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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Offensive picture warning

This will probably be rejected,but maybe all images on mediawiki:bad image list, when viewed on articles, have a popup saying "this image may be offensive, press OK to view it. It wouldn't stop people from seeing it, complying with Wikipedia policy on censorship, but some people may want to find info about something offensive without seeing the picture. 92.25.55.153 (talk) 13:10, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

An IP with a good idea, now i've seen everything XD Support. MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 16:26, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

  • I proposed this a year and a half ago. It was rejected per WP:NOTCENSORED. Ryan Vesey 16:28, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support: Yes! Some pictures like (might be offensive in nature) this has some warnings added! But, I don't know the importance of this warning when you have actually seen those picture! And I want the same warnings for categories and few Commons imgaes, categories too! --Tito Dutta (contact) 16:50, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose First, that is not the purpose of the list. The list is not a comprehensive list of offensive images. Instead, it is a list of images that are both offensive, and that have been abused by vandals, trolls, or others with the purpose of shocking, offending, or upsetting viewers. This would create a confused system where one picture is censored, BECAUSE it had been used abusively in the past, but another, potentially more offensive image wont be, and will appear immediately. It would also lead to fights over whats included at bad image list, which is currently uncontroversial BECAUSE any legit use should be authorized. If logged in editors want a gadget to enable such a functionality, it should probably be doable without censoring everyone else. Monty845 16:59, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
What is offensive? A naked baby? A Mahoma drawing? A woman wearing a bikini? Someone will complain about any picture we have. --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:36, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Most of the search engines including the giant Google is not confused on what is offensive and what not (ref: Safe Search settings)! Recently Google disallowed option to disable safe search for US users! I don't know if they followed any US law or rule, anyway, and "we are not censored"! --Tito Dutta (contact) 17:48, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Perennial proposal. See 2005's WP:TOBY. May have merit, but its a complicated issue not likely to be solved so easily. This was discussed in 2010's white paper on offensive comment (it's on meta somewhere). Herostratus (talk) 19:38, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
    meta:Controversial content has a list of past research and major proposals. Speaking in broad demographic and cultural terms, the proposals have failed because of opposition from childless white males who believe that their right to show you a picture is more important than your right to control what pictures appear on your screen. Asian, African, and Latino users tend to support these proposals quite strongly, as do most white women and most parents. (The parents, however, may be thinking that the WMF would implement a childproof lockout, which has been formally rejected by the WMF board and staff.) Everyone worries about the details of implementation, naturally, because there are smarter and stupider ways to go about it.
    In the short term, see Help:Options to hide an image. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:53, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
No "childless white male" is forcing anybody to view anything. People use the Internet and Wikipedia on their own volition. Talk about a "right to show people a picture" as if it's being forced on others is non-productive slant. Attacking computer nerds like this is a pet peeve of mine because to a large extent, these "childless white males" built the internet, built the web, and built Wikipedia. The rest of society seems to think what they built is pretty cool because they use it so much. I think instead of mocking them we should show them a little respect for trying to change the world for the better and all. Part of that plan is lack of censorship. The people that support an uncensored Internet do so for good reason, and if every culture and demographic were to have its way, there'd be practically nothing left on the internet except maybe Bible or Koran sites and an IRS webpage. On top of the practical difficulties of satisfying every group, a content-warning is solving an issue that isn't really a problem. The Wikipedia has been uncensored since its inception and yet the world has continued spinning and children have continued to grow and be fine. No harm is occuring, only better informed readers, and, yes, "better informed" sometimes means seeing shocking images. If an image belongs on an article, it belongs there. Nudity belongs in some medical articles. Gory images belong in some news and historical articles. Putting layers between the images and the reader is hindering the flow of information and would ultimately be the start of a slippery slope, which is why people stand so firm against censorship. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:02, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
Unless you are tied to a chair with your head in a clamp, your eyes taped open, a self-refreshing Wikipedia feed on a monitor, and the Wikipedia Song blaring into your ears, nobody is infringing your "right to control what pictures appear on your screen".
If you are tied to a chair, etc., let me address your captors: First, keep up the good work. Second, please take away his keyboard. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:05, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
Neither of you were involved in those discussions, so it's not really surprising that you don't know what people were saying. We had multiple editors, largely from the USA and northern Europe, claim that if the WMF installed a feature that allowed a woman or child to visit the article Penis without every single image loading, then the WMF was interfering with the editors' divine right to make every single person visiting that article (or stumbling across it via Special:Random) see whatever pictures the editors wanted to put on the readers' screens, regardless of the readers' preferences, bandwidth, or personal safety.
Some of our readers face serious consequences over images. Right now, a girl who reads our articles about sexuality at an internet cafe in some parts of the world could be prosecuted for committing sex crimes. Right now, the WMF is giving readers in that situation a choice between being arrested or maybe beaten, and remaining ignorant. Without pictures, Penis on the English Wikipedia is going to look just like any other article to the local busybodies. With pictures, the subject is obvious even to an illiterate person. A sizeable minority of our childless white male editors—but none of our developing world editors or women editors or anyone in a country where a woman showing an ankle, much less a picture of men having sex with each other, could get put in jail—prefer that anyone in that situation simply remain ignorant, or if it's important enough, to go ahead and risk getting arrested or raped or beaten or kicked out of school. Because, you know, nobody's tied those girls in Pakistan or Somali or other repressive countries to a chair with their heads in clamps and forced them to read these pages. They've just maybe blamed them for being rape victims or arranged a marriage for them and refused to tell them what they need and want to know about sex, and what some of our editors apparently don't want her to be able to learn without risking her personal safety.
Those of us in wealthy countries and with our own private internet connections need to remember that not every reader is so fortunate as we are. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:48, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Was that feature not produced? I thought it was practically finished over a year ago. Ryan Vesey 05:02, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
The feature was not produced.
The original plan was to set up a couple of general groups (e.g., pictures offensive to some religions, pictures of people having sex, pictures that get a lot of complaints that they're disgusting), to be populated by editor consensus. Then individual users could reversibly click a button to filter only those groups that were of special concern for them (so you could choose to see everything except Mormon temple garments and drawings of the prophet Mohammad, if that's what you wanted, or everything except sex pictures, or whatever, with the default being that everyone sees everything unless they take specific, deliberate action to filter it.
The original plan has been completely scrapped. No design or coding work was ever done on it. No replacement has been approved. AFAICT, no replacement plan is even being contemplated at this time.
The only alternative that hasn't caused a panic in the "the readers are censoring me!" camp is a suggestion that there could be a button that allows readers to block absolutely every single image, from the Wikipedia logo at the top right on down to "Powered by Mediawiki" button the bottom of the page. IMO this is overkill, but AFAICT, even this isn't being accepted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:02, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing is misrepresenting the discussion and reality.
1) Everybody can currently choose to read Wikipedia without images, just a couple of clicks needed. Go to Wikipedia "mobile view", mobile site "settings" and then click images "off", done. You can easily enable the images again, if your done browsing penis etc. (and there are countless other ways to hide images for yourself in your browser etc.)
2) The image filter, if it would work and be usable, would be used to censor Wikipedia. Look at your example of girls in Internet cafes in Pakistan or Somali or other repressive countries, being enabled to exercise benign, optional selfcensorship... - in reality they can disable images of syphilis today (see 1), but not anymore if this "offensive" content is on the filter list. If this image filter were built and working, it would take very little time for content filtering software companies to integrate the (free!) filter into their products for schools (US and beyond) - and for ISPs and for censorship authorities of whole countries (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India, Indonesia ...) And why wouldn't they use a filter of "offensive" images, if Wikipedia itself says so and supports using it? And it's free, you don't need to invest expensive manhours, just create a rule to use the user-generated filter for your purpose (why not block the questionable articles that include the offensive images too? easy, done). And if someone accuses repressive countries of censorship, just point to Wikipedia: it's their filter and their content decision. This, and the undefinable scope of "offensive" and "objectionable" images and ensuing moral arguments, were excellent reasons to scrap the project. --Atlasowa (talk) 09:31, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Do you recognize the ironic contrast between "this feature already exists" and "this self-censorship feature must never be implemented"?
What exactly would be the harm to readers in putting a button on a page that says "don't bother loading images today" without having to switch to the awkward mobile version? Surely the argument about the-evil-school-administration-will-get-you (the same school administrations that don't allow Wikipedia at all, because of this issue) doesn't apply to the suggestion to allow individual readers to suppress 100% of images without having to magically know how to switch to the mobile version and enable it there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:08, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose for two reasons: 1) There is no good way to judge what does and does not belong on the 'restricted' list (without causing massive fights and culture wars), and 2) sexual content isn't just strewn about haphazardly on the project, it's on pages related to said content, so people should know that there's going to be sexual content there. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:16, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
    This may surprise you, but sexual content isn't necessarily the most important issue for our readers. Many of our readers want to have sacred religious images filtered, and figuring out whether an image does, or does not, contain a very short list of sacred religious items related to a religion that verifiably opposes these images, is remarkably simple. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:08, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Pretty much any image could be potentially offensive to someone; the usual example is that people with arachnophobia might find this offensive, so where do we draw the line? The last time this sort of thing came up, I created a simple userscript that will hide *all* potentially-offensive images (unless the user finds offensive, although they could always pick a different replacement image) until each is individually clicked. Someone concerned about seeing potentially-offensive images could install that. Anomie⚔ 13:27, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
    Providing exactly that kind of option to 100% of users, rather than just the tiny number of registered users who happen to know about it and can figure out how to install it, is one of the rejected proposals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:08, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support - a sane and sensible idea which would improve Wikipedia's functionality for many people while having no obvious downsides, and for that reason it will never happen. Robofish (talk) 23:25, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

WP:GLAM, and how to solicit for content

If you haven't heard of the GLAM initiative, is the Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums outreach program. The general idea is to connect with cultural institutions, collaborate with them, and create a simple avenue to provide content. I think everyone can agree that this is a good idea, but how are we supposed to attract their attention? For example, in my region there are about 200 museums listed on the relevant Wikipedia page.

If the idea is to ask cultural institutions to write articles for us, I do not think it will be met with great success. They might even get blocked when they do write articles. Thus I ask: What content are we asking institutions to give us? How are we going to convince them to give us that content? How can we get content without the institution being bitten? --NickPenguin(contribs) 15:39, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

There's also the issue of perceived cost. Some organisations in my end of the world are now of the opinion that they have to fund a wikipedian to get coverage. WMUK have totally dropped the ball on this issue. 8-( Andy Dingley (talk) 15:53, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Can you show me the example you speak of? To me that sounds like the wrong approach. Wikipedia is a foundation yes, but at it's heart it is a volunteer service. --NickPenguin(contribs) 16:01, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Any discussion of this gets blanked by those concerned and blocks are threatened for raising it. Still, blocks and bans aren't any barrier to high office at WMUK! Take a look at the murkier corners of Monmouthpedia, QRpedia and some of the off-wiki press coverage of this. I'm unconnected with Monmouth but I live "over the hill" from it, so it's a high-profile issue locally. I organise some decently large public events, I also have IRL business connections with museums. Unfortunately I've also let it be known that I'm an editor here (I edit under my own, unusual, surname). In three different towns and cities I've now run into non-WP people from museums etc. who, when the subject of WP is raised, get very frosty about the topic and there are dark mutterings about what a low regard they now have for WP, particularly in relation to a lack of financial clarity concerning Monmouthpedia. I find that my connection with WP (which is trivial) is becoming a slur by association on my own character. If I have a commercial meeting with any new museum, WP is the last topic I'd bring up. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:15, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
I took a cursory glance at Monmouthpedia, but I can't seem to see what you're referring to, so I will instead ask clarification about the money thing. In your experience, you have found museum folk to be unresponsive to helping with Wikipedia because they don't get funding to do it? Or because they feel funds are not being appropriated well with existing projects? I'm not understanding the connection clearly enough. --NickPenguin(contribs) 16:38, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
He seems to be saying that Museums etc in his area are of the opinion that if they want to do anything with WP, then they have to give money to some ranking WP editor. Either as a bursary (wikipedian in resident) or in the form of some consultancy/training fee. That they think that the WP system as manifested in Mononmouth and Gibraltar is corrupt. John lilburne (talk) 20:38, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
* Compass Partnership (January 2013). "Review of Governance of Wikimedia UK" (PDF).
Andy Dingley (talk) 21:45, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi Andy, sorry to read your concerns about Wikimedia UK. I have just dropped you an email using the "mail user" function - I would certainly be interested to discuss your concerns with you. Certainly as an organisation, Wikimedia UK doesn't feel Wikimedians in Residence are the only way for GLAM outreach to work or that museums need to pay anyone to work with Wikipedia. We're keen to work with partners institutions of all natures in all kinds of ways. Do email me back. Regards, Chris Keating - Wikimedia UK chair. The Land (talk) 12:24, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
As a first step I'd narrow down that list of 200 to museums that cover subject that you personally are interested in. Then go and talk to them.©Geni 21:55, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Mr. Penguin -- the gist of Mr. Dingley's comment is this: The museum managers in his area have gotten it into their heads that promotional/archival assistance from Wikipedia is a "pay-to-play" proposition. That is, you have to hire a Wikipedia insider to get stuff done (actually a "Wikimedia UK" insider, but outsiders do not make this distinction). This got into their head because some Wikimedia UK board members were -- suggesting various pay-for-play ventures around GLAM, et... Google on "Monmouthpedia" and "Gibraltarpedia" for background.Dan Murphy (talk) 22:06, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
He is saying nothing like that - what he is trying to say is unclear, but I rather doubt it is that. What that is is what you always say - from the other side of the world isn't it? Johnbod (talk) 21:18, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, as Andy said I "got it in one." You misunderstood him, and snarked at me when I explained the issue. The Derby Museum venture and the promise to "put the city on the tourism map" with good SEO stuff is also instructive here. This stuff does ripple out.Dan Murphy (talk) 17:08, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Though both of those had nothing to do with museums, but with cities and governments. He just needs to tell them that, no, that's not true. SilverserenC 22:20, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Actually the last time I mentioned WP in a museum, in the west midlands, their response was more about Jim Hawkins, and in a far from complimentary manner. They didn't even realise how closely the two issues were related. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:45, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Isn't there a PoTW connection between the two? John lilburne (talk) 00:11, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Given that you've just admitted to pushing their POV in a certian direction I think we can conclude that your credibility as a source in this area is limited. Can we now return to the original question?©Geni 06:11, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
WTF are you on about and who are you accusing of bias?
I have two concerns about GLAM, both of which are UK specific. However they're serious problems for WM in the UK (which has to be seen as distinct from WMUK).
  • The perception of WMUK, post "Gibraltargate" is not only unfavourable, but now sufficiently well-known that museums and town marketing groups (I'm a member of such a group for a town near Monmouth) are bringing up WMUK's disrepute themselves in early discussions about WP. This is tarnishing WP's perception in such groups. It's even tarnishing the good name of unconnected people (i.e. me, which rather annoys me), such that I'm now hiding any involvement I have with WP when I'm doing my regular business with museums.
  • One active WP editor (Who I've been threatened with bans for "hounding", so no names but it's rather obvious) is also extremely active in museum projects, yet their involvement with a locally publicised BLP issue (don't annoy local media types, they have an obvious channel for making their grievances public) has dragged WP's name further through the mud. A museum in that area, and an obvious and important candidate for GLAM, brought this issue up when I talked to them about WP. Yet they're now likely to find themselves with the UK's default Wikimedian in Residence, and the same editor behind much of the Hawkins debacle.
WMUK is a blot on the good name of WM. yet any discussion of this is blanked or whitewashed, and those raising the issue are treated as those causing the prroblem. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:12, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
The statement that "they didn't even realise how closely the two issues were related" makes it pretty clear you were trying to influence their POV. Your backpedaling at this point just further harms your credibility. In this case since the question related to Alberta (you may not be aware of this but Canada has been an independent country since at least the 1930s) your poor choice of venue is a problem.©Geni 06:10, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
@Dan - got it in one Andy Dingley (talk) 12:53, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I work with GLAM projects in Mexico, principally with the Museo de Arte Popular, Garros Galeria, the Salon de la Plástica Mexicana and I do projects with the school that I work for. (Hang on before you scream COI!) There is no one way to approach GLAM. Some WM-UK projects have had some controversy, but just about all the rest have gone along with no problems at all. So what kind of content? In my case, I usually talk with institutions about photo donations first. This is relatively easy way to get started and have a big impact, not only in terms of number of photos on Wikimedia Commons but also in illustrating numerous Wikipedia articles in various languages. One of the first examples of this type was the Federal Archives of Germany, which put about 80,000 up on Commons in low resolution. Requests for images in high resolution have increased 300% since this because people know the images exist. Article creation is usually done through edit-a-thons, where volunteers come to the GLAM partner and work on articles related to it, often using research resources available there (especially true for libraries). I have done these kinds of things and more. I am not paid for the work I do with the museums and the work I do for my campus is not part of my contract. So what do I get out of it? First of all, it is a wonderful networking tool and way to get out from behind the screen and do something different. (not that there is anything wrong with editing... I have over 500 articles under my belt) I have met tons of ppl this way and get invitations to all kinds of wonderful cultural and educational events. As far as my teaching job. My boss's boss's bosses know who I am and in a good way. That's certainly not a bad thing! I also get to do all kinds of creative stuff and reinvent my job (e.g. creating assignments for my students). Now if this makes me evil for some people, so be it, but Im not breaking any rules.Thelmadatter (talk) 22:25, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

The key thing to remember about GLAM is it's all about local content, local interest, and local benefits. Most GLAMs receive local municipal funding and for them, gaining visitors or media attention affects their income directly. This is why sometimes Wikipedia GLAM initiatives get a bum rap, as people who are not involved in the sector see "Wikipedia promotion" as a conflict of interest, which as Thelmadatter explains above, it is not. Most GLAMs are attempting to offer the public the "sum of all knowledge" on their particular collection, which overlaps with Wikipedia's mission in uncountably many ways. All of that said, I will tell you the secret of attracting Wikipedians like Thelmadatter to your GLAM. It's easy - all you have to do is ask them. Any relatively good GLAM has got some savvy friends with Wikipedians among them who can lead you through the GLAM pages and start your own project. The case studies is a good place to start. Good luck and happy editting! Jane (talk) 09:57, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

A message from the Wikimedia UK office

Hello everyone. My attention has been drawn to this conversation from the cultural partners mailing list where this issue is raised. It is really important that Wikimedia UK addresses some of the points raised here. The key point is that it seems that some GLAM institutions feel that they are only able to participate with, or engage with, Wikimedia projects if they are willing to make some kind of payment or by dealing with an unnamed Wikimedian in Residence. This is absolutely untrue. Wikimedia UK is very happy to engage with any GLAM institution that has an interest in Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons or other Wikimedia projects and there is no charge for this. We have been training volunteers to deliver introductory sessions on how to edit and we can arrange training for your institution. Again, there is absolutely no charge for this. I'm not sure from where this idea has arisen that GLAMs have to fund a Wikipedian. I'm also quite alarmed that "Any discussion of this gets blanked by those concerned and blocks are threatened for raising it". If anyone can point me in the direction of any examples I promise I will follow this up. Wikimedia projects are volunteer-driven efforts. There is absolutely no need for any GLAM to have to pay to engage with the projects and certainly no need for "consultancy fees". Wikimedia UK has just appointed a GLAM co-ordinator who takes up post in April. He will be working to reach out to as many GLAMs as possible to engage with them and encourage them to get involved in Wikipedia, Commons etc. However, in the meantime, if anyone has any concerns about any of the above, or represents a GLAM instution that would like to participate or engage with any project, please do contact me directly. You can do this either by leaving a note on my talk page or by emailing me directly at stevie.benton -at- wikimedia.org.uk - I promise I will address any concerns that I am able to and pass on those I'm unable to address. I'll also keep an eye on this page and follow up any further messages left here. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:05, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

This is all blowback from the Monmouthpedia/Gibraltarpedia/Victuals mess. There's nothing you, Stevie, can do this late in the game about the damage which WMUK did to Wikipedia's reputation, except to assure folks that the era of "pay for play" is over, even if some of the editors involved are still around. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:09, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your response Orange Mike. That's the point I'm trying to make - there is not, or ever has been, a need for any GLAM institution to make any payment to Wikimedia UK to receive support from us. We are here to support Wikimedia projects, editors and volunteers. Any GLAM, or any interested people from anywhere, that would like to learn more about Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project is welcome to speak to us at any time and we will do what we can to help. I can't state that strongly enough. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:22, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikinews

Hi I have an idea could we create a page called daily wikinews so that it is updated daily with news around the world so each one has a table the first one could be home so new around the work and the second one could be uk and so on and then sports and technology tabs please 46.45.182.142 (talk) 19:42, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

It could look like this? 89.242.92.134 (talk) 20:05, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
it will be different to the main page it will have tabs and have more news and would look like similar to daily mail but different 46.45.182.142 (talk) 20:07, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Do you mean Portal:Current events ? (and associated WP:WikiProject Current events) -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 01:28, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
yes tiny bit but we would create a page called daily Wikinews and we update it daily with news and would shows world wide news accross the country 46.45.182.142 (talk) 07:37, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Okay, I'm not understanding the issue here. Is it just really, really, really important that the page title be called "Daily Wikinews", so just plain Wikinews:Main Page isn't good enough? Notice that's the main page for Wikinews, not for Wikipedia, and it's already updated daily with news and already shows worldwide news. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:17, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
no it's not important i just would like to suggest it and it would be a page full of news 46.45.182.142 (talk) 16:06, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
We already have that. It's called "Wikinews"; there is also "In the News" which is accessed from the Wikipedia Main page. The regionalization of news you seem to be requesting as well would probably never happen, as the primary reason we're all here is for building an encyclopedia, not a news-service. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 16:37, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Have you examined Category:Current events portals ? There's the breakdown by region for Current Events portals. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 00:07, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
should I create a test page off what I am talking about 94.116.137.241 (talk) 12:32, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Input needed regarding new "conflict resolution" project (and process?)

