Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive AL

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Wikipedia project

I was thinking last night that perhaps someone should start a wikipedia or wiki project (not a new wiki)that brings the wikis together. For example a article about spanish language might then have a link or part of something that was on another wiki. So to give the user a full advantage on knowledge throughout the wikis.Wiki.user 11:53, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Look up wiki in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Well, there are interwiki links (the 'in other languages' boxes along the side), sisterproject boxes, (like the one here pointing to Wiktionary), and the entire project Meta, which among other things coordinates interwiki issues. I'm not quite clear I understand what you mean, though. --ais523 14:14, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
I think he wants interwiki transclusion, so material in other wikis will appear within an article. (SEWilco 15:51, 3 June 2007 (UTC))
Something in between the two latest suggestions.Wiki.user 18:07, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Is your are reffering to a project, where you search in particular subject and get a list links to the subject from other wiki projects, I don't like the idea. It would be overly confusing. However, the idea of having more interwiki links, not just dealing with different language wikipedias, sounds good. --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 19:34, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
I think he wants data that is duplicated between projects to be editable from a single source. So the population of Spain is cited/verified at a single location, and embedded everywhere else. He wants m:Wikidata, which will exponentially increase the amount of raw-facts we can distribute. --Quiddity 21:08, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
All i basically thought was just to have more wiki links, to make it easy and encourage people to use all the wikis for knowledge, not just wikipedia...that's all. Where people have got these fancy ideas about wikidata or putting things into an article i don't know.Wiki.user 19:34, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
Psychological projection and wishful thinking ;) --Quiddity 19:49, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Lists of Office Holders - standard format?

Wikipedia has numerous pages of Lists of office-holders (many of which I have contributed to myself). The thing which detracts from the standard of Wikipedia is lack of conformity in such pages as these lists. The style is so varied that it makes Wikipedia look piecemeal.

A standard format means a reader can instantly grasp the layout and can expect the same in each list.

Certain lists have different emphases according to the nature of the list. However as far as lists of office holders go, consistency should extend to the following:-

1. A tenure date column (with an agreed consistent format - some currently have the from and to date in a single column, whilst others have the dates in separate columns) 2. An incumbent's name column, a political affiliation column (where appropriate) and a Notes column. 3. A column containing thumbnails of the portrait of the individual adds to the appearance of the page. 4. The position of the columns should be standard.

I personally consider that the column which specifies the order of the list should be the first (leftmost) column. In the case of a chronological list of office-holders this is naturally the tenure date column. --JohnArmagh 16:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Random Portal tag

Is there a possibility of coding in a Random Portal tag or page like the one available for a Random Topic ("Special:Random")? It would add further functionality and consistency to the site and would further increase the presence of the portal pages (which even I wasn't aware of until recently).
Kudos 06:50, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. Or, if that is not suitable, Wikipedia:Portal/Directory should be more prominent. Adrian M. H. 16:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Special:Random/Portal will take you to a random page in the Portal namespace. That page will link back to the top-level portal page. 69.201.182.76 17:22, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

New Tag

A new tag should be made to tell people if there’s any sexual or inappropriate images or features in an article so no one stumbles across something they don't want to see. This could be a tag that have two options on it, see the inappropriate images/features, or block them. Or the tag could work anyway. If I had kids, and I stumbled across one of those sexual image, I don't want my children seeing it, not to mention i don't want a kid to go into an article with inappropriate images and seeing them {I wouldn't want a kid on an article that needs sexual images in the first place.} A tag like this could be helpful in so many ways. §→Nikro 21:38, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia and Wikipedia is not censored. If you don't want your children to see them, monitor what they're doing. --132 21:42, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
Here's another relevent article (here), that talks a little more in depth about why they shouldn't (or even should) be used. --132 21:45, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this is one of the perennial proposals. The main problem is that you'd have to figure out what constitutes sexual content, and then how to judge it. Is a woman showing ankle too much? Is genitalia in need of censorship? Wikipedia isn't censored, but it's also supposed to work on the principle of least surprise, so as long as you stay away from articles related to sex and anatomy, you aren't likely to see many naked people. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:49, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. There's the clincher. What's inappropriate? It's extremely subjective. Some people don't consider anything about the human body or sexuality to be inappropriate while some would think that someone showing their shoulders or ankles is entirely inappropriate. It's a slippery slope that would likely cause one nice, big snowball effect where more images are censored than not because someone, somewhere thinks it's inappropriate. --132 21:55, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Toby was a proposal where you could tag any page with 'toby', where basically 'toby' represented anything someone might not want to see, and people could turn that on or off. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:10, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 March 8/Template:Linkimage involves this issue. –Pomte 23:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
That's simply unnecessary. The project is not censored...well, you know the rest. Jmlk17 06:12, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia does not use disclaimer templates. See also the Content disclaimer. Kusma (talk) 11:35, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Robots.txt

I expected to find this on WP:PEREN, but didn't. Have there been previous proposals to change the robots.txt file for EN to lock out Googlebot and/or other major search-engine spiders? Our high PageRank is very flattering, but is increasingly leading to Wikipedia serving as an indiscriminate source of real-time information, rather than a project to construct a high-quality encyclopedia over the long term. Of course this would require massive discussion here and then with the Foundation, and would probably be bogged down in public outrage, but this seems like a discussion we should be having. -- Visviva 22:15, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there's any reason to block out search engines completely, but I .really. wish we would block user pages and all talk pages. Those pages don't get patrolled all that well and it's very easy for something defamatory to survive on a talk page or user page. By not allowing those pages to be indexed, we limit the possible damage. --BigDT 22:30, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
According to Brandt, talk pages are already blocked by google for some reason. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:05, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Just to clarify, I was proposing (or at least inquiring about) blocking major search bots from all pages, including articles. -- Visviva 01:03, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't see why this should be done. Additionaly, I frequently use Google to search Wikipedia because Wikipedia's search is terrible, and makes it very hard to find pages if you don't know how to spell something and what not. --R ParlateContribs@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 01:24, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
We write WP in the first place in order that people will find the information. We want to encourage our articles being found, rather than less reliable articles elsewhere--blocking talk pages however seems reasonable, since discussions take place there which we'd never permit on an article page.Not that we would ever want to hind them, just that people shouldn't find them first. DGG 01:42, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
I've put up some rough pro-and-con at User:Visviva/Robots, which anyone is free to edit. I'm not actually proposing this -- I was just curious if anyone might have done so already -- but I do think that our increasing role as a real-time information source and internet presence is detracting severely from the actual work of writing an encyclopedia. -- Visviva 04:11, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

So you're trying to have that we won't be as prominent on Google to reduce spam, etc.?! That would greatly reduce the amount of constructive edits and potential great users! Reywas92TalkReview me 20:18, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

It would also, and more importantly, reduce the number of people who come here to make their voice heard on the Net, who are more interested in winning arguments than building an encyclopedia. To say nothing of people who think their contribution to Wikipedia is to make the articles look pretty... Going off the grid would also dramatically lower the stakes in edit wars and requested move conflicts, and considerably reduce the immediate gravity of issues like WP:BLP. I am less concerned with vandalism or spam -- although anything we can do to make ourselves a less inviting target is worth considering -- than with our becoming the World's Battleground or Slashdot 2.0. -- Visviva 08:42, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
The only major problem with blocking out articles from robots.txt, would of course be that a) we would have to rely on the fairly poor search engine in Wikipedia in order to find articles, b) we'd hide ourselves from new editors which may not know about Wikipedia yet, c) hide the information people actually search on google in order to find...thus making the encyclopedia rather pointless. Bjelleklang - talk Bug Me 11:25, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Every good, active user we recruit can fight off fifty spamming, vandalizing, testing users. I also completely agree with Bjelleklang above in all points. Reywas92TalkReview me 20:14, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Request for consensus: External Links => Incline Citation Bot

  • In many wikipedia articles, there are external links after a sentence which is used in a number formating (so the external link has no extra info attached to it); example [1].
  • Would it be possible for a bot to remove "[" replacing with "<ref>" and remove "]" replacing with "</ref>"?
  • After that the bot would search if there is <references/> in the article.
  • If it cannot find it, the bot would make a new sub-section "==References==" and place "<references/>" below that.
  • The bot would have to make a list from the last dump of all the mainspace articles, and perform the operations (hopefully it will get over within one week).

