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.
• 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.

« Archives, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212

Navigation templates

Hi. it has come to my attention that there is a mixed reaction towards footer navigation templates. Especially for sports related articles there is a ridiculous number of templates. I personally think 1 or 2 can often be very useful but anything more really is an eye sore. Some people loathe them entirely and are attempting to remove them from articles like the Cinema of templates for film, which some users find very useful. Given that there is never going to be agreement over them, is it possible that a new option becomes available in " my preferences" to hide footer navigation templates? Dr. Blofeld 11:16, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that a gadget may be better. emijrp (talk) 11:36, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

There is already a guideline at Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. It specifies that the topics within a navigation template should be closely related, and mention each other to some extent. If the relation is very broad, the template may be removed from the article, or even nominated for deletion MBelgrano (talk) 11:57, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't address the fact that some people hate any form of navigation template and are intent on removing any form of navigation in template, however closely related or important to the article. This is my point. Can somebody make it available in "gadgets". Dr. Blofeld 13:11, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

This makes very little sense. Why are would we create gadgets that hide encyclopedic content? Would it make sense to have one that blocks out Infoboxes? or "Plot" sections in fiction articles? BOVINEBOY2008 14:02, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

No chance of a gadget, but it's easy with user.css: Just add this line to Special:MyPage/skin.css

.navbox {display:none}

Which will make all 1,300,000+ standard footer navboxes disappear completely (including the ones for project and help namespaces, etc). -- Quiddity (talk) 19:01, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Why is there no chance as a general option? I personally don't have a problem with nav boxes but others do. Dr. Blofeld 18:35, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

"No chance" is my opinion, based on - low desirability (I'd guess only dozens of editors at most), and non-scriptness (it can be easily implemented with a single line of usercss, so adding a gadget entry to the mediawiki-preferences is overkill), and indiscriminate-ness (it would hide all navboxes, including items like Template:MediaWiki_messages, which would lead to those users asking unnecessary questions). But you're welcome to try suggesting it at the Wikipedia:Gadget proposals page. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:26, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

It would be optional. If an user wants to hide all navboxes, he only needs to enable the gadget, he is free to do it. Also, I think that this solution can be used to hide sexual or offensive images. Of course, the default Wikipedia is not censored, but, we must offer "alternative" Wikipedias, for usability reasons (hiding huge navboxes) or for personal beliefs. Regards. emijrp (talk) 14:38, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Good idea. And when wikipedia is as diverse as it is with millions of difference users these sort of options should be available to meet different demands.You would think though that if people get shocked by graphic imagery they would refrain from visiting page related to sex and massacres etc.. Dr. Blofeld 16:59, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Most navboxes now support the show/hide collapse option; it might be better to roll this out more broadly and work on some kind of "default collapse" option for users, rather than explicitly hiding them - this reduces it to a few horizontal bars at the bottom, which is fairly unobtrusive and retains the option to pull them out again. Shimgray | talk | 15:12, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

The thing is most of the cinema template are collapseed onto a single line and still editors like BovineBoy insist on removing them. Bovine did I say anything about hiding encyclopedic content? Who said anything about removing the infoboxes and plot? Just the footer templates. Dr. Blofeld 16:56, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I thought this discussion was about hiding all templates, not a continuation of the one elsewhere. Don't split discussions without notifying either one that its going on, if that is what you are doing. BOVINEBOY2008 17:12, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I left a message at WP:Films directing here as this is a proposal to hide all footer templates as an option, not just films but every article on wikipedia. Stop assuming things and stop ordering me about. I am pointing to the fact that you are unhappy with even collapsed templates so there needs to be an option to hide them. It isn't just you, there are many who feel the same way over templates and disagree with those who endorse them. Given that there ar emany who find footer nav plates useful, why should you persist in taking away the preferences of others? With this proposal you would have the otopn to hide them which would solve the problem. Dr. Blofeld 17:15, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, sorry I said that. But you mistake me. I am not opposed to those navigation templates, but am opposed to linking them to every article that remotely relates, which is not the point of navigation boxes. I support the use of them in the particular articles that they link to, but no more. BOVINEBOY2008 17:31, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