Input is needed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Conflict_Resolution#How_is_this_project_different_from_Dispute_Resolution_project to determine if a new project (and perhaps a new DR process) is needed. --Noleander (talk) 19:15, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

LibriVox

I've recently come across LibriVox (http://librivox.org). Since they share similar principles to ourselves, how would folk feel about linking to them from articles on books they have published (e.g. The Prince)?

If there's consensus to do so:

a) would an mention in the external links section be appropriate;
b) would anyone object to me writing up a bot to do so?

(The bot itself would need to go through a separate approval process from a bot stand-point so the ins-and-outs of the bot process can be left for there.) --RA (talk) 14:15, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I have seen way too many poor quality, or Microsoft Sam recordings. I dont think this should be done automated. Werieth (talk) 20:29, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
There are few articles where it is already being used. Nothing stops you to add it if you are sure that the content will increase article's quality! --Tito Dutta (contact) 16:59, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Their quality standards are quite high, for free recordings, that is - more than adequate for our purposes. If anyone has concerns about quality, I suggest you download a few. I've listened to 20 or so - mostly classics - and, although some readers are more convincing than others, the recordings have all been clear enough.
Over 900 Wikipedia pages link to LibriVox recordings and I'd support a link being added to the external links section of all book articles for which there is a LibriVox version of the book, unless there is a better free spoken-word version, in which case we should link to that version. I'd also support adding a link to the LibriVox author page in the external links section of our author articles.
Can I suggest you name the links, respectively, "Spoken-word version of this book at LibriVox.org" and "Spoken-word versions of this author's works at LibriVox.org"? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:15, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
I've emailed LibriVox to see if one of their outreach/corporate relations people wants to join in here, in case we have any questions. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:18, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Page layout

Hello,

First, thanks for all that you at Wikipedia do. I appreciate the resource you provide.

For future planning, I hope that you will consider dividing the content up into columns. I realize this would be more work but it would make the content so much more readable. Visually tracking across a paragraph that is almost the width of the screen makes it more tiring to read.

Thanks,

Estefan

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Estefan en pensamiento (talk • contribs) 23:16, 5 March 2013‎ (UTC)

Hi! I suffer the same problem. Some time ago I proposed adding an option to reduce column width to 80-120 characters, but I got no aswer. Good luck! --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:33, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
In Wikipedia articles your browser window size determines one's line length. Narrow your browser window. The text will reflow automatically to your desired line length. Darrell_Greenwood (talk) 23:57, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

SVG editor

I'd like to suggest that a request be made to add direct SVG editing to MediaWiki. Since SVG files are just text files, it should be possible to edit/revert/preview images from the WikiEditor. MediaWiki already converts an uploaded SVG file into a rendered PNG file for display purposes, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to not have this functionality as well. Perhaps a separate SVG namespace would be needed. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 04:07, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

What for? • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 11:28, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Usually people want to translate captions in the image, or enable the image for multi-lang usage. Jane (talk) 12:13, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
I think that's a good idea. In fact, if it the MW software could be integrated with an open-source WYSIWYG image editor, it would be even better. Kayau (talk · contribs) 12:38, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Someone worked on an extension for their Google Summer of Code project last year which allows for translation of SVGs in the interface, if I recall. Not sure of a link to that. --Izno (talk) 02:51, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Toolserver has this cool tool http://toolserver.org/~nikola/svgtranslate.php that is linked from the commons:Template:Translation possible tag.DMacks (talk) 15:45, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
We directly code EasyTimeline extension images in the WikiEditor, I dont' see why we wouldn't do the same with SVG. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 01:27, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
SVGs, especially those exported from graphics programs like Illustrator, can often be a huge unfathomable mess. If a person writes an SVG in a text editor it can look very sensible as text, but that is rarely how they are made. In order to understand and edit SVGs quickly, it is often better to use a program that understands the file as vector graphics rather than try to work directly with the underlying source. Dragons flight (talk) 18:26, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I've handtweaked those things before... and reduced their size by 99% sometimes. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 00:39, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
http://toolserver.org/~jarry/svgtranslate/ is another tool for translating text, but from my experience, only SVGs designed to be translated (enough space for potentially longer terms, text not converted to curves etc) work well. As Dragons flight wrote, most SVGs on Wikimedia are exported from programs, and are very difficult to edit manually. On the contrary, people familiar with SVG coding probably already have the tools to edit them. cmɢʟee୯ ͡° ̮د ͡° ੭ 20:11, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Sign language annotation for sound files

I was wondering if the software supports a sign language annotation for the sound files, indicating what signing would be done if one used American Sign Language. I think that having sign language for audio files could be another way to add support for deaf users (some instructional videos and news broadcasts use sign language)

For instance I already have English and Spanish subtitles for File:Sextortionagent_interview.ogg but I was wondering if there was an automated generation of American Sign Language available for a sound file too. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:17, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, I don't see how what you are talking about fits into that. However on Commons they keep media which might be used for educational purposes so linking the media together so it can be used easier sounds worthwhile.
On Wikipedia how do you envisage American sign language annotation as having any use whatsoever when people need to be able to read in the first place to use Wikipedia? Also American deaf people would only form a small proportion of the total deaf people reading Wikipedia never mind the total number of readers.
Anyway as to annotations, I think there is a worthwhile idea here of encouraging and making it easy to link to other forms of a media for whatever reason but principally accessibility. If for instance there is a text file giving a speech then instead of listening to the speech a person could read it instead, or have it in American sign language if somebody could be bothered to put in the effort to set up such media. Personally I think the ASL versions would be infrequent but text might be used quite widely. Dmcq (talk) 10:59, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Files on the Commons are used to enhance Wikipedia articles. I see this as a matter that affects both Wikipedia and the Commons, I have also made this inquiry on this matter on the Commons. Anyhow I suggested ASL to start with since the fie originated from the United States, and ASL is also practiced in other countries. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:49, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
We have Spoken versions of a number of articles (Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia). It doesn't seem like much of a jump to go the other way too. This notes that the majority of American deaf high school graduates have a fourth grade English reading level. And that the gap holds true for different combinations of national sign languages and spoken languages. Rmhermen (talk) 16:49, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
As I understand it, deafness as an isolated condition seems to be a minority issue, since people who have "only" hearing loss usually get cochlear implants and thus aren't really signers (or basically at all, in some cases). It's hardly surprising that people with multiple and often serious disabilities (that just happen to include deafness) have poor academic success.
Furthermore, your source suggests that simply providing "here's the sign for this word" (as if even ASL had only one sign for common words) won't be useful. You'd have to do a full translation, including a complete revision of the grammar from "exact" English into ASL, for it to really be useful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:10, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to add a subsection on Metaphilosophy to the article Philosophy

An RfC concerning addition of a subsection to Philosophy can be found at this location. Please comment upon its inclusion and any modifications you think would help make it better. Brews ohare (talk) 20:30, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Password recovery disabled for blocked IP?

Already twice I've had to bail out a user on WP:UTRS because they forgot their password and their IP address/range was blocked, by temporarily unblocking the IP. Why do we disable the password recovery feature on blocked IPs? Generally blocked users do things like make sockpuppets and stuff, but I've never seen them attempt to crack a legitimate user's account. (And if they do succeed, they would have to also have access to the victim's email address.) So for a hardblock, it's understandable to disable it since logged-in users can't edit anyways (why would they need to recover their passwords). But for the vast majority of IP blocks (especially rangeblocks) which are softblocks, I don't see how it really helps to prevent abuse. Maybe, just as an idea for the devs, "disable password recovery" could be made an IP block option, so it is only applied when the blocking admin has reasonable suspicion the IP may be used for malicious purposes. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:55, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Before this was implemented, it was common for vandals to harass and flood the blocking admin's email with these requests. Werieth (talk) 20:16, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
But what about making it an option, so that admins can decide for themselves whether to block it? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:15, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
How about we limit the password recovery to twice per 24h per account? I think that would prevent the flood mentioned above (2 emails every day isn't the problem), while still allowing users on blocked IP addresses to recover their own accounts. And I doubt that any users would legitimelty need more than 1 per day. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:41, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

April Fools' Day policies

Hey there. So every year there seems to be a battle over what is and is not acceptable in terms of April Fools day pranks. I feel that it would be prudent to set some ground rules for this year. What are people's thoughts on the following:

  • With the exception of the April 1 selections for the main page, pranks should be restricted to areas of the project that casual viewers (non-editors) would not reasonabally be expected to see. In other words, pranks can be done in the Wikipedia/Wikipedia Talk and User/User talk namespaces, but not in live articles, help pages in any namespace, or to templates or images used in live articles. Wikipedia namespace pages that are designed for helping new users, such as the Teahouse or the Articles for Creation pages, should also no-prank zones.
  • Pranks that survive the day must be undone by their perpetrator once April Fools day is over. A reasonable amount of time (24-48 hours) will be given to account for differing time zones and activity levels. This does apply to XfDs made in jest.
  • While different people view different things as funny or not funny, if a reasonable, uninvolved person would view a prank as malicious in intent, as opposed to comic or silly in intent, it would be best if such a prank was not perpetrated. By the same token, if a proposal (VP, XfD, etc.) is likely to be considered a joke or non-serious, but the proposer is being serious, the proposer is advised to launch the proposal on a day other than April 1.
  • April Fools day is not an accptable excuse for violating topic or interaction bans, article content policies, 3RR, or NPA.
  • If a person indicates that they are not interested in 'celebrating' April Fools, their decision should be respected.

I believe this to be a fair set of guidelines and one that is in keeping with past practices.

Thoughts? This is also Sven Manguard 22:30, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Bullets one and two could be seen as contradictory w.r.t. XfDs, without clarification. --Izno (talk) 23:33, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Most of the above should go without saying, but you're correct that past years' April foolery has shown otherwise.
Vandalism is vandalism, irrespective of the date. Humorous edits to one's own user page or talk page are okay, provided that they don't attack fellow editors, defame living persons, materially mislead users (e.g. by falsely claiming to be an administrator) or otherwise cause disruption.
Apart from that, legitimate content — visible to non-editors or not — mustn't be replaced with jokes. Standalone gags (such as mock discussions/debates) generally are considered acceptable (because they don't interfere with the encyclopedia's normal operation), but they (and any links thereto) must be confined to the Wikipedia, Wikipedia talk, User and User talk namespaces. And for goodness sake, the MediaWiki namespace is off-limits. (We don't need a repeat of this.) —David Levy 00:12, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, MediaWiki doesn't have to be completely off-limits. Changes to admin-only interfaces are OK IMO, as long as there is no risk of an admin accidentally performing an unintended action. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
I disagree. It's okay to set up extra stuff that stays out of the way (such as satirical RfAs), but no replacement of content used in the encyclopedia's normal operation (excepting edits to one's own user page or talk page) should be permitted. —David Levy 00:49, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for drafting this proposal, Sven. But I'd be even more strict in some aspects. Why do you support an April Fools main page? Also, I would add another criteria of non-acceptable pranks: jokes that can be mistaken for actual information. --17:41, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

The main page tradition is that April 1 is marked by a collection of things that look like April Fools but on closer inspection are true, that has worked fine for years. As for AFds, RFAs, requests for signatureship etc, there are plenty that have been tagged as humour and left intact. I think they get detemplated to separate them from the real stuff. But the no jokes/vandalism in mainspace rule is longstanding - there are likely to be one or two people who breach it on the day, and they get warned and if necessary blocked. But my experience is that most people get the importance of keeping this out of mainspace (I was the nominator of Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Earth_(2nd_nomination) in 2009 and have participated in a couple of April Fools since). ϢereSpielChequers 18:10, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I know this would never fly, but heck, can we just not make an allowance for April Fool's this time? It always gets over the top, and most of the stuff is just rehashing old, tired jokes...</rant> wctaiwan (talk) 10:54, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, believe me, I agree. The issue is that it's going to happen even if we ban it, and if blocks are issued over mundane stuff, there will be flame warring for weeks. I'd rather it be confined to places that only editors see, if we have to have it. This is also Sven Manguard 22:53, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • There's no need to celebrate April's Fools Day in mainspace. I'd like to see it declared strictly off-limits to place any false material of any kind in mainspace or in any supporting areas that effect the presentation of mainspace. Basically, if editors want to dick around with other editors, I can tolerate it, but it shouldn't extend to dicking around with the readers.—Kww(talk) 23:06, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
I think we should be allowed to have a sense of humor in an official manner one day a year. Even Jimbo thinks so. But it should be done in a manner that doesn't reflect badly on the project and does not actively encourage vandalism, but...come on...we can ignore all the rules for this in some manner. Don't you think that is acceptable KWW?--Amadscientist (talk) 23:22, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
Not in mainspace, no.—Kww(talk) 23:52, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
No, on the mainpage.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:04, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

So as a guy who's all about keeping things in order and sees April Fools being taken a step too far by some crackajack every year I think i'll give you my opinions on these bullet points.

Bullet Point 1: Support. Can't really think of any changes for that.

Bullet Point 2: Support. 48 Hours Max is something I would have done myself, and I definitely agree that pranks must be reverted after their time in the spotlight is up. Weird how Wikipedia is made to highlight things after they've had their spotlight yet we're talking about removing such huh?

Bullet Point 3: Support. I support both parts of this bullet point. I had to look up Perpetrated but as soon as I saw that this meant 'carry out' I was in agreement. Likewise with the part of holding off a serious deletion that might be taken as a joke. My suggestion would just be to make a minor edit and give it an edit summary like putting in contributions to (deletion process) outside of April Fool's Day or similar.

Bullet Point 4: Support. Bans and rules are here for a reason. You wouldn't break one of the important rules in your workplace just because it's April Fools, so why do it to Wikipedia?

Bullet Point 5: Support as one of the people who doesn't want to be April Fooled. Consider this a warning: If anyone pulls an April Fools prank on me i'll be off to an Admin. Sorry to be Groucho but i'm here to help build an encyclopedia. This partnership is only temporary. These April Fools regulations seem pretty well thought out to me however. I say go ahead with them. MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 21:42, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposed move for bad image list

Hello all. It has recently become technically possible to rename MediaWiki:Bad image list, and there is currently a proposal open at its talk page to rename it to MediaWiki:Restricted-use media list. Any and all comments are welcome. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 08:23, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Move donations link?

My wife donated to Wikipedia last night. She had been intending to do so for some time. Her problem that when a donation drive would come along she wouldn't have her credit card at hand. A week or so later she would return with the intention of donating but couldn't find a donation link.

There is a donation link on the left. But she didn't see it. It unlikely (IMO) that she's alone. So, maybe we should make the a little more prominent?

My suggestion is to place it in the top-left for non-logged in users e.g.:

Create account  Log in  Donate

--RA (talk) 10:54, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I think we'd really like to reserve that area of the browser window for the log in link. There's a lot of surrounding muscle memory. Perhaps a donate link could be added to the page footer? But, bigger picture, your wife's time is probably much more valuable than her money to Wikimedia. What about teaching her how to edit? :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 18:28, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
+1 to MZMcBride's comment. I agree with everything he said; additionally, it almost seems a bit too pushy, shoving it up there... being the 6th item in the sidebar seems like plenty. —Theopolisme (talk) 01:46, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Or left sidebar issue?

Exactly, I have a strong doubt that a very good number of people don't notice those links of sidebar. I never noticed the important links like "Download PDF" "Print" until I became an editor. --Tito Dutta (contact) 04:09, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

It's unclear whether we as a community want something more prominent. I had to look up the page m:Fundraising 2009/Donation buttons upgrade recently for a related discussion. That was an old proof-of-concept that was never implemented here. We could add a donation button to the sidebar fairly easily with site-wide JavaScript (it'd take maybe thirty minutes to write the necessary code). But do we want that? --MZMcBride (talk) 05:38, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
  • The more important question is, do we (read "does Wikipedia") need more money at present? A prominent "Donation" link or button will help us not to add "Please donate, message from Jimbo Wales" at the top for one month! --Tito Dutta (contact) 06:45, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
Support anything to see less of of Jimbo's face :-) So, a notation link in the top-left corner isn't going to fly but, in principle, would people be supportive of a more visible donation link? --RA (talk) 17:45, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Content Contributor status, BWiki, MWiki, DWiki or something similar

WITHDRAWN
Proposer has withdrawn the proposal in the face of strong opposition. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:51, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

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

The main purpose of this proposal is to attempt to bring attention towards content creators and not to present any fixed idea. Modify it/suggest your own.

They actually make the Wikipedia, and they have nothing. From my experience, I can tell you, people often ask "oh, you spend 5-6 hours everyday in Wikipedia, and you are buying lots of books too. Well what is your position in Wikipedia?" Then there is nothing to say other than mentioning the autopatrolled right.
Suggesting to introduce BWiki, MWiki, DWiki user status after verifying an editor's content creation/expansion skill (B=Bachelor, M=Master, D=Doctor, the way we have admins). The selection can be done in the same way we do for RFA. --Tito Dutta (contact) 04:09, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

User rights are not status symbols (see WP:TROPHY). It's unfortunate that they are sometimes thought of as such, but they just give you some additional tools with a set of responsibilities (and sometimes depending on the user right, additional scrutiny on your edits as an added bonus). The proposed user statuses, on the other hand, are clearly status symbols or titles and don't serve a specific purpose towards improving Wikipedia. You will need to give more compelling reasons for why they are needed; I don't think we need to introduce this just to tell our friends. The differences that such user statuses will make, as far as I can see, are all negative. It would provide a certain degree of legitimacy to that all too familiar "I've been here x years and written y articles, so my point is more valid than yours" argument that comes up in disputes. It would scare away new editors from challenging the edits of a more experienced editor because of their "title". It would mean more time spent on debating whether an editor deserves a status symbol – time that could be better spent on writing articles, which we're here to do after all as you suggested yourself, Tito. Personally, I think the only "status" an editor needs is the amount of quality content he has contributed. Chamal T•C 05:40, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per the above by Chamal. A non-starter. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 06:35, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)You will need to give more compelling reasons for why they are needed
I started making a list. First few of the list follows-
  • Content creators may be helpful and effective in content disputes.
  • There are multiple Wiki policies and guidelines like Neutral Point of View, Original research, advertising/promotion where a content contributor might be very helpful! But, their comments/opinions are often underestimated, ignores and sometimes mocked or ridiculed. Reading from Talk:Bhagavad_Gita/Archive_3 where a valid comment of an excellent content contributor was underestimated, because he was not an admin.

...I am ignoring you Sitush. You are not an admin, or in any position to dictate what one writes.

If an admin comes and points out a Wiki rule, others immediately accept. But, (for example) you come and say you are editing in that particular project for 3 years, that does not have any effect on the listeners. Theoretical world is often different from the practical world! That's the environment! An admin is an ADMIN and a content contributor is... well.. just another editor.
  • For example, you are a non-admin but have terrific knowledge and experience about WikiProject Greenland and its articles and I am an admin and know nothing of the project, yes, most of the people will go to the admin to get help and not to you. Giving experienced contributors some respect (if not "rights") will help them to work more independently.
  • It'll reduce admin workload, since these content editor can help to solve content related disputes.
  • Content contributor can do the necessary research works (to improve articles).
  • A point has been mentioned "experienced editors will scare away" new editors. But, it can be exactly the opposite. New editors can approach them to get help on collecting sources, preparing/expanding content/article
  • By, giving content creators more importance and respect, we can encourage editors to create high standard articles. Currently there is nothing other than barnstars and autpatrolled rights.
  • It'll help to retain content contributors. A good number of editors, after making few thousand edits here and there, give up editing mainspace. In RPP page, I have seen few Non admin observations like "(Non-administrator comment) The article has only 2 disruptive edits in last 15 days, thus, protection is not required.", I don't know value of such NAOs. Anyone, even the admin, can see the edit history and count number of disruptive edits. Now, you'll say, these editors are trying to get experiences. Of course! But, it is also true, he knows just "content creation" will take him nowhere.
  • Last but not in least the most important in my opinion, this will create lots of scopes and possibilities that these group of editors will bring new and fresh ideas to improve the encyclopedia, its article, because these editors will primarily concentrate on Wikipedia's content! --Tito Dutta (contact) 06:59, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
"If an admin comes and points out a Wiki rule, others immediately accept" trust me they don't. If people are giving admins special status in such circumstances the correct approach is to explain why they are wrong rather than going "aha but I'm a BWiki editor thus you should pay attention to me". I'm also not seeing why we need to add hats in order for people to introduce new and fresh ideas to improve the encyclopedia.©Geni 08:36, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
@Tito: Firstly, regular editors (without any special user rights/status) can be involved in dispute resolution, and are encouraged to do so. If you head over to WP:DRN, you will see that many volunteers there are not admins. Similarly, we have non-admin members in the Mediation Committee as well. However, if you want this new "status" so that your opinions will be more readily accepted, then forgive me, but it is better that you don't have it. Also, the worth of your opinions are judged by their merits and reasoning in any discussion on Wikipedia, and not on your position. Trust me, my position as an admin isn't worth a damn if and when I get into a content dispute.
Secondly, you need not worry about comments that disregard your opinion because you're not an admin – this is a misunderstanding of wikipedia policy and admin responsibilities, and will not be relevant when determining consensus.
Thirdly, regular editors are welcome to suggest changes to policy and guidelines. That's how you made this proposal too, isn't it? Regular editors play a major role in determining changes to how things work around here, contrary to the notion that admins run the place. For example, see the discussions that brought about pending changes, one of the major changes that happened in Wikipedia in the recent past.
And lastly regarding respect; we have many editors who are held in high regard in the community without having any special user rights. For example, the above mentioned members of the mediation committee, several delegates at WP:FAC and WP:FLC, and prominent members in most of our larger wikiprojects don't have admin tools or any other special user rights. If you're good at what you do and deserve the respect of the community, you will get it based on that. You don't get respect just because of a user right. Chamal T•C 08:56, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Half of this proposal is creating Trophy-like userrights or labels. The other half seems to be assuming the proposal will somehow create content contributors. The fact that a "Content contributor can do the necessary research works (to improve articles)" means nothing as that fact won't be changed by the proposal. In regards to the comment made related to Sitush, that was created by a blocked sockpuppet. Ryan Vesey 07:58, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
The word "right" was not mentioned, I used "status". A comment by a blocked user is still a comment! "Content contributor can do the necessary research works (to improve articles)" means nothing as that fact won't be changed by the proposal" encouragement can change many thing, which can be seen in non admins' participation in AFD, AFC etc! --Tito Dutta (contact) 08:05, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
Survey! Feasible?

