question, is it be possible to have the definition of "active" accepted as a URL token, like 60 days instead of 30? Or is your tool working off a pre-built table? Equazcion ^(talk) 20:54, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Brilliant stuff Dispenser, that needs to go on the history page, bump off the fossils. Penyulap ☏ —Preceding undated comment added 21:32, 15 April 2012 (UTC).

In the meantime I made a script to insert this. It doesn't replace MZMcBride's, just adds a new link after his: User:Equazcion/ActiveWatchers.js. Equazcion ^(talk) 22:43, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I originally used 30 days to match the automatic log out period, but that's since increased to 180 days. Look at the distribution there is a very rapid fall of watchers after only a few days and a spike around August 27, 2010 which is most likely the WMF Usability update. There's nothing here that operates on 60 day period so there's little point in providing the option. — Dispenser 01:02, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

60 days was just an example. I think people have varying definitions of "active", so the ability to provide that as a parameter would make the tool more versatile. I'm just not familiar with how this works, so I'm wondering if the time period is submitted with the query (meaning it wouldn't be that big a deal to make it variable), or if you're querying some sort of cached table that already has the the total watchers logged in with 30 days. Equazcion ^(talk) 01:18, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)

The default for the history page needs changing, whatever the period is, it is better than what is the current calculation done on, 7 years ? more ? If it includes dead wood that is years old, then the current situation is totally pointless, except as an option. The new idea, for a short period, needs to be implemented as the default now and the length of time is better left up to the people who notice the change and then come and comment on it, you'd get a better scope of what people are after that way. Better to speedy do this one, and discuss time and so forth once people take an interest in the change. Penyulap ☏ 02:48, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is something admins have access to change, but if they do, there's no reason not to do it immediately. Unfortunately nothing is speedy on Wikipedia though, except maybe response to copyright paranoia. If developer intervention is needed it'll take eons. I'll change my script to replace the link instead of add, in case they want to gadget it and enable by default. All I can do. Equazcion ^(talk) 04:18, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)

...done. Equazcion ^(talk) 04:21, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)

here, let me lend you a little train, it worked for me when I railroaded my bot proposal through early, and this train I will lend you is an extra fast train, so it should railroad your brilliant idea through that much faster. Stands to reason. When you are thinking up blatantly good ideas like this one, you shouldn't be forced to stop everything to lecture and teach, you should be out there doing more. Penyulap ☏ 05:48, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Its at MediaWiki:Histlegend, but MZMcBride's watcher lets trusted users see the raw results. It's all dynamic, it could count today's users or those who's last activity was January 9. But a good justification is needed as this could be used as a stalking tool (Are you cheating on your wikibreak). — Dispenser 05:57, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps then a few preset choices could be offered, like 30/60/90/180? If MZMcBride's tool provides functionality that's only accessible to developers, it should continue to be included in their interface, while everyone else should have it changed to the newer tool. Equazcion ^(talk) 15:03, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)

It provides a functionality provided to trusted users (as Dispenser said): m:Toolserver/watcher. It would be nice if the two tools could merge into a supertool (so both benefits are provided). Killiondude (talk) 17:19, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't know about that list. I'll have to change the script to link to both again, though I'll keep it compact. Until one combined tool exists, I think both should be linked. Equazcion ^(talk) 17:49, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I updated my script to display both links. Equazcion ^(talk) 18:00, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I've started using Equazcion's script, and I'm pretty happy with it. Perhaps someone would update Help:Watchlist to let users know about Dispenser's tool? WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:03, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

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

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

Added Authentication with valid watchlist token. TS roots tell me I answer directly to wikimedia-tech if they don't like it. If you're on m:Toolserver/watchlist, then Sign in (top right of tool). — Dispenser 21:33, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Banner Idea

Hi, I came up with a banner that Jimbo quite liked and thought it would do well [3]. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Could we use it for this year's fundraiser? Willdude123|Ƹ21ɘbublliW (talk) 16:42, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I like it. (I take it as obvious that the text needs cleanup)--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:47, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Most people have no idea who Jimbo is or what he looks like, so I don't think that would be terribly useful. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 17:03, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

THTFY, are you joking? Killiondude (talk) 02:01, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

No, I am not. People who are regularly involved in Wikipedia matters know who he is. The general public does not. Folks just coming here to search from time to time would have nothing to indicate that the picture above was one of the founders of Wikipedia. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 12:44, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Even for people who don't know what he looks like, I think the message comes across anyway; it's you who writes Wikipedia, not "us". Equazcion ^(talk) 02:04, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Experience tells us that the WMF fundraising team dosen't really care what the community wants, says, or does, it's going to do what it has determined through studies to be most likely to get donations. The WMF is in the wonderful little bubble where they realize that their relationship with the community is so bad that they need to hire staff members to smooth communication... and they continue to ignore or overrule the community, say and do things that accomplish little except for pissing the community off, and respond poorly to feedback from the community encouraging the to back off. All of this is to say that I seriously doubt that this will ever be put to use. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:34, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

...and then they wonder why editor retention is a problem. Equazcion ^(talk) 04:10, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)

The theme has become a meme Penyulap ☏ 02:38, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Is this nicer:

 Hazard-SJ  ㋡  03:32, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Much nicer. Could do with darker blue though.Willdude123|Ƹ21ɘbublliW (talk) 16:25, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Even better now? I made it darker.  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  01:03, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Just so long as it's true, I'm happy. Penyulap ☏ 06:20, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Wrong account name. He has 9,791 Wikipedia edits, 1581 to the article space. If you were instead saying that you want him to not have any edits, I agree. I don't think he handles his role ethically. Sven Manguard Wha? 14:53, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

What role is that, exactly? (other than "editor", that is)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 17:04, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Although note that 3,959 of those are comments to his talk page. Only 1,581 are actually article edits. Equazcion ^(talk) 17:11, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)

tsk tsk tsk, too much time spent socializing, wikipedia is not for that kind of thing, if he wants to do that he should make his own wiki.

His role? I agree with Sven, he is not acting as an ethical scapegoat, many a time after edit warring I have felt that I am somehow partly responsible. SHAME SHAME SHAME Jimbo. Penyulap ☏ 20:08, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

On further thought and reading, I think Sven means how Jimbo stays around where people assume he will provide some cohesion or guidance, but maybe Jimbo chooses more of an editorial role, and so his presence in an unexpected role is surrounded by confusion amongst the masses.

Sven, sorry I realize I didn't answer your query, I was just looking at the banner that has Jimbo denying that he is an editor, and commenting on that. But I certainly can see the tangents that wiki travels along, and it's ultimate destination, at least for the next decade minimum. I think I know where your getting at. Not to say the banner is a big fat lie, I mean it is, but it's not of course, and then there is also the dynamic of 'this mess is not my fault, it's YOURS(collective)' sort of thing. Meh, I don't know. Penyulap ☏ 20:37, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Please don't try and put words in my mouth. I'm not going to explain it further, but suffice to say that your wild and haphazard guessing is wrong. Sven Manguard Wha? 17:20, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Ohms law, seriously, is Jimbo no more to the masses than just an editor ? Sure he has the right to be just an editor, and the masses will go on ignoring that choice. Penyulap ☏ 20:42, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

A lot of people tend to put him on a pedestal, but I don't (and he doesn't want to be, from what I've seen). He does oversee the arbitration committee, and is essentially an unrevokable administrator. Aside from that though, he's just another user (on wiki, at least). Which, not coincidentally, answers (or sidesteps, at least) the questions of ethics. If Jimbo is just another editor, then there's really no additional ethics defined by his role than there is for any of us. Considering he himself has long espoused that exact view, I'd say that those who are trying to fit another role onto him are more at fault than he is himself, in terms of ethical questions.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:18, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Well as to who is at fault for the aura of confusion, It reminds me of one of those 5? step processes, where you just don't believe the masses, then you are angry at the masses, then you try to bargain with the masses and finally accept the reality of the masses. (I'm sure I left out a step). Anyhow, it's all kind of funny to say that he doesn't want to be on a pedestal, but HEY! put me on a banner and I'll be your poster boy, I'm thinking there is something a little fishy about that equation, what do you think ?

