Use the <ref> tag to add references to your articles presented as footnotes. This tag is easy and convenient because it allows you to cite your sources within your text and have them automatically numbered and added to your References section at the end of the article. To cite a source, simply type the <ref> tag after the statement the reference is for.
For example: Haliburton park is the largest park in the world.<ref>Bill Harton (2005). http://www.linkhere.com. Retrieved March 3, 2005.</ref> Then, at the end of your article, add the following template to include all of the citations in your article: {{Reflist}} directly under the References or Notes section title.
hi. this is just a note, to say thanks for the great links above, to tools for wikipedia. these are great resources!! thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 18:26, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Transclude files as random slideshow template[edit]
The images slideshow using {{Transclude files as random slideshow}} is not working on portals such as Portal:Drink (see the General images section) and others that I have spot checked. The images load, but then instantly disappear. It does not appear to be a lua timeout. I wonder what the problem is; perhaps you can offer some insight on how to fix this. North America1000 18:06, 20 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect History of Khanpur. Since you had some involvement with the History of Khanpur redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 23:28, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Automatically detecting Good Article, Featured Article, and Featured List status, and limiting ORES predictions to B-class
An updated version of Twinkle was released. Features relating to the recently-enabled partial blocks include automatic lookup of pages and expanded options for block templates. See a full list of changes here
For users of Enterprisey's easy-brfa script, the bug with transcluding new BRFAs has been resolved
For any scripts that previously made use of the edit API to change a page's content model, a new API module is available: use action=changecontentmodel to specify the new content model of an existing page. Documentation is available: mw:API:ChangeContentModel.
The dispute resolution noticeboard wizard is no longer a gadget, but rather is loaded using withJS and withCSS. See the discussion at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-DRN-wizard.js
Pending requests
A script to help file movers process requests, including
renaming the file
updating file links
removing the {{Rename media}} template (when relevant)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Help:Editor's cheat sheet. Since you had some involvement with the Help:Editor's cheat sheet redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Bsherr (talk) 17:38, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Enterprisey's reply-link has been updated to fail less, especially around template transclusions.
Twinkle released new features, including a new option to disable individual modules, support for stub template nomination at CfD, and integration with the PageTriage extension used to patrol new pages. (See full list of changes)
Open tasks
The mediawiki.notify resource loader module was deprecated and is no longer needed; its functionality is now available by default. See mw:ResourceLoader/Migration guide (users) for more. Any dependency on it should be removed.
Twinkle's Morebits library added a new Morebits.date class to replace the moment library. It can handle custom formatting and natural language for dates, as well as section header regexes. If you were using getUTCMonthName or getUTCMonthNameAbbrev with Date objects, those have been deprecated and should be updated.
Hello, User:The Transhumanist, it's been some time now and no moves have been made from me on this tree. Well, I feel like I've had a fresh argument somewhere on the site every week and contributed little in material terms, sort of the opposite of encouraging to lead essentially a project-wide initiative.
But that's not exactly what is on my mind. I've been thinking about the relationship of Wikipedia to Britannica. You know, Britannica hasn't gone anywhere. They continue to aspire to out-qualifying Wikipedia one day, and any time that crosses my mind I am reminded of the depreciation of the portals, because that is an element of navigation on the site.
If you were to plan for a hostile take over of Wikipedias business, how would you do it. Some sort of sabotage would be relevant, but you couldn't just vandalise. That could easily wash out in such a way that it would bolster commitment and Wikipedia has vandalism well covered. One thing, however, that might cripple the value of Wikipedia... would be to depopularise navigation tools. Oh, I could rattle on about the implications, but needless to say, I will not stop thinking about bringing that idea to you here, until I do. Portals are not the only depreciated navigation tool. The "see also" section itself has quietly been depreciated. Imagine that...