Chamal, Geni etc have given some good some points. Though those are mainly against my proposal, following rules of "good discussion" I should appreciate those points! Very well presented, I must say. Okay, will it be possible to conduct a survey? You can choose any 50 or 100 senior editors (specially content creators) and ask them questions like-

  • Do you want to see any such status or position for content creators?
  • As a content creator, have you ever wished to get such status or position?
  • Have you ever, in any discussion or dispute in Wikipedia, felt that a right or status to testify your experiences could be helpful?

Currently we are talking on the basis of our personal experiences. We'll get a clear answer then whether content creators need something similar. Feasible? --Tito Dutta (contact) 09:26, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

    • User rights are not trophies, and this sort of hat-collector system would never be implemented by the developers. And for the record, I have 4 FAs, 14 GAs, and am the founder of a WikiProject with 48 FAs and 800+ GAs. --Rschen7754 09:37, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
    • As someone with 7 FAs, 13 FLs and seventy four good articles, I find this proposal short-sighted and frankly highly offensive. This attitude - that it is content creators and only content creators who make the wiki - is hokum and bunkum and pointing to some platonic editor who does not exist. I would have none of those citations if the editors before me had not created the environment that allows me a space in which to write, or written the content that brought Wikipedia to the level of prominence where I had encountered it. I would have none of those citations if not for the copyeditors who turned my masses of, yes, well-referenced and authoritative, prose, into something more publicly readable. I would have none of those citations if not for the countless reviewers who had taken my articles and peer reviewed them, critiqued them, given them re-assessments and contributed their own knowledge over time. I would have none of those citations if not for the anti-vandalism patrollers and administrators who curate and clean and maintain my content. In short, I would have nothing were it not for the countless thousands of non-content contributors who do the necessary work, putting in, yes, "5-6 hours everyday in Wikipedia". If you want to know what prizing content contributions and authority as if nothing else matters looks like, I invite you to look at Citizendium and it's 165 approved articles.
    • There seems to be this tendency these days to talk about content as if it's the be-all and end-all of Wikipedia. Building it is certainly essential, but merely building content does not a thriving project make. We are not ten, or a hundred, content editors. We are tens of thousands of volunteers from all walks of life and all parts of the world. We are equal. And we all do our part. As a content contributor, I will leave before I see people like me treated as if we're demigods operating in a vacuum. Ironholds (talk) 09:49, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose If you're editing because you want a title, you're here for the wrong reason. Sven Manguard Wha? 16:18, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose I am an admin and an Auspicious Looshpah and you must listen! Or not. Really, really not. Arguments should stand on their own merit, not on the perceived authority of the debater. Rmhermen (talk) 16:28, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose Geez, where to even start with this one? Wikipedia is not an RPG and is not the armed forces. The sort of editor who'd be proud tell all their friends that they're the Exhalted & Illustrious 3rd Vice Rear Admiral of Content Creation of Wikipedia (and of course to lord that over others in disputes) is exactly the kind of editor we DON'T need at Wikipedia, and certainly don't want in any position of power. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:44, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Withdraw: Alright! It seems the survey will not be possible too at this moment! Good wishes! --Tito Dutta (contact) 17:44, 24 March 2013 (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.

We need a guide on how to edit wikipedia from a mobile device

Wikipedia:Editing on mobile devices is useless. It comes in Google as the first hit on "how to edit wikipedia from a mobile device" but fails to deliver anything substantial. We need to have a how-to guide, with pictures, on editing from a mobile devices. I am in fact teaching a class about Wikipedia now; and a number of my students ask me how to edit Wikipedia from a smartphone or a tablet. Having tried to do so a number of times on my Android devices, and even with pretty good Wikipedia-fu and Google-fu skills, the best I can tell them is to activate the "view the desktop version", and do edits from that. Particularly for smartphones, this is far from being friendly. If there is a better way of doing so, it is very, very well hidden (I cannot find it; no of my students can find it). I hear a lot about WMF pushing for Wikipedia friendliness for mobile devices. While viewing mobile Wikipedia may be friendly, mobile editing is still attrocious. At the very least, we need a good guide on how to do it! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:07, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I had a problem a while back with a cellphone that didn't seem to know what a tilde was, making it impossible to sign talk messages. So I created a template Template:Mobilesig (Mosig also works) that can be entered in the cellphone with subst: and produces a signature. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 04:11, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
That should be linked from that page, although for most new users, signing is not high on the list of their priorities - such as "how can I edit at all?". --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:34, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I created a documentation for this template explaining how to use it. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 10:37, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Maybe we should replace Wikipedia:Editing on mobile devices with one word: don't. Rd232 talk 00:23, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Heh. I'd agree, it is just that WMF keeps piping up about getting new editors to edit from mobile devices, and I keep thinking - what kind of marketing scam artists they spend our donations sold that this particular crackpot idea? As far as I can see, introducing people to editing Wikipedia on mobile devices is a great way to make sure they will never edit again. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:36, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
So mobile editing is more likely to be attempted by more experienced wikipedia fanatics as a last resort when nothing else is available, then by some army of newbs who need to be broken in? Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 15:13, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Or at least it should be, at least with the current mobile implementation...or lack thereof. —Theopolisme (talk) 16:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

At the end of the day, Wikipedia is intrinsically text-heavy, and even with custom apps developed with touchscreen editing on small screens in mind, I think you have to be really quite desperate to want to do any editing on a mobile device. (And no, that's not to be taken as a request for such custom apps - the developer time and WMF money should go elsewhere!) Editing without a keyboard is necessarily much less efficient and much more error-prone, and not to be encouraged except perhaps for people who have no alternative (which is maybe where the WMF interest comes in). Rd232 talk 16:32, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Nobody would choose to edit Wikipedia on a mobile device, but many people will never have another option. In the third world most people access the internet on mobiles and always will so, yep, we have to make the mobile editing experience as easy as humanly possible, for equity. Presently, the foundation is failing dismally. (I haven't done any serious editing since my laptop broke a month ago because all I've got is an Android device, and it takes a minute or more to follow a link from my watchlist or a page history.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:02, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I prefer editing on a PC as opposed to a netbook, so I dread to think what it would be like editing on a mobile, perhaps mobile accounts for some of our all caps friends? I would have thought that hotcat would lend itself to mobile editing, if mobiles can be used to send texts of a 100 or so characters then it should be possible to use it to add categories to articles. It should also be possible for the mobile reader to make each paragraph separately editable as well as each section. On the plus side perhaps the rise of the mobile amongst the younger generation accounts for the combination of our readership growing faster than the Internet whilst our editorship is broadly stable but probably ageing. ϢereSpielChequers 17:18, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

It will never be broadly stable for long! There are now post-secondary and even secondary courses around the world that work with Special:Institutions to train young people to become editors. This seems like the cutting edge of education in the Information Society. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 17:29, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
I gave away my netbook as too large to carry happily and too awkward when without a table. The tablet that replaced it is nicer for reading, especially since an injury temporarily cramped my style. When reading creates a sudden urge to improve, it's difficult unless the article is very short or carefully sectioned, and impracticable when large. I musy wait until I get home or to someone else's "real" computer. Better software might be very helpful. With the smartphone's tiny screen the few Wikiedits I have done do not easily support such optimism. Jim.henderson (talk)

Two things:

  1. Most users know nothing about the intricacies of formatting & sourcing. If they click "edit", it's most likely to correct a typo or add a short bit of information. Even limited ability for easy typo correction could be very helpful.
    • When I edit, I usually do so from my laptop. When I read, it's more and more often on my Android phone—quite often just to kill time while waiting for something. It's rare that I don't stumble across something easy to fix (like a typo, or mildly awkward wording). Editing is such a huge pain on my phone that I just don't bother, and by the time I get to a laptop, I've forgotten (or no longer care).
  2. In the future, fewer and fewer people will even own a device with a keyboard. Editing on touch devices isn't just one of those "wouldn't it be nice" features, it's imperitive if the project is going to grow—or else have it shrink into a basement-nerdz-only anyone-can-edit-if-they-happen-to-have-specialized-technology club.

———Curly Turkey (gobble) 07:03, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Your first point is spot on: I never pull out my phone intending to edit, but I frequently do to look up something that just came up in conversation. Then I spot the typo or non-grammatical sentence. Then, since it's such a pain to edit on the phone, I pretend I'll remember to fix it later. The more people who browse Wikipedia on their phones, the more who will want to fix something using their phones, and I don't see why we shouldn't try to make that easier. Laura Scudder | talk 17:25, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

As an iPhone User I should probably point out that I cannot for the life of me find a way to edit a page from the WP App. MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 21:10, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there's an app on the market that has editing enabled. Your only option is working with the desktop version of the site in Safari. Laura Scudder | talk 00:48, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
Or virtually any other mobile/tablet browser. I've editted here on about 5 mobile devices, from Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Nokia (Symbian) and Android. I wouldn't like to compose a new article on some of them, but minor edits, rollback, even page curation and Twinkle have worked. Opera Mini is good for older/smaller memory/screen devices, Opera or any of the Android browsers do OK, especially on a tablet. The lack of editing on the dedicated WikiPedia App is a major and very disappointing flaw, this isn't 2006 anymore. We expect to be able to do everything on mobile devices, especially via apps. The-Pope (talk) 22:05, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Official Wikimedia Foundation "Crackpot" here to answer all your mobile editing related questions ;)
  1. Mobile editing: we're working on it. If you've been using the mobile version of Wikipedia (en.m.wikipedia.org or any other language Wikipedia/sister project), you may have noticed that we recently added some secondary navigation and, crucially, a login/create account link. That's because we are, in fact, starting to build contributory features on mobile, including both editing and uploading to Commons. If you visit the mobile site, opt into the experimental Beta in Settings, and log in, you will see an edit button on all articles. When you tap the edit button, you will see a very rudimentary prototype edit form. The reason we haven't been blasting this from the rooftops is that it's pretty janky right now, and arguably not that much better than just using the desktop view to edit. That will change; it simply requires more work and more time. We're getting there, and your feedback is invaluable: try it out and let us know how it could be better.
  2. Mobile web vs. apps. There is one very significant thing stopping us from taking the existing Wikipedia apps for iOS and Android and turning them into editing apps: our commitment to an open Internet. We could certainly spend a lot of time and resources making awesome editing apps... that could only be used by iPhone and Android users, who are less than a 5th of the world's total mobile users (according to the latest comScore mobile trends data). That's why we've turned our attention and energy to the mobile web, which is device/OS agnostic. That's not to say we're ignoring apps entirely; we're definitely interested in making apps to support folks on top shelf devices (see the Commons:Commons:Mobile app, currently in beta and soon to be fully released to Google Play/App Store). But at the end of the day, we're not and never will be the encyclopedia that only iPhone users can edit.
  3. And, finally, yes, that page is terrible! I'm happy to help clean it up :) A link to the third-party iPad app that Mono mentioned, as well as updates on official WMF mobile editing and uploads features, would be a good place to start.

More generally speaking, I'm the go-to person 'round these parts to answer your questions about Wikimedia Foundation mobile web stuff, and I have a talk page. There's also a Wikimedia mobile team channel that's usually pretty active around the clock (our team is distributed around India, Russia, and various parts of the US): #wikimedia-mobile connect. Feel free to hop in and chat with our illustrious devs (and me) there :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 23:16, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

save pages option

In Wikipedia - Contributions should be added a new option for the users: Save pages (created / modified / administrated) to save (created / modified / administrated) pages on user computer.

Does 'Save page as' in your browser work? --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 18:48, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposed section updating meta-ontology

An addition to meta-ontology is presented here. The article meta-ontology as it stands at the moment is focused upon the Carnap-Quine debate over what ontology is about that took place in the 50's. More has happened since that time. Comments and suggestions for improvement are solicited. Brews ohare (talk) 01:10, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

COI Template

Template:COI editnotice is a short template intended for the Talk page of articles about organizations to provide clear, concise, straightforward advice from WP:COI directly to the article, where PR people will see it. This started as one of a batch of village pump ideas that gained the most traction. We got a lot of feedback in user space, before it grew stagnant enough to attract an AfD, but there was strong consensus in its favor. It's been RfCd and incubated further, applied boldly to articles with support thus far and re-written a dozen times over.

Since I am myself a PR person and a COI contributor I am less bold here than I am normally. But I think it's ready and I would like to see if there is consensus to apply the template more broadly. There has been extensive discussion on whether it should be an edit-notice or a Talk template with no consensus, so I'm proposing, at least to start out, it be applied to Talk as the path of least resistance to make progress and perhaps later discussed whether it should be escalated to an edit-notice. It has also been suggested we roll it out in test phases to avoid an overwhelmed Request Edit queue. Please provide your support or objection below to a roll-out of the template or if there is a better way to make the proposal than the instructions I was provided here, let me know. CorporateM (Talk) 19:31, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Amended per Ironholds: Proposing initial deployment to Category:Companies based in Idaho on a trial basis. If successful, expand to Category:Companies based in California for phase 2 before Category:Organizations.

The template is as follows:

Support. I think that there are many organizations that want to correct legitimate issues with their articles but are not sure of how to do it. Giving such users a place to edit other than the article is a terrific idea. Andrew327 19:55, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Comment: what are you actually asking us to support or oppose? A trial, a full deployment, a....? Whatever it is, the terms of the discussion must be made clear. Ironholds (talk) 19:59, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Basically support trial deployment - but the language is not firm enough. I'd suggest replace "advised" with "strongly advised", with the word strongly maybe in a contrasting hue such as green or at least bright orange. Are you contemplating a kindred template for COI editors from non-profits who just want to enlighten the yearning world about their noble institution or cause? --Orange Mike | Talk 20:06, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Intended for all organizations, not just companies. The language is based on the WP:NOPAY section of WP:COI, but can be modified if WP:COI is updated. We can't create new policies through templates. Although some parts of COI use "strongly discouraged" - I'm not sure that's actually firmer, since "discouraged" is very weak. CorporateM (Talk) 20:09, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Support (Trial deployment). I'm fine with the language. We actually do accept that if a company saw a pure factual statement, such as a relocation, and the article had the wrong city, they could edit it without opprobrium. I get a lot of questions along this line at OTRS, and have worked out a short templated response with instructions on how to edit a talk page, this will make it easier, although I'll have to watch to see if the template is in place and modify accordingly.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:04, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Support Trial - Novice COI editors frequently complain about Byzantine navigation paths to find help. This template should help considerably. In fact, we might want to generalize this notice to all COI editors and make it part of the main space talk page design. Rklawton (talk) 21:13, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Comment. 1) I'm not opposed to a trial of this, but it probably needs to be discussed at WP:COI not just here listed at WP:CENT. 2) Which article's talk pages would receive this page, all corporations? All corporations and non-profits? Why are public figures such as celebrities, politicians, authors, and/or performers, etc. excluded? 3) Could we preload the new section box with an edit request template to improve the chance of someone actually seeing and responding to it? I'd be happy to try and code that for you. 4) Could we slip in a link to WP:PSCOI as well, since it's more instructive/explanatory than WP:COI alone. (Or link to PSCOI from the WP:NOPAY section too rather than just the top of the WP:COI page?) Thanks for this idea. Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 21:25, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Intended for all orgs, as oppose to just Cos. I dropped a notification at WP:COI. Regarding WP:CENT, hopefully the template is not proposing a new policy, rather than just summarizing WP:COI. If it is proposing a new policy, than I think we would need to change the template to not do that. CorporateM (Talk) 21:43, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Support trial. Would encourage the word 'strongly' be added to 'advise', DVMt (talk) 22:10, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 Done Added "strongly" per feedback from DVMt and OrangeMike. CorporateM (Talk) 22:11, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Support Trial - I spend a great deal of time dealing with conflicts of interest, as do many other commenters here, and throughout the years, I have noticed that many COI editors are simply not familiar with our policies and guidelines let alone WP:COI. Furthermore, I find that helping COI editors to understand our policies and guidelines and turning them into productive editors is what's best for this encyclopedia and what's best for them (although, I care more about WP than what's best for them). This talk page notice is just another way for us to help funnel COI editors into a system where we can help them understand the issues with editing with a COI and help them become a productive member of our editing community. I support a trial because there's really no way for us to know how this will turn out. While I don't anticipate any negative repercussions, monitoring its use will be important as the template could theoretically be placed on every single article talk page in the encyclopedia. There's really nothing keeping anyone from posting this to any page, whether or not a COI is declared or suspected and pointing the COI gun can be damaging to the encyclopedia when there's no evidence to support the accusations. OlYeller21Talktome 22:17, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Support Trial with parameters suggested by Ironholds. Idaho, then California, then Planet Earth. A formalized talk page notice and links to resources for COI editors seems like a very good idea to me. Is there a more comprehensive resource about COI editing other than WP:NOPAY that we could link to in the template? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 23:36, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Question Is this specifically targeting businesses/corporations? or anyone who may have a COI with an article? GenQuest "Talk to Me" 00:23, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
All organizations, not just corporations. And for those "Acting on behalf of" (PR/marketing) as oppose to COI in general. CorporateM (Talk) 00:47, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Comment. Trial implies that some data collection and analysis will occur before the California deployment. What will be measured and who has volunteered to measure it? Do we even have baseline stats on COI editors' ratios of talk page/article/reverted article edits? I'll support provided "trial deployment" isn't just a euphemism for a plan to ignore consensus. Kilopi (talk) 04:45, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Increased use of Request Edit. Baseline use today is very small, so it'll be easy to see if more people use it. Whether more people don't edit at all or only edit on Talk can't be measured. CorporateM (Talk) 05:32, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, i've only ever see it get to 20-30 at most. I think once it was at 42, but that might just be wishful remembering. Of course, with increased use of the Request Edit template, we also need to make sure that people keep up with going through them. SilverserenC 06:45, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Good enough for me. I support. Kilopi (talk) 10:14, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Even today with very few Request Edits, some languish for months and many PRs are frustrated with the delay. DGG mentioned doing test/trials largely for this reason. If we get much more Request Edits, but nobody is manning the queue, this is worse instead of better. The interest in editors supporting Request Edit seems to be fleeting and I understand why - many PRs using it are argumentative or doing shoddy work. Not sure the answer to that riddle. CorporateM (Talk) 13:50, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Support test. The preloaded requested-edit link is absolutely a good idea. I am agnostic on everything else, but this is great :-). Let's try it. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:17, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Support trial deployment - This seems harmless to try out, and I see that the trial will consist of a few areas such as Category:Companies based in Idaho. Experience with other tags suggests that use of this template on specific articles may be argued about, so there should be a way to deal with disputes. I suggest that any complaints about usage of the template might be directed to WP:COI/N. EdJohnston (talk) 15:16, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Although it probably won't do any good.
I see company editing as similar to BLP subjects editing their own articles: they have a conflict of interest and much of what they are likely to add is promotional. But they can also be the only ones motivated to fix problems that affect themselves.
Would you ever put a similar notice on a BLP page? "The subject of this article is strongly advised not to edit the article. Click here to request corrections or suggest content, or contact us if the issue is urgent." Of course not. Ken Arromdee (talk) 16:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Oppose This can only extend to any kind of organization and eventually to every article out there; someone always has a connection. And I continue to be surprised that people think that the COI of employment is so very much higher than religion or especially ethnicity. Are we going to routinely tag every article on Maryland with a message saying "don't edit this if you're from Baltimore"? It seems to me that the biggest problem with employment COI editing anyway is that articles get created on NN companies, where they aren't going to see this notice anyway until someone slaps it on. Mangoe (talk) 16:38, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I don't think the template is the right place to discuss the advice itself, unless someone feels it conflicts with WP:COI. Otherwise, those discussions should take place on the guideline page and any changes can be mirrored on the template as a janitorial issue. CorporateM (Talk) 20:07, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Support Conditionally I like it in principle. I guess I'm wondering whether it might be a better idea to merge this with the existing COI template. The message in the template would say something to the effect of "If you are reading this *and* you are this entry's problem, here are your options." --Philgomes (talk) 18:00, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Support Looks great, grabs the attention and quickly expresses the concern involved. I also like it because it attempts to avoid template:Connected_contributor ever becoming an issue and the whole WP:OUTING. It's like the level 1, once a COI has been identified we would use Connected_contributor template as a level 2, hopefully never progressing to edit-protect.Geremy Hebert (talk | contribs) 13:04, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Support Conditionally I like the wording and spirit, but I think this should be an edit-notice similar to Template:BLP_editintro rather than a Talk page template. A COI editor who knows enough to go to the Talk page has probably already done some research on COI and is acting on good faith. The COI editors this is aimed at are probably more likely to just go straight to Edit. That being said, even a talk page notice would be preferable to nothing. As a newbie COI editor, I spent several days trying to make sense of COI and I didn't find the edit request feature until the very end of that research. --Fallentomato (talk) 21:53, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Support per the above, especially Geremy.Hebert. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 22:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Conditional support I agree commercial COI editing has become common enough to justify preemptive talk page warnings. But please exclude articles in Category:Defunct organizations, or more broadly Category:Former entities, and all subcategories. The template would not serve its intended purpose if the organization no longer exists; it's likely to be misinterpreted as a broad prohibition against editors supportive of the defunct organization. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 22:22, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
If possible, it would be great to exempt defunct organizations. I don't know if our bots can do it without some custom technical work. CorporateM (Talk) 11:51, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Support trial. However, could you specify for which articles this template would be added during the test period, how many articles would be tagged during the test period, and which are criteri for inclusion of articles during the test period. In the case of full implementation, I think this template should be automatically added to the talk pages of all organizations (including corporations). I also think that Ocaasi made a valid point about public figures, but I don't see a clear answer if it should be applied for all BLPs or not. I also share concerns expressed by Fallentomato, so we certainly need some additional considerations after the trial period. As the template as such, is it possible to add a direct link to WP:COI within the template? Beagel (talk) 14:48, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Support trial usage -- Many newbies will not get to the talk page, but its a step in the right direction by providing an easy link to a place that they can gain information and assistance.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:42, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
The words "are strongly advised" links to WP:COI. Prior discussions showed no consensus on a Talk template versus an edit-notice, so I went with the path of least resistance for now, but we can revisit later on and always change it if needed. CorporateM (Talk) 11:51, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
An edit notice would be better in my opinion. I don't think you'd see much opposition. It's frankly a great idea. Feedback ☎ 07:24, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

So does this mean the RFC is done? MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 12:09, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I think consensus is strong enough to close it, though we may have to revisit before deploying to the entire Org category. I made a bot request, but it seems it went ignored. CorporateM (Talk) 14:59, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Given the strong consensus here, does anyone who knows how want to get a bot to apply the template to the first test group? I can't seem to find anyone to help make this happen. CorporateM (Talk) 00:31, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
Comment This would be better placed in the edit notice, where its target audience is more likely to see it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:17, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Removing article count from Main Page header

It is clear that there is no consensus for this change. While there is an argument to be made that quality is more important than quantity and the count isn't really accurate anyways, there is an equally valid argument that quantity does actually matter and serves to advertise the massive size and breadth of the project. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:47, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

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

Hi. This has come up a few times, but I don't believe there's been a formal proposal, so I'm writing one. I'd like to remove the article count from the Main Page's header. This is what the header would look like without the article count. I want to remove it for a few reasons:

  1. it's inaccurate (what is and is not considered an article and what the software actually tracks for that value are both unclear at this point);
  2. it's already included on the page (in the Wikipedia languages section); and
  3. it's kind of McDonald's-y (the English Wikipedia, over four billion served!).