--Paracit 23:24, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

In my view, end of section references are preferable when there is a textual description of the reference. For a pure html link, the reference section just obscures matters, requiring an extra click-through. However, putting raw links into a reference section might encourage people to change them to proper citations. That's a testable proposition, and if it's true this would be a good idea. Derex 00:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Some editors might consider it controversial to change an inline link to a cite.php reference. Even if it encourages adding full citation info, some will view this as a short term detriment, by making the link one step removed. Gimmetrow 01:34, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
It is possible to create such a bot and not very complicated actually. But I share the concerns mentioned above. Maybe you should see if you can reach a consensus in a discussion on this question at WP:CITE. Perhaps this has already been decided on and you can provide a link to it? I'd be interested in helping with the bot / programming it, if there's such a common agreement. I suggest continuing to talk about a bot when we are sure your suggested changes are supported by the community. — Ocolon 08:33, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
I've run across other articles where an editor has manually (I assume) converted embedded links to references/footnotes, without adding anything else. I suppose that encourages editors to work the references to improve them; I'm not sure (because I didn't systematically follow up over the months) that anyone actually did.-- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
I would almost suggest to just be bold, and manually do a few articles and see the reactions. Do the links get improved? Do you end up just annoying people? etc. —— Eagle101 Need help? 04:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Check this out so many external links converted to inline citations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clinical_depression&diff=118654983&oldid=118576074
--Parker007 21:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the Clinical depression article *did* benefit from converting the external links to inline citations. A problem that this conversion did not address is that the reference sections contain a lot of raw link text that ought to be replaced by useful 'metadata' in the form of authors, titles and complete names of publications. (Each raw link could be replaced by a citation template, and the link itself could be filled into the 'url' field, so the citation would be clickable). Someone could go through manually and fix that. Another more general problem is that this article seems to be overwhelmed by its excessive references. Wikipedia is not a directory or a bibliography. Not sure what your tool could do about that, but it might suggest to us that manual fixup can do things that a bot cannot. EdJohnston 16:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Request for consensus, please. --Paracit 06:44, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

It would be helpful if a click on a citation which is a bare URL went to a screen that prompted for the rest of the citatation metadata as an encouragement to get it collected. I dissent in part from EdJohnson that the Wikipedia is a not a bibliography. The Wikipedia only has credibility or encyclopedic authority to the extent that it can reference the secondary sources which compose the articles. After all, the article authors are not experts but anonymous compilers of information available in secondary sources which are attributed and can be verified. Something which appears first or only in the Wikipedia is called original research. patsw 12:31, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposals such as this should be discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals); consensus on on a talk page is not usually considered adequate justification for highly visible bot operations. CMummert · talk 12:39, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Request for consensus, please. --Paracit 21:09, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


Bad idea. Raw number external links are not an ideal form, but hiding them behind a ref tag isn't the answer, they need to be replaced with properly formatted citations. That's not really a bot task. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I too have misgivings about the idea - whilst I personally would like to see all inline html links replaced by properly cited footnotes, this would be against current guideline of forcing a change of footnote/citation style - see WP:Footnotes#Converting_citation_styles which states "Converting citation styles should not be done without first gaining consensus for the change on the article's talk page.". So whilst I would dearly personally like this, I would bow to the wider community's relunctance for this.
Minor point from WP:MOS, surely "References" are used for sources researching the whole topic, whereas what we are addressing here are footnotes supporting or elaborating on specific points. Hence the <references/> tag (despite its name) should be under a "Footnotes" or "Notes" section. David Ruben Talk 22:42, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
I've used [2] type links in the bodies of articles deliberately on several occasions. A semi-automated bot maybe, but not automated. LukeSurl 00:03, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Define what you want done. Automatic or semiautomatic doesn't matter if nobody knows what is acceptable. Under what conditions is a direct Wikipedia link useful as a direct reference? Usually Wikipedia is not a reference. (SEWilco 05:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC))

It's worth pointing out that bare URLs are an acceptable reference style, so long as they are complemented by full citations in a separate reference section. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:35, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

What's your point? A bot can also create missing citations. (SEWilco 05:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC))
The point is that how will a bot recognize between bare URLs used incorrectly and correctly used embedded citations. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:19, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
The simplest test is to look for the same URL in both the article text and in a citation. If the place where citations are listed does not have a URL, then that URL does not have a citation. (SEWilco 00:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC))

This strikes me as a bad idea too. I think there are times when an editor wants to link to an outside source inline without sticking it in a footnote. --Selket Talk 06:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

A detailed citation is required; see WP:CITE. For example, if you don't document the title of the web page which you are linking to then it becomes much harder for someone to clean up your link when the page gets moved on the external server. (SEWilco 04:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC))
This is a very good idea, take Tar_sands for example, where instead of a reference section it has external links after the sentence. I strongly support this proposal. --Khunter 16:16, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I also strongly support this proposal. References via external links look messy, and really aren't that standardized. If you look at most featured articles, you will find that they all use the footnote method. Seems like a great idea to me. Tim.bounceback(review me! | talk | contribs | ubxen) 21:38, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
This cannot be an automatic process, in articles such as Enzyme kinetics the square brackets are used to denote concentration, eg "At low concentrations of substrate [S], the enzyme exists in an equilibrium between both the free form E and the enzyme–substrate complex ES; increasing [S] likewise increases [ES] at the expense of [E], shifting the binding equilibrium to the right." A bot would replace this correct formatting with ref tags. TimVickers 00:21, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
A bot should not. [ES] is not an external link, and you can see Wikipedia does not show it as a link. An external link has to have "http:" or another protocol after the opening bracket. (SEWilco 05:41, 6 May 2007 (UTC))
this is a useful proposal in the case where an article has a mix of ref-style citations and inline external links. in these cases one style should be used - ref-style. i have tidied-up mixed up articles like this several times, and it is invariably an improvement, encouraging further ref-style citations to be added by other editors. 86.31.103.208 12:43, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Support - Standardization is good. I would just say either require human intervention before proceeding to edit/replace a [http://link with] text in it & make sure it ignores the contents of the external links sections. MrZaiustalk 16:19, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Oppose; this is a bad idea for all the reasons above. This is the sort of change that almost always requires a human hand. (A citation with no details is no better than a numbered link, and not all numbered links are citations.) — The Storm Surfer 20:55, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Oppose; Reference adding is by nature a human task. On the other hand, if you want to tag external links outside of reference/external links sections with some small [Inline citation format needed] type template, that might be OK. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 21:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Category listing all people in Wikipedia

Is it possible to create a category listing all the people in Wikipedia so that I can find them easier and read about them?