So what you're saying is that you support batches of articles they link directly to like Template:Steven Spielberg rather than indirectly related content? Well that's a good point, but the templates were made in the belief that films by year are related to other films released that year. This was the point. I would gree with you though about a 1997 French horror movie being linked to a 1915 French silent comedy seeming redundanr. The best thing in my view in that case would be a see also link to French films of 1997 but a number opposed to this so in the end we ended up keeping the entire year templates. I'm sure there are other similar templates. I agree though that directly related links are better in templates. But I do think there should be the option to hide them for all subjects as some people loathe templates fullstop. Dr. Blofeld 18:57, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

As a quick aside: Dr. Blofeld, it would be beneficial if you were to read and follow Wikipedia:Indentation. Thanks! Killiondude (talk) 04:31, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but I find indentation irritating when spewed across the page, it wastes space. Dr. Blofeld 12:32, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

How about having a new option in "my preferences" to show/hide indentation then? - Pointillist (talk) 12:54, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that there's an issue here. The discussion at WT:FILM from which this proposal appears to stem from is not navboxes are evil but rather a specific concern about the use of certain navboxes in certain articles. Hiding all navboxes from view won't address this issue. PC78 (talk) 03:38, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

The Creation of Wiki Forum

Dear Wikipedians As a new member of Wikipedia which I find interesting, I noticed there was little interaction with editors, if there is interaction it is very hard to find. I propose that we have a forum, similar to chat rooms in which editors can discuss articles and be able to organise project meetings, discuss wikipedia problems and solve problems together as a community. There is to be monitors that will oversee the discussions and chats, as many as possible and chat rooms with language dictionaries, a visible report tool and a instant response to reports. 'Thank you for listening to my topic. I hope you shall assume good faith and help me in our mission to make Wikipedia a better place to be" Yours Sincerely, RosePetals1

We already have talk pages. Bear in mind that Wikipedia is not a discussion forum. MER-C 10:51, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Check out Wikipedia:IRC, in particular see #wikipedia-en on Freenode. Herostratus (talk) 14:27, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

This technically is a forum. Though once LiquidThreads is rolled out ... ViperSnake151  Talk  16:33, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

A single place to go for unstructured discussion has advantages (friendly, good for newbies, and encourage all sorts of discussion). IRC kind of does that, but a lot of people don't use IRC (including me). An onwiki single place to go doesn't exist because it would become overloaded with everyone going there (even if only to be directed elsewhere). Imagine WP:ANI multiplied by every other traffic heavy page - the idea of a central place has some appeal, but it's just not workable on wiki. Hence IRC. Rd232 ^talk 16:55, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Linking to Wiktionary Swadesh lists — a "WikiVocab" project

I'd like to link all Wikipedia language articles with lists in Wiktionary's Swadesh lists appendix to their respective lists. Wiktionary currently has lists for around 200 languages, many of them in language-family rather than individual lists — see http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Swadesh_lists. I have personally created and finished around 20 different Swadesh lists, with more coming on their way. I'm wondering if it's possible to do so in the {{Infobox Language}} template, or to create a separate template for this purpose.

My dream is for there to be a 'big database' on the Internet where anyone can access the basic vocabulary words (in standardized topical lists) of all the world's languages. Wikipedia has information on the grammar and demographics of languages, but does not often include vocabulary, which is the core and essence of language. The closest things we have to a massive comparative database on world languages are the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database, Intercontinental Dictionary Series, and of course, Wiktionary's Swadesh lists. As a side note, even though this is basically the Rosetta Project's goal, the website is still quite unwieldy for ordinary users, has a very low Alexa site ranking, and does not allow wiki-style contributions. The Rosetta Project has also pulled off Swadesh lists that used to be on there, and does not have any searchable vocabulary databases as of now. And why do this? To help in language preservation, comparative linguistic studies, language learning, and more.

Or perhaps we can even create a separate "WikiVocab" website, similar in style to WikiSpecies! If we do create a big, unified, and searchable database for all the world's languages — all in one place — I believe it will be one of the greatest human achievements in modern times.