All best, ~ R.T.G 07:50, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@RTG: Hello to you too. Just popped in on a whim, and found your message. Interesting thought. Though, there won't likely be a hostile takeover. Instead, Wikipedia will be made obsolete when AI can write better articles than humans, on the fly. That is, instead of the search results we have now, google will answer whatever question or request you have in prose. So, if you say "tell me about bumble bees", it will whip up a treatise for you in .013 seconds that's better than WP's article on the subject. Probably coming in less than 10 years, maybe even 5. AI development is going so fast that they may skip prose and go straight to AI production of mini-documentaries upon request in real-time. They are heading in that direction already. See this article about Meena and this one on sports coverage. And you'll be able to customize the narrator's voice to be whomever you like, such as Marilyn Monroe. — The Transhumanist 08:22, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The main portal of the Palacio de San Telmo
I like the sports editor seeing as its whole purpose is just to be captivating but I'm impressed by Meenas joke telling ability, "Hayvard" lol. I don't know about Wikipedia being superceded that way. Yes AI may be able to write better articles, but articles for articles sake are just a number. The only way an AI can make Wikipedia irrelevant is not to simply write articles, but to build an encyclopaedia :)~ R.T.G 01:24, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@RTG: Good point. An on-the-fly article wouldn't have links to other on-the-fly articles, because they don't exist at that moment. But, if AI can write one article, it could write and save 10 million of them, complete with interlinks. The trick would be designing the AI to know not to write an article on each individual tree and blade of grass. Though having an article on each individual person may be just around the corner. — The Transhumanist 01:43, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I so miss customer service since the rise of the internet. Imagine ringing a government office or a phone company and getting an instant and useful response! I hope AI can bring that back. Still awaiting however to see a robot doing home deliveries during this lockdown. ~ R.T.G 02:51, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
An on the fly article of that sort would just get the AI to create another on the fly article on whatever you clicked on, except you wouldn't need to click, just ask. It wouldn't need to write and save 10 million as long at there was access to the needed references. Not holding my breath, but Iain Banks would feel at home. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood(talk): 20:46, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
What happened between 22:29 and 22:30 on September 18, 2017?[edit]
You changed, Transhumanist. One minute you create a new redirect, the next you're setting a different target and politely advising it never change, lest the doomed redirect not work! I'm not mad at you, or even disappointed, just letting you know it's OK. I fixed the paradox and everything should return to normal shortly, at least in theatres. Just try to be more careful screwing with the future next time, maybe? InedibleHulk (talk) 10:32, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@InedibleHulk: I'm glad you are not mad about something that happened 3 years ago. And Ive no doubt changed since then, too. By the way, according to my contribution log, my last edit on September 18, 2017 was at 17:25. You must be in another time zone. Therefore, I cannot answer your question. Please provide diffs. — The Transhumanist 04:39, 30 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Can't copy and paste, but check the history of the redirect above for the 23:30 (UTC). Technically, I got the order of events backward, but only if we're counting forward. Still mad at something that happened three years ago, but not this. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:07, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
A significant portion of our collection now no longer requires individual applications to access! Read more in our recent blog post.
Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 09:49, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
Did not mean to bring you into an edit war. Was thinking that logic would prevalent with a few more people involved . ..but I think the animosity is 2 high. RfC on your wording is on it's way. --Moxy🍁 23:13, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:28, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Enterprisey's parsoid-round-trip uses Parsoid to convert wikitext to HTML and back, and then shows the result and the difference between the original wikitext and the post-conversion wikitext.
Frietjes's infoboxgap assists in renumbering infobox labels/data/classes, so that a new line can be inserted in the middle of the infobox.
Twinkle has made a number of improvements, including using a change tag to identify actions made with it and automatically filing edit requests for protected XfD nominations.
GeneralNotability's spihelper updated to 2.2.10, fixing a number of small bugs, automatically tagging globally locked socks as such in the sockpuppet template, and restoring open cases following an SPI history merge.
Enterprisey's script-installer gadget has been updated with more internationalization of messages, as well as addition of a user preference, window.scriptInstallerInstallTarget to allow controlling where new scripts are to be installed.
My apologies for the delayed issue. As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, help is appreciated. Stay safe, --DannyS712 (talk) 18:20, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Enterprisey's copy-section-link adds popups to section headers which has an appropriate wikilink and external link to the section.
DannyS712's FindBlacklistEntry can be used to figure out which line(s) in either the local or global spamblacklist prevent a particular url from being added.
The Watchlist Expiry feature worked on by the Community Tech team has been enabled on Wikipedia. For scripts that include watching or unwatching pages, developers may want to update their code to take advantage of the new functionality. See the documentation on mediawiki.org.
As noted in the prior issue, Enterprisey's links-in-logs script has now been implemented as part of MediaWiki core. By my count, this is his third script that was replaced by implementing the code in MediaWiki core or an extension, along with link-section-edits and abusefilter-hide-search. Additionally, his reply-link script is being converted in part to mw:Extension:DiscussionTools. Are there any other scripts that might be worth integrating directly in MediaWiki? Thoughts would be welcome at Wikipedia talk:Scripts++.
As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy holidays! --DannyS712 (talk) 00:19, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
PNAS – Official journal of the National Academy of Sciences
EBSCO – New Arabic and Spanish language databases added
We have a wide array of other collections available, and a significant number now no longer require individual applications to access! Read more in our blog post.
Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects!
User:Ahecht/Scripts/pageswap - version 1.4 fixes reading destination from form field if destination is not in article namespace, and fixes self redirects.
Wikipedia:XFDcloser - version 4 brings a new user interface for dialogs, some preferences for customising XFDcloser, major behind-the-scenes coding changes, and resolves various issues raised on the talkpage. Also, since version 3.16.6 non-admin soft delete closure have been allowed at TfD.
Open tasks
As a reminder, the legacy javascript globals (like accessing wgPageName without first assigning it a value or using mw.config.get('wgPageName') instead) are deprecated. If your user scripts make use of the globals, please update them to use mw.config instead. Some global interface editors or local interface administrators may edit your user script to make these changes if you don't. See phab:T72470 for more.