Do you mean people who have Wikipedia articles about them, or people who edit Wikipedia? –Pomte 17:53, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Or Category:People? Adrian M. H. 18:33, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

fringecruft board?

I believe we should have a separate project or noticeboard for reporting fringe theories. For instance, I accidentally stumble upon Cyrus the Great in the Qur'an and read the following: "Gog and Magog were the wild tribes of North Eastern Asia which, from the very early times had been making inroads on settled kingdoms and empires in Asia and Europe and ravaging them. According to the book of Ezekiel (Chapters 38, 39), they inhabited the territories of Meshech (Moscow) and Tubal (Tubalsek)." Is there a place where I can report it, since I have neither time nor desire to revert war or persuade people that it should be removed and the whole page rewritten? There are dozens huge articles along these lines scattered across Wikipedia. If no measures are undertaken, Wikipedia will rapidly evolve into an asylym for kooks eager to elaborate their obscure theories in mainspace. --Ghirla-трёп- 06:17, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

the main problem is that many good editors do not have the required background in humanities to tell fringecruft from bona fide minority views. I understand this, if you have no deeper acquaintance with the field, how can you tell? That's precisely how kooks sell books, they target a popular audience and tell them they are being hushed up by senile professors. There are just as many cranks in the natural sciences, if not more, but they don't stand a chance because many Wikipedians have a science background. But nonsense about Proto-Armenians, Harappan Proto-Aryans or Gog and Magog go unchallenged for months because very few people can be bothered to check. The problem is that the only people that seem to care about the Armenian hypothesis are Armenians with little or no education, and the only people that care about Indian mathematics are Indians with a collective inferiority complex. And we both know that the less educated or self-assured you are, the more aggressively you will push your national honour on the most absurd points. Our problem is not with real kooks so much as with second-generation expatriate youths who are shedding their testosterone properly intended for tribal warfare in front of the screen.
what can we do? The problem is not that we need a board, but that we need more good editors to clean up the poo-poo made by the confused and indoctrinated. A noticeboard would see much abuse. I can already see Bakasuprman and cronies tout N. S. Rajaram and denounce the entire field of Indology as fringecruft (or "dabcruft" as he likes to put it) that belongs deleted.
I could see a WikiProject. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Decrankification. Where we can keep lists of articles that need cleanup, troublespot topics, and keep records of past discussions so that interested editors without the necessary background can get their bearings quickly. But I'm not sure it would do much good, we simply lack the manpower. dab (𒁳) 06:33, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
IMHO, such a tag would only allow a new kind of tag abuse, where people add such tags to articles where they don't belong. How many times don't we see bad faith {{fact}} additions?--Berig 06:54, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't propose a tag but a noticeboard along the lines of WP:PAIN or WP:RD/H where people could investigate obviously cranky statements along the lines of "Ezekiel wrote that Moscow..." as in my link above. Or: "These fundamentalists thrust Islam by hook or by crook. They converted by atrocities, by polluting the KPs by banning the wearing of sacred thread and tilak, by sexual harassment and forcible abductions of the daughters of Hindus and other satanic misdeeds."[3] Or: "The Parama Kambojas (Asii), Lohas and Rishikas (Tukharas?) also fell into the Scythian region often said to belong to Amyurgian Scythians by Herodotus".[4] You don't need an Oxford degree to understand that these statements are cranky. Neither dab nor me have time to remove these claims and to spend days defending their removal from unavoidable accusations of "vandalism". For this very reason, they are perpetuated in Wikipedia for months if not years, seriously compromising the project's integrity and reputation. We need to address the most glaring violations of WP:FRINGE, which instructs the proponents of fringe theories to reference their claims "extensively, and in a serious manner, in at least one major mainstream publication or by another important mainstream group or individual". --Ghirla-трёп- 07:19, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
indeed. But look how difficult it is to get even our reasonably educated friend Rokus01 (talk · contribs) to edit responsibly. You can always dodge common sense and put the burden of proof on those who challenge you. Most of the "cranks" we get have no education to speak of, often they can hardly write comprehensible English, let alone follow explanations of how they are mistaken, even if they wanted to. Oxford degrees have nothing to do with it, but you need at least highschool literacy for a meaningful debate to be possible. We cannot take it upon ourselves to offer basic education to random teenagers with internet connections. That is what I meant with my infamous "shithole" comment: If a handful of educated editors are faced with literally hundreds of uneducated edit-warriors on switching IP addresses, Jimbo's approach of 'talk to them kindly until they understand' simply breaks down, as much as I hate to say it. The result is, of course, a growing number of permanently semiprotected articles. That takes away the brunt of driveby-cranks, but is of course no obstacle to cranks with any dedication to speak of.
anyway, your idea of a noticeboard has some merit. I tried to give a first outline of the shape of the problem here. What we need are pages that allow a quick overview of affected articles, and the typical issues involved. dab (𒁳) 07:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
I tried to leave statements on talk pages along the lines of "I wrote the article and I consider this version [link] definitive" but in reality this approach does not work. I also thought about bringing forth the most glaring cases on WP:RD/H, as it is the last refuge of reasonably erudite public interested in improving mainspace coverage of humanities. In truth, it took me about a year to have someone (an anonymous editor) deal with Martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadar, after I mentioned the article on more than one noticeboard. I will air my grievances on Wikipedia talk:Fringe theories and WP:VPP to see what others think about it; your comments are welcome too. --Ghirla-трёп- 07:46, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Fringe-cruft is best handled by discussion and pointing out relevant policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. WP:FRINGE is a good start but don't forget WP:WEIGHT, WP:N, WP:RS, WP:NOR, and WP:V. In order to even have a mention at Wikipedia, the prose must fulfill all those points. That is, it must not be unduly emphasized in comparison to its notability, it must be sourced by reliable sources -- which usually means that critical review needs to have happened: using only primary sources doesn't cut it, it must not represent an original amalgamation or construction, and must be wholly verifiable. Normally fringecruft violates one or more of these policies and guidelines. If the editor is reticent and refuses to admit this, try getting a Wikipedia: Third opinion. If you are meticulous in your documentation (which isn't that hard), you will find that other editors will be responsive to your perspective. -- ScienceApologist 12:56, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
You don't get it. I'm aware of dozens articles along the lines of Komedes which have been here for years and whose current shape is damaging to the reputation of Wikipedia. I have neither time nor desire to muck about with them, much less to request third opinions, to pontificate about secondary and tertiary sources, or to fend off accusations of vandalism. I don't have a noticeboard where I can report Komedes, so that people with plenty of time on their hands could decrankify such pages. Your proposal amounts to preserving status quo. Well, I don't give a hoot either way. --Ghirla-трёп- 14:02, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Also, there already is a fringecruft noticeboard of sorts at Wikipedia: Wikiproject Skepticism. No need to reinvent the wheel. --ScienceApologist 12:58, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Where can I submit a page for investigation? I have been exposing kooks for years and I have not come across a single member of this project, by the way. Probably they are simply not interested in history, especially its nationalistic aspects. --Ghirla-трёп- 14:02, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Template test subpage(s)