Thanks for your considerations! — Stevey7788 (talk) 10:41, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

See also http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiVocab

Expanding the "move without redirect" ability to more users

Currently, only administrators can move a page and choose not to leave behind a redirect. However, this function is also often useful for non-admins. It's not something that can be "abused" quite easily (if someone moves a page, anyone can just move it back still), but would be helpful for non-admins. Some examples would be: trying to combat any instances of pagemove vandalism (not having to CSD the redirect created after moving the page back), userfying articles for new users, moving a userspace draft to the mainspace without leaving a userspace redirect, and/or moving a misplaced Articles for creation submission from the mainspace to projectspace. Currently, someone would have to move a page, G7 the redirect, and let an adminbot delete the redirect. Giving more users the ability to move pages and not leave a redirect behind when unnecessary would reduce the amount of pages CSD'd under R3, as well.

Basically, I don't think adding this to some other common right will be very controversial or potentially harmful and open to misuse. When used in such situations as I mentioned above, it would just speed things up and make less work for admins. To whom this right should be given, I am not yet sure. Maybe not to every autoconfirmed user, as many of the newer ones still do not understand how moving pages works, but perhaps bundling it in with rollback would work well, as it is useful when dealing with pagemove vandalism? What does the community think? —fetch·comms 20:35, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Good idea, fetchcomms. WikiCopter^Radio_Checklist^{Formerly AirplanePro} 20:52, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Agree; this would be helpful for all sorts of reasons. In fact, it's so obvious that I can't help thinking that it's probably been discussed somewhere before... Alzarian16 (talk) 21:03, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't really have an opinion one way or the other, but I do wonder whether the level of R3s or G7s is really a problem or not. Also, I don't know which way might be easier to get consensus for, but rather than bundling it into rollback it's also possible that a new user group could be created to grant just that right. And BTW, bots also have the suppressredirect right (although I don't know of any offhand that make use of that), see Special:UserGroupRights for a full list of which groups have what. Anomie⚔ 21:04, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

It's not mainly about the CSD backlogs, just that this seems fairly uncontroversial to me (this doesn't even involve moving pages over existing ones, which would be actual deletion), and has many uses. I thought about adding a new group, but that's just a bit too much to me, for such a little right. I know of one bot who uses (well, will use) that: User:AFC clerk bot. —fetch·comms 21:17, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

The reason that it belongs to admins is that the MediaWiki code has that button make you actually delete the page. It just doesn't make it show in deletion log or on the page. It would mean letting non-admins delete pages which, while a good idea in this case, probably wouldn't work with the code. I Support this but think that it's impossible. Mr. R00t ^Talk 21:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

But, as Anomie pointed out, the bot usergroup has this ability, although they cannot delete pages themselves. —fetch·comms 00:24, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Mr. R00t, it doesn't even create the redirect if it is to be suppressed.[1][2] Anomie⚔ 00:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I think the potential for abuse or unintentional misuse would outweigh the benefits; if it is to be rolled out to more users, it should be a new userright (perhaps one that consolidates all the other userrights into a bundle package). –xeno^talk 00:55, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Unintentional misuse is possible (that's why I don't think everyone should get it), but where would be the potential for abuse, if the ability is restricted to users already trusted at a certain level? A "bundled rights" usergroup seems like a good idea for many users, but I foresee a rather long, tedious, separate discussion about that. —fetch·comms 01:04, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

¶ I've been a rank-and-file editor here for more than two years and seven thousand edits [I was automatically granted reviewer rights last May, but I've neither sought nor received any other administrative privileges.] While I'm hardly a stranger to MoS Talk pages, most of this is way over my head. Could someone save me a lot of tedious and redundant research by reminding me what things like G7 and R3 mean? Even better, could someone summarize the proposal and debate into plain English? I have a feeling that this could affect ordinary readers and editors (like clicking a link to nowhere without knowing it's been redirected somewhere else), but I can't follow what's being discussed. —— Shakescene (talk) 01:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

G7 is requesting speedy deletion because "author of page requested"; R3 is request speedy deletion because "page title is an unlikely search term so a redirect doesn't need to be here". Basically, I am proposing that some non-admins be given the ability to move a page without leaving behind a redirect. Currently, only admins can move pages and have a choice of whether or not to have a redirect created from the original title, or not create a redirect, but just move the page to a different title. —fetch·comms 01:24, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Good idea, but I don't think all autoconfirmed users should get this. Maybe all rollbackers and autopatrolled? — Train2104 (talk • contribs • count) 19:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it needs to be redundant to users with both rights, as many autopatrolled users are also rollbackers (and if they're not, I don't see how it would hurt to make them rollbackers). —fetch·comms 21:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

The user shouldn't need both, only one of them.