Miscellaneous
For people interested in creating user scripts or gadgets using TypeScript, a types-mediawiki package (GitHub, NPM) is now available that provides type definitions for the MediaWiki JS interface and the API.
A GitHub organization has been created for hosting codebases of gadgets. Users who maintain gadgets using GitHub may choose to move their repos to this organization, to ensure continued maintenance by others even if the original maintainer becomes inactive.
As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, including nominating a featured script, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy new year! --DannyS712 (talk) 01:17, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:Ahecht/Scripts/pageswap - version 1.4 fixes reading destination from form field if destination is not in article namespace, and fixes self redirects.
Wikipedia:XFDcloser - version 4 brings a new user interface for dialogs, some preferences for customising XFDcloser, major behind-the-scenes coding changes, and resolves various issues raised on the talkpage. Also, since version 3.16.6 non-admin soft delete closure have been allowed at TfD.
Open tasks
As a reminder, the legacy javascript globals (like accessing wgPageName without first assigning it a value or using mw.config.get('wgPageName') instead) are deprecated. If your user scripts make use of the globals, please update them to use mw.config instead. Some global interface editors or local interface administrators may edit your user script to make these changes if you don't. See phab:T72470 for more.
Miscellaneous
For people interested in creating user scripts or gadgets using TypeScript, a types-mediawiki package (GitHub, NPM) is now available that provides type definitions for the MediaWiki JS interface and the API.
A GitHub organization has been created for hosting codebases of gadgets. Users who maintain gadgets using GitHub may choose to move their repos to this organization, to ensure continued maintenance by others even if the original maintainer becomes inactive.
As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, including nominating a featured script, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy new year! --DannyS712 (talk) 01:17, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
FoldArchives collapses archived talk page threads in order to reduce screen space
GoToTitle converts the page title into an input field for navigating to other pages
UserHighlighter adds highlighting to links to the userpages, talk pages, and contributions of administrators and other user groups as well as tooltips to indicate which groups a user is in
filterDiff: Adds a "Show changes" button to the filter editor.
filterNotes: Parses filter notes as wikitext (so links are clickable), and signs and dates new comments for you.
filterTest: Adds a "Test changes" button. Opens Special:AbuseFilter/test with what's currently in the edit form, not with what's saved in the database, so you don't have to copy-paste your changes.
Twinkle has a number of improvements, including that most watchlist defaults now make use of the new temporary watchlist feature. Other changes include rollbacks treating consecutive IPv6 editors in the same /64 range as the same user, adding a preview for shared IP tagging, a preference for watching users after CSD notification, and for sysops, the ability to block the /64 and link to a WP:RfPP request, and new copyright blocks default to indefinite.
Wikipedia:Shortdesc helper now v3.4.17, changes include minor fixes and preventing edits that don't change the description.
Joeytje50's JWB now version 4.1.0, includes the ability to generate page lists from the search tool, major updates to the handling of regular expressions, the storing of user settings, the addition of upload protection, and an option to skip pages that belong to a specific category, among other changes. See User:Joeytje50/JWB/Changelog for a full list of recent changes.
Wikipedia:User scripts/List has been revamped to make it easier to find scripts suited for your needs. If you know of a cool script that is missing on the list, or a script on the list that is no longer working, please edit the list or let us know on the talk page.
My apologies for this long-overdue issue, and if I missed any scripts. Hopefully going forward we can go back to monthly releases - any help would be appreciated. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 13:04, 2 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Dear TH, I was thinking today of how valuable it would be to have a written history of the role of lists, classifications, catalogs, and portals in the development of Wikimedia. Starting with WP: with lists of towns --> mav's dotmaps, early lists of topics (10k? to a page) --> stubs + redirects, and later WikiProjects once those came into being.
Of course some of the lists of lists were themselves topical: categories, portals, and more. List of lists of lists didn't crop up right away.
I thought you might already have started on something like this, or that it might spark your interest. – SJ + 21:03, 15 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Sj: It is nice to hear from you again. I'm glad to see you have survived the pandemic. I hope you've been fully vaccinated.
Thank you! Yes, just; same to you.
Out of curiosity, what did you mean by "role of lists in the development of Wikipedia"? Are you interested in the history of lists in general, or specifically the history of lists as they were applied in the development of Wikipedia?
You mentioned "catalogs". You weren't by any chance referring to categories, were you?
I mean as applied in the development of Wikipedia + its sibling projects. I mean all sorts of classifications, including those that are more list-like (indexes, lists, catalogs) and those that are more tag-like (categories, navboxes). More in a bit! – SJ + 15:53, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My availability is limited, so I don't know if I can be of much help in the actual writing of such a history, though I have written extensively about the history of lists on Wikipedia (especially of topics lists) in past discussions.
As you know, the primary purpose of lists on wikis is for navigation, as most lists are lists of links.
And, due to the red links feature of Mediawiki (in which you can create a new article just by clicking on a red link), lists have been (and still are) a key tool in the development of Wikipedia.