When template editors try something bold on templates, we usually put the new code in a sandbox, and put some sample transclusions in another sandbox. What if we centralize the use of these two sandboxes as subpages, say /test code and /test transclusion? For a high-profile and complex template like {{Infobox Country}}, different editors may understand/care more about different parts of the template. With the centralized sandbox, we get better coverage of testing. Obscure use cases can also be documented (like the recent Giant space issue of {{Infobox Country}}. This is a pattern that is similar to the /doc pattern dictated by Wikipedia:Template documentation. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 11:40, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I know of one active example at Template:Infobox Settlement/Test, and there's a need for test cases at Template talk:Cite news#Volume/issue, redux. I see no problem with creating a subpage and linking to it from the documentation. –Pomte 14:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
An advantage of a single sandbox is that a prepared collection of test cases can link to the sandbox, so effects of modifications might be more easily apparent. (SEWilco 15:49, 3 June 2007 (UTC))
Could be useful for a few templates and could encourage regular users to edit modify otherwise protected templates. I would keep the names of the subpages a short and descriptive as possible though. How about /sandbox and /testcases. —Ruud 16:23, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Or /sandbox and /sandbox/doc, and then put the testcases in the latter instead of the documentation. —Ruud 16:25, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Any name is fine with me. If this is perceived as a good thing by the community, should this be written into a page in the "Wikipedia:" namespace? What's the process of creating a new one? --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 00:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
I would suggest just to modify {{template documentation}} to mention the sandbox (if some parameter is set), then create a few testcases for a number of highly used templates which could benefit from this (e.g. the cite-family and some of the infoboxes) and see if it catches on. —Ruud 07:39, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
P.S. if you follow the naming-convention I proposed it should be possible to copy the real and sandbox code one-on-one between the template and the sandbox. —Ruud 07:39, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

This is my plan:

  • Use /sandbox and /testcases
  • Put conditional links at {{Template doc page transcluded}}
  • Create Category:Template sandboxes and Category:Template test cases (parallel to Category:Template documentation)
  • Write the documentation of this pattern at Wikipedia:Template test cases
  • Implement on a few high profile infoboxes.

--ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 08:28, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Making vandals stand out

If someone has just committed a vandalism spree and is close to being banned, is there some way we can tag their account so that all their edits appear in a different colour, bold, or something like that? I'm not sure how it would 'wear off', perhaps just after a certain amount of time, but it would certainly help in vandal fighting if people new who to look for. As to who could assign it, it could either be automatic after a last or only warning template was placed, though it could also be placed by users (say the semi-protection criteria type of user). I've just given a user a last warning but I don't plan to stalk them for the next few hours, so I thought I'd mention the proposal here. I've also mentioned it or something similar at Wikipedia talk:Vandalism, though that page doesn't get that much traffic. Richard001 09:58, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

One problem with this idea is that a lot of editors place final warning templates prematurely; for instance on silly, as opposed to offensive, vandalisms without previous warnings. A second problem is that persistent vandals do not, by and large, get banned. They get blocked, and if their vandalism edits were to merit highlighting then I suspect that the editor would ipso fact merit a block anyway. While single vandalisms should generate warnings, on an ascending scale of severity, editors who go on vandalism sprees are customarily blocked forthwith.--Anthony.bradbury"talk" 10:54, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Userbox standard

(moved from Talk:Main Page)

This isn't about the Main Page directly but about the userbox system currently used it is about changing many of the pages on wikipedia and thus is important for much of wikipedia since it is important i decided to put here on the talk page of the main page

I propose that we convert all Wikipedia:Userbox pages of userboxes to the new format Template:usbk

it is currently the official version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Userboxes/New_Userboxes


to load a userbox all you have to do is the following

{{usbktop}}
|-
|{{usbk|XXXXXX}}
|{{usbk|YYYYYY}}
|{{usbk|ZZZZZZ}}
|}


where XXXXXX represents your 1st userbox etc.


for example
{{usbktop}}
|-
|{{usbk|User:UBX/media responsibility}}
|{{usbk|User:UBX/media responsibility-2}}
|{{usbk|User:UBX/media responsibility-3}}
|{{usbk|User:UBX/media responsibility-4}}
|}


loads

Code Result
|{{User:UBX/media responsibility}}
Entertainment is a commodity.
News is a right.†
 Usage
|{{User:UBX/media responsibility-2}}
$ ¥
€ £		This user believes that the profit motive makes network news reporting inaccurate and biased. †
 Usage
|{{User:UBX/media responsibility-3}}
This user believes that politicians should not interfere with Public news broadcasting. †
 Usage
|{{User:UBX/media responsibility-4}}
$News + Profit = Propaganda †
 Usage

it also allows the user to see who is using their userbox

to see an example of the difference between the old standard and new standard see
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Userboxes/Emoticons&diff=138367651&oldid=123358877 as you see it saves lots of time and the old system was very time consuming


here is what one user said


I really believe that all the UserBox list pages should be standardized with a single format. The format I propose uses the template Template:Usbk and template:Usbkc. (template:Usbkc is used when parameters are in use in the Userbox) These are the same templates that are being used on the Wikipedia talk:Userboxes/New Userboxes page. I had made a whole page with this format at Wikipedia:Userboxes/WikiProjects. Before the change of format on that page, some of the userboxes appear to be corrupted. After the change in format those userboxes were corrected by the simplified templates. I know it would take work to standardize them, however I am up to the challenge of making these pages look right. I hope no one is against the idea of the new format as this I feel would the best one to use since it is being used to list new userboxes and it is a very simple template to use. If anyone has any comments on this please post below. Sawblade05
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Userboxes#Standardizing_the_format_UserBox_list_pages.
As a side note Note Template:usbk now works for parameters --Java7837

I now that User:UBX let's people edit his/her list and so does ashley y and Wikipedia:Uerbox does too the new standard needs to be official and a group needs to be formed to make this be used on all the userbox pages of the above mentioned individuals it saves lots of space and causes pages to load a lot faster especially for people with dialup also it is easier for coding --Java7837

But why is this here??? --Howard the Duck 16:22, 15 June 2007 (UTC)



--Java7837 16:30, 15 June 2007 (UTC)



the following use Template:usbk
Wikipedia:Userboxes/Emoticons
Wikipedia:Userboxes/Science Fiction
Wikipedia:Userboxes/Encycloboxes
Wikipedia:Userboxes/Health#General_conditions
Wikipedia:Userboxes/Health#Health_Awareness
Wikipedia:Userboxes/WikiProjects
User:UBX/Userboxes/Religion
User:Ashley_Y/Userboxes/Religion/Judaism
User:Ashley_Y/Userboxes/Religion/Islam


--Java7837 17:47, 15 June 2007 (UTC)


Note thousands of pages(Maybe 10k's even i don't know how to figure out how many pages use it can someone please help me with this) use Template:usbk

see Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Usbk or Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:usbk


--Java7837 17:57, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Whatlinkshere is only useful when there's no user category. I'll add a parameter for the latter. –Pomte 19:00, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Clever Search?