Note: I was sure I'd seen this discussed before as a bad idea (eg here), but I think those considerations are taken care of by bugzilla:16950, which shows the move log on a deleted page in addition to the deletion log. As far as I can see that means the idea is no longer dangerous (as it once was), though I'm not entirely convinced it's worth the likely misuse by inexperienced people not leaving redirects when they should. Speedy deleting unnecessary redirects, in my experience at CSD (not recent...) didn't take much time. What took time was borderline cases that required more thought on whether to accept or decline. Rd232 ^talk 21:37, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

How inexperienced do you mean? I mean, rollback is open to misuse as well, but one would just revoke the right and undo the harm done. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:04, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I believe it will be best if it becomes its own user group. Us441(talk)(contribs) 22:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

That sounds sort of overkill for just a teensy little right. Who would get it, then? People more experienced than the ordinary rollbacker but less than what? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 23:49, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Admins. Us441(talk)(contribs) 23:54, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Adding another user right seems overkill. In my opinion, there are far too many individual user rights as it stands. Including this in something like reviewer seems fine. Killiondude (talk) 00:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

My concern lumping this in with a pre-existing userright is that users will be presented with a new options, probably unawares as to its appropriate use. –xeno^talk 13:27, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, except that depends on PC being kept or not. Rollback seems to be a slightly "harder-to-get" right than reviewer, so that's also why I thought it might work. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I see no harm in folding this into either the Rollbacker or Reviewer right. Logically I think it makes more sense with reviewer, as this new right seems "closer" to the reviewer function than the rollback function, in my mind. I think the chance of abuse is miniscule. I also agree that it would be overkill to add an extra user bit for something so insignificant as the ability to not leave a redirect behind after a move. ~Amatulić (talk) 05:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

It could be used to move an article from mainspace into userspace, and then db-u1 the article. An admin not paying attention might then delete the article without checking the relevant history. This is just one of the potential vectors for abuse, and there are several for unintentional misuse. –xeno^talk 13:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Who would do that? The chance that some malicious user who takes a month or two to amass several hundred edits, get rollback or reviewer, then go on a mass pagemove vandalism spree, is pretty small to me. In the case you mentioned, any admin who doesn't check the history before deleting that is, frankly, an idiot. I hope everyone agrees that this ability is useful, but the issue is over who would be entrusted with it. Is there any technical way to only give a right to people who are in a certain two usergroups? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

There is still the unintentional misuse aspect, or the case of users using it to push a particular point of view regarding a title. And, no, I don't think there's an ability to grant an ability based on an intersection of userrights (and in any case, this would still raise the objection that a new ability being rolled out to users with them not knowing the proper use thereof). –xeno^talk 17:12, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

"... this would still raise the objection that a new ability being rolled out to users with them not knowing the proper use thereof'". A bit like admin rights then. Malleus Fatuorum 17:17, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, new rights have been rolled out to admins, but they are generally expected to exercise good judgment - enough to educate themselves before pressing a new button. (I realize this is a best-case scenario) –xeno^talk 17:20, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

You may have that expectation, but I certainly don't. Malleus Fatuorum 17:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Hence, generally expected. –xeno^talk 17:26, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

If your argument held water it would not have been necessary for you to qualify it with "generally". Generally regular editors (remember them, the ones who actually write this stuff?) are expected to exercise care before pressing any buttons aren't they? Malleus Fatuorum 17:31, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