The navigation aid aspect of lists (which serve as tables of contents, indices), makes using the encyclopedia easier, and therefore also supports development.
I may be able to provide some permanent links and/or diffs to historical events, such as Larry Sanger's use of lists, and a list of such lists, in his efforts to organize topic development in the early days of the English Wikipedia.
Larry Sanger created a page in the Wikipedia namespace called "Basic topics", along with a number of lists included on that list (each called "X basic topics"), for the purpose of identifying topics of highest priority for writing new articles, utilizing the red link feature of Mediawiki.
He urged people to add needed topics to the lists, as links, and then to write articles for the topics for which the links still appeared red. Once an article was created for a topic, its link turned blue, so you could readily see which topics still needed articles created for them.
Back then (in 2001), the main challenge and focus was to populate Wikipedia with articles on the most basic of topics in order to make the encyclopedia generally useful.
I came across Larry's set of lists in the fall of 2005 (under the account name "User:Go for it!"). By that time, the lists had served their purpose and had fallen out of use, as all the red links had turned blue. They were no longer useful for creating new basic topics, because by this time Wikipedia had articles on all basic topics. They (the lists) had transformed from lists of basic topics that needed to be written to lists of links to those articles useful for navigation. But, they were "gathering dust" where nobody could find them.
So, I moved the entire set to the article namespace, as the "Lists of basic topics", and created a WikiProject to support them.
The set grew to include hundreds of lists, and each list grew far larger in scope than "basic topics". Eventually, they were renamed to "Outline of".
Here's a link to the page that Larry Sanger started this all off with:
This is very helpful indeed! Lists on Wikipedia deserves to be a main historical article at some point, but WP: A history of lists and categories might be another place to start, if no equivalent exists. Perhaps some current major policy pages have history sections that would be an appropriate place to start...
Were you involved in discussions around the development of categories, and how to navigate the distinction b/t cats and lists? I know there were later debates once both existed about where to convert from one to the other, and where it makes sense to have both [or more] for a topic. – SJ + 15:57, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Sj: Thank you. I'm fully vaccinated, yes. It intrigues me that the fact -- that almost all deaths caused by the virus are within the non-vaccinated population -- isn't incentive enough for everyone to get jabbed. Getting vaccinated isn't just following the science, it's pragmatically survivalist. Not doing so smacks of suicidal tendencies, and is just asking to be naturally selected out of the gene pool and into the Darwin Awards. Hopefully, that will make the next generation smarter.
Here's another question for further clarification: Are you interested primarily in the history of lists of lists, or in the history of Wikimedia's various list systems? (By "list system", I mean any set of lists regardless of title, which would include categories, for example, which are a type of lists). Each list system, by virtue of its linked entries, is a navigation system. The lists of lists in those systems are merely the upper "levels" or core nodes. "Nodes" is more accurate, as each of these systems is a network, rather than a hierarchy.
I'm still not clear if you are seeking a history of the development of list systems, or a history of how such list systems were applied to the development of Wikimedia projects. Your suggested title "Lists on Wikipedia" hints at the former rather than the latter.
The history of lists in human recorded thought is of course deeply interesting. Wikipedia has accelerated and concentrated some of that work in one place, in the same fashion that Britannica did for a time, leading to its Outline and Syntopicon -- still among the best topic trees in the English language, decades on. Being a networked collaborative rather than a closed system, we have 30+ schemes rather than one or two that are taken to extremes. But we're in the best position to document this ourselves... so, the latter (illustrated briefly, perhaps, by the former as it informs what we experiment with here) – SJ + 21:27, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking of clarification, I'm curious as to what you envision in general...
You mentioned that you thought such a history would be valuable. Valuable in what way?
The development of ostension (nouns, namespaces, citations), classification (granular concepts, shared aspects, equivalence classes [in some context]), and compressed detail (shortening complex concepts into individual terms and symbols, to allow expressing entire discoveries in a single line) are some of the main tools we've built so far for advancing thought.
Wikipedia has made advances in each of these, with an open namespace + authority-file of aliases, creative uses of classification schemes, and dense wikilinks (an improvement on jargon one has to look up in a glossary). The second is less immediately visible than the others, and less standardized. – SJ +
What are the main themes you are thinking of?
Different approaches taken; where they intersect or conflict; what they have enabled; where they draw on past examples in the wider information-world, and where they are trying something new; for perennial ideas tried in many flavors, what was learned
What do you see as the main contributions or benefits of lists in the development of Wikimedia projects?
Identifying completable subsets is a mood. It also allows very clean divide-and-conquer approaches that parallelize well to thousands of contributors.
Inviting overlapping classifications is great for some things; makes other aggregate things (category completions and intersections) hard. But with positive tradeoffs.
Asking "what else might belong on this list?" helps counter types of systemic bias (though it may contribute to others, if very long granular lists take over a shared space)
New facets of discoverability -- more than one way to find what you want – SJ +
What are you hoping people will learn from the history?