I was wondering if Wikipedia's search could be modified in such manner, that it would recognise (more or less) common spelling mistakes? (e.g. today, when I accidentally typed "elctrochemistry" in the search bar, I received no results; it would be nice to get a "did-you-mean type of link) I don't know much about the technical background, this is just an idea, but it would be nice to hear other opinions on that
Bakic 16:15, 5 June 2007 (CET)

I'm assuming you are aware of the "restricted search" and "spelling suggestions" features of Google? These provide precisely the functionality you are after, although unfortunately this does require reliance on a site outside WP. dr.ef.tymac 14:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
This is a perennial proposal too. Dcoetzee 23:34, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Link. GracenotesT § 17:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Despite the frequency of this suggestion it was not listed at WP:PEREN. I added it. Dcoetzee 08:00, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I have that ame problem, i say we should add it ¥→WikiDragon295 21:12, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Internal emails

Maybe we could consider a feature so that when you receive emails internally via Special:Emailuser, you could get a little notification bar similar to the

and this would save you having to keep checking your email box, any thoughts? The Sunshine Man 18:03, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Where would the new messages link and last change link lead? How would the software know that you have received the message so it doesn't show the bar anymore? If you need a notifier, there's always Gmail notifier if you use Gmail, or many programs, such as Mozilla Thunderbird and Microsoft Outlook, which will alert you when you get new messages. —METS501 (talk) 18:11, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't want to appear to be shooting down your suggestion, but why not just check your mails more frequently, like most folk do? Or use the auto-check feature that mail clients provide. Allowing mails from Wikipedia users seems redundant to me, though; talk pages are better because it provides a record of communications. Adrian M. H. 18:17, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Unless you block a lot of users and need to give them some way to contact you. --ais523 17:29, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
I never thought about the software actually knowing whether you had emails, guess this was a silly suggestion. Apologies for wasting your time. The Sunshine Man 18:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
No, it wasn't a silly suggestion, it was a good suggestion, and it would be great if it was possible, but it's not :-) —METS501 (talk) 18:34, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Hehe, it would be eaiser but... guess I was thinking of ways to be lazy (). The Sunshine Man 18:41, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

It would just need a software change or bot or something to edit your talkpage with a brief note saying "Someone has sent you email", that way you'd get the notification bar.... Seems simple enough, no? --Quiddity 20:33, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

You need to add a bugzilla enhancement request, I think. --Quiddity 18:42, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Sandbox

There is a sandbox for editors in general. Is there one for admins? Simply south 17:47, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Why would they need a sandbox? To test deleting, protecting, etc? Perhaps even create an account User:Adminsandbox to test blocking? Funpika 17:54, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Try the test wiki. —METS501 (talk) 18:08, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
The test wiki isn't there to play with administrator tools. Funpika 18:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Why not? Obviously not to delete the main page of the test wiki, but you can try blocking yourself there, protecting or deleting your userpage, editing the Wikimedia messages, etc. —METS501 (talk) 18:38, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Ask the developers! According to test wiki's Requests for Permissions page it is really used to make sure changes to the code doesn't cripple the live sites. If you want a test wiki where everyone can test admin tools then someone should make one (editthis.info is not suitable)! I will see if I can do something. Funpika 18:44, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
How nice I easily found a free PHP5 host to put a mediawiki installation on. Now I just need to set up the Wiki. :P Funpika 19:01, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Crap! It is actually PHP 4.4.6. Well Mediawiki 1.6 should be good enough...I hope. Funpika 19:22, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Okay here it is. Funpika 19:38, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
I've used User:ais523 non-admin as a blocking sandbox on occasion (turning the autoblock off, of course). --ais523 17:28, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletable signatures proposal

Since I'm canvasing for opinions, and trying to avoid the bad kind of canvasing, I'm mentioning Wikipedia:Deletable signatures proposal here. Anybody care to comment? Thanks, Luc "Somethingorother" French 14:50, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

What's the use of such a proposal? bibliomaniac15 An age old question... 01:48, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't agree with concept. It is too restrictive. Also many good signatures are longer than 100 charecters. --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 23:16, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
...but no signatures are now longer than 255 (see WT:SIG). --ais523 17:26, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Edit Summary link

Can we have the Edit Summary link open in a new window. A couple of times I've gone to put in my edit summary after a long edit and ended up losing everything because I clicked in the wrong place. Thank you, C0N6R355talkcontribs 17:03, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

In most browsers, you can get your edit back if you click on 'back' immediately. I also agree that new-window opening on links in the interface for the edit window would be useful, but it would require a software change. --ais523 11:11, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I've done the same thing, and, while it is a pain in the butt, it doesn't happen often enough to me to vote for a change in software. Jmlk17 20:16, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
All it requires is some editing to MediaWiki:Minoredit, not a software change. ^demon[omg plz] 11:05, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
It does take a software change, as you can't place an <a> tag (which would be required) in wikimarkup, which is how MediaWiki:Minoredit is formatted. --ais523 17:15, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to have fulltime (limited time) wikibounty

I recommend that wikipedia undertake an project to allow for community members to offer and provide bounties in return for editing and improving articles on wikipedia. I make this proposal out of my own eagerness to, on one hand, gift in some manner the authors of some pages for their excellent contributions and on the other improve/encourage the 'cleanup' or 'improvement' of other pages.

Please pardon my confusion: how is this different from Wikipedia:Bounty board and Wikipedia:Reward board? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:36, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Normalized article output as XML

I remember seeing an initiative (on this idea) that apparently died on the vine. Are there any efforts underway, or any motivation to consider structured article output in XML format for use in other contexts? The last time I asked a question similar to this, the thought seemed to be: "for that, you want a Structured Wiki, and Wikipedia is not that type of animal". dr.ef.tymac 15:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Yep, we do (if I understand your question). See api.php (and not-fully-implemented specifications). Check out this request, which gives the last 10 revisions of the Sandbox article. We also have JSON, YAML, and other formats. GracenotesT § 17:00, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
The output's still in wikimarkup, though; I read the question as looking for something like a wiki-DOM that changes the wikimarkup tags into XML (so '' would become <i> or </i> depending on context, for instance). This has been discussed on the developers' mailing list in the past, but it seems there are a lot of exceptional cases to deal with that are quite hard to handle. --ais523 15:14, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Magnus Manske has done something in that direction, see http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/wiki2xml/w2x.php. It's been a while since I last looked at it, but I remember it produced acceptable results. --Dapeteばか 18:27, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Questions on the reference desk

How about creating a list of all questions that are asked on the reference desks. What I mean is lists of questions sorted by different criteria, e.g. "how to...", "what is...", and also "Computer programming...", "Computer Hardware...", and "Wikipedia..." and then there would be a group of people that look through every question and do three things:

  1. Come up with the exact, extremely summarized sentence that describes the question in a very easy to read way, the reason I say this is because the question asked isn't always very descriptive
  2. Go through all of the text and come up with the conclusion of the answer, e.g. Q: What is the capital of France? A: Paris
  3. Summarize the explanation of the answer so that you can read it properly, because some people give input that turns out to be wrong or, because of a badly asked question, irrelevant

So basically, I want lists of questions in an easy to read way that has the question and, if possible, the direct answer, then when you click on the question it goes to a different archive with the summarized explanation (i.e. it doesn't use the archived version of the original question). Also note that the archivers summarize questions that didn't get an answer and put them in an "Unanswered" group/category. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 22:20, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Gosh, that would require a lot of work. Any takers? YechielMan 17:55, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
That's an excellent idea. Feel free to get started on that right away. Design the project, write some code, recruit volunteers. Let us know how it goes; I'm sure there are a lot of people who would find it a useful and interesting resource. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:01, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
What me, how? Jeffrey.Kleykamp 10:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Jeff, I think TenOfAllTrades was politely suggesting that you are probably best suited to accomplish this task, because (apparently) you are the only one who seems to consider it doable. The mere notion of a correct answer is subject to considerable and justifiable dispute (both in a deep Epistemological sense, and also in the more "mundane" sense that it is difficult sometimes to tell if people really know what they are talking about when they "answer" RefDesk questions).

Also, a lot of RefDesk questions go "unanswered" but still get responses that relate to an interesting tangent, or suggest other ways for the questioner to find the relevant information outside Wikipedia. How would those questions be "summarized"?