True, but they haven't been vetted in a trial by fire. Thus, there is a higher probability that may unintentionally misuse the feature (even in good faith) if it becomes available to them without prior notice. –xeno^talk 17:33, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Your "trial by fire" would be better described as a ducking stool as used in a witch trial; make a few enemies and you're damned whatever you do. Malleus Fatuorum 17:39, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I suppose my objection is already addressed somewhat by the instructions in the move dialog. –xeno^talk 17:43, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Clearly this has no more chance of gaining that mythical "consensus" than any other of the similar proposals that are regularly shot down, and even if it did whatever software changes would be needed wouldn't happen, but I do wish that a few minds would start opening up to ways in which wikipedia no longer needed administrators, or at worst very few of them. The wikiway to everything seems to be "we need more administrators", instead of looking at "why do we need administrators"? Malleus Fatuorum 17:52, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a strong objection to this being granted to users, I simply foresee that if it's given to them without prior notice (or without them explicitly requesting it), that it will be misused, even if unintentionally. Do you think it would be wise to simply give every user admin tools? –xeno^talk 17:55, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

As it happens I do, so long as they're easily but fairly removed, but that's a discussion for another place. Malleus Fatuorum 17:57, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Fair 'nuff. Thanks, –xeno^talk 18:03, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that it would be useful for some non-admins to be able to do this. I will credit Xeno's objections, however, and propose a middle ground: create a path to request this ability which requires first earning the rollback bit and using it wisely for a stretch of edits or a period of time. bd2412 T 19:26, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

The rollback bit is about as much use as a chocolate teapot, and to talk of "earning" it is little short of risible. How did you "earn" your sysop bits? Malleus Fatuorum 19:31, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

If the rights were granted in a separate new userright, my objection would be largely moot (because they would need to request the right, and in doing so would be read the riot act directed to review WP:R#SUPPRESS before using the tool). –xeno^talk 19:39, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Which part of the blocking policy were you forced to read before your popularity contest RfA? Malleus Fatuorum 19:55, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

'Twas many moons ago, but I think I read the whole thing before answering Q4 in my RFA. –xeno^talk 19:59, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, you and every other admin hopeful. We clearly inhabit different universes, so you enjoy yours and I'll enjoy mine. Malleus Fatuorum 20:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

How did I earn my sysop bit? Like this. bd2412 T 21:00, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Quite. So clearly you were not elected on the basis of your ability to write abuse filters, for instance, or to hand out and remove user rights like rollbacker. It's hard to know whether the old-timer admins like you are dishonest or just stupid. Malleus Fatuorum 23:04, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I was elected on the basis of my judgment. For example, having the modicum of common sense needed to avoid implying that someone I don't know is dishonest or stupid. bd2412 T 03:14, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Clearly your election victory was a long time ago, and perhaps in the interval you've become either dishonest or stupid. It's difficult otherwise to explain your resistance to accepting what's self-evidently true, which is that nobody but the fawning admin wanabees trusts administrators with rights they were not elected to have. Malleus Fatuorum 05:16, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think the volume of usage is such that we really need to give this to more users. But if we have to, making a separate user right for this is just stupid. Its mainly useful for cleaning up pagemove vandalism, so give it to rollbackers. Mr.Z-man 22:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Improving the workflow for new editors

Hello. I am working to improve our account creation and first edit flow. I invite you to join and help us! —I-20the highway 14:07, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Semiadmin

I have a new user group called Semiadmin. This group is for former admins who lost adminship for misusing Rollback, but were good in other administrative work, like blocking, deleting, etc. This way, we can have those admins keep other admin tools. Us441(talk)(contribs) 22:32, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

There have been various proposals for partial admins in the past, they tend to fail on grounds of trust - if you trust someone with one part of the toolset why not give them the whole lot? As for this specific proposal, I don't think we've had many admins lose adminship for misuse of rollback, at least not recently. Rollback is fairly easy to acquire, and if someone has lost it through either edit warring or excessive errors I would have thought they are best advised to fix the problems that lost them Rollback before trying for adminship. ϢereSpielChequers 22:59, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think this would work out very well. If you can't do one administrative thing right, most people wouldn't trust you to do any. And I've never heard of an admin being desysopped for misuse of rollback... usually it happens when they abuse the deletion or blocking mechanisms. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 23:48, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Usually it doesn't happen at all, even when they do, but I agree that there's no obvious value in a semiadmin user group. Malleus Fatuorum 17:04, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

This is basically a perennial proposal. —I-20the highway 22:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposed bot to add "Commons" and "Commons category" templates to articles

Hi! I wish to inform you that I asked here the approval for a bot able to add, in few very obivious cases and after appropriate checks on Wikimedia Commons, the templates {{commons}} and {{commons category}}. For details or questions please check Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/FrescoBot 6. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 10:39, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

copied from Template talk:Commons#FrescoBot 6 for greater visibility. –xeno^talk 13:25, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

New etiquette board?