Mostly, I don't know, which is why I want to see the history myself. It's certainly worth exploring.
How many different approaches there have been! How these have been important to the growth and thoroughness of the projects; how they have contributed to having "critical mass" of enough instances of a thing to get the shape/structure/tools for that category of thing down pat.
Learning from similarities and differences among major advances can help us find new advances like them. These are often systemic shifts that are not obvious until one starts down a path. – SJ +
There are a few suggestions I can offer concerning the building of list systems for navigation. The main one is: "don't!". Building list systems manually, let alone maintaining them, is not scalable. Getting enough people on board to make such an endeavor scalable is highly unlikely, and would distract editors from building needed content. Automation is the only plausible way forward, and it is coming soon (in years or perhaps just months), in the form of flexible AI machine learning applications. Once those arrive, they will be able to do in minutes what an army of list editors would take centuries to accomplish.
That being said, if someone wants to build a list on a particular subject because they really need a conceptual map to help them find their way around or see the big picture in their field of interest, that could be well worth it. But, trying to manually build a map of all knowledge would be a major waste of time, in light of the technological advances that are happening right now. Automated document classification applied to articles is just around the corner. It's worth waiting for. Kind of like George Lucas waiting for technology to progress to the level needed to film the second Star Wars trilogy.
Concerning the discussions on the development of categories, I was not directly involved. Where I have been involved was in protecting lists from the deletionist tendencies of those who favor categories over lists to the point that they believed that lists were pointless.
The main place that lists and categories have clashed is in deletion discussions. Not just at AfD and MfD, but also at the Village Pump and via deletion proposals presented as RfCs. Some epic battles have been waged between the categorists and list makers, over proposals to nuke entire list systems. So far, the conflict remains a stalemate, with fire still smoldering just beneath the surface, perhaps to ignite again at any moment.
Some major stand-offs occurred in policy discussions too, especially those on the talk pages of the various list guidelines. Those also have the potential for flaring up again.
But, for the same reason as mentioned above concerning manual building of list systems, spending any time arguing over which system is better is a waste of time, because automated systems will render all of these obsolete in the relatively near future.
So, the status quo is fine, for now. Some editors like to work on decentralized categories, while others prefer centralized lists. We might as well let them. Each of the two list types has their strengths and weaknesses.
Getting back to the history itself, and whether it should be named "Lists on Wikipedia" or "Wikipedia:A history of lists and categories", the latter seems more practical, simply because of the lack of coverage of lists in public media: there is a general lack of accounts in the news and other external sources about Wikipedia/Wikimedia lists, their development, and their roles. A referenced article that doesn't merely scratch the surface is simply not feasible due to lack of 3rd-party references.
There is however a rich record of edits of and discussions about lists within the Wikipedia community. Therefore, your best bet is to use those, and to do so, the article will need to be restricted to the Wikipedia namespace.
I hope you find my observations useful.
I look forward to your replies to my additional questions. :)
P.S.: List development by the Wikipedia community has been (and still is) far more extensive than first meets the eye. There are more than 30 list-based navigation systems (WP linkified classification systems) and list types on (or of) Wikipedia. Here are the ones I can track down at the moment:
WP Books, deprecated but still available as a link system through the Wayback Machine, with a working category front-end (categories are fully functional there)
@Sj: I agree with your point as to where to publish: a page in both the Wikipedia and Main namespaces would be better than either one alone.
In response to my question about value, you gave a partial yet highly impassioned summary of the potential content, apparently without answering my question. Your posting of historical observations could be interpreted to have implied that you wish the record to be set straight so that Wikipedia gets credit where credit is due, recording for prosperity in the world's historical record the contributions and influences of the Wikipedia community via advances to the technology and methodologies of lists. I apologize for this leading question, but: was that part of your motivation?
I am a warm proponent of accurate attribution, in history and philosophy and epistemics, but it isn't as though anyone else is trying to take credit. This is just one of the world-changing amplifiers of human potential -- like the descriptive power of languages and dialects -- that is barely recognized in isolation, and so has developed sporadically if at all. My primary goal is recognizing that these methods have advanced, and identifying the contributions of newfound or newly widespread use. Secondary goal is increasing awareness of the importance of this class of ideas as tools for civilizational self-awareness and understanding. Attributing blame comes after those, though identifying this as one of the prominent features and results of Wikipedisme may attract some excellent people to join us. – SJ +
It would certainly be easier for people to learn from Wikipedia's example, if that example were quantified and qualified.
I think you are right, that the writing of a historical account would be exploratory in nature. Who knows what we would discover about the impact of Wikipedia's lists, and advances in list development, it is responsible for developing? Such an article could uncover useful approaches for AI designers in the automation of list building.
It would also be interesting to see what lists are in the Wikipedia graveyard. Over the years, some of Wikipedia's best navigation tools have been deleted.
Yes! I don't know how to mine those properly, but will ask some scripters who work with full histories.