Oh! I better say something about the topic hadn't I, Umm, Umm, well we can't use Wikipe-tan on a fundraiser banner because Wikipe-tan is busy fundraising elsewhere. Where is that creepy crawly insect that we all so love, maybe we can dust him off ? I think he is around here somewhere, probably crawled under the refrigerator, they always do that. Penyulap ☏ 22:04, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

... those are the five stages of grief. I don't know where you're getting this stuff about "the masses." Regardless, the confusion here only seems to be your own. Jimbo not minding if his image is used for promotion, doesn't mean he's a "poster boy" or wants to be on a pedestal. There's nothing fishy about it. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:49, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Anyway, is there some dedicated place where banners and other fundraising elements are proposed and discussed? There should be. Or have we resigned to the fact that the WMF only considers material produced by their high-priced ad agencies? Equazcion ^(talk) 22:19, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)

We could try and get Jimbo to discuss it over here I suppose.Willdude123|Ƹ21ɘbublliW (talk) 06:17, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Good luck with that ;)  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  01:03, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi! I'm not sure what I'm being asked. I see up above that I'm being insulted, the WMF denigrated, etc. by one person, but other than that I'm not sure what the question is. I think it's the right thing to do to use banners that work while simultaneously getting out important messages. This one seems to me to be pretty good, but testing would be necessary to be sure. I'm not in charge of that. :) I think as a fund raising banner, this one might not work well. As a banner leading to a page inviting people to edit, it could be great, although I'm not sure it's the most effective possible way to increase the flow of new editors. (Nor does the evidence, as I understand it, suggest that recruiting new editors is where we should focus our efforts - it is getting people from the 2nd to the 99th edit where there seems to be a problem.) But I'm a big fan of empirical testing, and if Zack and the fundraising team wanted to give this one a go in the fall, I'd be ok with that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:39, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

For fundraising, how bout "I don't pay for Wikiepdia, you do" (snicker) sorry couldn't resist. Fair points though. Equazcion ^(talk) 18:51, 20 Apr 2012 (UTC)

How Often Does Jimbo Speak With Capitalized Words? Regards, RJH (talk) 17:29, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Make Disclaimers More Visible

It seems that most of the people who complain about offensive images have not read the disclaimer about them—and I can hardly blame them. While the disclaimer is linked from every page, it is not very visible; very few average readers bother to read the footnotes, because they do not really care about the copyright information, and most pages require some amount of scrolling to reach the bottom. As the disclaimer is an important point to make to our readers, I propose that the link to it be moved to the side bar, under "Donate to Wikipedia", where it would be immediately visible on every page. Interchangeable 18:41, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Does it even matter?

I'm trying to envision the conversation you expect to happen:

Newbie: There are pictures of naked men in this porn-related article! What are you, a bunch of perverts?!

You: See the disclaimer.

Newbie: Oh, that's all good, then! Thanks for letting me know that there's a disclaimer protecting the little children from seeing those porn stills!

It's just not very realistic, is it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:57, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Yep, a disclaimer also doesn't address NSFW issues. Using the "Random article" link in the office can be dangerous. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:12, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

If there's no point in referring users to a disclaimer, why is it linked from every page in the first place? Interchangeable 23:06, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Before the event, the disclaimer is of little use since most users will not click on it, even if you embellish it with giant breasts. After the event, you can gently point to the fact that it is linked from every page. In other news, you may have noticed that very many websites put the boring stuff - disclaimers, privacy policy - at the foot of their web pages. It's not tremendously valuable screen real estate. Users who care about this sort of stuff tend to know that that is one of the places to look. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:10, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Having a disclaimer makes the legal folks happy. I'm not sure that it matters to anyone else. Ditto for the foundation:Terms of Use, which is changing in about a month. (It's "only" been discussed for most of a year now, with repeated notices in the Village Pumps and other forums, so you should expect to see people completely freaking out when the change is actually made and they discover, once again, that they don't control Wikipedia.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Reference Tooltips

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

• Support Had it for quite a while now and I think it constitutes a significant step forward in Wikipedia's usability. I just hope enabling a gadget by default means unregistered users also get it. Equazcion ^(talk) 21:46, 18 Apr 2012 (UTC)

  Yes, gadgets enabled by default work for unregistered users. --Yair rand (talk) 21:56, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support Yes! This would be extremely useful, rather than having to hit back to go to the spot you were in the article before you clicked it. This way, yu can tell beforehand if it's a reference you will actually want to click into. Furthermore, it lets you know directly which reference that number is referring to, without having to go to the reference list. Helps you understand the narrative of the article and its references without a bunch of back and forth clicking. Silverseren^C 22:43, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support, seems to have few problems about it. (I wonder if existing popups can be disabled by preference for refs - this one's nicer?) Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 22:45, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support; I'm a fan. I don't know if there is any technical downside to this - will it work on all browsers, does it degrade gracefully? --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:47, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

• I guess the only way to see would be to test it. Silverseren^C 22:56, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

• Comment One concern is that Popups already has this functionality. If you're not using Popups, you should be. Would the two be compatible together? Ocaasi ^{t | c} 23:09, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

• Well, the point is to make the Reference tooltips a normal feature that even unregistered readers can use. But that's a good question on whether the tooltip and popups works together or if one of them breaks. You might need to uninstall Popups until it's upgraded to work with Reference tooltips. Silverseren^C 23:39, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

• I just tried using both and tooltips appears redundant to popups, which already does the job, so I disabled tooltips. Why would you want or need both? Viriditas (talk) 00:48, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

  You wouldn't. However, the overwhelming majority of our readers do not want to have a large box pop up whenever they hover over any kind of link, so having popups enabled by default is not feasible. --Yair rand (talk) 01:17, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

  The tooltips box was larger than the popups box, and popups can be enabled by default and easily disabled. I really don't see any benefit to tooltips other than a pretty interface. Viriditas (talk) 01:43, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

  Not really "easily" disabled; pretty much none of our readers have accounts, and they wouldn't care to create one, and they wouldn't be able to figure out how to modify their preferences even if they did have accounts. Do you want to go ahead and propose that popups be enabled by default? Do you think that proposal has a realistic chance of succeeding, and that the change would improve the experience of our readers? I suppose we could temporarily close this discussion, and then resume this after the popups proposal is closed if it fails... --Yair rand (talk) 02:40, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Nonsense, popups is a vast array of tools, and a bit much for enabling by default for everyone. We generally want to keep things simple when we're talking across-the-board changes, and reference tooltips is a simple feature that makes things easier. It has nothing to do with being pretty, though that is something of a prerequisite for default features. Equazcion ^(talk) 02:44, 19 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Simple, as in duplicating an interface that is already in wide use? That's not simple, and doesn't make anything easier. Viriditas (talk) 02:57, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Last statistic I heard on that was that it was enabled by 34,000 users, which is what, 00.01% of our readers? The popups users are not a substantial portion of the user base. The use of a tool by a minuscule amount of people is not really relevant here. Do you want to propose that popups, or perhaps just part of popups, be used instead? If not, I don't think continuing discussion of popups makes much sense here... --Yair rand (talk) 03:12, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

See the screenshot above your comment. You are going to duplicate an interface we already have in wide use by our most active registered users. We already have a tooltips-like interface and it is called popups. Viriditas (talk) 03:26, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

If it creates a conflict with popups, perhaps something can be worked out where it's automatically disabled for popups users; or maybe the script code itself could disable the tooltip if popups is detected; or it could be done in the popups code. Equazcion ^(talk) 03:35, 19 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Thanks for recognizing my concern. Viriditas (talk) 07:44, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Viriditas, I don't understand what is the point you're trying to make. Yes, we already have a tool that does something similar, and it's probably been a great deal of help, and it's used by a large portion (most?) of the active editors. How is this relevant? Sorry, I didn't understand that you were worrying about having multiple boxes showing up at once. --Yair rand (talk) 07:53, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

slightly off topic, but is it out of the question to enable the popups script by default? I think it (a)deals with footnotes with references better (b) more readable text. on a downside, it's (c)not as good looking and (D) heavier.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Staticd (talk • contribs) 10:41, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. The vast majority of unregistered readers give a damn about references. They just want their information and they are done. Also, popups can easily become an annoyance, and they usually annoy me, too, even though I actually like this tool. That does not mean it should be activated by default. Leave it as an opt-in tool, as it is now, and anyone registered and really interested in this additional functionality can easily activate it. Nageh (talk) 11:23, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

  Sorry, but this is an utterly ridiculous comment. References are more useful than the content itself, in many cases (it depends on the subject area, but that's generally true everywhere).
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:00, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

  To you, maybe. I did not make this claim out of thin air, I have watched enough people browsing Wikipedia articles, they never look up references unless they are students doing homework, and they take everything literally. We, editors, and researchers are in a vast minority when it comes to the general public. So do not come up with "this is an utterly ridiculous comment". Nageh (talk) 21:30, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

  Critics will probably appreciate, then, that we're seeking to make the sources of Wikipedia's info more apparent to everyone, by showing it to them as they read; rather than keeping it easy to overlook and ignore. Perhaps people will grow to care a little bit more about sources if we make it easier to see. Equazcion ^(talk) 21:39, 19 Apr 2012 (UTC)

  This is actually a pretty good argument. Nageh (talk) 22:02, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

  → Weak oppose/neutral under the condition that registered and unregistered editors can easily turn it off. Nageh (talk) 10:47, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

• Conditional Oppose – pop-ups have the annoying habit of getting in the way of what you actually want to read. I prefer them off by default. If that is not acceptable, then it should be made trivially easy to disable them. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:51, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

• Unsure: Based upon both arguments, on both sides, it seems like a reasonable tool to enhance verifiability, however, popups can indeed be annoying. If anything, I would say that there should be a substantial delay, say, 1½ seconds, to where they do not pop up accidentally and slow peoples' computers down or interfere with navigation. I do not usually use Google anymore due to my frustrating experience with Google Instant, where they refused to save my preferences to disable the feature, and every time I had exited and returned later, it was reverted back to its original state of being enabled. That's why I now use Yahoo! Search and Ixquick. 75.53.218.81 (talk) 01:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