And related to the third point, size isn't everything, of course.

It's a one-line change to kill the line. I actually don't think this is a particularly controversial change, but perhaps others disagree. Thoughts? --MZMcBride (talk) 05:55, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I've advertised this discussion at Talk:Main Page. I'm not sure where else it needs to be advertised. Please let me know if there are other areas of Wikipedia that need to be told of this discussion. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 06:04, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Support

  • Support. The example to which MZMcBride linked contains the heading layout originally intended when the main page's current design was created in 2006 (at which point the article count was relocated to the Wikipedia languages section). The rationale was that it was time to stop placing so much emphasis on quantity.

    But when the confirmation vote began, this was a difficult message to get across. Due to a level of emotional attachment that we didn't anticipate (fueled partially by the the excitement surrounding the creation of the encyclopedia's millionth article, which occurred less than a day into the vote), editors began opposing the entire redesign on the basis that the article count was "missing" (often without realizing that it had simply been moved down). To avoid seeing months of work wasted due to a relatively minor change stealing much of the focus, we hastily modified the heading to include the article count. It wasn't a particularly good fit from an aesthetic standpoint, but it clarified that the article count's new location wasn't inextricably tied to the redesign.

    We left the article count in the Wikipedia languages section with the expectation that users would grow accustomed to its presence there, enabling the redundancy to be phased out within a few months (after the aforementioned "1,000,000th article" excitement had died down). Seven years (and more than three million articles) later, the redundancy persists. The matter has been discussed a few times, and there never has been consensus to leave the article count in the heading, but because there wasn't clear consensus to remove it, it remains.

    We're literally putting quantity before quality. We showcase the encyclopedia's best content, but not before boasting that it contains 6,906,253 articles (a statistic that places featured articles and unsourced stubs on equal footing). We send the message that we care more about increasing that count than we do about improving existing articles, thereby encouraging editors to contribute accordingly.

    Why do we do this? Well, a decade ago, we were building public awareness of the project's scope. Mission accomplished. Wikipedia has an Alexa ranking of 6 and dominates millions of Google searches. So at this point, the article count remains at the top of the page largely due to tradition and inertia. I don't know whether this discussion will change that, but here's hoping. —David Levy 07:42, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

    • Quantity created the excitement generated by reaching the millionth article. Similar excitement will surround reaching the five millionth article (which we are rapidly approaching), the ten millionth article, and so on. People care how large Wikipedia is. It's relevant. It indicates relatively the comprehensiveness and scope of this encyclopedia compared to other works out there.

      There hasn't been consensus to remove the page count from its perch because it is a good idea to keep it up there. Wikipedia's main strength is the extent of its coverage. That is, its size. That's why so many people come here: because Wikipedia has information about what they are looking for.

      So the page count is where it is because the community does not want to take it off. And for good reason: it's a damn good marketing tool and helps bring in donations. Being the largest encyclopedia with the highest number of articles displayed anywhere is something to be proud of. The page count at the top of the Main Page sends a very loud message about Wikipedia's strongest feature: if you are looking for something, come to Wikipedia and you will likely find it here.

      And what's even better is, that likelihood will continue to grow with this number!

      The page count serves a very important purpose. Therefore, we should oppose this proposal. The Transhumanist 01:41, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

  • Support I agree with your proposal and reasoning. It does seem rather old-fashioned for a website to boast about its size, like Geocities used to do, and all those website which still proudly display hit counters. As you say, it's inaccurate, which doesn't help Wikipedia as a project when accuracy is supposedly what we're about. doktorb wordsdeeds 09:29, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support per nom, also number of articles encourages a quantity over quality mentality. Regards, Sun Creator(talk) 10:07, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support - unless the number is reasonably accurate, it shouldn't be there. I could uncerstand the relevance of a counter which isn't updated every second (a relatively small number of articles are created or deleted in the course of an hour); but a counter which counts anything different than articles (that is, pages in the article namespace that are neither redirects nor disambiguation pages) is completely irrelevant. And it would tend to promote quantity of articles (let's see if we can raise the number) over quality (FA or GA). I would like some indication of the number of FAs to be present on the main page, though. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Suppprt largely per MZMcBride and David Levy. wctaiwan (talk) 10:50, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support, for all the reasons already given. Victor Yus (talk) 10:51, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support, So many people propose adding things to the main page, it's good to also see things being removed when they've outlived their usefulness. Even if it's only a small thing. Keeping things for "tradition" leads to ever-increasing clutter. APL (talk) 11:57, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support The willingness to add content without a countering willingness to remove dated content info will kill any page's usefulness over time. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 16:40, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. The number is neither relevant nor interesting. There's no longer any need to explain how big we are - every reader knows that Wikipedia has articles on lots of topics. If anyone wants to see the number, they can scroll down to the bottom of the page or look at Special:Statistics. It can be useful for smaller, developing, language versions. It's an anachronism for enwiki, that serves no useful purpose. Modest Genius talk 20:51, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support Per David Levy's fourth paragraph ("We're literally putting quantity before quality...") This is also Sven Manguard 22:51, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    • Yes we are, but not figuratively. We're not saying quantity is more important than quality. For emphasis we display large excerpts of quality content front and center on the Main page. To quantity we give a couple of lines, including one at the top of the page where people can actually spot it. That's good marketing. We can legitimately claim that Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia in the world (and the number proves it). The Transhumanist 02:10, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support The article count is twice on the main page (in the header and in the languages section), and it is reasonable to remove at least one. Removal from the header seems the most logical; at the bottom there is at least some sort of context. Jahoe (talk) 17:35, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. We should be shifting from quantity to quality. So what if we have 4 million articles? Half of them are cookie-cutter '''{{subst:PAGENAME}}''' is a village in Galicia [[Category:Settlements in Galicia]] &c with no actual creative input or readable prose. A quarter of a million articles have been tagged as unsourced and there surely more which have yet to be tagged. And so on. We should stop fetishising the article count and instead focus on better content. bobrayner (talk) 14:20, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support I have nothing against the counter as such but the header of a page is not the right location for that content. Adding the counter as an additional line under the Wikipedia label and pay-off makes that area busy and takes attention away from all three elements. The redesign proposal is so much cleaner and clearer and therefore communicates more effectively.--Wolbo (talk) 15:14, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. The counter has been bad statistics for a long time, it's had its day. — Hex (❝?!❞) 16:27, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support removal: a) We shouldn't have something that's inaccurate on our front page, because that confirms all the horror stories people believe about this site, b) How could this Wikipedia is isn't measured by the number of articles. "Oh, boy! We have 5 million articles, 4.9 million of them are start or stubs!" Whoopie! pbp 04:46, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support due to redundancy, inaccuracy (probably the most important issue for me and the only one that swayed me from a neutral stance, per pbp), and, additionally, the simple lack of necessity - people do not come to Wikipedia to see how many articles we have. It is expected that we have the information that they want, and quality is more important. Jackson Peebles (talk) 04:57, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support basically per nom. I would be open to having another but more reasonably accurate statistic replacing the current one. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 08:58, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support Repetive and gives too much emphasis to quantity rather than quality. An enormous number of articles are too short or non-notable to really be considered articles, and there is no need to show off the number of articles at the top of the page. Reywas92Talk 19:53, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support per nom and David Levy. KillerChihuahua 10:15, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support - It's inaccurate and cheesy, and the information is readily available elsewhere on the page if someone is actually looking for it. ‑Scottywong| soliloquize _ 22:44, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose

  • Oppose Tradition. And a good tradition. Those pages were not machine generated. Those were human hands that created those millions of articles. That's what that number says to me: many hands made this colossus, together we can make something greater than the sum of our individual abilities. [ Also support adding a GeoCities style hit counter to the main page per doktorb :-P ] --RA (talk) 11:22, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    Thank you for acknowledging that the article count appears at the top of the page because of tradition, but please note that machine-generated stubs are included in the count. We're announcing to the world that we value them equally. —David Levy 13:43, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    Counting something = declaring that everything in the set is valued equally? Wat? (If this was actually meant seriously and you honestly believe that real readers think this way, I'm happy to go on, but I hope this was just a rhetorical flourish or something.) SnowFire (talk) 18:29, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    It depends on the context. "There are ten houses on the street." carries no such implication. Likewise, the knowledge that the fledgling English Wikipedia had grown from 50,000 articles to 100,000 articles (as an arbitrary example) was meaningful. But those days are long behind us. A running tally at the top of the main page — proudly announcing to the world that the encyclopedia has increased in size from 4,187,239 articles to 4,189,614 articles — conveys that no matter how high the number reaches, increasing it remains our top priority. We're literally promoting quantity above all else. —David Levy 22:19, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    Continued in the "Discussion" session, as I don't want to ramble here too much. Short version: I disagree any readers draw the conclusion David Levy suggests. SnowFire (talk) 21:36, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
    How many of them were not machine generated? --MZMcBride (talk) 18:19, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - it's a great piece of free advertising for the project that takes up virtually no space since it only balances the "portal" listing on the other side. It won't get nearly the same attention if confined to the languages section (I didn't even know it was repeated there). I think the argument that Wikipedia is not about quantity is nonsense. Quantity and accessibility are Wikipedia's main advantages, the huge number of articles on many otherwise obscure topics is part of what distinguishes this project from other encyclopedias. Gatoclass (talk) 11:44, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    Drawing less attention to the statistic is the idea. We've long since reached the point at which "advertising" Wikipedia in this manner is unnecessary and counterproductive. Web users are well aware that Wikipedia is large. They question its quality, and we do ourselves no favors by implying that we've deemed quantity a higher priority.
    No one asserts that quantity isn't something setting Wikipedia apart from other encyclopedias; we're saying that it isn't something that still requires a running tally at the top of the main page. We disagree with the original version of your reply, in which you opined that "quantity (and accessibility) is what Wikipedia is all about" and that it "is never going to compete on quality with professional encyclopedias". —David Levy 13:43, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    Just having an article count at the top of the page doesn't "imply that we've deemed quantity a higher priority", at all. It just reminds readers of one of our strengths - a strength that may not otherwise be apparent. A much larger amount of mainpage real estate is dedicated to one of our other strengths, the Featured Article project. I think the quantity aspect is entitled to at least a little exposure by comparison. Gatoclass (talk) 16:24, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    Again, no one asserts that quantity isn't among Wikipedia's strengths. But at this point, the English Wikipedia's large size is well known among (and readily apparent to) Web users. So maintaining a running tally at the top of the main page — before the first mention of featured content — conveys that we value quantity above all else. (Otherwise, why would we display it above all else?)
    What isn't apparent to some readers is the contextual meaning of "featured". A common misconception is that "today's featured article" is simply an article that we've decided to "feature" on the main page. (The same is true of today's featured picture and list.) That's why people often ask why [non-featured article] isn't "featured" on a relevant day.
    And why should readers assume that we give any consideration to quality? According to the message at the top of the page, all articles are counted alike.
    You noted that "the quantity aspect is entitled to at least a little exposure". That's why the article count is mentioned in the Wikipedia languages section, where it's contextually relevant (because it's a list of Wikipedias, grouped by size). —David Levy 16:50, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Besides what RA and Gatoclass say, the article count is present on every other Wikipedia main page that I can remember seeing, including all of the ones linked by http://www.wikipedia.org. People from other Wikipedias will sometimes want to see how many articles we have; why would we make it harder for them? There's literally nowhere else, except the very bottom of the page, where we mention quantity; we need to advertise quantity as well as quality, and relegating it to a severely below-the-fold location doesn't do that at all. Nyttend (talk) 14:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    That "every other Wikipedia" does something a certain way doesn't mean that we must too, particularly given their tendency to emulate the English Wikipedia. (If they do something because we do it, and then we keep doing it because they do it, we'll remain trapped in a viscous cycle forever.) If we stop displaying the article count at the top of the main page, it's likely that other large Wikipedias will follow suit.
    You noted that users might want to see how many articles the various Wikipedias contain. m:List of Wikipedias fills this role. —David Levy 15:12, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    I agree that it's pretty common on other Wikipedias. I don't really agree that we're making the figure less accessible, though. There's an entire page devoted to stats on every wiki (Special:Statistics) and there are lists at Meta-Wiki dedicated to allowing easy comparison among projects (e.g., m:List of Wikipedias). I'm not sure we still need to advertise quantity at this point. Are we trying to sell Wikipedia to someone? :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 18:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Quantity matters. Quality matters. This isn't a situation where we have to chose only one. The main page has several sections devoted to highlighting some of our best content, and it also has a few details highlighting our size. Both aspects matter for users of a reference work, and breadth is one of the things that sets Wikipedia apart from all others. As RA suggests, we built that, and the size of Wikipedia is something that editors should take some justifiable pride in as well as conveying one of Wikipedia's core characteristics (breadth) to users that might be unfamiliar with us. I don't think relegating this to the Languages section of the main page is actually an improvement. I agree that there are some problems is accounting for what the number actually means, and if someone had a tool for counting pages without including stubs, disambig pages, and the like, then I could support replacing the number with a figure that more accurately captured the total number of "articles". I might even support changing it to a text line that mentioned our place as the world's largest encyclopedia without giving a specific number, though I'm not sure how to do that and make it seem reasonable on that portion of the page. Dragons flight (talk) 15:15, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    If there were actually a useful metric, I think I might be able to agree with you. But as it is, the number is just wrong, as you note. I don't think we should be publishing this number so prominently when it's mostly made-up. What does that count represent? We literally have no idea at this point. It's just a random counter that's occasionally incremented by certain actions (we think, maybe). --MZMcBride (talk) 18:22, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The article count is something Wikipedia can justly be proud of, it's catchy advertising, and actual readers enjoy the trivia tidbit. It should absolutely be placed right at the top because a 4 million article encyclopedia is something totally amazing, a fact we have perhaps been spoiled on and forgot compared to 2000, not hidden at the bottom of the page. The argument that this somehow devalues quality makes absolutely 0 sense to me: quantity and quality are not opposed, and an encyclopedia with 50 Featured Articles and 0 stubs is far worse than an encyclopedia with 50 Featured Articles and 500 stubs. So bragging about quantity, especially when it's what Wikipedia is best at, is fine. We won't make quality better by attacking quantity as evil, and in fact we're more likely to scare off the new blood that keeps Wikipedia editors from drying up. SnowFire (talk) 15:48, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose It gives a sense of the encyclopedia as a growing, living thing that's still being developed (or if you're a deletionist you can watch with excitement each time it falls). It functions as a declaration that Wikipedia is the most comprehensive encyclopedia. It would be better if it was more accurate, but it still represents a significant statistic. Finally, I think it's really bad from a general point of view to design anything by voting piecewise on whether each feature should be present or absent. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:53, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    How does a single (inaccurate) number function as a declaration that Wikipedia is the most comprehensive encyclopedia? Is that even true? If so, how does this particular made-up figure support this? --MZMcBride (talk) 18:24, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    It indicates scope. The Transhumanist 09:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
    We need an inaccurate claim to convey the encyclopedia's scope? —David Levy 16:41, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose It should be t the top of the page, it's about this Wikipedia. It should not be buried in a section about foreign language Wikipedias. Why would I look for information about this Wikipedia there? Consider this a counterproposal to remove the second mention from the main page. Rmhermen (talk) 17:02, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    On what do you base the assertion that the Wikipedia languages section is strictly "about foreign language Wikipedias"? Its first sentence is "This Wikipedia is written in English.", and the name was changed from Wikipedia in other languages seven years ago. —David Levy 17:10, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    He didn't say "strictly". "Generally" works just as well. The Transhumanist 09:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
    Rmhermen referred to it as "a section about foreign language Wikipedias" and asked why one would "look for information about this Wikipedia there". It's called "Wikipedia languages". English is a language. —David Levy 16:41, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Wikipedia is great because of its quality and its scope. Most of the main page focuses on quality, but one line about quantity is definitely worthwhile. I don't buy the argument that "on top" means more important; that's not the way web design works. "Main page", "talk", "read", "view source", "view history", "log in", "create account", etc. are all above the page; that doesn't mean they're more important. What matters is the amount of space, which FA by far exceeds the tagline. That said, no one scrolls to the bottom of the page to look at other language versions of Wikipedia. -- Ypnypn (talk) 18:41, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. But I do acknowledge that there are plenty of good, rational reasons to support. At the time I write this comment, the counter is at 4,189,542. I fully admit that this number may not be accurate, and may not even satisfy WP:V. But I don't seriously think that our readers will really be put out of joint by the possibility that it should have been 4,189,541 or 4,189,543. That's not the point, as I see it. I think the point is that the number is a really, really big number. We could change it from that number to just saying "a shitload", although I somehow don't really think that would sound as good. The number gets the message across that the number is big, and the number is getting bigger. And it's a good thing to communicate that message. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:26, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - A growing total article count demonstrates The Project's general health in the face of publicity about declining very active editor and active administrator counts. Carrite (talk) 00:17, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - When you are the world's largest encyclopedia, it's good to make sure everyone knows exactly how big you really are. Sure, size isn't everything, but size does matter. I can't tell you how many times I've seen or heard a news story on Wikipedia and they pretty much always say something like "Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia with over 4 million articles..." Whenever I see Jimmy Whales on some television talk show, one of the first questions asked by the host/interviewer is usually "how big is Wikipedia" to which the reply is something like "We have over 4.1 million articles in English...". Clearly, size matters to people, so we need it displayed prominently. Rreagan007 (talk) 04:18, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
    If we're going to cite Jimbo's statements, let's not forget these:
    • "We can no longer feel satisfied and happy when we see these numbers going up... We should continue to turn our attention away from growth and towards quality." (2006)
    • "We are moving into a next phase where the community's interest has turned from the metrics of 'how many articles' – because that becomes less and less meaningful – to quality." (2010)
    Also, I'm curious as to how a wildly inaccurate statistic enables "everyone [to know] exactly how big" the encyclopedia is. —David Levy 15:46, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
    Not exactly. The general ballpark is good enough. And that number reflects a very nice ball park. Four million plus. Sheer vastness. Wow. That's impressive. Exactly what an advertising blurb is supposed to be. Let's see you market quality as impressively and as concisely as that. It's a very valuable intangible asset. We should keep it. The Transhumanist 09:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
    If "the general ballpark is good enough", why not simply state that Wikipedia contains "more than four million articles" (as I suggested below)? Why is it vital to make a specific, wildly inaccurate claim? I agree that it's impossible to market quality as concisely as we can market quantity, but we needn't actively lower the site's quality by placing a veritably false statement at the top of the front page. —David Levy 16:41, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose The statistic is clean and simple. It's the section at the foot of the page about Wikipedia languages which should go as it is redundant to the language links in the sidebar and is also too wordy. Warden (talk) 12:42, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose' Not only do all the other Wikipedias have one, whenever I go to a foreign language Wikipedia the article count is the first thing I look at. I have come to expect it and never once thought it was some sort of bad influence. It tells me something about what sort of encyclopedia to expect. It's not just about bragging rights, it's informative to know whether a Wikipedia has 1,000 or 100,000 articles. (I guess that's more important for small language Wikipedias, but still). In fact, I looked at the 4 mil figure and one of my thoughts was, "there's got to be some serious diminishing returns in the last million articles"--but love it or hate it that tells me something useful about Wikipedia. This has the potential to pass because no one wants to go against "quality, not quantity." But does hiding the article count really advance that goal? 169.231.20.146 (talk) 09:49, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - of course there are other important things apart from having lots of articles: each must be complete, neutral and pleasant to read, for example. But the sheer 4 million figure that keeps growing is a very important sign of the efecct of Wikipedia on readers. It's a cheap way to show how important we are, but it still matters. --NaBUru38 (talk) 20:56, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I like to know how extensive Wikipedia is and how fast it is growing. The first thing I do each day the first time I go to my home page (you guessed it, Wikipedia) is look at that number. I anxiously anticipate the rate of development to increase via accelerating change, and the reported number provides an easy way to track that. I also think it is appropriately awe-inspiring to other visitors of the site, who may be as impressed as I am by how fast the number goes up between intervals. The more impressed they are, the more likely they are to talk about Wikipedia's scope with others (like I do). It inspires word-of-mouth marketing, baby! By all means, keep it right up there at the top. The Transhumanist 09:06, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
    That isn't the type of advertising that the English Wikipedia needs. People know that it's very large. They question its quality. You noted above that quantity is easier to market (which is true), but displaying a running tally of article creations at the top of the site's front page actively advertises that quality is a secondary concern. "Wow! Let's get that number higher and higher, baby!" is exactly the message we send. —David Levy 16:41, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
  • That number posted up there is one of the reasons people know Wikipedia is as huge as it is. It's a basis of comparison for size and to a lesser extent, scope. It's exactly the type of advertising Wikipedia needs. Wikipedia is the largest, most extensive, most comprehensive encyclopedia in history! The page count exemplifies these strengths. These qualities are just as important as quality of content. The message the page count sends is that you are more likely to find what you are looking for on Wikipedia than on any other encyclopedia, or on almost any other website. The qualities of Wikipedia are not mutually exclusive. When you are promoting one, you are not denying or diminishing the others. Rather, they are synergistic. Removing the page count, which promotes Wikipedia's greatest strengths, would be counter-productive. We would be sabotaging one of our best marketing tools. But Wikipedia doesn't cover everything yet. I wonder how many articles that will take. I can hardly wait to see that number up there. The Transhumanist 22:51, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per several of the above arguments. Personally I'd favor adding more prominence to the number of GAs and FAs on-site since we know those numbers to be better and we're more proud of them, as opposed to depreciating the total number of pages. —Ed!(talk) 16:32, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Don't fix what ain't broken. A tradition is a good thing. It's psychologically disconcerting not to have what millions of readers expect to see on the first page of the website. -- Taku (talk) 01:31, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
    As explained in the nomination, the article count is broken; it isn't even close to accurate. We should leave a false claim at the top of the site's front page because people expect to see it there? —David Levy 16:41, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose People love numbers and statistics. Will it could use some confidence intervals it is a good way to advertise the site and explain its growth over time. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:50, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