Hopefully, there are enough list developers still around who have the time to recount their contributions and experiences concerning lists. Analyzing Wikipedia's historical record on lists (discussions, edit histories, deletion logs, etc.) could be a monumental task. Perhaps an AI should write the article. :)
Thank you for the clarifications.
You're idea is a worthy one, and there is only one thing left for you to do to turn it into reality...
Create the two pages you mentioned, as stubs, and let the wikimagic begin!
P.S.: If you have any questions about lists you would like to ask, feel free to do so. The vast majority of my manual editing has been upon lists, and so I might know the answer or be able to point you to useful resources. Who knows what memories you might trigger! —TT
:) Thanks, TT. I am already glad I floated the idea here first. – SJ + 19:25, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I've started the mainspace article as the last section of the WP: page for now. Take a look... – SJ + 20:05, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
New Wikipedia Library collections and design update (August 2021)[edit]
Hello Wikimedians!
The TWL OWL says log in today!
The Wikipedia Library is pleased to announce the addition of new collections, alongside a new interface design. New collections include:
Cabells – Scholarly and predatory journal database
Additionally, De Gruyter and Nomos have been centralised from their previous on-wiki signup location on the German Wikipedia. Many other collections are freely available by simply logging in to The Wikipedia Library with your Wikimedia login!
We are also excited to announce that the first version of a new design for My Library was deployed this week. We will be iterating on this design with more features over the coming weeks. Read more on the project page on Meta.
Lastly, an Echo notification will begin rolling out soon to notify eligible editors about the library (T132084). If you can translate the notification please do so at TranslateWiki!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 13:23, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
I just de-PROD'd this article you created that is, if you are Nexus Seven whose talk page directs to your talk page archive. I wanted to see if you had received notification, which you hadn't. The only edits of this IP editor were to nominate this article for proposed deletion so I had thought you might not have been notified. Just a head's up that it might go to AFD next. LizRead!Talk! 21:19, 29 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Liz: Thank you. Yes, Nexus Seven was a previous account of mine. Also, thank you for the heads up on the outline I initiated. Concerning the prod, the reasons provided in it are not true. It says that the page reads like a celebratory advertisement, even though the outline, as a WP content navigation aid, is a collection of the subject's article links with descriptions excerpted from those articles -- which is about as neutral as you can get. The prod also claimed that an outline is unnecessary and that the root article should suffice, but the poster didn't say why, so I'll present the main reasons to keep the outline:
1) A WP outline is the equivalent of a subject table of contents. There is enough material on WP about transhumanism to fill a book. It's common knowledge that the information in a book is easier to access when that book has a table of contents. The outline system is the table of contents for Wikipedia, and the Outline of transhumanism serves as the table of contents for that subject on Wikipedia.
2) Each WP outline is an example of a tree structure, useful for depicting the hierarchical relationship of topics within a subject, to more easily see the conceptual structure of the content.
3) Outlines are lists, which are faster, and therefore more convenient, to browse than prose articles.
@Liz: A 4th reason for keeping the outline: Each outline is part of one of Wikipedia's content navigation subsystems, with the system of outlines presented at Wikipedia:Contents/Outlines, while the main contents link resides on the menu sidebar which appears on every page of Wikipedia. Go there to see how the outlines fit in to the overall contents system. br>I look forward to any observations or comments you may have. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 11:02, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Outline of transhumanism until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.
To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:02, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.
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The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Outline of chocolate until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the 22nd issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter. This issue will be covering new and updated user scripts from the past seven months (June through December 2021).
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
Featured script
LuckyRename, by Alexis Jazz, is this month's featured script. LuckyRename makes requesting file moves easier, and automates the many steps in file moving (including automatic replacement of existing usage). Give it a shot!
Updated scripts
SD0001: hide-reverted-edits has been updated to take into account changes in reversion tools like Twinkle and RedWarn.
ClaudineChionh: SkinSwitcher (a fork and update of Eizen's script) provides an options menu/toolbox/toolbar allowing users to view a given page in MediaWiki's default skins.
Wikipedia:User scripts/Ranking is a sortable table of Wikipedia's thousand-or-so most commonly used scripts; it includes their author, last modification date, installation count, and sometimes a short description.
Toolhub is a community managed catalog of software tools used in the Wikimedia movement. Technical volunteers can use Toolhub to document the tools that they create or maintain. All Wikimedians can use Toolhub to search for tools to help with their workflows and to create lists of useful tools to share with others.
draft-sorter sorts AfC drafts by adding WikiProject banners to their talk pages. It supersedes User:Enterprisey/draft-sorter, adding a few features and fixing some bugs.
BooksToSfn adds a portlet link in Visual Editor's source mode editing, in main namespace articles or in the user's Sandbox. When clicked, it converts one {{cite book}} inside a <ref>...</ref> tag block into an {{Sfn}}.
diffedit enables editing directly from viewing a diff "when, for instance, you notice a tiny mistake deep into an article, and don't want to edit the entire article and re-find that one line to fix that tiny mistake".
warnOnLargeFile warns you if you're about to open a very large file (width/height >10,000px or file size >100 MB) from a file page.