  Quick note on Google Instant: It was sufficiently annoying to me, too. I have long set the browser's start page to www.google.com/webhp?complete=0 since. Nageh (talk) 09:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support. Unlike popups that are new windows, you can get rid of these by simply moving your mouse away. It's a great idea to simplify access to the citations for our text. Nyttend (talk) 01:01, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Just to clarify, popups in this discussion were referring to WP:POPUPS, a gadget that offers a similar tooltip feature along with many others. It didn't mean new windows. Just mentioning that in case there was some confusion. Equazcion ^(talk) 01:35, 20 Apr 2012 (UTC)
• Support. I think that this emphasizes that citing sources is important to Wikipedia, and will hopefully encourage others to cite the things that they post, when they might not have before. The only condition is that it should definitely be able to be easily disabled if one should so desire. Falconus^{p t c} 17:24, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. Have something similar. Mugginsx (talk) 19:59, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

  I don't quite see how this is relevant... --Yair rand (talk) 22:02, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support per comments by Silver Seren, Equazcion (particularly those in response to Nageh, above) and Falconus. Agree that it would emphasize the importance of citing sources. Also agree with others who have posited that users should have the option to easily disable if they so desire.--JayJasper (talk) 20:11, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. As User:Yair rand has pointed out, many users are unaware that Special:Preference exist. Important for the text select-reading style people that this may interfere with who'll want it off. Like popups this cover up the read text, better to stick the reference on top or bottom. It lacks caret browsing support. Finally, Backport improvement to popups. — Dispenser 04:32, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

1. Support, excellent idea. Ironholds (talk) 20:48, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. Reference tooltips is a great feature for editors and researchers, but would probably be irrelevant at best, and downright annoying at worst, for many general readers. I don't think we should be imposing a feature on readers which they may not want and cannot turn off. SpinningSpark 21:39, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

The only readers that will notice the feature are those that are interested in references, since the tooltip appears only when pointing to a reference link. Diego (talk) 09:44, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• Strong Support I have been editing articles for a few years now and spend quite a lot of time dealing with references, and only on reading this discusion found out that it was possible to enable the reference tooltip in preferences, which I then did. It has been very useful over the last few days, and to me a it is a great feature. It is not obtrusive, as you have to hold the cursor over the reference for anything to happen, and as it is a small target this does not usually happen unless you are actually trying to put it there, and it goes away effortlessly. I think the annoyance factor for the indiscriminate consumer will be small, and the usefullness to the rest of the world quite significant. Anyone who is sufficiently put out can switch it off, once they find out that it is possible. I would not support a proposal to make pop-ups a default setting. Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:57, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• Strong Support - this feature greatly improves usability for references in an unobstrusive way. It should be made default because currently it's too difficult to discover. Also per Equazcion argument, enhancing the visibility and accesibility of references is a net benefit to the project itself.

However the tooltip should have a link to the configuration page so that it's also easy to deactivate it for readers that don't want it. Implementing this change and enabling it by default, it would be easy to set up both for users that want it and for those who don't; the reverse is not true. Diego (talk) 09:44, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Like many of the other supporters, you are missing the point that a user needs to be registered before they are able to disable the feature. Things that popup on mouseover can be irritating for those who have no use for them. Registered users are nearly always also editors and will find the tooltip useful, and if not they can turn it off. A large section of our readership, however, possibly the majority, will not find it helpful. SpinningSpark 12:06, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

This is a technical detail with a technical solution; you can set up a cookie so that unregistered users can disable the tooltip on their machine with just one click (or maybe two, the second one for requiring confirmation) - not different to the current interface for disabling the mobile view in tablets and smartphones. "Like many of the other opposers", you are missing the point that the current interface already has tooltips for most links and images; the reference links are almost the only ones missing them. The target link for references has a quite small area and so it's unlikely to be targetted by accident, and for most references the size of the tooltip would be similar to the ones for wikilinks or images. And I doubt that the majority of readers won't find them helpful; but those who don't will likely not have problems because of them, and the percentage of readership that is interested in references is likely to find them invaluable. For those who don't, an easy way to disable the feature (providing a disable link in the tooltip itself) would be enough to avoid all possible remaining irritation. Diego (talk) 12:37, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• Comment As this change would affect everybody who reads or edits wikipedia, I listed it on wp:CENT. Yoenit (talk) 13:01, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support As some comments above show, many people where not aware of this tool before and consider it a significant improvement once they start using (myself included). I expect the response from our readerbase will be much the same and the large majority will see it as improvement. No doubt some will not like the change for various reasons, so it is important there is an easy way to turn it off/on through a single button click, as Diego says in his comment directly above. Yoenit (talk) 13:01, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support Too much click-scroll for me recently. 50.22.206.179 (talk) 14:25, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

  Comment Anonymous proxy server. Hipocrite (talk) 14:49, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think the change should be decided with people using Anonymous proxy servers in mind, if that's what you mean with your cryptic comment. Those that know what an Anonymous proxy server is wouldn't have problem creating an account or installing GreaseMonkey to trim the tooltip from references. Diego (talk) 22:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support Useful to many readers, not a detriment to readers who don't care (some have mentioned text-selecting readers as a possible group to be annoyed, but I select text as I read and these don't interfere with my view), will help Wikipedia's reputation as a sourced encyclopedia and emphasize references for editors (particularly new editors). Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:57, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• Comment. This discussion is flawed. We are discussing about a change that primarily affects unregistered readers, yet all the persons that are commenting here are registered editors. Nageh (talk) 21:53, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

How come? All registered editors would be equally affected by the default setting. And there's nothing impeding IPs from joining the discussion if they wish, so where's the flaw? Diego (talk) 22:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

A practical problem is that IP's can't use the extension, so they wouldn't know what they are supporting/opposing. Yoenit (talk) 22:49, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

That could be said to be a problem with all proposed changes to Wikipedia. A site's serious user community is generally the group that makes decisions that affect everyone else (well usually it's not even those, but some designers in a back room). Unregistered users are fortunately welcome to comment, which is much more than can be said for other sites. It's still not perfect, but it's the best we can ever do. Equazcion ^(talk) 23:21, 23 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Why do people always (seem to) avoid responding to the essence of a statement? The problem is that we don't know whether readers will appreciate the change. It is true that this applies to virtually every platform, but if we claim that we are working for the readers then this is not quite true. Nageh (talk) 23:30, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I think I responded to its essence. This isn't an argument that would apply only to this particular change, but to nearly any. We could post a survey (via banner?) after a month or two asking for feedback on what people think of reference tooltips, and consider changing it if most people don't like it... Equazcion ^(talk) 23:35, 23 Apr 2012 (UTC)

You did. My comment was more directed at Diego. A public survey is what I am hinting to, it would be the only way to assess whether readers will appreciate it. Whether the community considers that it is worth it is another thing. Nageh (talk) 23:41, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support I didn't even know about this until I saw the WP:CENT notice for this discussion. I wish that it were the default sooner—it would have save me a lot of scrolling. There are so many good reasons already mentioned for this, not the least of which is demonstrating to users that we care about references, and for the user's ability to easily access them without mindless scrolling or clicking back and forth. First Light (talk) 22:08, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support Incredibly practical. Right now any editor questioning a source while reading an article would have to click a link, check it, scroll up and try to find where they left reading. I can't see it being in the way either, so i have no issue with seeing this enabled by default. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 23:02, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Actually there's no need to scroll up, just hitting the back button works fine. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:26, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
    • At least for me it never really occurred to me that I could use the back button - I always click the "back up"-type button associated with the reference, and if there are multiple lines linked to the same reference I often click the same one. I imagine that many other readers have had the same issue. Calliopejen1 (talk) 03:35, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
      • True, the link is just a relative link inside the page so the back button works. But i gamble that most editors are not aware that they can use the back button for this since it will (normally) take you to a previous page. And even so, you will end at the bottom of the document, which is still quite inconvenient most times. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 08:07, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support Very useful, as it brings attention to the fact that we do indeed rely on third-party sources, and makes it much easier for casual readers to identify whether a cited source is reliable or sketchy. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 00:55, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support This is an incredibly useful gadget, and surprisingly unobtrusive. I think enabling this gadget by default would be beneficial for Wikipedia and everyone who reads the encyclopedia. Maybe our references would get a lot more attention if we improve their accessibility, as the current system is honestly quite clunky. --Dorsal Axe 09:06, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support, if it does not conflict with popups (i.e, enabling popups must disable this feature).  Sandstein  16:03, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support—this is one of those things that once you turn it in, you wonder why we didn't have this a long time ago. So long as the technical details are worked out, and I have confidence they will be, do it! Imzadi 1979 → 20:37, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
• Strong Support Useful tool, and will increase confidence of general public in reliability of WP.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 18:36, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
• Conditional Oppose. Unless a slight delay is added to the trigger, as I've suggested previously. (200 or 300 milliseconds should be adequate.) Otherwise it gets accidentally triggered constantly. Kaldari (talk) 09:04, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose any delay. That's my pet peeve in the Windows user interface right after Windows popping up taking away the input focus from another window. If supported, make it user-configurable. Nageh (talk) 11:32, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
    • What does that possibly have to do with adding a trigger delay to referenceTooltips? There's no focus event involved here. Kaldari (talk) 22:16, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose (unconditionally :) ). I'm pretty sure that this is one of those things that look like great ideas when you don't see it from the typical user's point of view. Those of us voting here are definitely going to be biased towards a tool like this because we're likely to be the ones most interested in references, i.e. selection bias. The average user or even editor is just going to find this downright annoying IMO, and it won't be immediately obvious to many people that it's a feature that can be turned off. I certainly wouldn't want references popping up depending on where my cursor goes, delay or no delay, and I'd consider myself very interested in the references. Well-rested^Talk 22:54, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support I did not know that tools of this kind existed until I read this proposal. It looks immensely useful, and I would have loved for it to have been enabled throughout my time here, before and after I made an account. Shirudo talk 22:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Public Domain