  • I am rather Neutral when it comes to this proposal, but how about this; rather than just saying we have X many articles, we should say with a count on the main page, we have this many Featured Articles, Featured Lists, Featured Categories, Class-A Articles, Good Articles, and total articles. Perhaps this can be hidden all underneath a collapsed bar titled statistics or something like that. It can include stuff like, most viewed articles, etc.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 20:38, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    Agreed. I'm no fan of the plain, inaccurate "articles" number linked to the unhelpful Special:Statistics, but losing it entirely seems a pity. How about replacing it with a daily number randomly chosen from the grid at Wikipedia:Statistics#Articles_by_importance_and_quality, eg today, "461,574 low-importance Start-class articles"; tomorrow, "18,455 high-importance B-class articles" etc. At least it would give a better sense of the range of quality. Rd232 talk 21:45, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
    Such ideas, which I've supported, have been discussed on occasion. As I recall, the main stumbling blocks have been apathy (proposals largely ignored) and reluctance to state the number of "good articles" (the Wikipedia connotation of which is unknown to most readers, so it would appear to imply that most of our articles are "bad"). —David Levy 22:19, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
I know the saying "you don't want to know how sausages are made" is pretty common, but I think linking what makes an FA, FL, FC, GA content with the numbers would help the casual reader understand what the community of editors have agreed makes up quality content. Perhaps if they come to understand these hallmarks of quality, and see an article that is presented to them with the utmost of quality and scholarly work overtime non-wikipedians may be less apt to reply "Oh that's on Wikipedia, you know you can't believe that!".
For instance, the meat industry is often the target of much derision, however, there are sectors that seek to shed a more positive light, and being more public are more open about how they raise their livestock, butcher/process their meat, and what to look for in quality end product when it's placed in front of the consumer. This has lead to organic and humane practices, and on and on.
Perhaps being more open may entice more people to join and contribute, or at the very least come to understand "how the sausages are made".--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 13:15, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Not usually a fan of commenting just to say I have no opinion, but I had never really thought about this before and after reading this I don't find either side making a particularly compelling case. Might as well just take a vote if these are the best arguments to be made. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:07, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
  • (moved down here for space reasons) David Levy says above in reply to RA's oppose that (paraphrased) because we prominently mention the article count, Wikipedia is declaring to the outside world that the article count is Wikipedia's top priority, and possibly that stubs are somehow equivalent-in-value to any other article. (And that this is bad, so therefore let's get rid of it.) The first is a claim of fact that can theoretically be checked, and the second implication is shaky as well. First off: I entirely disagree that any actual readers would draw David Levy's conclusion - and I just checked with a random non-Wikipedia editor for their thoughts on various parts of the Main Page without cluing them in as to which part I cared about, or the answer I wanted to hear. The running tally says that Wikipedia is proud of its article count, yes. It says nothing that it is our "top priority," or that stubs are valued equally to detailed articles. The use of "literally" is too apt - the placement high on the page means it's "literally" on top, but that is not a good gauge of emphasis. Screen space above the fold is much better as has been pointed out before, which would means that In The News and Today's Featured Article win big. (If someone was arguing that Wikipedia's front page design places too much emphasis on it being a news site, I'd be more receptive!) So I doubt that readers' impressions of Wikipedia will be overwhelmed by the article count.
Secondly, even if somebody sees the article count and decides to identify Wikipedia's prime concern as expanding the number of articles, it's not clear at all that this implies that quality is being denigrated, which is the actual reason for the opposition presumably. No one argues that the article count isn't bragging about quantity; but why would said bragging automatically mean it's the only priority? Insert any marketing campaign ever for anything as an example: a campaign that plays up facet X as a product's strengths doesn't imply that facet Y has gone to crap; few campaigns try and laundry list all a product's strengths. As everyone else has already said, being proud of quantity does not mean denigrating quality.
Lastly, I still don't get the stubs = FAs argument. They're obviously both articles, so they should unquestionably contribute to the article count, and they're obviously different in utility. Who exactly is getting the impression that stub = FA because they both count as 1 article? I'll also add again that having stubs is a *good* thing for Wikipedia anyway. Not as good as FAs, sure, but breadth is important; our stubs are better than many of Britannica's old Micropedia entries. The only negative value articles are the ones that are actively misleading / hoaxes / BLP violations / etc., not stubs. SnowFire (talk) 22:37, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Firstly, it goes without saying that perceptions of the main page will differ, irrespective of how it's presented. Neither of us has conducted a scientific study, so both my argument and yours are partially speculative.
Secondly, you've oversimplified my position. I don't mean to suggest that prominently mentioning the article count (setting aside its inaccuracy) is intrinsically counterproductive.
As I noted, displaying the article count at the top of the page served an important purpose when Wikipedia was new and unestablished. Nowadays, the site has an Alexa rank of 6. Most Web users are aware that it's very large. But in case someone isn't, stating that it contains "more than four million articles" would be a big improvement over a running tally that serves to indiscriminately celebrate each and every article's creation before measures of quality are even alluded to.
And as discussed above, I've supported (and will continue to support, regardless of this discussion's outcome) the idea of supplementing the figure with other statistics (such as the featured article count), which I believe would strike a reasonable balance.
Thirdly, of course stubs should contribute to the article count. My point is that the article count, by its very nature, fails to distinguish articles by quality. I don't believe that readers are under "the impression that stub = FA". I believe that our main page doesn't adequately explain what featured articles are (a separate but related problem), so many readers have no idea that it's a measure of quality. As I noted, that's why they sometimes ask us why [non-featured article] isn't "featured" on a relevant day.
I don't mean to pick on stubs, which can serve as the foundations for top-notch articles. And a stub should be viewed in that light, not as an unspecified article among 6,906,252 others, to be blindly counted in our never-ending quest to create as many articles as possible. (And yes, an article's length isn't the sole measure of its quality; some of the worst Wikipedia articles I've encountered also were among the longest.) —David Levy 01:01, 23 March 2013 (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.

Round Two done, Round Three is up

Round Two of the Requests for Comment (RfC) on the Requests for Adminship (RfA) process was a success by any measure, and has now been closed. The final round is a one-week vote on two proposals that got support, but relatively few votes, so we're advertising widely and hoping for broader participation in Round Three. - Dank (push to talk) 23:43, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

We've added another proposal, "Probation", to Round Three. Have a look. - Dank (push to talk) 18:48, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Apply hAudio microformat to Template:Audio

Please comment on the proposal at Template talk:Audio#Apply hAudio microformat. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:00, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

New paragraph of Wikipedia:Copyrights

Crossposted here and at WP:VPP.

Input is requested in a stale discussion at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights#Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. It's about the inclusion of a section regarding content reuse within Wikipedia (instead of outside Wikipedia). It's a somewhat trivial thing, but I think it's important enough to be settled. Comments are much appreciated. Cheers, theFace 10:53, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposed merger of meta-ontology and ontology

It is proposed to combine meta-ontology with ontology. The discussion is found here. Although this may seem to be a technical issue, probably it can be settled on grounds generally used to discuss mergers. Please participate. Brews ohare (talk) 15:32, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's articles for improvement on Main page

Bumping thread for 10 days. Ushau97 talk 17:44, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

A discussion is occurring at Wikipedia talk:Today's articles for improvement#Main Page deployment to finalize adding Today's articles for improvement on the Main Page. --Ushau97 talk 17:44, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to take over Encyclopedia Dramatica

Such goodwill towards our cousin wikis... who'd ever have thought? — This, that and the other (talk) 01:06, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

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

After the owner abandoned the website in April 2011, the future of Encyclopedia Dramatica was looking pretty bleak. Luckily some volunteers were able to quickly fork most of the encyclopedia to encyclopediadramatica.se using Google's web cache.

ED remains a stalwart defender of the freedom of speech and even co-participated with Wikipedia in the SOPA blackout in January 2012. As such, it is a frequent target of the FBI and has been brought down by other enemies of liberty.

There are over 9000 links to ED from Wikipedia. If ED dies, the knowledge curated within it die too. With a takeover of ED, the WMF stands to gain a valuable co-confederate and friend of the Wikimedia movement.

The idea proposed here is that the Wikimedia Foundation take control of Encyclopedia Dramatica, including the physical infrastructure (such as servers) and the domain encyclopediadramatica.se. In return, the WMF would finance the necessary modernization of the service and provide legal counsel against lawsuits.

Proposed domain names
wikipediadramatica.org (or)
wikidramatica.org (or)
wikiED.org
People interested
  1. ED would be a wonderful addition to the WMF's growing portfolio of successful projects. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 05:01, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
But what do we do about Uncyclopedia? It will certainly get jealous of the attention we give ED. Feedback ☎ 05:46, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
As long as it's blue, I support your motion. Feedback ☎ 10:07, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm assuming this would be a merger with Wikipedia as we wouldn't really want two encyclopaedias in the project? If so this would reduce the admin shortage if all ED admins became admins here. ϢereSpielChequers 09:49, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
Good idea. Naturally all Wikipedia articles would be merged and redirected to their ED equivalents. Wikipedia can never hope to match ED's quality and accuracy. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 18:41, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
  • I seriously hope this is an April Fools' prank, because the WMF would never, even tempted with sums of cash with more zeroes than we have articles, consider some kind of merger or takeover with ED. if you look at the ED page about Wikipedia, it clearly displays very anti messages against us. Truth be told ED is nearly a pornography site with the amount of obscene pictures showcased on its "articles". If we were to affiliate ourselves with things like that, Wikipedia's (and sister project's) reputations would be ruined and nobody would use us any more. If this is a joke, pease say so and close the discussion now. Rcsprinter (talk) @ 22:13, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong support - Perhaps make the "kittens" article the homepage here too? LOL Davey2010 22:19, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Since we're so often accused of liberal censorship, we might as well live up to the accusations. We can start an alliance with RationalWiki and start off here or here, where we can replace the word of the Bible with some good, hard science. Sure, maybe we'll get struck down by some lightning bolts, but at least that means we'll go out in a blaze of glory. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:42, 1 April 2013 (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.

Email confirmation message

Hey all. In case you didn't know, English Wikipedia has long customized the email you get when you sign up, asking you to confirm your address. Since the page has fewer than 30 watchers, I wanted to make sure my proposal to trim and reword it is seen. It's at MediaWiki talk:Confirmemail body#Reword proposal. Thanks, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 03:23, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia has and should have a pro-academia bias

I don't know if this was discussed before, so I apologize if it was already discussed. What I want is to propose the statement that "Wikipedia has and should have a pro-academia bias". I had many discussions on this issue till I got the idea of settling it once and for all, cast it in stone as it were. The last discussion about it was at Talk:The Bible and history#Anti-Biblical Bias?. As far as I see, from the already approved Wikipedia policies and guidelines it follows that Wikipedia always takes and should take the side of academia. It pertains to the basics of Wikipedia. Wikipedia editors don't create their own sort of knowledge, but render the viewpoints expressed by academics. In respect to present-day biographies, entertainment and politics, reliable press is also included. I think that it is obvious that Wikipedia has and should have a pro-academia bias. According to some scientific knowledge theory, knowledge is forged by the academic community, i.e. a "disinterested community of scholars seeking truth for its own sake" (Sheehan). If something can't be taught at an reputed university, then it does not belong in Wikipedia. According to Rick Roderick, the only people who buy the idea that all opinions are equal (i.e. have equal value) are those permanently committed to the insane asylums.

I want to obtain consensus that this should be stated as a matter of Wikipedia policy, or at least receive good arguments why it shouldn't. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:50, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Isn't that why Citizendium exists? Written by experts, curated by experts, using only expert sources. Though, several WikiProjects on Wikipedia have problems with your proposal, as it has resulted in conflicts between ethnic/cultural/regional editors and topic editors, who come to the same subject from different points of view, and some claims of racial bias in that the sources used by the topical editors are English, while the others are not, and that the "experts" do not take into account actual usage, only academic papers from foreigners who do not even speak the local language. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 00:12, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
It seems to me that this principle is incorporated through WP:NPOV, one of the Wikipedia:Five pillars. Praemonitus (talk) 00:18, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
The policy WP:GREATWRONGS says that Wikipedia is not meant as a remedy against the side effects of the peer-review system. Or, as I put it there, according to WP:GREATWRONGS Wikipedia does not have the task to redress unjust exclusion from the academe. So, arguments about the "other" (i.e. excluded) academia are void by default. Wikipedia does not buy tragic stories about how the truth about God gets nailed through peer-review. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:19, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
WP:GREATWRONGS is an essay, not a policy. Thus the basis of your argument is invalid. Praemonitus (talk) 00:21, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Ok, touché, it is an essay. By the way, WP:SOURCES says that in principle Wikipedia uses only expert sources. So there is no comparison to be made with Citizendium. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:23, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
WP:Use common sense is also an essay. WP:Bold, revert, discuss is an essay. WP:Tendentious editing is an essay. In fact, it is our actual WP:POLICY that the tag at the top of the page isn't what determines whether an idea is relevant, appropriate, or the actual practice of the community (which is, by the way, the True Policy: we have a "British constitution" system, not a statute of laws labeled 'policy' and optional musings labeled 'essay'). See the supplement to that policy for more details. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:28, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
You're right that it's not about the tag. That's not the point at all. Policies and guidelines are supposed to have consensus. If they don't, they will be changed. Essays, on the other hand, need not have consensus, and may indeed severely oppose it. That's why essays are absolutely correctly given less weight. --Trovatore (talk) 01:14, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
The bigger quote from Sheehan is:

Heir to a great ideal of the disinterested community of scholars seeking truth for its own sake, the university has become a central institution of the modern era.

— Peter Sheehan, Universities in the Knowledge Economy
My proposal is about recognizing the importance of the university (or universities) for the build up of human knowledge, which Wikipedia has to render. We know the boiling point of mercury, the chemical formula of water and we heard about Julius Caesar from people who got such information from scholars. So, scholars have created most of our explicit knowledge, at least the explicit knowledge of encyclopedic value. We have to recognize how dependent is Wikipedia upon the academe. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:56, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
"If something can't be taught at an reputed university, then it does not belong in Wikipedia." As far as I have seen, virtually any topic can be taught at a reputed university. This doesn't narrow things down much, if any. "My proposal is about recognizing the importance of the university (or universities) for the build up of human knowledge, ..." Nobody is denying this. But what you seem to be attempting to do is to constrain what can be covered on Wikipedia. The existing policies already do that. In particular, see WP:VALID which gives all due accord to the scholarly mainstream perspective. Whether editors follow those is another matter, but at least you can wave around the published policies in an attempt to forge a consensus. Praemonitus (talk) 04:09, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
It's not a limit for the topics, it is a limit for content, i.e. about the quality (intellectual level) of information and reliability of the sources. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:35, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Then perhaps then you could clarify your intent with a specific case: would you exclude content based upon a reliable journalistic source like the New York Times? The reporting journalist may be university educated, but the information source is a non-governmental commercial enterprise. Praemonitus (talk) 01:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
As I said before, for certain stuff, reliable press is good enough. I.e. for writing about Justin Bieber, we may expect that the press gives us more information about him than articles published with peer-review in scientific journals. In fact, what academics are in respect to scholarship, journalists are in respect to everyday events. They are professionals with a reputation of fact-checking and their area of expertise consists of everyday events like political events, disasters, crime, entertainment, etc. Plato and Aristotle did not have a diploma, because it was not usual for those time to have such credentials; meanwhile academics and journalists became specialized professionals, i.e. their activity got standardized and professionalized. Tgeorgescu (talk) 10:16, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
"For certain stuff, reliable press is good enough." So when it doesn't affect your bias? This seems to be an excuse to push forward your particular bias on Wikipedia. 216.238.225.200 (talk) 15:06, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I should have put "bias" between quotations marks, in order to show that it should not be taken purely literally. Speaking of biases, we humans could be accused that we have a breathing bias: whatever we do and whatever we say, we have to breathe. Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:49, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Wikipedia is successful because it is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The concerns of the OP are adequately addressed by WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:RS, etc. and is (indirectly) a re-hash of the WP:VNT argument. --Surturz (talk) 02:38, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
It already exists, but it's mostly phrased in the negative. Things like WP:FRINGE. But if you read WP:IRS, you'll see this is true. If you check out WP:MEDRS you'll see one of the strongest sourcing guidelines (although that's specific to medical articles). I seem to remember WP:PSTS taking a much firmer line in favour of scholarly sources, though it's possible that has changed. Guettarda (talk) 03:29, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, to abstract the gist of the arguments, my proposal is superfluous since Wikipedia policies, guidelines and essays already support/affirm it. In this case, I would simply like to add a hint in some policy about sources or about NPOV that "a pro-academia bias is no violation of WP:NPOV, but a straightforward consequence of how scientific research and philosophical/theological debate work". It would be restating the obvious, but it would have an educational (pedagogical) value, like "verifiability not truth" has educated thousands of editors into prioritizing reliable sources over their own musings about what the truth is in the edited matter. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:48, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support This seems pretty obvious and is clearly true. It is the academic community that produces the science and history other information that is used in our articles. Academic sources are also the highest quality sources we can use. Being "pro-academic" essentially means being "pro-information". And, really, you could technically argue it means "pro-truth" as well, since academics sources are the most likely to be correct and accurate. SilverserenC 17:01, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - This is clearly not in keeping with the spirit of wikipedia since the beginning and would be better suited to Citizendia. "Bias is something Wikipedia can do without." Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 01:45, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Except we already have a "pro-academia bias". It's called our "proper sourcing bias". The only major difference between us and Citizendium is that they required experts to actually write their articles, while we don't (as that would constrain the creation and expansion of articles). But, other than that, we both still have the same types of sourcing. SilverserenC 02:55, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Except the whole thing is ridiculous since it relies on some big-n-scary definition of the word "Academic" that you must have invented. According to dictionaries, an academic is "anyone connected with any institute of higher learning, or otherwise engaged in scholarly pursuits." The International Central Politburo of Accreditation is a pipe dream. Like the title says, this is all about "bias" plain and simple - getting someone's personal bias enshrined as "neutral" by applying some litmus test that doesn't exist on the English word "academic". Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 03:01, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I definitely agree with that, Surturz. Or disagree with the OP on that, I mean. But there is clearly a focus on high level sources, whether that means reliable news institutions or scholarly sources, such as published books or journal articles. My understanding of academic extends beyond just institutions of higher learning, but I understand how most people would constrain the meaning to just that. SilverserenC 05:08, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Is your 'understanding of academic' reflected in print in any source? That would help. This context I'm practically certain is a wiki-barbarism vintage ca. 2012. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 12:57, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
What I meant by that is that I consider high quality news institutions to be academic. Since a degree in journalism still comes from an accredited university, does it not? SilverserenC 18:11, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
So what is a "high quality news institution"? Describing them as academic? Hardly. The bias in the American news services is no longer deniable. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 03:39, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Press, even English language press, is not restricted to the US, besides, in the US you have publications with liberal bias, publications with conservative bias, and so on. So there is plenty of room for some press disagreeing with some other press. This way, at an aggregate level the press gives a broad picture of everyday reality, it just demands some zapping of the channels. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:10, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • In order to be able to identify reliable sources, we have to have some rule of thumb for who is an academic and who isn't, about who is an authority in his/her field and who isn't. So, sooner or later, it is unavoidable to pass judgment about who's who in the academe. "I like how he/she writes and I believe him/her on his/hers word of honor that he/she has checked the facts" is too subjective for WP:RSN. In fact, I ask for no more than what is being practiced daily at WP:RSN, it just has to get a formal recognition which will end nonsensical discussions like "your pro-academia bias is a violation of NPOV". Tgeorgescu (talk) 10:24, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • And of course accreditation matters, I would not want to be taught by someone who got his diploma through mail order or got a PhD for writing three essays on alternative medicine. But you should not turn it into a global conspiracy meant to silence the politically undesirable. Credentials matter and accreditation is there in order to prevent fake credentials. Tgeorgescu (talk) 10:57, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
"Rule of thumb for who is an academic and who isn't"? It seems you are asking us to officially redefine the word "academic" according to your concocted definition, not according to what any source will tell you it means. I don't see this going anywhere. It's kinda like coming into Village Pump with a section header saying "Wikipedia should be biased." Oh wait, it is... Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 12:57, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
If somebody does not have recognized credentials, relevant teaching position and research output in serious journals, why should we call him/her a scholar (academic)? It does not follow that I would be an academic if my research passes peer-review in the Academic Publishing Wiki at wikia.com. Or for that matter in any Eastern-European ersatz for an ISI-indexed journal. Tgeorgescu (talk) 17:35, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Wikipedia shouldn't take sides, it's an encyclopedia. It describes society, nature and science, period. So if someone claims that capitalism destroyed Mars, we may report (it if it's relevant). If you are convinced of truth, you don't need to write a sign "hey, this is true!", people will realise it if Charles Darwin was right or not. --NaBUru38 (talk) 13:06, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • In case you did not notice it yet, Wikipedia does take the side of Charles Darwin. Insofar Wikipedia is concerned, evolution is fact (or the paradigm of biology, if you wish) and creationism and intelligent design are pseudoscience. How does Wikipedia know this? It knows this from biologists who live by publish or perish. They have consensually agreed that evolution is valid and that creationism and intelligent design are awkward rubbish, insofar we speak of science. Tgeorgescu (talk) 13:40, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, it's always great when only one side of a controversy gets to make up "consensus", isn't it? Also it may fall in line with politically-enforced intolerant stances or agendas of certain governments in the world. But that makes it one of the well-known backwaters of impartiality on the project, when you look around the project as a whole, I tend to hope most of it is still more enlightened to tolerance than that one. But we must remain vigilant, that's what's it's all about. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 13:50, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Tolerance does not require refraining from calling a spade a spade. Wikipedia applies the label pseudoscience when it is consensually applied by the authorities in the field. I did not say that creationist theology would be rubbish, but when it tries to be science it does not get beyond pseudoscience. Physicists would be as combative as biologists if the law of universal attraction would be contested in court and churches would vehemently oppose teaching it. Scientifically seen, creationism "is not even wrong", it is not science any way one would look at it. Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:01, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe the original poster of this section should write an essay, or find an appropriate one to add to. --Izno (talk) 13:54, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, I have created Wikipedia:Academic bias. Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:54, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
    • Oppose and I guess the proposer has some funny idea of academic as well. At university I remember the librarians having a discussion about which new comics they should subscribe to and they had a 'blue room' where they kept any banned books. Why? so people in the future could study our society. Dmcq (talk) 11:22, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes "Wikipedia has and should have a pro-academia bias", but that is the result of our policies on sourcing and neutrality, not something we need make explicit. ϢereSpielChequers 16:40, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I agree it is the result of those policies, and if you read them properly my proposal is superfluous, but it would be weird to have such "bias" and refuse to mention it or talk about it. I did not say that I came with a new, original policy proposal. In fact, what I am advocating is as old as Wikipedia itself, or maybe at some later stage when it matured and needed to formalize what information gets collected. But saying that it is superfluous does not mean that it has no pedagogical value. A teacher has to be so redundant that his/her students won't fail to get his/her point. Redundancy is not a sin in education. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:13, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I kind of wish I had asked at the start, but what do you mean by "pro-academia bias"? That only professors get to sign-off on what is "true"? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:58, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Bias is for liars and con men. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 05:08, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that is called a bias, unless we really pay too much attention to people's credentials. The scientific method is simply continued into Wikipedia. If done correctly, that is the path to truth, not bias. David R. Ingham (talk) 05:57, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Correctly put, the results of the scientific method are rendered by Wikipedia. According to WP:OR, Wikipedia performs no original research upon any issue, but lets reliable sources speak. Reliable sources are generally published by academics (or journalists, if they concern the news). Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:57, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
You seem to think that only "academics" — professors? — and journalists are reliable sources. That is certainly not the reality outside of the classroom, and it shows that you misapprehend the basis of reliability. For that reason I ...