QuickDiff (by OneTwoThreeFall at Fandom) lets you quickly view any diff link on a wiki, whether on Recent Changes, contribs pages, history pages, the diff view itself, or elsewhere. For more information, view its page on Fandom.
talkback creates links after user talk page links like this: |C|TB (with the first linking to the user's contributions, and the latter giving the option of sending a {{talkback}} notice). It also adds a [copy] link next to section headers.
diff-link shows "copy" links on history and contributions pages that copy an internal link to the diff (e.g., Special:Diff/1026402230) to your clipboard when clicked.
auto-watchlist-expiry automatically watchlists every page you edit for a user-definable duration (you can still pick a different time using the dropdown, though).
generate pings generates the wikitext needed to ping all members of a category, up to 50 editors (the limit defined by MediaWiki).
share ExpandTemplates url allows for easy sharing of your inputs to Special:ExpandTemplates. It adds a button that, when clicked, copies a shareable URL to your exact invocation of the page, like this. Other editors do not need to have this script installed in order to access the URL generated.
show tag names shows the real names of tags next to their display names in places such as page revision histories or the watchlist.
ColourContrib color-codes the user contributions page so that pages you've edited last are sharply distinguished from pages where another editor was the last to edit the page.
All in all, some very neat scripts were written in these last few months. Hoping to see many more in the next issue -- drop us a line on the talk page if you've been writing (or seeing) anything cool and good. Filling in for DannyS712, this has been jp×g. Take care, and merry Christmas! jp×g 07:30, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Global issue until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.
To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:02, 9 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The Signpost will be re-publishing on Sunday the essay WP:Prime objective as "Prime directive" with your username listed as the lead author (you have about a third of all edits and added text). I just wanted to give you a heads up. Please let me know if you have any objections. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:28, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Smallbones: Thank you for the heads up. You have my blessing. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 00:18, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Outline of tennis until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.
To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:02, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
New Wikipedia Library Collections Available Now - April 2022[edit]
Wiley – journals, books, and research resources, covering life, health, social, and physical sciences
OECD – OECD iLibrary, Data, and Multimedia published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
SPIE Digital Library – journals and eBooks on optics and photonics applied research
Many other sources are freely available for experienced editors, including collections which recently became accessible to all eligible editors: Cambridge University Press, BMJ, AAAS, Érudit and more.
Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: log in today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 13:16, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Hello, The Transhumanist. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:Buddhism in Greece, a page you created, has not been edited in at least 5 months. Drafts that have not been edited for six months may be deleted, so if you wish to retain the page, please edit it again or request that it be moved to your userspace.
If the page has already been deleted, you can request it be undeleted so you can continue working on it.
Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia. FireflyBot (talk) 18:03, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Look for your user name in that page. When I clicked it it brought me here. But in those times you had a multicolor design. Thinker78(talk) 16:34, 26 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Thinker78: Oh, the colorful signature. I was messing around with font formatting. How naive of me. I dropped the rainbow motif after some guy saw it (when I was logged on a computer at a library) and hit on me. :) Over the years, I've converted thousands of the signatures, but there are still a bunch of them floating around. The signature is what you were referring to in this message's title, right? — The Transhumanist 07:14, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe the guy was just not your type and you got shocked someone would hit on you. It happens! It was a nice signature, and yeah, I was referring to it and how it made the whole page colorful. :D Thinker78(talk) 15:44, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Looking for tips on how to break out of one's filter bubble[edit]
I've become more aware lately that I'm not very aware.
I've been trying to see on the web what I haven't seen, but search engines aren't very useful for that, because you can generally only search for what you know of.
The search query "Show me what I don't know about" doesn't work.
I encountered the same problem on Wikipedia. What haven't I read about?
Though, Wikipedia does have a feature that helps with this...
The random article item in the menu can help break out of one's sphere of awareness, especially if you use it en masse...
I've started using it like this: ctrl-click (or wheel click) on it about a hundred times in rapid fashion, which opens a hundred tabs each with a random article in it, and then I explore the tabs using ctrl-tab or ctrl-w (which deletes them as you go). When there's a topic belonging to a class that I'm unfamiliar with, I explore the parent article too.
Opening many tabs helps compensate for the drivel (because you can skip past them quickly), like sports articles, articles on tiny towns out in the middle of nowhere, insect species, articles on non-distinct roads, tropical storms, etc.
Using "random article" en masse is kind of like browsing the book shelves at the library, or joining a book club.
If you have any methods you use for breaking out of your own self-imposed filter bubble, or of expanding your awareness of topics, please share.
Looking forward to any ideas you might have, — The Transhumanist 09:05, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
P.S.: I've tried perusing "All pages", but that puts me to sleep real quick.