Wasn't everything in Wikipedia supposed to be "free", how is it free with the "CC" license: you need to copy down the URL, rewrite the license and provide a full descriptive explanation of any changes you have made.This is extremely time consuming and very likely to put people off copying material! Whereas if it is public Domain, you can usually use it for any purpose. Sorry about my tone if it sounds a little harsh :).--Deathlaser ^talk 17:22, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

To quote from Copyleft: "...copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work) free (libre), and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well." Sure, the project could be a little "freer" in your sense if all rights whatsoever were granted, but around here the decision has been made not to permit non-free derivative works. We're making a free encyclopedia that will stay free, in whatever form people transform it. Ntsimp (talk) 18:13, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Ridiculous whining. Wikipedia material is used reused by uncountable number of people all around the world, in projects, in papers, in presentations, on web sites, etc. Asking people to say where they got is the least we can do. Nageh (talk) 18:27, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Beyond the above, there's a good number, possibly even the majority of large contributing editors, who would never bother with WP if it were all released into PD upon pushing the save button. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:36, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

How do you mean Melodia ?

I personally find it very difficult to understand what on earth commons is about. If it takes me 10 minutes to mix up an image, it takes me 30 to upload it properly with all the references in the right place, there is just no guidance at all. The commons wozzard (my butt is more wizard than that thing) should ask you what images you used as components of the image, at the moment, you have to study very hard, and probably still won't understand the difference between a derivative work and a mixture of images or a retouched image. How newbies are supposed to work it out is beyond me. Penyulap ☏ 00:56, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

There have been several efforts to improve the wizard and/or write other tools to help with certain common situations. I recommend you contact Wikipedia talk:File Upload Wizard to discuss ways to make it easier and/or more clearly documented. Without input from actual users, the authors there won't have a clue what actual users need improved. DMacks (talk) 01:05, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

well i will give it a go, though, if it is anything like the barnstar page, they'll prefer I teach them rather than fix the problem, I don't have energy for both. Penyulap ☏ 01:55, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Copyleft licenses are not created to be newly-friendly, they're designed to be lawyer-resistant. Diego (talk) 12:54, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry for my Idea:(.--Deathlaser ^talk 16:21, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Deathlaser, it's true what you say, and everyone, it does need fixing. The problem is that every newbie has to be a lawyer to understand the rubbish docs. It's especially hard if you mix 5 images into one and then try to upload, it's just impossible. should be something like you tell the machine just the urls of each image, and then it works out what it can by itself and then come back and ask you anything else. You can tell commons an image name, but it can't come back with the license. And how is a newbie supposed to know how to put everything down on that form ? That is exactly like going to court or something, it's too hard for the artist to do the lawyer work, and the lawyer can't do the artist work, so we just don't have the images that you see in any given google search, it's too hard to find the talent cause it's too restrictive. Not restricted by the licensing, but restricted because the licensing is a mess of tape like a spider web. Simple would be proper.

ah don't worry i go waffle in that other place, probably nobody there though. Penyulap ☏ 06:27, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I.....don't understand. Are you frustrated with me or do you think I have a valid point.--Deathlaser ^talk 11:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

• The time to raise this was many years ago or many decades in the future. As we've built the pedia on our current license shifting to Public domain would mean abandoning almost all of the content. You could fork and ask editors to release their contributions as public domain, and any article that had only been edited by editors who agreed to that could be ported to the public domain version. You could also wait until the copyrights expired and the whole thing became public domain. But for the bulk of the project and for the lifetimes of the current editors we are stuck with licenses that require attribution and which require derivative works to be similarly free. I and I suspect many others rather like that as Public domain is in some crucial ways less free. No-one can take my work, tweak it slightly and then claim it as their copyright and demand money from me or others to use it, if this was Public domain then people could do just that. ϢereSpielChequers 11:42, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

If Wikipedia were public domain, someone could start with Wikipedia, write a super-way-better revised edition (copyrighted because of their improvements), sell it (say, as a book), and Wikipedia could never benefit from these improvements. Free licensing means that all improvements/work on Wikipedia is able to be incorporated back into the main Wikipedia. Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Just to play a bit of the Devil's Advocate here: would that be so terrible?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 15:23, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with it except that they'd steal other people's WP contributions in the process. In other words, if they start from a clean slate, not a wp:FORK, it's just fine. But there's no way in hell that every single WP contributor (past and present) is going to consent to having their contribs dumped to the PD. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:44, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

That's not even remotely what I was referring to, but that's OK. I never honestly expected any sort of real discussion about this to be able to take place anyway. We've got to continue to shame Deathlaser for daring to bring the issue up, after all.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 16:50, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

No, certainly not, asking why contributions are not put under PD is a valid question. But arguing that PD should be preferred because CC is so "time consuming and very likely to put people off copying" is dubious at best and easily disproved by the uncountable number of publications that incorporate Wikipedia material. Nageh (talk) 18:07, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree. However, again, that's not what I was talking about.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:51, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Well then, perhaps you could tell us what it is that you were talking about, since we've not managed to correctly guess? LeadSongDog come howl! 21:26, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand where there could possibly be any confusion. I replied to Calliopejen1, who said "someone could start with Wikipedia, write a super-way-better revised edition (copyrighted because of their improvements), sell it (say, as a book), and Wikipedia could never benefit from these improvements.", to which I replied: "Just to play a bit of the Devil's Advocate here: would that be so terrible?" What's confusing to you?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:43, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

If you're not just trolling, you should know that the Copyleft provides a strong incentive for participating, one that is not present in contributions to public domain. A significant percentage of participants would not bother to collaborate if Wikipedia license was not share and-share-alike; so there would be a measurable harm in your Devil's Advocate approach. But maybe you weren't referring to that either? Diego (talk) 21:52, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

zOMG! Facepalm Can't you two read?!? I know all of that! What I was replying to was the thought about what could theoretically happen without copyleft, since, you know, that's what Calliopejen1 was talking about. Holy hell! Who are the trolls here?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:57, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

You asked "would that be so terrible"? And several others have replied "yes it would be so terrible". What else did you expect? Diego (talk) 22:02, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

How in the world is replying to a completely different question at all helpful? "Is the sky blue?", "yes, the grass is green." huh? Did you hear what I said? Obviously not, since that's not what I asked! And then you have the fucking nerve to say that I could be trolling?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:06, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

So let's get this clear. If you didn't ask what would happen if Wikipedia was public domain, what did you ask? Diego (talk) 22:08, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

...that is what I asked! You replied with an explanation of copyleft (like I'm some kind of idiot, so thanks for that!), which is not at all what the subject was. How that's helpful is beyond me.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:12, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to sleep. HAND. Diego (talk) 22:14, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps the confusion hinges on "If Wikipedia were public domain". Was that intended as a hypothetical course of action, or a hypothetical historic situation? "If wp had always been PD" vs "If we were to make wp PD" are quite different suppositions.LeadSongDog come howl! 22:19, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, "If wp had always been PD" is what Calliopejen1 originally said (...sort of), and was what I was replying to. This whole exchange has me exhausted though. Any interest in the subject has evaporated.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:01, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

The lesson may be that it's important to be aware of the venue where things are said. This is VP (proposals), after all. Hypotheticals are likely to be taken as courses of action, not alternate-universe histories. Just sayin'. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:15, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

As LeadSongDog points out, I think you just took a different understanding of Calliopejen1's comment. I didn't take it as "if wp had always been PD," just a hypothetical "this is what would happen if we went PD." I'm guessing that was how Diego read it as well, hence each of you not understanding the other's point. It's easy to do. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 13:23, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Use AJAX for live editing

What I mean is, we should use Ajax for the editing UI so that you can edit pages and see the preview change dynamically (without having to continue loading action=submit). Another possible feature would cause a warning tag to popup when an edit conflict is possible so you can decide on-demand how to address it without becoming the slave of the MediaWiki software. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 21:54, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure becoming slaves of Javascript is better than MediaWiki. (-; Killiondude (talk) 22:03, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I think there would be licensing issues but also not everyone in the world has access to high speed internet which seems to be fairly important for Ajax. Rmhermen (talk) 23:11, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Get to work on coding something. When you're done come back and we'll talk.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:12, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

There is a script that is supposed to do this, but it didn't work with Vector the last time I tried. The developers are currently working on taking it a step further that this proposal -- a WYSIWYG editor where you edit the formatted text directly. Who knows how long that'll take to go live, but at least it's in the works. Equazcion ^(talk) 00:18, 21 Apr 2012 (UTC)

The new Wikia look has a rich text editor. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 00:01, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I think we should try a demo version of the HTML5 version of Wikipedia, perhaps at some domain like demo.wikipedia.org or en.wikipedia.org/demo. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 00:07, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

There are still issues with compatibility with MediaWiki. See here. You probably want to take a look at mw:HTML5 as well. Killiondude (talk) 06:34, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

mw:WYSIWYG editor —danhash (talk) 20:42, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

At least one implementation of this already exists: User:EpochFail/Wikignome. Kaldari (talk) 08:03, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Patent related stuff -> new words like this patent expires after...