Sometimes responses are helpful, but there's no way to verify that unless there is a subsequent follow-up (did you actually find what you were looking for)? Sometimes people ask questions and never actually verify that the answers are "correct" (I'm speculating here, but I bet this does happen quite a bit). If this is true even for the people who ask the questions, that in itself should tell you something. dr.ef.tymac 15:46, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

So you're saying my idea is dumb. Not that I can't handle critique but I would like to say that I'm deeply ashamed for anyone that's politely suggesting anything and that that is the exact reason that Wikipedia doesn't have any April fools jokes, because people might take it seriously, and, upon figuring out it's a joke, lose all confidence in the system. I would also hereby declare that I will no longer be a Wikipedian because of the reason above. I hope that makes you properly think of how bad those things are, bye. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 17:04, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Uhhh ... no one said "your idea is dumb". There are substantial difficulties, but no one said it was "dumb". You may very well come up with a solution, who knows? You may have what it takes to make your idea a reality, and to prove all the doubters wrong. If you do, then it doesn't seem like leaving Wikipedia is going to help you accomplish anything. dr.ef.tymac 02:53, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm saying that people think my idea is so dumb that they don't even bother telling me the problems. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 13:31, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
What you've suggested is a subproject that will require tens (hundreds?) of hours to set up, thousands of hours of work to assemble and index the Ref Desk archives, and will require extensive ongoing effort to maintain. It's an awfully big job for a volunteer project that, frankly, is focused on doing something else (creating an encyclopedia). It's not to say that your idea couldn't work, but you're much more likely to see progress on it if you take the initiative to start some of the work. Getting discouraged this early and leaving in a huff suggests that you may not be prepared to manage or organize such a big task at this time.
If you are keen on going ahead with this, might I suggest you start with a small part of your proposal and work from there? Perhaps create Wikipedia:Reference desk/Orphan questions to look at which questions aren't being answered (or aren't being answered in a satisfactory manner). I would strongly suggest that you discuss your proposal at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk—that's where you'll find the people who are familiar with the technical and social structure of the current Ref Desk. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:06, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't want to do this, it was just an idea and I didn't really think it would work out in the first place, I'm just mad that people prefer to make fun of me rather than discussing the problems. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 14:55, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: Gnome Day

Originally posted this at the talk page for WP:CLEANUP but I thought it might get more eyes here. Didn't see it on perennial proposals.

Some points:

- It goes without saying that Wikipedia is in need of a massive, massive, massive amount of cleanup. From typos to wikification to bad prose to poor articles, the list goes on. Not to mention all of the backlogs.

- People who perform cleanup tasks are known as WikiGnomes.

- There was a "Spring Cleaning" day proposed awhile back, but the page has been deleted (it was in userspace, and I believe the user left. I wish I could remember who it was so they could get credit for the idea.)

- June 21st is International Gnome Day.

Starting to add up? Basically, the day would be set aside for a massive cleanup effort by any and all editors who wish to participate. If there's enough interest I or someone else could set up a Wikipedia/WikiProject page for it with sign up list. There could be some sort of running total of work done, although hopefully so many articles will be improved that this won't even be feasible. (The original idea suggested shutting down new article creation and anonymous editing, but that will never happen.) This gives more than enough time to "rally the troops", as it were, a worthy cause, and an exciting moniker to make cleanup fun! :)

Thoughts? Crystallina 04:30, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd support an extended drive, a week or a month, with site-wide notices and motivations for people who participate, like "I wikified X pages in the 2007 cleanup drive!" Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 07:15, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
I might be down with that :). Jmlk17 08:20, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Agree, especially with the first point. I think the issue might be started within the Wikipedia:WikiGnome/Kudos. IMO we require more gnomes to face the increasing backlog issues. --Brand спойт 11:14, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
A week/month could work - in fact that'd probably be better. If it were me I'd probably have it start on the 21st though, just to get in the reference. Crystallina 16:36, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
I would love to have a month of no new articles and no new image uploads ... just cleanup what we have. That probably won't happen, though. --BigDT 15:38, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

All right, I wrote a first draft of an essay page here: User:Crystallina/Gnome Week. Does it look okay? If so, I'll go ahead and move it out of my userspace. Crystallina 23:33, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I like the concept, I say go ahead and move it out onto the WP space. I will be adding my name momentarily. --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 01:10, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

This has been suggested before. The talk page is here, the page itself is baleeted. Of course, this flavor of the idea is a bit more moderate. GracenotesT § 20:10, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Link added below to current active location. --Quiddity 18:14, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


See Wikipedia:Gnome Week for current information, on a mass article cleanup drive between June 21 and June 28, 2007.

Hot Articles?

Sometimes I come on Wikipedia and just start looking for articles to help out with. A feature such as "Hot Articles" could help on the recent changes page. It's not a priority but it would be interesting to see which articles are most edited/discussed today, this week, this month (whatever).

It would also give wandering Wikipedians (like me) a place to concentrate their energies.

Just a thought. Carsinmotion 05:50, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

see Wikipedia:Community_Portal#Collaborations Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 06:12, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Take a look at Harmonious editing club (formerly known as the "Militia")! --Neigel von Teighen 07:34, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Have you looked at Wikipedia:Challenges? Corvus cornix 23:08, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

POV Pages

A way that Wikipedia could improve the neutrality of their articles and reduce the amount of POV pushing is adding, in addition to the talk pages, an opinion page to each article. The talk page would be a (as intended) place for discussing the article, while the opinion page would allow people to discuss their opinions on the topic of the article. This feature could prove to be of extreme value to the wikipedia community, as it would give people the chance to look at the opinions on a topic before forming their own. The proposed opinion pages would work in the same way as talk pages, but with the exceptions below.

  • Users could edit their own postings, but not anyone else's (Admins would still be able to edit anything on the page, in case of inappropriate edits). This feature, while not keeping the page entirely fair and unbiased, would prevent the deletion of other users opinions.
  • Users could not edit the opinion pages more than five times a day (except for Admins in the event of removing harmful content). This measure would prevent users from flooding the page with their opinion and/or vandalism.
  • If their is enough vandalism/inappropriate edits added to a page that it is tough for Admins to keep up, the page may be temporarily protected; if this does not solve the problem, then the page may be deleted or protected for a longer period of time.
  • Admins/Arbitration will have the final say as to whether content added to the page is appropriate or inappropriate.

As a side note, I recommend that the use of sock puppets on opinion pages carry the same, if not heavier penalties than articles and talk pages.