Requests for Internship

The above discussion doesn't seem like it's going to be successful, but I think I have a proposal that remedy some of the issues with the above RFC. We all must agree that there seems to be a problem with RFA, as we are making significantly less admins every single year. My proposal is to replace RFA with a very similar procedure. I call it "RFI" (Requests for Internship). The idea is that if a user wants to be an admin, they have to request becoming an "Intern", protegé, padawan, or however you'd like to call it. Here are the specifics:

  • Although similar to the "probation" proposal, RFI would be an obligatory step towards adminship. A user who desires to be an admin, must create a request page at RFI and follow a procedure almost exactly like the current RFAs.
  • The interns will be given limited blocking rights like the ones proposed in the above RFC, among other admin rights. The interns will be mentored by the admins on how to use their new rights and if they prove successful, they will be given adminship.
  • The internship will last from 3-6 months with an obligatory "Performance Evaluation" page open during their whole tenure as an intern. Like that, users will be able to give out advice, praise and voice concerns at any given moment.
  • Admins will be given the ability to take away the interns' new rights at any given time. User will feel more comfortable supporting an RFI knowing that their rights are reversible. However, it will be encouraged that the admins seek a consensus before taking away any of the interns' rights.
  • At any given moment during the internship, an admin can suggest on the "Performance Evaluation" page that the intern is ready for adminship. A consensus will then take place on whether to promote him or wait until the end of the six months.
  • If at the end of the six months, there is significant opposition on promoting the intern, or there seems to be WP:NOCONSENSUS, the user will be revoked of his internship privileges. He would be encouraged to work hard on improving himself before applying for another internship.
  • If a past intern who failed his Performance Evaluation succeeds at a second RFI, it will be encouraged that his second Performance Evaluation last the minimum 3 months.
  • If an intern decides that adminship just isn't right for him, he can add a template to his Performance Evaluation withdrawing his candidacy for adminship and asking an admin to remove his intern rights.

RFA wouldn't have to be done away with entirely. If there is a consensus that people should still have the option to run directly for adminship without interning, then by all means we can keep it. But I think most candidates should be encouraged to go to RFI before going through RFA. Most users won't ever know exactly what adminship entails until they have a walk in an admins' shoes. This way, users will be able decide for themselves whether adminship is a right fit for them. But most importantly, this will make the rest of the community comfortable with supporting RFI's knowing that these interns will be in the spotlight for a few months and the decision could be reversed if anything goes wrong.

Agree? Disagree? Discuss! Feedback ☎ 22:00, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not convinced that this is workable or the solution to our RFA problems. Some specific comments:
  1. We don't log what deleted edits an admin views, so one aspect of the internship would be un monitored.
  2. The WMF has been very clear that viewing deleted content is a big deal legally and they won't accept a method of giving people this right unless it involves equivalent scrutiny to an RFA
  3. While their deletions can be scrutinised by fellow admins they can't be scrutinised by non-admins.
  4. Deletion is one of those areas where some of us believe that a lot of mistakes get made and we need to be very cautious as to who gets this power. Incorrect speedy tags are already a problem, if this went ahead we'd risk more incorrect deletions.
  5. Blocking, or at least blocking vested contributors can also be contentious. I believe we might get consensus to unbundle blocking of IPs and new accounts, but I doubt we will get consensus to have a bunch of not yet vetted editors with the power to block the regulars.
  6. One of the few saving graces of RFA is that the timing is in the hands of the applicant, and it needs to be, so that they can pick a 7 day period that fits in with their real life commitments. It is particularly important in the early parts of an RFA, a candidate who leaves questions unanswered because they weren't online for the first three days can expect opposes; I always suggest to candidates that they save their draft RFA and don't submit it till the start of a long editing session. Your proposal puts the timing into the hands of others.
  7. If there is any pattern to desysops it is that they tend to happen to admins who have served for more than three years in which time they and either the community or its standards have drifted apart. So probationary and internship proposals are starting in the wrong place to address our adminship problems.
  8. This is a much more bureaucratic system, that might not be a problem on other sites or if it clearly targeted the problem. But it is a problem here.
  9. My experience of trying to persuade many editors to become admins is that the whole 7 day process is offputting, (sometimes I think we forget that we are trying to persuade unpaid volunteers to give us their time and take on some hassle). Lengthening it to months is not going to make it more attractive to many potential good candidates, it may actually make things worse.
So most of the usual objections to probationary systems, plus one about timing. ϢereSpielChequers 13:43, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
But most of these are valid objections for the current RFA system as well. My workaround to these would be to not allow the interns to view deleted edits, but they could still delete under the supervision of their mentoring admin. (i.e. every time they hit the delete button, an admin must confirm it). Like that, admins can be able to respond constructively to how they are using the tools. This process would also be an obligatory step towards adminship, so anyone who would be successful at a current RFA would have to go through this. I don't see how there would be any more "risk" then there would be with the current system. And as for the waiting period, the reason I said 3-6 months is because it is a very flexible timeframe. Someone can go three weeks without editing, and still be able to pass the RFI due to their general performance during the 6 months. If a candidate hardly edits during their 6 months and that negatively affects their Performance Evaluation, then they probably shouldn't have requested adminship in the first place. That's not a critique on semi-active editors (like myself), but admins should definitely be consistently active. 6 months (~180 days) is enough time to see if an intern will be active enough as an admin. Feedback ☎ 18:23, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
No these aren't objections to the current system, just reasons why the current system can sometimes seem harsh. The point being that admins have to go through that before we let them block or delete, if you introduce interns you temporarily give the block and delete buttons to a string of editors who have not yet gone through RFA. As for having every deletion seconded by a full admin. If every time they have to do an action a full admin has to confirm it then you have a very inefficient wasteful system. Lastly re levels of activity, we do desysop admins who have been inactive for a year or more as there is a risk that in the meantime their account has been compromised, or they themselves have got rusty. But our admins are volunteers, we've certainly had admins in the military who edit when not on active tours of duty and might not edit for months. Others might give us one or two evenings of their time every month. There is no reason why we should restrict ourselves to just those editors who are hear all the time. There is a defacto limit that you are unlikely to get through RFA unless you have a dozen recent months in which you've contributed over 100 edits. But that doesn't mean you have to be highly active, or continue that level of editing in order to retain the mop. Wikimedia Commmons has I believe a two admin actions every 6 months requirement. Here a semi active editor could remain as an admin despite not having a logged admin action for years. ϢereSpielChequers 19:04, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:2012 main page redesign proposal

Do we have a consensus to change the main page? How is it going? Asiaworldcity (talk) 02:13, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

We are on Wikipedia:2013 main page redesign proposal. Ryan Vesey 02:40, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Require users to confirm before removing large amounts of content

This is a pretty simple proposal, which I expect would be technically possible. It's sparked by coming across this edit, which I just reverted:[1] An anonymous IP removed 4000 bytes of content from the rarely-viewed BLP Jose Tillan, and nobody noticed until I came across it nine months later. Now, maybe User:204.128.192.34 intended to remove that content and honestly believed they were improving the article, or maybe they were trying to vandalise it; as they didn't leave an edit summary, we don't know. But I'd be willing to bet the removal was accidental. It's easily done: you click 'edit this page', click around a bit and make some changes, then click 'save page' and realise you've lost some text and don't know how to get it back. If you're a complete newbie, you probably don't even know how to view a page's history, let alone how to undo your edit; or perhaps you don't even notice that you removed anything. And meanwhile, some valuable content is lost until someone else notices.

All I propose is this: when a user submits an edit that removes a large amount of content from an article (say, over 2000 bytes), they should be prompted with an 'are you sure?' box telling them that they're doing so, and confirming that they wish to continue. This would be similar to the existing dialog box that appears when you try to navigate away from an edit window without saving your edits. The motive would be the same, to make users less likely to accidentally lose content.

Of course, there are plenty of good reasons for removing large amounts of content from an article, and having to click 'OK' each time would quickly get annoying, so registered users would be able to turn this confirmation off. But I think for new and unregistered users, it would be a good idea. So, what does everyone else think? (And would this be technically feasible?) Robofish (talk) 23:43, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Easily done with an edit filter if you can get consensus that it's a good idea. The "page blanking" filter catches situations like that: it doesn't insist on complete blanking. Right now, it's just set to tag the edit instead of warn.—Kww(talk) 07:43, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
I can negative effects too in teaching vandals exactly how much they can remove without it being tagged. Perhaps there may be a way of improving notifying about vandalisms to pages that have few watchers? Dmcq (talk) 11:06, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Sounds like a thoroughly good idea for preventing accidental blanking, and I don't see it having problems from the vandalism side. For one thing, since it wouldn't punish people who remove content, it wouldn't make vandalism simpler or less easily caught even if vandals found how many characters could be removed. What's more, if you're a vandal who figures out the number, either you're going to waste lots of time removing just the right number of characters, or you're going to remove substantially smaller amounts once you learn that big removals are slower. Either way, you're going to do at least a little less damage. Nyttend (talk) 15:20, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. Can't see any downside to this at all and if it's technically feasible and easy to implement, why not? Kim Dent-Brown (Talk) 15:25, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. Not certain what the threshold should be, but large deletions should be given half-a-moment's extra thought. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:06, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support for all the reasons expressed above; a simple yet effective change. Plus it can be done with an edit filter—all the better! —Theopolisme (talk) 21:58, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Conditional Support As long as confirmed users can toggle "off"; and someone, or group of editors, don't have to spend a great deal of time creating or modifying the Bot to do it. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 00:55, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Support with suggestion. Many articles have 2k of material that should be removed, though an edit summary is highly desirable when doing so. Suggest the filter exempt editors who have some TBD level of experience (enough that they would notice and self-revert accidental blanking) and use an edit summary (including default summaries for rollbacks and AES for redirects). Similar exemptions are already incorporated in Filter 30. Kilopi (talk) 10:21, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong Support- I think the "Are you sure?" box is a great idea, but I also think we should create a Special Page that lists the edits where users confirmed the large removals of content. Like that, these would be very easy to track down and correct. Like you, I also have experience with reverting IP edits that removed over 2000 bytes of content. I spent 20 minutes yesterday reverting and rollbacking about 15 articles. This is an issue we should all pay attention to. Feedback ☎ 07:20, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong support:(1)See this.(permalink) Twice it has happened to me. When I tried to edit a section from mobile, the rest of the sections, somehow, got blanked. (2)In another case, I was editing a very big page of Wikiquote (from slow Desktop Computer). When I saved the page, large amount of content got removed because of some error.[2] I was fortunate to be quick enough to revert it myself; otherwise someone may have even blocked me as it was my very first edit to mainspace there.···Vanischenu (alt) 12:18, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Support Yes, please. — ΛΧΣ21 13:45, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Conditional support under the condition that an option is provided for established editors to disable it. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 08:57, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Option to hide offensive images

I think this will get past WP:NOTCENSORED, but here's the problem: You want to look at an article which you know has an offensive picture, but you still need the information. Every image on Wikipedia (except the ones which will be offensive to nobody) is hidden to start with, and you click the blank area to see it. A cookie then keeps this information of which pictures you don't like, and the descision is reversible by a link below the image. Load speed is also improved because you are not downloading an image. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.13.130.87 (talk • contribs) 18:40, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Which images, in your view, "will be offensive to nobody"? —David Levy 18:50, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
This is easy enough for you to do: Turn off images in your browser. That way, you get to pick and choose what you might consider offensive. --Golbez (talk) 18:54, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
There is some sort of content control system being worked on. It would rely on ratings that you could then apply. I don't know the status and can't remember where this was discussed. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 19:21, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
An interim solution (until, er, hell freezes over??) is User:Anomie/hide-images.js - it hides every image until you click on it. Put importScript('User:Anomie/hide-images.js'); in your Special:Mypage/common.js (you need to be logged in to do it). It might be nice to make this a gadget, to make it easier to point to as a solution for those as wants it. Rd232 talk 20:10, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
meta:2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content. Seems pretty stale. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 20:43, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
It's a little more complicated than that, see User:Anomie/hide-images. Anomie⚔ 02:58, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
WP:NOSEE may help?
Last I heard, the 'gadget' isn't even being planned.
The original idea was to give people an option to tick a box that said "I don't want to see images whose contents are verifiably offensive to certain religious people" and thus automatically put a 'click here to see this potentially offensive religious picture' box on top of any images in commons:Category:Depictions of Muhammad or in commons:Category:Temple garment. Similar schemes were planned for disgusting medical pictures (see, e.g., endless complaints at Talk:Smallpox and any page showing mutilated murder victims) and pictures of sex acts (e.g., commons:Category:Photographs of sexual intercourse, which has since been deleted).
But some people said that making a list of categories that were likely to contain images that users might find offensive, or indeed doing anything at all that might allow, e.g., a person with PTSD to avoid looking at images of mutilated bodies or rape victims to read about sex acts without having to look at pictures of them, would obviously result in involuntary, irreversible, third-party censorship, and thus must be strictly avoided, even if it means that thousands readers cannot safely get the information they want and need. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
Some participants in the image filter discussions opposed "making a list of categories that were likely to contain images that users might find offensive" on the basis that it would facilitate third-party censorship (among other reasons), but I don't recall anyone citing this concern as an argument against "doing anything at all that might allow" readers to avoid viewing images against their wishes. Can you please link to some comments along those lines? —David Levy 21:23, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
I guess the successors to commons:Category:Photographs of sexual intercourse would be commons:Category:Penile-vaginal intercourse and commons:Category:Penile-anal intercourse? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:15, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
What would be helpful is a nice easy way to switch all images off or on, that could be used by any reader at any time, whether logged on or not, without having to muck around in style sheets etc. Giving the reader this sort of one-click option will take a lot of heat out of the situation while avoiding problems associated with censorship or having to define what images get filtered.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:49, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
Related: bugzilla:32138. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:15, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
One-click all-image filtering would be useful here, but a comprehensive solution will permit someone to go to Commons and search for images for articles like Vegetable or Cucumber or for illustrating a school report on nutrition without encountering anything in commons:Category:Sexual penetrative use of food (unless, of course, the user actually wanted to see these kinds of photographs). It's kind of difficult to find usable images while they're all turned off. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:00, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
Creating an image filter = direct and indirect censorship. As WhatamIdoing says....one click images filtering would put the control of an individual users experience in their own hands. I wonder if it would be possible to convert all images into smaller thumbnails which would give queasy readers at least an idea of what the image is before deciding to render it as full size. I'm not sure if this creates more questions than it tries to answer/resolve. --Shabidoo | Talk 02:22, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
I see that you've returned to the thread. Perhaps you overlooked my above message, to which I await your response. —David Levy 03:11, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

You were there, David. Don't you remember that not everyone was as moderate as you?

I could go on, but it should be clear enough. Some member of our community believe that people who strongly wish to avoid seeing certain kinds of images (e.g., mutilated bodies) should simply refuse to use Wikipedia or Commons for anything at all, or should find a way to filter images that does not require the agreement of the WMF. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:39, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm well aware that some participants in the discussions expressed opposition to "doing anything at all that might allow" readers to avoid viewing images against their wishes. In the above thread, you attributed this position to the belief that it would "result in involuntary, irreversible, third-party censorship". That argument pertained to the idea of "making a list of categories that were likely to contain images that users might find offensive" (and similar approaches), but I don't recall its application to other proposed implementations (such as the type suggested above).
I know that people opposed "doing anything at all", and I know that people expressed concerns about "third-party censorship", but who opposed doing anything at all because of concerns about third-party censorship? —David Levy 12:26, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
Your web browser (or a plugin for it) may already be able to approximate this ability. The ImgLikeOpera plugin for Firefox seems to do pretty much exactly what you want: displaying a placeholder for each image, until you click to download it. (If you're one of the few, proud users of the Opera browser, that functionality is native to the application.) About the only thing that isn't provided is a 'this image is offensive to absolutely no one' flag—and you're never going to get that. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Allow newly-registered accounts to save user-space books

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T48944

The book creator is currently set up so that only autoconfirmed accounts can save a book. This seems illogical, when we allow a newly-registered account to create a mainspace article, user page or user sandbox page with their first edit. This comes up regularly at the help desk (26 March 2013, 4 February 2013, 20 January 2013) and at Help talk:Books (12 February 2013).

I propose that we allow newly-registered accounts to save books to their user space, and modify the book creator's user interface to make this clear. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:14, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

This is obvious common sense. Any user should be allowed to create a book in their userspace. I suggest you file a bug to get this changed. — This, that and the other (talk) 01:01, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:38, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - it's causing no harm to any other users and allows them to interact with Wikipedia in a greater manor which could even encourage more users to become regular editors. Oddbodz (talk) 10:31, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Current tag for recent changes

One of the most annoying things about being a recent changes patroller or tags patroller is having to check if the edit is the current version of the page manually. I had an idea: you know those (current) tags on contributions pages? Well, I was thinking we could institute a similar feature for recent changes. Is this a good idea? Revolution1221 (talk · email · contributions) 16:53, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

This is definitely outside my experience, but this is the sort of question that usually leads to someone saying, "Just use WP:POPUPS, and it will do everything for you and bring you a cup of coffee, too." So you might at least look into that option to see whether it solves your problem, if you aren't using it already. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

RFC on microformatting bot to apply to NRHP articles

Please see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Start date in NRHP articles, about running a bot to implement "start date" and "end date" microformatting into NRHP infoboxes. --doncram 01:34, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Fig 1. Visitor traffic to Wikivoyage
Fig 2. Mock-up
Fig 3. Subtle version

Proposal

I want to propose to place a "Travel guide" link to Wikivoyage next to the geographic coordinates in articles on cities and countries.

We recently successfully launched our newest sister project Wikivoyage. During the week after its launch we ran a banner atop every Wikipedia article to inform the world about this endeavour. According to the regular editors at the site this resulted in a large number of constructive edits by new users. According to Alexa this promotional effort briefly put the site in the top 1000 of most visited sites on the Internet (see Figure 1.)