Hi. Basing on "date-> It was about xx days ago" template, and for e.g. Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States, of course date of patent/image would be great to do, especially on commons section automatic info response. For e.g. "This patent expired xx years xx days xx months ago", or "This patient would expire on {<day> <month name> <year> - shown automatically basing on filling/issuing date". This would be great for community, like the date stamp in historic articles, and more in a patent world, info for creator or other engineers who want to make some works basing on it too.

As we generally don't have articles on individual patents, I assume you refer to cases when patents are used as references in an article. 99.99% of the readers will not care about this information and consider it useless clutter. The people who do care should know the term of patent length and can look up the filing date themselfs. Yoenit (talk) 13:59, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Hmm - firstly this is not probably(don't known Wikipedia, but have some little knowledge about programming) heavy to make. Second - why do You think that 99.99% of the readers won't like this feature? You did some research poll? Personally I think that You are not right about it - the term of patents is really -now topic- especially in XXI century today. 1) The discussion about patents and license rights is heavy on Wikipedia(lot of rights too). 2) If the 90s/00s were success of "green" political parties and ecology topics, the patents, license related parties - like "Pirat party" are gaining the same strength - from European parliament to national parliaments. 3) We live in times, where some companies, like Monsanto even are patenting seeds, which the gmo based food is planted on big parts of world. 4) The same argument like with the dates - Wikipedia have for e.g. bio, events articles which are not concerned on the dates but on people, events. Everybody can count (probably) how many years ago this was, but this feature was included. I hope that not only You will read this arguments(I tried to write it logically), and this feature will be included in Wikipedia. If not please make some stronger arguments than "I think it is useless". (Some people using Britannica thought that Wikipedia is useless and won't even gain popularity)....

In the US fees must be paid periodically to maintain patents, if the fees are not paid, the patent expires. It's very likely that the fees will be paid for important patents, but some of the more obscure ones might be allowed to expire early. Also, I agree this is unnecessary clutter. If the expiration was or will be significant that can be stated in the article. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:14, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think the programming would be much more complicated than the template that calculates a person's age based on his birthdate, which is routinely used in infoboxes. But because of extensions and early surrenders, it's very likely to produce inaccurate information. You are better off putting that information in manually, based on what a reliable source says. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:26, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

New proposal to establish WP:requested moves/Closure review

No need to discuss it here; discuss it there. That's all! --George Ho (talk) 01:48, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Using works from the public domain

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

I'm not sure if there is a formal policy, but there are attribution templates to indicate the source of public domain works, such as {{Jewish Encyclopedia}}. Maybe someone else will know the specific policy to point you to. Monty₈₄₅ 17:09, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Also, some discussion of it at Wikipedia:Public domain resources. Monty₈₄₅ 17:10, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

From the point of view of copyright, you can copy it. From the point of view of attribution, you need to add a note to the article stating that some text came from that source. That is what the attribution templates are for. One of the goals of free content is to let us reuse other free content, not as a reference, but as an actual part of our own articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:28, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Some editors believe that such uses require WP:INTEXT attribution as well as license-related attribution, i.e., that you say "According to the Jewish Encyclopedia" in the text of the article. This does not appear to be what the majority of editors actually do, however. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Revive Vandal sniper

I have recently noticed that Vandalsniper is being merged with Wikibench(or something). It was said that Wikibench will have RC, but does not mention that it "can revert vandalism and warn with a single click". But any-way, Vandalsniper looks really cool and I want to request access yet it's being merged and the developer is "on Wikibreak" (perhaps in the future we need more then one "developer").--Deathlaser :  Chat  17:46, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Well if we do, lets hope its not a 12 year old eh?♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:54, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

It's quality that matters.--Deathlaser :  Chat  17:58, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Unique page anchors

Currently, each header (== A section title==) on a page automatically generates an anchor in MediaWiki with that same name, so that links can easily lead directly to a section (ie. WP:VPR#Unique page anchors). The watchlist arrow links → use these anchors to jump directly to the section containing an edit.

However, this only works when each anchor is named uniquely. If two sections have the same name, they currently get the same anchor name, and anchor links don't have any way of distinguishing.

I'm proposing we fix this by including two anchors for every header, instead of the one they currently include: one that only contains the header text, to keep that convenience for the vast majority of situations where it isn't a problem, and another that contains a unique ID number. That way, the watchlist → links could link to the unique anchor ID, and they'd be of some actual use on pages like dispute resolution noticeboard etc, where duplicate section titles are standard. Equazcion ^(talk) 00:47, 26 Apr 2012 (UTC)

How could this work? It is hard to imagine that the unique ID would be part of the wikitext and thus visible in the edit window. If not then somewhere a table is kept with IDs that knows which section to go to. Mediawiki software would need to store this table in a separate place from the wikitext for the page. For WP:DRN and similar pages an alternative might be to create section names in a better way. Someone could improve the preload function or templates. EdJohnston (talk) 05:52, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

The IDs wouldn't need to be unique, just unique within the page. They could even be simple sequential numbers, 000001 000002 etc (leading zeros to prevent duplicating an actual section titled "1" or "2"). This wouldn't need to be visible, just coded into an invisible anchor tag -- currently MediaWiki creates these invisible anchor tags for each section title, which is why we're able to link to them. I'm just proposing another one be created for each, though named with auto-incremented numbers. The numbers wouldn't need to be visible on the rendered page, because generally they'll only be of use to the MediaWiki software (to create auto-generated anchor links in watchlist, recent changes, etc), not to users. They could even match the numbers the TOC assigns, so that users could see them that way and use them. Equazcion ^(talk) 06:00, 26 Apr 2012 (UTC)

The mediawiki already does distinguish between duplicates - header ids are header-name-based, aye, but given two headers of the same name, the second will have a _2 appended to its id, and the third _3, and so on (the ids are the anchors). Technically it has to do this to be proper syntax; a given id may only occur once on a page, unlike a class.

If the watchlist links aren't going to the right one, it may be related to how when section editing, it also doesn't go to the right one upon saving, though. The mediawiki doesn't check which it is for that, and perhaps doesn't when automatically generating the edit summary, either? I haven't looked at that in particular, but that might be it. — Isarra ༆ 06:23, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'll be a son of a bitch. You're right, the IDs are already unique. The auto-generated edit summaries just don't use them. Editing ==section a== generates the summary (/* section a */ my edit summary), and just uses whatever's in the /* */ to create the anchor link, but only the visible section headers are used. Maybe we could change that to use the actual IDs instead, since we have them? Equazcion ^(talk) 12:41, 26 Apr 2012 (UTC)

If the actual IDs were used in the auto-generated edit summary that would allow the watchlist link to take you to the correct section even when two or more sections have the same visible title. An alternative could be a warning to the user about duplicating a section header when they are about to save the file. A user warning scheme would admittedly not solve the DRN problem where identical headers are created 'by design'. Perhaps not wisely. EdJohnston (talk) 14:01, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Isarra is right about the unique suffix used to create unique ids. It is still possible to break the section anchor, as a valid id must start with A-Z or a-z. This usually breaks when the section title is a year or starts with a non-Roman or non-alpha character. There is a bug report on this; the easy fix would be to add a prefix, but this would break a lot of current links. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:27, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Still, the auto-generated summaries don't use those unique IDs, so what do you think of the suggestion to use them? Equazcion ^(talk) 14:49, 26 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Since you can't click on the auto-generated summary, why does it matter? WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:32, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

You can click the arrow to the left of the summary. See Help:Edit summary#Section editing. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:39, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you I should make a habit of using that feature. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:54, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Vandal Bin/Vandal Brake as an alternative to Anonblocks and Schoolblocks

RationalWiki.org has a mediawiki extension that allows sysops to restrict troublesome users to one edit per thirty minutes as an alternative to blocking. It also blocks account creation. In the past, I've been critical of this feature since it's always been my opinion that vandals should just be blocked instead. However, IPs belonging to enterprise networks, as well as some ISPs, often represent thousands of users, some of whom probably have good intentions whereas some of whom probably have malicious intentions.

At Wikipedia, we have a policy of assuming good faith, but due to the problems coming from shared IPs, especially those belonging to schools, it's becoming more and more common for such IPs to be blocked long-term. While I wouldn't support using it for registered users as it would be basically like a cool-down block for them and would be horribly ineffective at combating serial vandals, I believe that Vandal Bin could work beautifully for us if we use it on these shared IPs that have lots of abuse. If we restricted their edits to one per thirty minutes, it would allow people with good intentions to make simple contributions without registering for an account while limiting the damage those with bad intentions are able to do. A vandal would only be able to do one edit, and thirty minutes later, the vandal would likely either be finished with their break if at work or be in a different class if in a school. Something that we would have to work on would be making it anon only (which should be easy for the developers) since at RationalWiki the Vandal Bin applies to both logged in and logged out editors from an IP address.