I hope that the wikipedia community will give great input on this proposal. Ks0stm 18:50, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

While I don't dispute the value of having a place for people to discuss and debate the merits of their personal viewpoints, I am concerned that providing such a forum is beyond the scope and mandate of Wikipedia. People occasionally lose sight of the fact that the purpose of this project is to create a free encyclopedia—no more, and no less. Perhaps Wikiversity would be a more appropriate venue?
Our articles are already supposed to provide readers with a thorough, detailed, well-referenced treatment of the major viewpoints on any given topic. Where we fail to do that, it highlights a need to continue improving our articles, not a need for a new namespace for free-for-all discussion. As an aside, I strongly suspect you will find little support among admins and arbitrators on Wikipedia for having their role expanded to include 'flame war referee'. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:24, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
I think since wikipedia is nearly universally known as a user-updated site, anything here should be taken with a grain of salt. That is mostly the reason why educators do not qualify wikipedia as research; though, anyone doing serious research should be encouraged to follow the links at the bottom of the articles. Carsinmotion 06:06, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Opinion pages would be a serious mistake - a waste of time at best, and a serious nuisance at worst. They'd be an open invitation to libel ("It's my opinion that X is a pedophile!"), make explaining Wikipedia even more difficult ("Well, you have to focus on improving articles, unless you want to get into an argument about whether W. is the worst President ever, or whether anarchy could every be successfull for a community, in which case there are opinion pages ..."), and could attract exactly the sort of editors we don't want more of - the kooks and fanatics and trolls and similar, to interact with the more reasonable folks who actually should be editing Wikipedia, but wouldn't, because it's boring to write an encyclopedia, but fun to argue. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:57, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I often think the very same thing: how nice it would be to have a place where I can just type whatever I want to: expound my own ideas on why humans are hairless, tell people where I think the aliens are on Mars, or explain the operations of a continuous flow intersection. Alas, everytime I think how great an idea it is (it always sounds like such a great idea at night), I sleep on it and wake up the next morning to think of how much I'd disagree with all the other opinions that everyone would write about. People would start saying that we're hairless because we stand up on two legs and the wind is stronger with altitude; or perhaps the aliens are not outside, but rather are within our souls; or they'd say that a diverging diamond interchange is a dumb idea. "HEATHENS!" I'd say ... and I'd surely have to make myself known.
Opinion pages would turn into a mass of flamewars, and I know full well I would be there with the torch. The way I see it, an opinion page would turn into a mess like this and never really sort itself out. When you throw in the bandwidth and storage space that the poor Wikipedia Foundation would have to spend for, I reconcile with myself and reconsider the idea. Then that night... reading some article that I just don't agree with, despite the references and sources, and start thinking "Wow it would be great if I could just write what is on my mind." ...Maybe I should start a blog. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 02:14, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
On the link in the above comment: WOW! Perhaps this isn't such a good idea after all...! Ks0stm 18:54, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Linking inside Wikipedia to stimulate collaboration and raise funds at same time

Is there any interest in doing something that would help Wikipedia to stimulate knowledge exchange and practical action, in the real world beyond the page, and also increase the number of citations on Wikipedia? I have a proposal that would do this, and also bring some money into Wikipedia, and also would encourage more specialists and community action people to come and contribute to pages. A low-involvement option for this would involve putting a link with a little graphic on a wikipedia entry (is this allowed?). A higher-involvement option is also possible. I'm an academic thinking of starting up a non-profit group... Engaging 09:30, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

People have already left Wikipedia over a seemingly innocuous link during contributions period which mentioned that certain corporations were matching contributions. Doing something like what you suggest might cause people to leave in droves. Corvus cornix 23:01, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Userbox standard

(moved from Talk:Main Page)

This isn't about the Main Page directly but about the userbox system currently used it is about changing many of the pages on wikipedia and thus is important for much of wikipedia since it is important i decided to put here on the talk page of the main page

I propose that we convert all Wikipedia:Userbox pages of userboxes to the new format Template:usbk

it is currently the official version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Userboxes/New_Userboxes


to load a userbox all you have to do is the following

{{usbktop}}
|-
|{{usbk|XXXXXX}}
|{{usbk|YYYYYY}}
|{{usbk|ZZZZZZ}}
|}


where XXXXXX represents your 1st userbox etc.


for example
{{usbktop}}
|-
|{{usbk|User:UBX/media responsibility}}
|{{usbk|User:UBX/media responsibility-2}}
|{{usbk|User:UBX/media responsibility-3}}
|{{usbk|User:UBX/media responsibility-4}}
|}


loads

Code Result
|{{User:UBX/media responsibility}}
Entertainment is a commodity.
News is a right.†
 Usage
|{{User:UBX/media responsibility-2}}
$ ¥
€ £		This user believes that the profit motive makes network news reporting inaccurate and biased. †
 Usage
|{{User:UBX/media responsibility-3}}
This user believes that politicians should not interfere with Public news broadcasting. †
 Usage
|{{User:UBX/media responsibility-4}}
$News + Profit = Propaganda †
 Usage

it also allows the user to see who is using their userbox

to see an example of the difference between the old standard and new standard see
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Userboxes/Emoticons&diff=138367651&oldid=123358877 as you see it saves lots of time and the old system was very time consuming


here is what one user said


I really believe that all the UserBox list pages should be standardized with a single format. The format I propose uses the template Template:Usbk and template:Usbkc. (template:Usbkc is used when parameters are in use in the Userbox) These are the same templates that are being used on the Wikipedia talk:Userboxes/New Userboxes page. I had made a whole page with this format at Wikipedia:Userboxes/WikiProjects. Before the change of format on that page, some of the userboxes appear to be corrupted. After the change in format those userboxes were corrected by the simplified templates. I know it would take work to standardize them, however I am up to the challenge of making these pages look right. I hope no one is against the idea of the new format as this I feel would the best one to use since it is being used to list new userboxes and it is a very simple template to use. If anyone has any comments on this please post below. Sawblade05
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Userboxes#Standardizing_the_format_UserBox_list_pages.
As a side note Note Template:usbk now works for parameters --Java7837

I now that User:UBX let's people edit his/her list and so does ashley y and Wikipedia:Uerbox does too the new standard needs to be official and a group needs to be formed to make this be used on all the userbox pages of the above mentioned individuals it saves lots of space and causes pages to load a lot faster especially for people with dialup also it is easier for coding --Java7837

But why is this here??? --Howard the Duck 16:22, 15 June 2007 (UTC)



--Java7837 16:30, 15 June 2007 (UTC)



the following use Template:usbk
Wikipedia:Userboxes/Emoticons
Wikipedia:Userboxes/Science Fiction
Wikipedia:Userboxes/Encycloboxes
Wikipedia:Userboxes/Health#General_conditions
Wikipedia:Userboxes/Health#Health_Awareness
Wikipedia:Userboxes/WikiProjects
User:UBX/Userboxes/Religion
User:Ashley_Y/Userboxes/Religion/Judaism
User:Ashley_Y/Userboxes/Religion/Islam


--Java7837 17:47, 15 June 2007 (UTC)


Note thousands of pages(Maybe 10k's even i don't know how to figure out how many pages use it can someone please help me with this) use Template:usbk

see Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Usbk or Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:usbk


--Java7837 17:57, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Whatlinkshere is only useful when there's no user category. I'll add a parameter for the latter. –Pomte 19:00, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Making vandals stand out

If someone has just committed a vandalism spree and is close to being banned, is there some way we can tag their account so that all their edits appear in a different colour, bold, or something like that? I'm not sure how it would 'wear off', perhaps just after a certain amount of time, but it would certainly help in vandal fighting if people new who to look for. As to who could assign it, it could either be automatic after a last or only warning template was placed, though it could also be placed by users (say the semi-protection criteria type of user). I've just given a user a last warning but I don't plan to stalk them for the next few hours, so I thought I'd mention the proposal here. I've also mentioned it or something similar at Wikipedia talk:Vandalism, though that page doesn't get that much traffic. Richard001 09:58, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

One problem with this idea is that a lot of editors place final warning templates prematurely; for instance on silly, as opposed to offensive, vandalisms without previous warnings. A second problem is that persistent vandals do not, by and large, get banned. They get blocked, and if their vandalism edits were to merit highlighting then I suspect that the editor would ipso fact merit a block anyway. While single vandalisms should generate warnings, on an ascending scale of severity, editors who go on vandalism sprees are customarily blocked forthwith.--Anthony.bradbury"talk" 10:54, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