With the banner taken down a week later, visitor traffic remains far above what it was before the official launch, but nowhere near the level it was right after launch. Currently we link to Wikivoyage from our articles, as we do with most of our links to sister projects, from the See also or External links section. However, articles on cities and countries tend to be exceptionally long (Rome counts in at about 15 000 words) and readers are thus unlikely to scroll all the way to the bottom of these article and notice those links.

I propose we link to Wikivoyage from a slightly more prominent place: the top of the article. Mock-ups can be seen in Figures 2 and 3. I hope such a link will attract additional contributors to Wikivoyage and be helpful, or otherwise unobtrusive, to our readers. I would suggest starting out with the version in Figure 2 and move to the more subtle version in Figure 3 after we have managed to establish sufficient brand-awareness among our readership.

(The technical implementation would be realized by adding an additional field to {{infobox settlement}} and {{infobox country}}, and a small tweak to {{coord}} and {{coord/display/title}} to render the actual link.)

—Ruud 18:38, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Support

  1. Incredibly strong support I think this is an excellent idea. Ryan Vesey 18:54, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
  2. Support We sometimes link to Wiktionary at the top of articles (e.g. see Rig), and we have Interwiki links down the side of articles. There is no harm in linking to, and raising the profile of other Wikimedia projects here in Wikipedia, and this is no different and I think that it's sensible. I prefer the subtle version though. Bazonka (talk) 19:00, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
  3. support the "subtle version" listed here Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:39, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
  4. Support. I initially thought "this is so un-Wikipedia-like", but then I was convinced by JamesA's argument just above, and others. Wikivoyage is a special case among our sister projects, offering prose information (just like we do) but of a different nature. Our other sister projects do not offer prose information (well, perhaps Wikibooks does, but I don't think I'd be alone in saying that I don't generally visit Wikibooks). Reading a travel guide allows one to attain a greater understanding of the place in question, in a way that cannot be done through an encyclopedia article. People wishing to visit a destination may look it up on Wikipedia, or reach the Wikipedia article through Google, and may find the link to the travel guide even more useful than our encyclopedia article. Our other sisters provide content of a very specific nature (dictionary definitions, a collection of quotations, historical texts) but Wikivoyage's travel guides pack in a lot more detail from a wider range of areas (things to do, transport, safety, etc). WV's content is much broader in scope than the other sister sites, and is likely to be useful to many of our visitors. ...and lots more reasons to support. — This, that and the other (talk) 06:31, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
  5. Support. I wasn't convinced by the main rationale given in the proposal. But making Wikimedia's travel content more prominent atop these articles will be useful to many of our readers, and should help improve both Wikipedia and Wikivoyage content by reducing misdirected edits (as explained by JamesA and Ryan Vesey above). I'd have no objection to similarly prominent placement of links to pages on other sister sites, where these are especially relevant. Disclaimer: I have made nearly 200 edits to Wikivoyage, so perhaps I'm biased, although I also have hundreds on Wikinews and Wikidata, and thousands on Wikipedia and Commons. --Avenue (talk) 12:30, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
  6. Support the "subtle" version. I think this is a great idea. Wikipedia is not a travel guide; many readers will come here looking for travel guide type information, and will be disappointed when they don't find it. So I think it is in the readers best interest to link to Wikivoyage at the top; it will also emphasize that travel guide type information is probably better suited elsewhere. Since it's a sister project with useful, relevant content, it's consistent with Wikipedia's aims to link to it. Mark M (talk) 13:40, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
  7. Support if other wikis are linked in the same fashion as Ruud Koot describes. Pokajanje|Talk 05:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
  8. Support Does not disturb the article in anyway (instead makes it more beautiful), helps the needed and curious readers in the way they want), creates more editors as practically anyone can contribute to Wikivoyage (unlike the [virtually] saturated Wikipedia with a set of never ending policies).···Vanischenu「m/Talk」 20:19, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
  9. Support The job of Wikipedia is to provide people with information. Most people searching for a place would be interested in a travel guide. It makes sense. Mono 23:53, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
  10. Support. It will help direct readers and contributors to a more useful location. The same thing should be done with Species, Source, 'Tionary (for "the" and the like), etc. -- Ypnypn (talk) 19:29, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
  11. Support better visibility, but not a top-hatted link. Amended proposal: By definition the community agrees that Wikivoyage is educational, or it wouldn't be here. We do crosslink our projects (including top, middle and bottom of articles, and in various sections in the body). However I'm reluctant to have an automatic top-hat because Wikitravel is not "neutral" or purely citation based in the sense that Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource etc are felt to be. It doesn't aim to be, so that's okay, but it means I am reluctant to have it mass-promoted as a top link (like a geo-co-ordinate or dicdef could be) from every geographical Wikipedia article. I'd be happy to see a "Wikivoyage has an article on..." box in the body, adjacent to the intro, in the links, anywhere really, however prominent. That would do the job. But not a hat style link like the mockups show. For me, the difference of POV (which I am fine with on its own merits) prevents that level of promotion/linkage as "something more special" within Wikipedia. FT2 (Talk | email) 01:55, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  12. Support in principle, but would like to see what it might look like. As mentioned above, it will send people looking for travel information to a more appropriate place, It will remind potential editors that WP is not the best place to put travel information, and it will connect the WMF projects which is potentially good for all. Similar links should be available for other projects where the specific case is useful to the reader. Not all place articles will have a suitable travel article link, and there should only be one if the destination article is usable or better (usable is a quality rating on Wikivoyage). I will declare my possible bias as a long time editor and recent admin on WV, but also long term editor on WP, occasional editor on Wikispecies, Wikiversity and Wiktionary, so getting relevant articles from all of the projects linked in the most effective way possible is something I would support. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  13. Support if I understand this rightly. It's good as long as it's solely at the top of the article, but it would be a very bad idea to put it next to inline coords. Imagine it next to inline coords at a geocoded list, such as this one. Nyttend (talk) 21:41, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
  14. Great support - I think this is a great idea, something I'd be very keen to see. I think something like this will help improve WP by making it easier for users to navigate from encyclopedic content about a location to travel information. This will also have the effect of making it easier to remove some of the travel guide like information that creeps into most article about location. Cabe6403 (Talk•Sign) 09:13, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
  15. Conditional Support/Oppose Support if all sister projects can have a link in that spiot if appropriate, otherwise weak oppose.Tazerdadog (talk) 19:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
  16. Support - For a slightly different reason: most medical articles have an infobox at the top of the page that includes links to relevant resources like OMIM (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man), ICD (International Classification of Diseases), and/or NIH (National Institute of Health) pages on the subject. These resources have highly relevant high-quality information that is often beyond the scope of the Wikipedia article (or provides in-depth information that is summarized in the article). This is an example where a specific type of article has a specific set of information and links provided in the infobox as a matter of policy. The utility to the reader is obvious, and it furthers the goal of providing highly relevant information. Since this proposal similarly involves a very specific type of article, it seems reasonable to me to enact a policy of providing a link to this highly relevant source of information at the top of the article. Whether this ought to be done for other sources in articles on other subjects is probably best discussed separately. Hyperion35 (talk) 20:52, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
  17. Support This is an excellent idea. Since Wikipedia articles frequently rank above other websites, this is sure to boost traffic to Wikivoyage. It will also assist in helping people realize that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a travel guide. BDP3300 (talk) 19:54, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. Oppose, I am not seeing a strong enough argument for privileging one sister project over all the others. All our links have so far gone at the bottom of the page (or sometimes the bottom of infoboxes.) Rmhermen (talk) 18:06, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
  2. Oppose - Wikipedia is to be an encyclopedia. It is not here to serve as promotion to other Wikimedia projects. These sorts of links are at best handled on a case-by-case basis for whether they are even suitable for the External Links section in the first place, but promoting them for special placement on article is simply not at all what we are here for. DreamGuy (talk) 03:40, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
  3. Oppose - Exactly per Dreamguy. It can be a great external link, but is not always fitting so should be decided on a case-by case basis. Definitely doesn't belong on top but should be in the external links section. Same as Commons, WikiQuote, WikiSource etc etc Garion96 (talk) 14:42, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
  4. Oppose. This is an encyclopedia, where the encyclopedic information comes first and links to additional resources are footnotes, no matter how special one thinks they are. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:04, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
  5. Oppose per Rmhermen. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:43, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
  6. Oppose Please do not put colourful clutter at the top of articles. Why not treat WikiVoyage the same as other Wikimedia projects: Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wiktionary, Commons - all get a link at the bottom if they have relevant, useful info for the article. This prominent placement for promotion would be a bad precedent. And readers would become "banner-blind" to it soon anyway. --Atlasowa (talk) 09:23, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  7. Oppose Links to Wikivoyage are all ready located at the bottom of the article along with links to other wiki sites. Unless we were to place them all at the top of the article, which would make a horrible mess, then I say we don't place Wikivoyage at the top as that would give an unfair bias to it. Oddbodz (talk) 10:25, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Comments

I would not object to placing other sister links in a more prominent place if they are highly on-topic (e.g., wikisource:Bible (King James) from Authorized King James Version or wikibooks:Haskell from Haskell (programming language). As Commons and Wikitionary cover a very wide range of topics they might be less suitable.
Reasons for treating Wikivoyage specially would include, as mentioned above, the relative length of the Wikipedia article from which we link and the fact that there is more competition in the "travel wiki" market than in the "quotations wiki" market. —Ruud 18:51, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Also, Wikipedia doesn't have issues with too many quotes, source material or media being added to articles. Many destination articles, however, get overrun with business links and touty tourist material. JamesA >talk 00:30, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
  • If the wikivoyage:Iowa page is typical of a Wikivoyage page, support the "subtle version" listed here. As for the placement issue, placing it with the geolocation information makes sense to me. Having the information at the top of the page may or may not make sense, but it is the status quo ante and this discussion isn't the place to discuss/change that, imho. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:39, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I'll abstain from voting, being a new Wikivoyage administrator. Although this proposal primarily speaks about the benefits to Wikivoyage, I can think of a few notable benefits for Wikipedia. Before Wikivoyage launched, many country, city and Tourism in xx articles had issues with being too touristy. While any tourism section should be factual and speak about trends in tourism and government campaigns, often it devolves into a paragraph about the best places to visit when you go to this destination. By adding the link to the travel guide in a more prominent position, it may encourage users and businesses to go there and add travel information where it belongs. It will also help prevent unnecessary links under the External links header. JamesA >talk 00:30, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
  • It's very obvious when reading comments at the Help Desk, Teahouse, and article feedback tool, that many readers come to Wikipedia expecting information that an encyclopedia can't/shouldn't provide. Including the link will be beneficial to readers, and will also ease the strain on Wikipedia editors because misguided new editors who want to provide travel guide like information will be directed there as well. Ryan Vesey 04:38, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
We don't link to Commons, Wikiquote, or Wikisource at the top of articles either. Why should Wikivoyage get special treatment? Rmhermen (talk) 18:43, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Not true. Wiktionary links often appear at the top of pages, like in the Rig example that I mentioned earlier. Bazonka (talk) 18:25, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
That is a disambiguation page, not an article. See above where I linked to our standard advice on link placement. Rmhermen (talk) 06:40, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
I never said it was an article, but a page, which is also the term you used above. Bazonka (talk) 22:29, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia rarely has issues with getting too many dictionary definitions plagued across an article. I haven't seen problems with too many quotes. However, articles getting bombarded with touristy info, business listings and other non-encyclopaedic content is all too common. Nearly every "Tourism in country" page is non-encyclopedic, rather listing all the best tourist attractions. This isn't just about helping out a sister project in getting more viewers. It's about trying to clean up Wikipedia and put content where it belongs. That is why we need Wikivoyage links underneath the headers. JamesA >talk 04:46, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
See Template:Wiktionary#Placement, The template may be placed anywhere, such as the external links section, the top of the article or... (e.g., They, She, Illeism, Cruelty and Shut up). ···Vanischenu「m/Talk」 18:42, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  •  Comment:It should be all in or all out, nothing just for one of the sisters. Wikivoyage is not a special case. for example, someone looking up a book could equally expect to find that copy listed at the top for Wikisource, an annotated version at Wikibooks, etc. The management of spam is not a valid argument, and you cannot truly believe that it will stop the addition, and on a similar note we are not wishing to distribute the spam to Wikivoyages anyway. Quite a specious argument, some already spam both enWP and enVoy, and similarly across many of the languages (and to note that I see a fair amount of these sorts of xwiki link additions) Think encyclopaedic! Think what may be possible via infoboxes. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:33, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
    • Your first point about not playing favourites is true. However, we must make sure we don't overdo it. I would find it very difficult to justify placing Wikiquote, Wikinews (it will often add little that is not already in the encyclopedia article and its sources) or Wikiversity in a "header" position under any circumstances. Wiktionary, maybe at the top. Wikivoyage and Wikisource, yes (although I still think Wikivoyage has the best case). Wikispecies has highly specialised content so it should go at the bottom. We should distinguish between "further reading", which users may want to look at after reading the article (use existing footer links), and "alternative" types of information, which they may be looking for instead of our article (use header links). — This, that and the other (talk) 08:53, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
      Well, there is certainly a case for placing all sister projects on top − see for example « Guillaume Paumier and Elisabeth Bauer. “Strengthening and Unifying the Visual Identity of Wikimedia Projects: a Step Towards Maturity.” In Wikimania 2007, 1–10. Taipei, 2007 (slides). Jean-Fred (talk) 15:15, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
  • You seem to be missing a vital point - that travel information is particularly relevant to many readers of these country and city articles. In contrast, I don't see how a link to a Wikispecies page (for instance) would be useful in most city articles, but it could be relevant for readers of a species article (and Wikivoyage probably wouldn't be). --Avenue (talk) 12:43, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
  • With the suggested technical implementation it would still be possible to decided on case-by-case basis whether to link from the External links section, the top of the article or at all. In particular, this proposal, if accepted, does not address the question of whether it would only be appropriate to link from the top of an article if Wikivoyage guide is already well developed—to ensure the reader will be presented with useful information—or also to "stub" articles—to encourage additional contributions to our sister project.
    Additionally, I disagree with the statement that "[Wikipedia] is not here to serve as promotion to other Wikimedia projects." Wikipedia already does so an a wide scale. This proposal is merely a suggestion to do it in a more effective way, to the benefit of both Wikipedia and its readers. —Ruud 10:18, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I agree that WP isn't here to promote sister projects, but when a siter project provides information which has a reasonably high probability of being useful to a reasonable number of users, it makes sense to provide a link in the most useful way. A top link is more obvious than any of the other options, thus is more likely to be spotted soon by the user who really wanted the information from the other project, but got the Wikipedia page because that is often the first hit in a search. In a way it is a project disambiguation link. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is the biggest and most active project by a significant margin. It is appropriate for Wikipedia to lead by example. It is also ethically preferable and appropriate to do something because it is the right thing to do, rather than as a way to pressurise others into doing the right thing. Where Wikipedia leads, others may follow. It is better that we lead in the right directions. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment on Garion96's vote, I agree it is not always fitting. The destination article should be appropriate in both content and quality. If this is the case then why not put it where it will be seen? This principle applies to any sister project article - If it is both appropriate and of acceptable quality, linking from a high visibility area is a service to the user. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment on Ningauble's vote, Yes, WP is an encyclopedia, so the fundamental information of WV is not appropriate in the WP article. A top link draws that fact to the readers attention by showing where it is appropriate, and if that is what they want to read or write, that is a better place to go. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Don't care. As a uniquely location-specific wiki, it seems sensible to put the link right there next to the location. The argument about all other subjects needing to be treated identically is fallacious: books don't have a special coordinates tag at the top, or anything equivalent, so there's nothing already there to attach a Wikisource link to. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:03, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment on DreamGuy's vote, Original research is one of the main differences between WP and WV, and lack of OR makes WP stronger as an Encyclopedia, and its presence makes WV viable as a travel guide. It is inappropriate to use this difference in policy as a reason not to link, as the difference in policy is necessary to the fundamental purposes of the projects. Wikitravel has a policy to "be fair" in the interests of the traveller and the travel industry. However I also recommend that only articles that are appropriate in both content and quality should be top linked. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I think we should do a better job of promoting sister sites, but the coords globe already kind of bothers me. Adding further clutter to that area doesn't feel good. I'd like see a better implementation. There's been talk of a sidebar section. We already have interlanguage links, but not interproject links, in the sidebar. A sidebar section would be scalable and would serve multiple purposes. The current proposal serves one purpose and even then I don't think it's served particularly well.

    In some ways, I think the red and green Wikivoyage icon remind me how Christmas ornament-y the top of the page has become (featured article star, lock icon, coord globe, etc.). --MZMcBride (talk) 07:01, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

    This whole proposal if of course an exercise in the management of "visual bandwidth" and I do share your concerns about overdoing this. I'm not much of an artist but I'll try to make a mock-up of both a sidebar version and an even less obvious top-linked version this evening. A priori, I'm afraid the sidebar might not be that effective, as it is already a bit cluttered.
    In favour of a top-link would would like to argue that 1) articles rarely use the full palette of top-icons and top-links at the same time, and that 2) an article would likely, or should, only have a top-link to a single sister project (cities to Wikivoyage, publications to Wikisource, ... Wiktionary is a different story, I've long felt that is needs to be much more deeply integrated with Wikipedia's user interface, but that project would be beyond the scope of this proposal.) And 3) use of a more consistent colour scheme, or even style, across all our icons and other interface elements would likely help a lot to reduce the "cluttered" feel. —Ruud 09:48, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Migrating references to Wikidata

A bot very similar to Addbot could be used to migrate references to WikiData. There are numerous benefits to migration:

  • Easier sharing of references between articles on one Wikipedia
  • Improved ability to create translated articles
  • Allowance to categorize reference works based on titles, authors, publishers, etc.

Perhaps best of all, this would not require any updates to MediaWiki or a new sister project. All that would be necessary would be new templates (in the form of {{cite doi}}) on WikiData and a bot to migrate existing references to the new templates. Wer900 • talk 17:57, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

It's a possible future improvement, I believe. --Izno (talk) 18:18, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
I'd like to understand what will happen when there are multiple editions of the same reference used on different articles, each with varying content and different style preferences? How will the variances be rectified? What is suitable for one article may not be suitable for another. Praemonitus (talk) 02:10, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm very leary on this. Unlike interlanguage links, references are very specific to the exact usage in the exact articles they are used in. Ideally, someone reads something, creates some text in Wikipedia, and then cites the specific text they create at Wikipedia to the source text that is supposed to reference that. I'm not really clear on exactly what the bot will be doing (is it removing the refs from the articles as it migrates them?!?) or what? I'm confused about exactly what is being proposed and exactly what the use of this will be. References are the lynchpin that holds all of Wikipedia together, and if we start messing with that, I think we have some real problems. --Jayron32 02:20, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
I thought the main point with Wikidata was infobox information, not storing article references. Sure, the infobox data will be referenced, but it shouldn't replace anything else. Chris857 (talk) 02:25, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
See, I'm just not "getting" what is being proposed here. A clear proposal which explicitly and exactly explains what is being added and what is being removed from actual Wikipedia articles would be excellent. Until I see that, I'm just not sure what we are voting on. --Jayron32 02:51, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Given the above complaints I think that I should explain this more:

A new bot would be created which would migrate references to corresponding pages on WikiData. Initially, templates like {{cite web}} would be moved to WikiData (along with all necessary meta-templates) and then references would be migrated to a bot. For example, <ref name=bob-2013>{{cite web|url=www.bob.com/index.html|first=Bob|last=Johnson|date=January 1, 2013}}</ref> would be migrated to a page in a new References namespace on WikiData. This would have the benefits of improving categorization of references and sharing across and within wikis. Wer900 • talk 04:01, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

What does "migrate" and "moved" mean? --Jayron32 04:31, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I don't think this would be feasible, because you just have no idea how different the different languages all are. It may be in a few cases hey might want to share the same references, but in many other cases they will not, or they will want references in their own language, and wikidata should not be used to force them all to conform or be on the same page when they are all already quite independent. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 04:15, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
    • The reference code is the same across all Wikipedias, and non-local language sources, while not necessarily prefered, would still be useful. Wer900 • talk 04:21, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
      • The basic <references/> tag and underlying code is certainly the same, but what about the highly configured and complex templates that editors use here on en.wiki, which may or may not be used elsewhere? Are we really going to port all that code to WikiData as well? In that case, we'll have to make sure any changes to said templates are also performed on WikiData, else things will start to spiral downward very quickly. — Huntster (t @ c) 04:49, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Definite oppose. Interwikis are comparatively stable and updates are easily dealt with by bots. References may change daily, added to, removed, etc, at a rapid pace. If we think there is a problem with unsourced articles and information now, just think how bad it will become once newer editors discover they need to go to another site to add or change a citation? Or, perhaps we'll have citations spread between here and WikiData. It'll become an absolute nightmare. To be blunt, I would have absolutely no part in it. — Huntster (t @ c) 04:49, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. There is no compelling showing of why references should be moved away from where they are used, nor that there is sufficient reuse of references that there is any advantage or efficiency gain in storing them centrally. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:08, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose as a Wikidata admin, this makes no sense to me. --Rschen7754 09:03, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose (as another Wikidata admin). I can think of many benefits of the phase II roll-out here (e.g. changing data55 on {{Infobox person}} to {{{spouse|{{#property:P26}}}}} so that someone's spouse will be shown if it's listed on Wikidata but not here), but for the time being I don't see this as one, especially when, to be honest, Wikidata currently doesn't have a sufficiently intricate sourcing interface. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 21:59, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Alternative proposal

The above proposal, storing the entire {{cite web}} as a blob in wikidata, is IMO just not going to work out. But something that stores just the data, e.g. something vaguely along the lines of BibTeX, could probably work. Our "{{cite wikidata}}" would pull in the necessary properties and format them in our style (e.g. using Module:Citation/CS1), and allow us to augment it with the specific page numbers and access dates necessary for the particular instance. A good initial goal, should someone actually do this, would probably be to migrate {{cite doi}} and related templates, as they already use the "give an identifier and get back a fully-formed citation" model. Anomie⚔ 13:02, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Whilst more technically feasible, it would still be pretty confusing to have references split between here and WikiData (or reference-data) for the new user, who we would like to understand and use references. Interwikis were perfect s something almost never edited by new users and never really needed to be. Also it would be difficult to really test that effect to be sure it was worth it. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:38, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
OTOH, references are already confusing to people who would be confused by that. Anomie⚔ 14:26, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Suggestion: Having a more flexible storage scheme would make sense. The Wikidata entry should be flexible enough to allow multiple formats, depending on the layout of the article where it is used. Possibly the data entry can include the complete raw data with all the expansive information, plus an unlimited number of layout format slots that utilize the raw data via (for example) printf-like format statements. Standardized template formats could be made available, but it should also allow for alternatives. The article author would then insert the reference by a Wikidata call that specifies which of the stored formats to use. Praemonitus (talk) 17:03, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
  • This is already being worked on I asked about this a while ago and was told "it's being worked on". There's already been several years of work done on this general idea at meta:Wikicite and specific details about implementation have been discussed for several years at meta:WikiScholar. Cheers. 64.40.54.208 (talk) 04:29, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Restrict rangeblocks to CheckUsers

Restricting WP:IPBE to CheckUsers makes sense because only CheckUsers have to proper information to make that judgement call. The same is true for rangeblocks. Since IPBE is often granted to good users caught in rangeblocks, and only CheckUsers can see which good users will be collateral damage, it makes sense to restrict rangeblocks to CUs. Blocking good users causes much more damage to Wikipedia than the vandalism it prevents because of all the good users that leave. In fact, the blocking policy actually says to have CheckUsers check for collateral damage before making a rangeblock of any significant duration, which most are.