Any thoughts? PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 03:04, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

• Moderate oppose for the following reasons:
  1. It's my belief that for schools, they can create accounts at home, normally, and they should.
  2. We do not have many ways to tell whether an IP is truly shared, except for mobile IPs. Actually, the vast majority of client IPv4 addresses are shared due to network address translation, so you kinda have to draw a line here.
  3. We cannot be certain of whether an IP address is a school IP address because not all schools are listed in the WHOIS.
  4. Good faith editors almost always have to make more than one edit, and that becomes an issue with a shared IP address.
  5. For shared school IPs the vandal could just resume it afterschool.

I'd support this for a different reason, which is to limit the rates of LTAs and spammers instead of replacing anonblocks and schoolblocks.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:12, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

LTAs and spammers can, and should, be hardblocked in my opinion; I do not support using this for long term abusers or spammers with registered accounts. Sometimes good faith editors just fix typos or remove other people's vandalism, and that should only take one edit to do; I agree that long term editors should make accounts at home. However, that first edit might be what sparks an interest in editing and may lead to the person creating an account. As for vandals, they can always resume after school or work, but for that matter, they can come up with the idea to vandalize at school or work and do it when they get home, whereas someone wanting to make a legitimate correction or contribution might just forget about it and not bother doing it from home. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 04:06, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose Worst of both worlds. Counter-vandalism tools are extremely effective at reverting ip vandalism that occurs in quick succession after the first vandal edit by the IP has been identified and reverted. So this change would eliminate the vandalism easiest to control without effecting the most problematic vandal edits, those that go undetected for some time. In fact, the more an IP vandalizes in quick succession, the more likely someone is to notice they are a vandal and revert all the vandal edits. Meanwhile it would place a heavy burden on IP contributors who wish to make positive contributions. Trying to do many constructive tasks on Wikipedia would be excruciating if you could only make an edit every 30 minutes. Monty₈₄₅ 16:01, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

One edit every 30 mins wouldn't hinder constructive controls nearly as much as an outright block, and if the anti-vandal tools are doing such a great job, then why must so many NATs with thousands of users be blocked for 6 months and upwards? 208.62.154.8 (talk) 16:55, 26 April 2012 (UTC) Forgot to sign in earlier. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 21:12, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

How about flagging recent changes with a marker to show if that IP / IP range / editor has been vandalizing of late ? Penyulap ☏ 04:50, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose many of these IPs are shared, and this would mean that sometimes someone who tried to save a good edit would not be able to because there'd been another edit by someone else in the same building twenty minutes earlier. So we'd lose some good edits. But for vandalism the situation is much worse - we often don't pickup the first vandalism that someone does and instead rely on them doing multiple vandalisms until a rollbacker reverts one and then sees what else they've done. So as well as losing some good edits and needlessly annoying some goodfaith users, we would be forcing vandals into behaviour that they don't want, but which would hide some of their vandalism from our vandal hunters. ϢereSpielChequers 19:32, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Version 1.0 Editorial Team

The Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team, which organizes offline releases of Wikipedia, has begun working on our next release—the version 0.9. Now we're trying to identify which members are still active and attract new members, so we can start the work. The issues related to the version 0.9 are being discussed here. Please add your comments to the discussion, and let us know here if you would like to be involved. Thank you. Ruslik_Zero 18:50, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposed blocking

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

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

Question: I indicated oppose, but just to clarify: what happens to administrators who ignore this procedure and block straight away? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 00:48, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Seven days of license to spam? Have you never seen the damage a corporate PR spammer with a sense of entitlement can do to an article in seven hours, far less seven days? --Orange Mike | Talk 00:06, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support as a formalization of what I normally see for username violations, especially good-faith editors.--Jasper Deng (talk) 00:09, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. What good exactly would a delay of 7 days do? People are supposed to take care of this kinda business straight away; after all, they were given notice before they created the account and for some reason ignored it. If you wanna be more friendly, reword the applicable templates. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 00:12, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
• Not a terrible idea, but not the best idea either. There probably should be some central place where blocks are discussed and reviewed though. The ad hoc use of AN/I for that purpose seems a bit lacking. That and block logs kinda suck, anyway.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:19, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support Much better idea then our current system, where, assuming the editor has already edited the topic their username is associated with, they get blocked and then request unblock so they can file a name change request. And if they start spamming, or blatant POV pushing, there is nothing stopping an admin from blocking as soon as warranted based on their editing rather then on the choice of username. Monty₈₄₅ 00:39, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
• I'm kinda leaning toward what Seb said above. Killiondude (talk) 03:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. If a user's name or conduct are problematic now, they should be blocked now rather than in a week. If they are willing to resolve the problem with their name or conduct, they can always make an unblock request.  Sandstein  04:45, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
• Comment Doesn't a username like that make it harder to go un-noticed, is everyone on Wikipedia sick in bed, retired or homeless ? They are going to edit anyhow, so I imagine that there are pros as well as cons about usernames. Penyulap marketing watch me closely 05:04, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. Who knows if the proposed tag will even be understood -- I foresee many instances where the user will wait out the 7 days, get blocked, and then say something akin to "Oh I didn't realize what that meant/that this was so serious, can't you just unblock me now and I'll get it changed?" And since blocks aren't punitive, there will be no good reason not to unblock. In effect we'd be doing what we do now, only delayed for a week. An immediate block, on the other hand, has less potential to be misunderstood. They're very motivational. Plus this seems like an unnecessary bit of added bureaucracy to keep track of. Equazcion ^(talk) 06:08, 28 Apr 2012 (UTC)
• Support the general idea, but Oppose the 7 days part. I would say they need to ask for a rename in their next 2 edits. Give one edit in case they say "what does this mean?" and then a second edit to go to WP:CHU. This obviously would require bot assistance or a change to the software. In general, I think this is a good idea that should be explored further and refined to get all the bugs worked out. 64.40.54.80 (talk) 12:39, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. We have too many procedures already. Rmhermen (talk) 18:59, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. Unnecessary. This can already be done by leaving a message on the user's talk page and following up to see if they've made the request. —C.Fred (talk) 19:04, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. We get all kinds of spammers, but we have enough different ways to deal with them:

• For "User:CheapBluePills" and "User:DiscountLouisVuittonHandbags" who are clearly not here to help, there is {{spamublock}}. No point giving them a week to carry on spamming. This is also appropriate for "User:XYZcorpPR" whose user page is blatant advertisement - any unblock request dialogue can be used to make sure, by questions like {{coiq}}, that he understands what is acceptable.
• For "User:XYZcorpPR" or "User:MyUpandcomingBand", whose entry looks something like an article rather than an advert, there is {{softerblock}} - the username is never going to be acceptable, but he is invited to set up a new account while being pointed to WP:COI. One needs to watch here to make sure that any new account is not accused of socking.
• For "User:SaveThePigeons" from a charity of that name, there is {{causeblock}}.
• For "User:UnivofXLibrary" or other organization name where edits are not spam, there is {{uw-username}}.

I do not think building in a week's delay will help in any of these cases. All except the first are courteously invited to set up an individual account, which they may as well do at once.

What would really help these people is to explain before they create accounts what Wikipedia is not for. I made a proposal at VPR, now archived to here, that the sign over the gate should not read "Everyone welcome, come on in and edit!" but "This is a project to build an encyclopedia. If you would like to help with that, you are very welcome, but if you looking for somewhere to write about yourself, your friends, your band, etc, this is probably not the site for you." That got some support, not as much discussion as I hoped, but no serious disagreement, and I plan to ask the WMF how to make a formal request. Support welcomed if that turns into a dialogue. JohnCD (talk) 21:37, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose The practice at UAA for borderline or potentially good-faith usernames often involves the little clock thingy and the "discussing with user" option. This allows time for the user to change names or a discussion on the issues. For names like "NlargYrslf" with histories of adding links to penis pill pages, there is simply no reason to wait. Bad faith editing, immediate indef block. These people are not going to be disillusioned with Wikipedia after having a spam account shut down. They probably will have more respect for us, knowing we make an effort to patrol our content. Talk page access is there if there is a change of heart. The Interior (Talk) 13:12, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• Weak oppose I think that it is generally a good idea, but it may get abused too much. As per the above comment, I think blatant spam and corporate accounts are definite blocks, but may be prolonged to spam even further. Unfortunately, this seems to hurt the good-faith editors who get caught up in this sort of thing. I know that this policy would constantly be abused on Negapedia, simply because of the nature of editors there, but I still say it has a chance here on regular Wikipedia. One pier (Logbook) 23:30, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support the idea, but it would be enough not to block the ip address used and to permit account creation--this allows them to easily rename. The present defaults for this first tell them to rename, and then prohibit them from doing so--why are we then surtpised people get confused about how to do it? DGG ( talk ) 03:30, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

A frequent backlog at RPP

Hello. This issue will be known to everybody, I guess. It's been for a month that RPP is getting frequent backlogs. Do you have any idea what to do about this? Dipankan ^{(Have a chat?)} 04:50, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