• Wikipedia:Antiquette

Evidently, there is a proposed new process board for WP:Etiquette or WP:AGF issues, which I stumbled upon by following links at the former guideline this morning. I don't see that this has been widely publicized and felt it might be of interest to those who monitor this board. Please see Wikipedia:Antiquette. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

What's the difference with WP:WQA? --Cyclopia^talk 17:36, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I can only respond with what I see. :) It seems that only members are allowed to discuss civility issues there, although membership is inclusive, and that each member may be maintaining a list of contributors whom s/he feels are problematic (or "anti-etiquette"). (See User:Porchcrop/Antiquette). It's a bit confusing at this point. You might want to ask there, though. I'm not sure if the proposer will respond in this thread. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:42, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

• A forum in which "members" (and only members) discuss and, presumably, work on sanctioning the behaviour of everyone else for not coming up to their standards. Hum. I cannot help but feel we've been here before, and it just ended in tears last time... Shimgray | talk | 17:58, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

• What is this even supposed to be, a drama-gossip/hate list board? Absolutely unacceptable. Labeling people as "antiquette" is itself the antithesis of etiquette. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:23, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

• Isn't this already covered by WP:RFC/U (minus the membership - that's Arbcom)? Airplaneman ✈ 02:24, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for Wikipedia in American English

If you go to List of Wikipedias, you may notice that although it appears that are many different languages in which Wikipedias exist on the net, some are actually different versions of the same language (there are separate entries there for Bavarian, German and Alemannic - the latter I take to mean Swiss German as opposed to High German). In the same way, do you think we could have two Wikipedias in English - one in U.K. English, one in American English? This would certainly clear up problems such as how to spell "ageing" (ageing in U.K. English, aging in U.S. English - go the article Ageing and visit its talk page and you will see my point. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:29, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

No. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 00:06, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

There is no question that the issue is a perennial irritation and will be for the foreseeable future. I personally despise the spelling aluminium and deplore the Chemistry WikiProject's choice to favor it just because IUPAC does.

But this is a minor point. On the other hand, the loss of expertise on both sides of a split en.wiki project would be anything but minor. We muddle along with WP:ENGVAR; it isn't perfect but it mostly works. --Trovatore (talk) 00:14, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

It works perfectly fine. The very minor differences between American and British (and Australian, and South African, and Canadian, and etc. etc.) versions of the English language are not really enough to justify the split into seperate Wikipedias. There are a few minor usage differences, and some small differences in vocabulary that do no more than cause a second or two of awkwardness. Articles written in ostensibly "British" English are perfectly understandable to an American reader (or Australian, or Canadian, or Kenyan, or Bermudan, or Jamaican, or...), so there's no impending need to create a new Wikipedia just so one can use the words "petrol" and "lift" while the other uses "gasoline" and "elevator". --Jayron32 00:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Then you get editors like me that use a hopeless muddle of British and American spellings. To date, the only time I have been absolutely perplexed was when a Haynes manual told me to rub down my engine block with paraffin to get it clean. I had no idea that they meant kerosene, not candle wax.—Kww(talk) 00:45, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Regional differences between variants of German are much greater than in English, especially in written form. I'm a native German speaker, and Bavarian description in Bavarian and Alemannish description in Alemannish are sort of decipherable, but barely a word is spelt exactly as in standard German. Rd232 ^talk 06:34, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

The regional differences in English are not enough to justify separate versions, nor are we likely to see standardization on one particular national variant. Much as Americans may think they dominate the world, they are only a small fraction of the English speaking world. Besides, as soon as we get American English and British English Wikipedias, we'll have to have Indian English, Singaporean English, Ebonics, Australian English, South African English, and so on, it's not practical for what amount to trivial differences. Triona (talk) 07:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)