Some people would have you believe that Admins are perfect and never make a mistake, and that good users are never blocked. Unfortunately this is not the case. By 2009, we had more than 6 million IP addresses blocked in rangeblocks. The problem was so bad that Newyorkbrad (talk · contribs) had to ask admins to monitor the problem because of all the good users being blocked.

Concern about excessive rangeblocks
A few weeks ago I guestblogged a series of posts on The Volokh Conspiracy. Since then I have received e-mails from several readers of that blog on various issues. One of the most frustrating was from an eminent retired law professor, who indicated that he has attempted to contribute to Wikipedia articles several times, but has been blocked from doing so. He summarized the message that he receives when he tries to log in, and it turns out to be a Scibaby rangeblock. I have written back and explained how I can go ahead and create an account for this editor, but he seems to have moved on and I fear that we have lost the possibility of his contributing permanently.

In the wake of the publicity surrounding the ArbCom decision in the Scientology case, I was asked to appear on a radio show. There was a short call-in segment in which three people called in, and one of them also complained that he too has been caught up in longterm rangeblocks. Again, I offered to explain to him how to get an account opened if he would e-mail me, but I never heard from him, so he may have given up as well.

It is understood that rangeblocks, particularly ones placed by checkusers, are intended to address long-term abuse situations and are sometimes necessary. However, if they are overused, we risk cutting off our nose to spite our face, and there are also times when semiprotection or just dealing with petty nonsense is a better answer than blocking tens of thousands of IPs. I think we should all please make a point to use rangeblocks as narrowly as is reasonably possible. (diff)
— User:Newyorkbrad 15:00, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

By 2011 we had gone up to 7 million IP addresses blocked and by 2012 it was up to 8 million.

Today, we have 14 million (14,009,294 to be exact) IPv4 addresses blocked and 1.1092E30 IPv6 addresses blocked in a total of 1,356 Range blocks

Anybody that tells you that good users are never blocked and that there is no collateral damage in rangeblocks is sadly mistaken. 64.40.54.138 (talk) 08:54, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

There is almost always collateral damage with range blocks, that's a given. But there are many occasions where there is no other choice. Restricting range blocks to only checkusers is foolish and unnecessary. Anon-only range blocks are often necessary to deal with vandals editing from educational institutions with lax IP allocation policies. I have made many, many (short) range blocks of this type, including many before I was granted access to the checkuser tool. There are many similar cases as well. Unless you're going to be hard-rangeblocking, the chechuser tool is not going to tell you anything more than the javascript CIDR contribs gadget available in your preferences if you're logged in (although I will admit it is far easier to read the results in the CU tool). Range blocks already should only be implemented as an absolute last resort, and only for a short period of time without asking a checkuser. Forcing all range blocks to only be implemented by checkusers is excessive. I would at least tacitly support a proposal to ensure that admins consult a CU before making a long-term range block, or a hard range block, but really, people shouldn't be making that sort of block anyways before asking a checkuser to look for excessive collateral damage.
Also, I want to point out that the number of IP addresses blocked has very little correlation on the amount of collateral damage caused. I have seen many IPv4 /22s with more edits than probably 80% of IPv4 /16s. J.delanoygabsadds 15:35, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I agree that restricting it would be foolish. There are many admin who know more about rangeblock appropriateness than some CUs, and most admin who aren't familiar with rangeblocks will just ask someone else to look at it. Being a CU doesn't mean someone is necessarily more network savvy. That said, it would be nice if we didn't INDEF block IP addys, or at the least, had an automated way to list rangeblocks (or any IP block) after they have been in effect for one year, for review. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 17:21, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Example I am sorry to have to correct my well-respected fellow Wikipedians above, but they may not completely understand the situation. This is understandable because they do not look for bad blocks. On the other hand, I do.
In 2006, 65,536 IP addresses were blocked when 67.18.0.0/16 was indeffed. In 2011, 67.18.92.167 (talk · contribs) asked to be unblocked (diff). Three well-respected admins reviewed the unblock request and all of them denied it (diff). I asked the original blocking admin to review the block (diff). The blocking admin agreed to lift the block (diff). This was 2 years ago, and there have been only positive contributions since then as one can see by checking the range contribs for 67.18.0.0/16. This is only one example of literally dozens. I would ask my fellow Wikipedians above to please look in to the situation before calling it foolish. We have an significant editor retention problem at this time and I am simply trying to help. Thanks. 64.40.54.254 (talk) 20:19, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement for how we do rangeblocks, I'm just saying that limiting them to CUs isn't a guarantee of better results. Fewer blocks don't guarantee better results either. Like I said above, I think the software should not allow indef blocks for IPs and we need a mechanism to auto review all blocks over 1 year. We will never "get it right", we can only hope to get as close as we can, while blocking problem editors AND causing the least amount of collateral damage. Collateral damage will always be >0 as long as we allow IPs to edit, forcing us to sometimes do range blocks. Doing them smarter is a good idea, limiting them solely to CUs isn't the best way to do them smarter, however. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 22:20, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Dennis, the root of the problem is that we don't really have a system in place to review long term IP or Range blocks. They really aren't very visible until an IP editor starts pushing over a particular instance. I started looking at Indef IP blocks a few months ago, and started a list of particularly old indef IP blocks at User:Monty845/Indef. They range from blocks with little explanation, to blocks by advanced permission holders that would require investigation by a combination of checkusers, arbs, OTRS agents, as well users with with Proxy check and WP:LTA expertise to conduct a review. Such a review really would need to be an organized group, prefarably with a mandate from the community to tighten things up to a certain standard. Monty845 23:08, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose, especially since rangeblocks of around /64 and smaller in size in IPv6 rarely will need CheckUsers to clear. There are many admins I know who know how to make rangeblocks but are not, and often don't want to be, CheckUsers. Any IPv6 rangeblock larger than one user's subnet (typically /64 to /56) and any IPv4 rangeblock can and quite often will cause collateral damage, as subnets of those sizes are to be sure to be used by more than one user. If rangeblocks are overused, which I'll say is somewhat true to a very slight (and hardly problematic) extent, this is not the solution.--Jasper Deng (talk) 23:24, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment. I've been thinking about this problem, and wondering, why do we apply ACB (account creation block) by default for pretty much every softblock? I think it often creates more problems than it solves. If we're blocking a single user who's vandalizing, sure it makes sense, we don't want to let them create an account while still allowing people with existing accounts to edit to prevent inadvertent collateral damage. But if we're blocking, for example, a school or library, we should block the IP to prevent drive-by vandalism but allow account creation for legitimate uses. A more determined vandal might create an account to vandalize, but then we just block it as soon as it starts editing as a vandalism-only account. Pretty simple. Also, I oppose this proposal per above, given the many reasons why non-CU would need to use rangeblocks. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:07, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I can't count how many times bored schoolchildren have taken advantage of the fact that account creation is not blocked for their school. I would say on average, if ten accounts are created from a school almost all of those ten accounts are VoAs. The only accounts that are not VoAs are the ones that haven't edited yet. It is extremely rare to find a legitimate person editing from schools (I am not talking about colleges or universities). Elockid (Talk) 00:20, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Legitimate user who edits from school right here. I agree though that is a problem. My school's IP is currently under a 6 month block (JamesBWatson (talk · contribs) assigned it, second block with the first being one week set by JohnCD (talk · contribs)) so no problems in that direction, at least until April, sometimes though I use the IP on Simple English and Meta because of the load lag the computers get it's faster to do edts as the IP, Look at my WikiVoyage user page, I admit to using the IP there. MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 17:09, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Rangeblocks are a significant problem I guess the reason people don't understand how big this problem is—is because I didn't provide enough examples. So here are the rest of the first dozen.
In every one of these cases, all the unblock requests were denied and it took a third party to intervene to get them unblocked. WP:IPBE is one of the ways to help good users caught in rangeblocks. If IPBE is going to be restricted then rangeblocks also need to be restricted for the simple fact there are hundreds of bad rangeblocks. I can post another dozen if people still don't understand the situation. Just let me know. Thanks. 64.40.54.79 (talk) 05:07, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
The main problem is hard rangeblocks, which I strongly oppose and think should almost never be used. For soft rangeblocks, IPBE is not necessary, and thus can be used more liberally (but still with great caution). In my opinion, if you have a range of 256 IPs of which 200 are open proxies, surely it won't be too hard to get ProcseeBot to block all of them individually rather than slamming a rangeblock on it? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:49, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
ProcseeBot can only check the small subset of proxies which are open HTTP proxies. Range blocks are not generally implemented, or useful, for these types of proxies. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:28, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose as it is unlikely to solve the problem. Personally, I don't think I have ever done a range block because, frankly, I don't understand them. But there's no reason an admin who does have the technical knowhow shouldn't be able to perform them. Also, in the specific example given above of an innocent person being caught in a scibaby block, that's been a long time and please forgive me if my memory is wrong, but I'm pretty sure the person doing most of those was himself a checkuser. So I'm not quite sure how preventing non-checkusers from doing range blocks is going to stop people from being caught in a scibaby range block. --B (talk) 21:35, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
"I'm pretty sure the person doing most of those was himself a checkuser" - this is correct. J.delanoygabsadds 22:14, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
  • What about some sort of solution that limits large rangeblocks to checkusers, but lets admins carry out the smaller ones ones (an obviously dynamic IP user repeatedly vandalizing a talk page, for example?) --Rschen7754 22:18, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
King of Hearts points raises the point that most range blocks should be soft blocks, in the case of a soft block, it seems like a regular admin should be able to evaluate things without the additional checkuser tools. I could see restricting hardblocks of large ranges to checkusers though. Monty845 22:26, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Is there not already something in place that prevents range blocking large ranges? Like 1.1.1.1/0 (I think that's every IP address in existence, right)? I'm hoping/assuming that there's already something restricting the number of IP addresses you can block in one action. --B (talk) 22:47, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
    It is not permissible to block a range larger than /16. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:50, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
    Just for clarification for me, is it merely not permissible (meaning if you do it, you invite the wrath of the community, Jimbo, arbcom, and the cabal) or is it actually prevented by the software? (No, I don't propose to delete the main page and find out.) --B (talk) 00:44, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
    Sorry, I meant technically impossible, as in the software will not permit it. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:46, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Oppose but worth commenting. Indeffing IPs is a bad idea and I think the practice has more or less been terminated (well, maybe not [3]) voluntarily due to the problems outlined by the IP above. A multi-year rangeblock is better in extreme circumstances or proxy hosting, since it will eventually expire, and won't be re-applied unless the abuse resumes. Rangeblocks are necessary in many run of the mill situations where CU is unnecessary (school blocks, IP hopping , IPv6 anything). I would comment that hard rangeblocks are necessary for proxy-hosting ranges because of throwaway accounts (why hard) and the fact that it's very very hard to detect every proxy (why the range) and there's no need to edit via an open proxy unless someone is trying to evade scrutiny (why nothing of value is lost). Sailsbystars (talk) 01:05, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I just thought of an additional reason: They may be a minority right now, but as IPv6 addresses proliferate, many of them will simply assign an entire /64 block to a single individual. /64 IPv6 rangeblocks may become a routine part of an admin's arsenal at WP:AIV, depending on how IPv6 addresses are handed out. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:01, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per King of Hearts. Elockid (Talk) 14:30, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose and strongly so. Many admins have the know-how needed to perform rangeblocks. At times range-blocks are crucial to stop a problem and have to be applied swiftly, and not always finding a checkuser is possible, tho not being able to find any checkuser online is now a much more uncommon scenario then it used to be once-upon-a-time; it wouldn't fix anything, as checkusers use wide rangeblocks just as much as non-checkusers do; /64 subnets are assigned by many, many ISPs/hosting providers/whatnot by default for IPv6; if all rangeblocks had to pass by checkusers, we'd have to double the checkuser team's size at least. Snowolf How can I help? 06:06, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose I work at SPI where at times I apply rangeblocks based ona large number of socking IPs. (All of mine seem to have expired based on the report). I would say that almost all experienced SPI clerks have implemented rangeblocks, short-term or long term at one point or another. We have the technical know-how and are aware of the standards. Admins should certainly not give out too many rangeblocks, but I do not think that this proposal would actually, independently reduce the number of rangeblocks. I've only used two at SPI, generally deferring to checkusers, but the fact I rarely use them is not a compelling reason to remove the ability. NativeForeigner Talk 00:24, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposal: mass deletion of all articles at WP:AfC

Moved to Wikipedia talk:CSD § Proposal: mass deletion of all articles at WP:AfC
 – 64.40.54.241 (talk) 03:13, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
I boldly closes this discussion here because we shouldn't discuss the same proposal at two places. Please let us discuss the new CSD criteria and the potential mass deletion at the RfC at Wikipedia talk:CSD#G13: Abandoned Articles for creation submissions. mabdul 14:51, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

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

Proposal: All declined articles at Articles for creation that are over 1 year old—some 90,000 articles—should be mass deleted without further review. 64.40.54.111 (talk) 02:31, 7 April 2013 (UTC) added "declined" per comment below. 64.40.54.202 (talk) 23:35, 7 April 2013 (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.

Shouldn't discussions at this village pump be officially closed before being archived?

When I look into the archives of VPR I find many discussions that were archived despite not being officially closed. In some cases it is hard to tell from the archived discussion whether a proposed change was implemented or not. Wouldn't it be better to require that all discussion be closed by an editor before being archived? Even if a change is not being discussed or outright rejected due to WP:SNOW reasons, it could still be officially closed and noted as SNOW close in the closing comment. I can't really see any drawbacks regarding this proposal, so I am bringing it here for assessment by the community. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 08:41, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it need to be closed before it is archived? No, seriously. Some discussions merely peter out, or attract little attention at all. If a discussion doesn't attract enough attention to generate the need to close it, there isn't a compelling reason to keep such discussions from being archived. Some discussions don't need to be acted on at all, they can just be left to die on the vine. Formal closure is really only needed in cases where the discussion is extensive enough to establish consensus to act. If we required discussions to be closed before they were archived, we run into the very real problem of leaving pointless discussions around for months or years. Let those just vanish. --Jayron32 22:43, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
The main drawback is that people who could be doing something important would be wasting their time on formally closing discussions. Discussions are formally closed only if necessary. If nobody cares, or if everyone already knows what the agreement is, then it's not necessary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:17, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Well, I guess there are really more important issues than whether a discussion had been officially closed before being archived or not. So lets close this and focus on more important issues. Who wants to waste some of their time and do it? -- Toshio Yamaguchi 21:24, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

suggestion box

Can you add a feature to wikipedia as in newspapers, when you scroll down it gives you a suggestion as a side-box related to what you read? I believe it will be really beneficial.

Hello! The section "See also" and the navigational boxes are meant for that. You can also see the categories of an article. Have fun! --NaBUru38 (talk) 15:54, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

(Disclosure: I work for OCLC)

For research was recently reviewing Template:Cite book#URL and noticed this sentence: Do not link to any commercial booksellers such as Amazon.com. However there are quite a few links to Amazon. Using Pywikipedia bot, I wrote a small script that determined that on April 9 2013 Wikipedia has 44,816 total links to Amazon, of which 19,075 are in mainspace. I'm curious as to what the community thinks should be done. One thing that could be done in my opinion, is to write a bot that would rewrite these links to a non-commerical website. It's possible to write a bot - I wrote User:VIAFbot - that would load the Amazon link, search for an ISBN, and then search that ISBN in WorldCat and return replace the Amazon link with a WorldCat link. WorldCat is a non-profit website links tell the user the closest library that has that book, and can link to free full text versions potentially.

Example: Benoit Mandelbrot has link http://www.amazon.com/The-Fractalist-Memoir-Scientific-Maverick/dp/0307377350/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351968124&sr=8-1&keywords=fractalist. Follow that link and see that it has ISBN number 978-0307377357. On the Wikipedia page, replace the Amazon link with http://www.worldcat.org/isbn/978-0307377357.

I'm wondering what people thinking about this idea? Maximilianklein (talk) 22:32, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not averse to changing Amazon links to WorldCat links, but I am averse to doing this as an automated process. Humans should be able to make human judgement and notice odd exceptions which were unforeseen (I can't think of a valid reason, right now, on the spot, why a mainspace article would need an Amazon link, but that doesn't mean that such situations do not exist at all); bots cannot do this. So, if you wanted to be bold and start weeding out the bad Amazon links and WP:BOLDly replacing them with good WorldCat links, I would never object to doing that necessary work. I'd be leary of assuming that a bot could do this, however, as I trust human judgement in finding edge cases than I do for bots to do the same. --Jayron32 22:40, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
The Amazon Standard Identifier, ASIN, is one of the 18 different document identifiers presently supported by Module:Citation/CS1 for use in citation templates. This has struck me as a little weird, as I think it is the only one associated with a specific commercial company while the other 17 ID systems are industry-wide / non-profit / governmental. As best I can tell, ASIN is used in roughly 1000 citations, so it wouldn't be that big a deal to remove it if people wanted to. Though I wouldn't do it myself without some sort of a consensus. Dragons flight (talk) 23:03, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
As I recall from my attempt to update {{cite video game}}, ASIN is the only identifier for many Japanese game releases. It is also the only identifier for a lot of Kindle books. --  Gadget850 (Ed) talk 02:26, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
If it's possible to get both an OCLC number and an ISBN (which won't happen with video games), then I'd be happy to have a bot mindlessly remove the Amazon link. Many of these are added by inexperienced people who just don't know any better. If there is some exceptional circumstance that requires not just those two numbers, but also an ASIN, then a test run of 100 pages/day for a week or so ought to be sufficient to identify it. The only possibility that occurs to me is someone citing content or reviews on the page about a book, rather than the book (e.g., "According to the Amazon page for this book, it has 235 pages and is seven inches tall"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:21, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
I think we have one or more articles about authors who have reviewed their own or their rivals books. They may validly have Amazon links. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:36, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
I like this idea This is a very good idea, but I would prefer it to be a user initiated tool rather than a bot. The tool could find a page needing updating, load the edit window with the suggested changes and show a preview to the user. The user could review the change and press the save button. I don't know how difficult it would be to make a tool like that, but I would use it if it were available. 64.40.54.121 (talk) 03:58, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
While I support this in principle, I'd like to see some stats on where these links are. Are they in bare references? Citation templates? External links sections? In running prose? We may need to deal with each type in different ways. We should also exclude the articles Amazon and any associated companies and topics. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:33, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose If we're just talking about uses in {{cite book}}, I see no need for either link, at least for those books that actually have ISBNs. We already have Special:BookSources to avoid the problems of having one default site to look up books by ISBN. But I know that I for one have cited books that lack both an ISBN and an OCLC number; sometimes the ASIN is the best option. Ntsimp (talk) 14:41, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Response It seems like there are more nauances then I imagined about what is entirely replaceable. It sounds like a Gadget might be a good fit for making this a semi-automated human-driven task. Would that work? Maximilianklein (talk) 17:27, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I believe a WP:Gadget would be very helpful. Thanks. 64.40.54.100 (talk) 09:23, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Auto reflist when previewing whilst section editing

Is it possible to automatically display the equivalent results of a {{reflist}} if you are previewing your edits whilst section editing? It is annoying to not see it at all until you hit save, and then realise that you stuffed up the cite template parameters. I know that complicated ref groups and other details might not show properly, but could an auto reflist on preview be implemented as an opt-in? The-Pope (talk) 04:16, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:16, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
T7984 - Edit preview doesn't let you preview cite.php footnotes --  Gadget850 (Ed) talk 10:35, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing me to the history, I should have done a better past proposals check. It seemed to get good support back in December 2011 when it was last discussed. To answer the query from that discussion, I would be happy to do a straight {{reflist}} equivalent for the current section only, either automatically or via a check box, as this would solve the problem for most cases of adding new refs. I think if you are adding duplicate refs from other sections via named refs, then you probably should be editing the whole page, not just a section, or the ref was already visible, so it doesn't need checking during preview. The-Pope (talk) 02:00, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposed mergers

First off, I'm not sure what's going on with the protocol for this but at the moment it's unclear and seemingly under discussion. Whilst it's up in the air, I'm making some proposals here.

Girls

Sunmachine

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