We need more admins, simply put.--Jasper Deng (talk) 19:19, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Or a breakup of the admin toolset, but that is just about the most frequently rejected proposal there is. Monty₈₄₅ 19:25, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Sock puppet messagery

Well can we have a sort of Message system (Sockuser Message system) to warn sockpuppets that they have been suspectedMir Almaat Ali Almaat ☏ 05:38, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

According to me, it's really not necessary to warn sockmasters about their sockpuppets, because then they'll create more and more sockpuppets to get rid. So why warn? Dipankan ^{(Have a chat?)} 09:04, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Pretty sure he means notifying the socks themselves that they're suspected, so they can come defend themselves (which is good in case suspicions are wrong), not notifying already-verified sockmasters (which I agree makes no sense). Equazcion ^(talk) 09:08, 28 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I meant that the person who is suspected of being a sockmaster. Dipankan ^{(Have a chat?)} 12:15, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I think he is after some kind of guidance, for his comedy (I think) related sock, (I think), something along the lines of 'this sock is compliant' or 'this is a dirty sock and will be washed soon'. So it's like a "sock for deletion template" and "where do I explain how my sock is compliant with the appropriate policies regarding alternative accounts". Do we even have any such thing at all ? or are pink striped socks (comedy) just waiting for a humor unaware admin to hit and run with a nuclear strike. ? Penyulap ☏ 11:34, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Are you aware of Template:Uw-socksuspect and Template:Socksuspectnotice? Jc3s5h (talk) 12:20, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Discussion ended and you'll say I am a Sockpuppet of my defunct account, Kelphin which is inaccessible.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mir Almaat 1 S1 (talk • contribs) 11:44, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

We care about your feedback and will answer your call shortly, please stay on the line.

Extended content

This is so cool, it (accidentally) reflects the (too often) WDGAF about you to newbies. I love it, there is no clue given as to where it comes from and it takes a good deal of clicking to get to anything that resembles someone to talk to, nice corporate feel, I should complain to my congressman about this. I give it a thwumbs up Penyulap ☏ 12:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

It took me quite a while to translate your sarcasm into an actual concern, so if you "GAF" about the rest of us, I'd tone that down a bit (and not just here). I see Wikipedia:New editor feedback as your average customer survey. I don't think it's any more mysterious than that (it "comes from" Wikipedia, will people really be wondering any more than that?). I never participate in them personally, and don't see why any thinking person would want to, but that's just me. As for getting to talk to a person, I don't think we make that too difficult. Aside from being able to post to any user's talk page at any time, the sidebar's Help gets you to the help desk in three clicks (Help → Ask questions → Help desk). I suppose we could make it 1 and just put Help desk right in the sidebar, since we are indeed not paying the people who respond, so who cares if they have to work alot?

Oh and about the grayed-out button, I don't know for sure but the negative character count seems to be saying you went over your allotted feedback length. I'll wait for someone who knows more about that feature to come comment. I'm not sure how mysterious that is either though -- YouTube has a similar count/limit for comments, as do other sites, and we all know the genius it takes to comment in those places. Equazcion ^(talk) 14:53, 28 Apr 2012 (UTC)

It's not sarcasm Equazcion, I firmly believe that an image presented should reflect experience likely to be found, and this one does. Seriously, who does actually care about new users here ? a minority at best. I think it's more likely cynicism, but not sarcasm, if you called me cynical in that remark, well, I guess I'd own that.

I may have gone past the twitter sized comment enforcement policy by moving my original comment down, replacing it with a comment on the button. I'll take up the issues raised on the board you point to, thanks. Penyulap ☏ 23:54, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia pages about editing article of a fictional character

I have written down the following pages:

• User:George Ho/Manual of Style/Characters (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• User:George Ho/Adding an image of a fictional character (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• User:George Ho/Notability (character) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• User:George Ho/Naming conventions (character) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

I have tagged them as "essay in development", and these pages are still in development. Do they belong to the "User:" or "Wikipedia:" namespace? If "Wikipedia:", must they be treated as Wikipedia essays or guidelines? --George Ho (talk) 18:00, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

From WP:Essay: Essays that the author does not want others to edit, or that are found to contradict widespread consensus, belong in the user namespace. So, as assuming they don't contradict policy, it is your call on where you want them to be. You would need to establish consensus to make them a guideline, but there are no prerequisites for making them Wikipedia space essays. Monty₈₄₅ 19:31, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

• I would advise that at least the first three, if not all four, should stay in userspace. Telling editors what they can and can't do in content space should only be in the Wikipedia space if there is consensus, imo. Also, I don't see how this belongs in the proposals section of the VP? —Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 01:09, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Where would it belong then? --George Ho (talk) 01:21, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
    • Village Pimp Miscellaneous is always a safe choice. Here's probably not too bad though, but by placing it here, you project the message that you're proposing to move these to the Wikipedia namespace. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:00, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
      • I intendeded to develop them as essays. However, I wonder if each passes the guideline of either an essay or a guideline. --George Ho (talk) 06:34, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

You could cry ot get consensus to approve it and make changes if need be to set as guideline within a wikiproject.Lihaas (talk) 20:27, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Have you read WP:Policies and guidelines? It tells you the best way to make a WP:PROPOSAL, assuming you want to have a page labeled as an official {{Guideline}}. You do not need to make a proposal if you want to tag a page as an {{essay}} or if you want no tag at all (see WP:NOTAG). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:43, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Shall we move this to Miscellaneous page then? Or is it too late? --George Ho (talk) 20:48, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

List of users with paywall/subscription site access

Hi. I've just been sitting in #wikipedia-en with a user who was looking to verify a citation from oed.com, and who didn't have OED Online access. It got me thinking - you list users here by the languages they speak; so, why not set up a verification page where editors with access to paywalled or subscription sites which are commonly used here, like JSTOR, can list themselves as having access to those sites — and then users who have a need to verify something from one of those sites and who do not have access, can post questions to them?

It seems strange to me that a free encyclopedia would allow sources which have to be paid for in order to read them, but as I have been told, you can't simply restrict yourselves to free sources, or it may prevent articles from being expanded or even written in the first place — and to me, this seems like a good way round. It might take some organising, sure - but when has Wikipedia been afraid of a challenge? :) Thoughts are welcome, constructive or otherwise - it will be good to hear any suggestions. MarkBurberry32|talk 22:26, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

See WP:REX. Goodvac (talk) 22:33, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Looking at REX, Goodvac, two problems stand out at me in detail. One - it's rather large and slightly confusing (and I'm saying this as a relatively new user), and Two - It doesn't actually suggest which site or what you're looking for. What I'm thinking of is more in line of this -

Say a user needs something from JSTOR, to reference material in an article. They place something like you see here on the talk page of the article, along with the reference they need checking, someone gets notified that there's an article waiting for JSTOR help, goes and answers the question direct on the article talk page. The list thing is merely for people to say which access they have. MarkBurberry32|talk 23:38, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

It's easier to watchlist a noticeboard than for users to constantly be checking a category. If you'd like to propose a way to make WP:REX more functional then I'm all ears. I'm just not too keep on the idea of splitting academic resource sharing into multiple categories (how many would that be?!) that decentralizes. Killiondude (talk) 01:33, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

The info in the encyclopedia is free. The sources still exist even if they can't be accessed without paying. It's not much different than books that don't have their text online, etc. used as a source. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:25, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Find a user who's active and is in Category:Wikipedians_who_have_access_to_JSTOR. There's also Category:Wikipedians who have access to Credo and a few others too. By being a member of those categories, people are broadcasting their willingness to share the wealth. Otherwise, why bother mentioning it? Sven Manguard Wha? 03:57, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• I see from your user page that you're British (I think). I'm not sure, offhand, how they do things over there, but here in the States all (or at least most) of our libraries offer at least some databases to the public, with access available over the Internet (usually by entering your library card). It's probably worth checking out if you have access yourself. Most people have quite a bit of resources available to them without even realizing it, or knowing where to look.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:10, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• • Yes, Ohms law, I am British. Access to resources here depends entirely on which county's public library service you're working from - Essex (where I'm actually from) doesn't provide free access to anything other than basic references, like Britannica online for example. Other counties, like Buckinghamshire - where I am now, don't provide anything free. If you don't subscribe to it, you don't get it. The best place is London, where the local services provide access to pretty much everything. It's a hit and miss game, sadly. MarkBurberry32|talk 14:11, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Whilst I have a dislike of anything paid, and love free software / music / everything, certainly we do use books, I love books, and they are great references on wikipedia. I'd love to come to this party and I don't want to come empty handed. I'd be happy to create userboxes to help categorize editors by the resources they have access to. Based on the image at WP:REX and the caption, I think these editors would be serious fun to work with. Penyulap ☏ 12:34, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

IPs cannot create talkpages of articles

IPs are not allowed to create an article so I don't think that they should be allowed to even create talkpages of the articles. I saw here: Talk:W8MSO, talk page was created without the article's existence by an IP. If IPs are not allowed to do that, we won't come across such problems. Yasht101 13:24, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

This proposal would completely screw up the WP:Articles for creation process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:18, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I wonder whether there is a bot that categorizes such non-article talk pages that are not part of the WP:Articles for creation process? Regards, RJH (talk) 15:05, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