This is a great question. I try category surfing instead. If we had size / quality / popularity data visible from the category pages, this would be the perfect way to browse and get a sense of what you're missing. Maybe something parallel to the work the Enterprise team is thinking about for signals of reliability of recent changes: relative notability of entire articles in their context. (pinging @Wittylama: :) – SJ + 00:11, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
On the face of it I don't think that a "Serendipity engine" (for want of a better phrase) is not something that the Enterprise team would build itself - but hopefully the kind of metadata extraction that is being pulled out and mashed together [like the 'size, quality, popularity' that you referred to] would enable someone to build such a feature. At least, something more 'intelligent' than the existing Random Article button. In the mean time, I'm going to pass this question around to some other people to see if anyone has some ideas that work with existing software. Wittylama 10:13, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Transhumanist: Can you take a look at outline of lichens and tell me if I'm on the right track? MeegsC (talk) 09:23, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@MeegsC: Kudos. Very good start. I now know more about lichens than I ever thought I would. I've made some minor adjustments - I hope you like them. I'm looking forward to seeing your further developments to the outline. Keep up the great work! — The Transhumanist 14:08, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ha! That's the plan (teaching people more about lichens than they ever thought they would know)... ;) Thanks for having a look. I'll follow your lead with the new bits. MeegsC (talk) 14:14, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Trans, that article is in somewhat better shape than a month ago, but it's still overly promotional and I see no need do any further work on it. Your talk page comment indicates that you think that others who helped OP with this are also affiliated with the subject, which AFAIK is not the case. SPECIFICOtalk 11:43, 17 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for contributing. The article contains no wikilinks to other articles, and has just one reference. For Wikipedia articles, demonstrable notability requires multiple references in reliable independent sources
The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|Paul W}}. Remember to sign your reply with ~~~~. For broader editing help, please visit the Teahouse.
Delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.
An article you recently created, Alden Todd, is not suitable as written to remain published. It needs more citations from reliable, independent sources. (?) Information that can't be referenced should be removed (verifiability is of central importance on Wikipedia). I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of "Draft:" before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. When you feel the article meets Wikipedia's general notability guideline and thus is ready for mainspace, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. Paul W (talk) 09:21, 12 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Transhumanist. I notice that you linked "lichen" at the top of the outline of lichens. Should I unlink the existing link on the previous line? It seems a bit of overkill to link it twice in literally two adjacent words! MeegsC (talk) 11:21, 17 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@MeegsC: I don't see how linking it twice would hurt. But, checking 3 outlines (and my sanity) at random — Outline of sharks, Outline of underwater diving, and Outline of physics — they all link the topic in the main entry rather than in the lead. It makes sense, as the lead line isn't actually part of the outline (tree structure) itself. I hope that helps. — The Transhumanist 11:35, 17 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. I've left your link, and removed the link from the line immediately above instead. It's still linked in the main body of the outline too. Does the rest of it look okay? Obviously, we still need to add refs for the explanatory bits. MeegsC (talk) 12:06, 17 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@MeegsC: It's great! I'll look it over in more detail as time allows. I also left a note on Pbsouthwood's user talk page asking him to stop by Outline of lichens to provide some feedback for you as well. He's the main developer of the Outline of underwater diving and the Outline of underwater divers. Keep up the good work. Always keep in mind that the key aspect of outlines is that they are navigation aids — they are as useful as they are comprehensive, so finding all of an outline subject's articles is essential to building the best outline possible. It looks like you found most if not all of them. — The Transhumanist 13:06, 17 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Disambiguation link notification for September 24[edit]
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Outline of Russia, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Footballer of the Year in Russia. Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)
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Right now it's totally unsourced, so doesn't meet WP:VERIFY. Were you planning on adding citations? Onel5969TT me 14:34, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Why, are you planning on challenging the material? Sure, it may be removed, but doing so would forego the benefits of collaborative editing and Wiki magic. — The Transhumanist 09:31, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Index of World War II articles (0–9) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.
To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|SunDawn}}. Please remember to sign your reply with ~~~~. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)
@SunDawn: I didn't create the article. You should look more closely at the edit history and the edits. I created a redirect to the history section of the Beirut article, so that a search query of "History of Beirut" would lead there. Someone else moved the redirect to draft space and then copied the history section to it for expansion. Whoever wrote the history section in the first place is responsible for starting the article. You might be able to figure out who it is from the Beirut article's history. — The Transhumanist 13:38, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have sent you a note about a page you started[edit]
Kindly remove the red links which doesn't falls under WP:RED.
To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|TheChunky}}. Please remember to sign your reply with ~~~~. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)
@TheChunky: Hi. I didn't write any of the article (just a redirect). Check the article's edit history for the author. Cheers. — The Transhumanist 08:26, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
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To see a list of a user's contributions, go to their user page or user talk page. When you do that, the menu item "User contributions" will appear in the Toolbox menu on the sidebar. This link will show you all the edits that user has ever made (except deleted edits), up to 500 per page. This is useful for tracking vandalism in progress.
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