In fact there is at least one report generated of talk space pages without corresponding articles, though the location eludes me... Monty₈₄₅ 20:59, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Cool. Found it (here) using search terms from your comment. --92.6.211.228 (talk) 21:10, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I think that's a bad idea. Only the other day I created a talkpage for an article I came across, placing the appropriate projbanner (WPMED in that case). That helps alert the wikiproject to the article so they may assess it accordingly and tag the article for any problems.
Your comment "If IPs are not allowed to do that, we won't come across such problems" is false. The problem is a talk page created without an article--whether the creator has an account or not is irrelevant. --92.6.211.228 (talk) 20:15, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Template:Ref expand

Hi I created this as I believed we needed a template like Bare URLs to encourage editors to add full citations not the just the websites. Can somebody take care of this properly and sort out the documentation and note to use such a template like the way Template:Bare URLs is being used? Template:Ref fill, Template:Expand ref and Template:Expand reference redirects to this.. Hopefully it will encourage more editors to fill out references properly and will go a long way to ensuring a more consistent ref formatting on wikipedia with adequate source details and not just titled links. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:02, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't an inline tag serve? Regards, RJH (talk) 15:07, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes we should have one of those too! this is for articles though which the entire bank of references are not filled out..♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:44, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Looks a little confusing as it indicates using template {{citation}} then later indicates a number of templates are available. Keith D (talk) 18:21, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Not confusing really. The Template:Citation says its identical to the cite web etc.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:45, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Use {{Cleanup-link rot}} for this. I see no point in adding yet another template for the same situation. As far as {{Citation}} is concerned, it says it can be made to produce identical output with suitably chosen (not specified, obscure) parameters, but it would be far more sensible to use the appropriate template to start with. It is quite clear that Wikipedia does not impose a particular citation style so any such template should not recommend only one style either. Also, we should try to avoid providing lots of alternative redirects, that just makes the source more difficult to parse. --Mirokado (talk) 20:16, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, by default, {{citation}} uses a different style from Citation Style 1— they are not usually mixed and the display parameters are not often used. And yes, templates are not required. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:23, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Admin elections

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

• Oppose - I think this is a perennial proposal. Inactive admins are already desysopped after inactivity for a year. However, I would support a proposal to clear up desysopping of established admins without having to go through arbcom. Besides, we don't use votes, only !votes, so it wouldn't be an election. I would also support a proposal to force all admins to be open to recall discussions.--Jasper Deng (talk) 20:13, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

The latter sees like a good accomodation. But it would be the similar sort of method as currently used to promote an admin.Lihaas (talk) 20:18, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

All that would have to happen is a post at ANI or a new noticeboard with the normal kinds of proposals, with support/oppose !votes similar in format to what happens here.--Jasper Deng (talk) 20:20, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Reconfirm_administrators. When you can overcome the mathematics—annual reconfirmation would require the community to process about thirty (30) admins per week—then I'm sure that people would take the proposal more seriously.

As it happens, all admins are subject to recall: the community has the practical power to demand that someone be desysopped whether that person is "open" to the discussion or not. A typical process is a complaint at AN or an RFC/U about administrative actions, followed by a trip to ArbCom for confirmation. The major problem is "political" abuse, i.e., demanding that someone who takes well-deserved action against a powerful user be shamed and desysopped. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• I sympathize with the proposal, but as WhatamIdoing points out, it's simply not practicable that way. I'd propose an alternative process altogether to replace RfA and recall: a community-elected (and thus again directly accountable) committee of sorts with the power to grant and revoke admin privileges on the community's behalf. It would save us tons of time and drama, as well as POINT-!votes. --87.79.130.145 (talk) 02:35, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Well, what I'm thinking is that the community is wary of the power of the Arbitration Committee, especially the fact that the community cannot override its decisions. That doesn't have to be the case, however, for this new committee, provided that we have enough bureaucrats willing to participate.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:43, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
    • First, in most cases admins stripped on the bit by Arbcom are allowed to go back to RFA at some point, so the community can already restore the bit if there is sufficient consensus. Why would the community trust this new body to remove the bit any more then it trusts Arbcom to do it? Seems dubious for going through the effort of maintaining another elected body with regular elections. Also, why would there be a need for bureaucrat participation? This new body would make its decision, and then tell the crats to carry it out, why would that require much crat involvement? Monty₈₄₅ 03:55, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
      • The new committee could be overridden by arbcom or anything else, and is far less likely to be as busy as arbcom. Bureaucrats are the ones who are best at judging admins, so that's why I suggested that they serve, but it's not mandatory.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:05, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I think its a bad idea to tie it to crats, most current crat responsibilities are, well, bureaucratic. The only big judgement call they make is in judging RFA consensus, but thats a far cry from judging if an admin deserves to be de-sysoped. Also, restricting membership to crats will invite accusations of elitism. Far better to have the membership be open to anyone who can get elected, though its likely that the electorate will select many candidates with advanced permissions. Monty₈₄₅ 04:12, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, then election can be open. However, I think it might be smart to have a minimum number of editors without administrative permissions, as to avoid COIs by admins.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:15, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

• RFA is a heavily political rectal examination because it's for-life, and re-elections are unfeasible. Personally I'd just make adminship much more tenuous. Make it much easier to become an admin by letting ~voters know that it'll also be much easier to de-op them later if need be. Admins can prove themselves as they go, instead of candidates having to explain every little thing in their past, and not have the impunity to know they can act badly once in a while as long as no one can show a pattern worthy of ArbCom. Rather, if they start slipping, they're gone (not necessarily permanently), and we let someone else have a go. Of course there would still be prerequisites: a minimum length of time between requests, still a !voting process, and we'd need to create a recall process that ensures uninvolved people make the decision. But, I think making adminship a revolving role rather than this permanent political title is worth examining. Equazcion ^(talk) 04:00, 30 Apr 2012 (UTC)
  • I think it's because we lack a process for that. If we make something as structured as ANEW for this I think we'd have reduced problems.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:15, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

ITN

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Consensus is against this. Closing before it gets any more heated.

---

Proposal to abolish ITN as its highly subjective and often the cause of disputes as a result. ITNR is another disputed feature. Something like DYK is far more objective. Further with WP's popularity current events are likely to be featuresd at the top of searches and will be found anyway. WP should be showcasing quality of WP articles and objectivity of itself, not contributing to WP:Recentism of articles that get created for ITN and then ignored forever. An attack/accident/diesease flare up/flood somewhere is not eneyclopaedic worth but for wikinews, it makes the encyclopaedia project further into a social media outlet to push povs. (As most current events (a la Arab Spring, etc) do). I realise this means changing the main page which is hard but its not that difficult. We could move DYK up or the OTD (As in formal documents where the date is on the top-right). Then we can either expand the current section by increasin the width/height, or the number of current additions within the current sections. Or an alternative idea of objectivity can be proposed. Im thinking we could add some small box of current events as in a link to current sports/elections/the daily or annual calendars which is more objective and can be added to without admin subjectivity.Lihaas (talk) 20:12, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose at a glance. I'd reform ITN rather than abolish it. For example, we could require the subjects to have pre-existing articles.--Jasper Deng (talk) 20:17, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

They already do, which is the problem as current events often times dont go through more than the days/week its on ITN...but the selection process is highly arbitrary in large part.Lihaas (talk) 20:20, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

My idea was to require like 3 months of age to prevent the creation of (non-notable) articles solely for ITN.--Jasper Deng (talk) 20:24, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

The inclusion of new articles written as a result of recent/current events is a fundamental element of ITN. In fact, the section was created for our coverage of the September 11 attacks (obviously not a non-notable subject). —David Levy 23:41, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• Surely the place to bring this up is WT:ITN, rather than hiding it here and not leaving a courtesy notice at ITN at all. Shocking behaviour. —Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 20:25, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose I think ITN has a problem that can be fixed. If less concern were placed on international/widespread notability of events and more emphasis were placed on the quality of the updates, we'd lower the amount of subjectivity and stagnancy associated with the section. No other section on the Main Page requires that the content be important to people across different regions; I don't understand why ITN has to act that way. There was a time when, somehow, it worked, but it doesn't work now. -- tariqabjotu 20:39, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
• Bad behaviour by Lihaas. Why not discuss it at ITN? How rude. Incidentally, no, oppose, but attempt to stop the inevitable bias that goes on at ITN (but that's a local issue). Generally our ITN is a fair representation of what's going on without being ticker tape. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:00, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Relax...its been 16 mins between posting here and there. Just got distracted with multiple windows open till i started closing them ;) Also AGF...bad behviour by you?

At any rate, this as my firstposting at village pump where there were no guidelines as such (As in ANI and SOCK that call for notificaiton). Lets not presume are way through...Lihaas (talk) 21:02, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Fully relaxed. Just odd that you would post this way round. Oh well. Let's see how your "proposal" fares, eh? The Rambling Man (talk) 21:09, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose I believe that ITN is useful. It needs to be improved (in what way would be a seperate proposal), not abolished. Shirudo talk 00:00, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose - Useful part of the main page, which may need some improvement. Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:33, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose- If we get rid of ITN, I'm leaving Wikipedia. Bzweebl (talk) 01:23, 30 April 2012 (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.