IMAGE CATEGORIES

Hi, just came to putting on question the above process, categorizing images that are transcluded from Wikimedia Commons seems to me just unnecessary. I just came from Category:Images of Chicago, Illinois, and look, almost all are GDFL from commons. Additionally some yes, are in wikipedia, and in case these are GFDL, should be moved to commons. As a result in the DISTANT FUTURE I think on fair use images should be categorized on these cats listed. Hope you answer this (see some message) --Andersmusician $ 05:22, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Random article

Is it possible to extend the functionality of "Random article" link to show randow articles from specific categories. Something similar to stumbleUpon. 128.61.185.84 07:12, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I made something like that for the dutch Wikipedia, in this case for jazz articles. You can see it here (press the button in the right upper corner to "stumble"). It works because the number of (good) jazz articles is not too large on the dutch Wikipedia. Another option might be making a redirect page that redirects to a random article with the help of parserfunctions, although you wont have a stumble-upon like button then. It would be a nice feature if the Mediawiki software would have something for this built in. Freestyle 22:46, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:FICT rewrite

A rewrite of WP:FICT is being proposed at Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)#Rewrite proposed. Needs polishing, clarification, and so on, but it's a start. — Deckiller 22:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

It has my endorsement already. —AldeBaer (c) 23:08, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Text links to Wiktionary

Since Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, and therefore may use words whose meanings may not be immediately obvious, would it be possible to include text links for such words to Wiktionary? Daniel 16:46, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

This is fairly common, though it should be done sparingly. Simply use the prefix "wikt," for example [[wikt:carcinogenicity|carcinogenicity]] creates carcinogenicity. -- Visviva 17:18, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

wikipedians

I have been asked by a wikipedian (hopefully correct description) who is gravely ill the following. I am unaware if anything already exists, and apologies if all I need is to be directed towards it. The wikipedian asks does the following facilities available. A userbox to explain the lack of input due to illness. A userbox that can be added by others to their page which states that the wikipedian has died. A programme that then removes the wikipedian personal pages - to free server space seems to be the idea behind this. The whole thing is in my limited experience as a wikipedian is fraught with difficulties. I think I have managed to get the points across - a tricky conversation about something that was / is important to the wikipedian. I was asked to do this so hopefully there are ideas, policies, thoughts out there. With Thanks --Edmund Patrick 10:11, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

An illness userbox would provide a way for a basic message to be delivered clearly by people who might not be familiar with Wikisyntax. How they would learn of the userbox existence is a little problem. (SEWilco 15:18, 9 June 2007 (UTC))

dead wikipedians

I point out that if the death of a wikipedian is reported, there should not be a hurry to delete the user's pages. Any automated removal should have a timescale based on months. This reduces the threats from some obvious vandalism possibilities, and gives the estate's representatives time to perform any desired actions (which might include copying or maintenance of the Wikipedia pages). I don't think we need to try to figure out policy for a user page being updated by heirs until the situation arises. I'm just pointing out that there is no need for a quick process. (SEWilco 15:18, 9 June 2007 (UTC))

Agreed. From experience, it is very easy to find userpages of folks who have disappeared from Wikipedia for a very long time and are not likely to return. As far as WP is concerned, they are "dead". But there is no general policy to delete their pages. YechielMan 05:16, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
Why should there ever be any removal of a User page, unless the User's family so requests? Corvus cornix 23:06, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
I agree that server space is not an issue, particularly since deleted pages are still retained (but inaccessible). Our total number of significant contributors is small enough that we can well afford, even in the long run, to keep all of their user pages in the database. I think the cost of storage will keep up for the foreseeable future. Articles are expanding far more quickly. Dcoetzee 07:33, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Clever Search?

I was wondering if Wikipedia's search could be modified in such manner, that it would recognise (more or less) common spelling mistakes? (e.g. today, when I accidentally typed "elctrochemistry" in the search bar, I received no results; it would be nice to get a "did-you-mean type of link) I don't know much about the technical background, this is just an idea, but it would be nice to hear other opinions on that
Bakic 16:15, 5 June 2007 (CET)

I'm assuming you are aware of the "restricted search" and "spelling suggestions" features of Google? These provide precisely the functionality you are after, although unfortunately this does require reliance on a site outside WP. dr.ef.tymac 14:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
This is a perennial proposal too. Dcoetzee 23:34, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Link. GracenotesT § 17:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Despite the frequency of this suggestion it was not listed at WP:PEREN. I added it. Dcoetzee 08:00, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I have that ame problem, i say we should add it ¥→WikiDragon295 21:12, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Any ideas on making the noticeboards/XfDs less cluttered?

Here's a matter that has basically bugged me for some time. There's many noticeboards and processes here; the question is, how many of those processes are actually easy to follow?

Please take a good look at the top of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard and try to figure out its meaning with the first glance, with your higher brain functions firmly dulled by caffeine (or equivalent). If I were a complete and utter newbie, I would have hard time figuring out what the heck the noticeboard is for; the title suggests it's for admin use, yet the very first paragraph crammed somewhere between bazillion boxes and whatnot tells it's not just for admins. There's one giant-long header that, before the people even get to know what this page is, tells what this page isn't.

Now take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion: Blahblahblahblahblah something something about deletion blah lots of bluelinks, boxes. The page tries to cram together all of the information related to article deletion in a somewhat coherent, and especially long-winded way. The end result is a bit confusing.

The big problem with this header is that it tries to explain in detail what it is; these process pages should, first and foremost, serve their function. Basically, now the page says "This is how we delete pages, blah blah blah... Oh, you want to actually get work done. Well, here's the daily list. Where was I? Oh yeah, the details. Blah blah..." When the page structure should be like this: "This page is where we discuss article deletion. Here's the open debates, here's how to put articles up for deletion. Oh, you're new to all this and don't know how we delete pages? Well, let me explain..."

Compare this to, say, the Finnish equivalent (not perfect, but better than our AfD in my opinion): There's a short, sweet red box that tells who can vote and how to vote, and a short, sweet yellow box that tells how to propose a deletion, before all of the gory details. Or, better yet, take a look at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. Now this is a brilliant header: Short and to the point. Wish all of these pages had something similar.

These aren't the only examples. Many such heavily used pages end up with a lot of confusing clutter and the headers probably need refactoring. So the task should be two-fold:

  1. Identify such cluttered pages, and
  2. come up with some sort of easy, clutter-free solution to this.

The bottom line is: Basically, in most cases all these types of project pages need is an explanation of what it is, how to use it, and if you need more details on what to do, that can go past header - but it's not really header matter. Pointers to other pages of this group and archives could go in some sort of sidebar or a box similar to {{editabuselinks}}.

I hope I'm not the only one who gets a headache every morning when heading to WP:AFD... --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 10:08, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

You're not.  ;-) IMO, almost every major page in project space could use a good going over at this point. -- Visviva 17:20, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
I would strongly support a big pruning of all those process headers. It's on my to-do- list, in fact, but that list is rather long :) >Radiant< 13:27, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
The header of the Help Desk was 'streamlined' quite recently; is it the sort of thing to aim for? --ais523 14:28, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Fan-crap

Hi, I’ve made a proposal here, about fan-cr*p on Doctor Who articles in the wake of a broadcast. Any opinions?--Rambutan (talk) 16:43, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

While I can sympathize, that looks like an overly bureaucratic method of dealing with a simple problem, and we're not changing policies just to keep out Dr. Who idiots. Just ask for semi-protection for the 24 hour period surrounding the broadcast. --tjstrf talk 10:45, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

If I try that, I get told about biting newbies and violating the semi-protection policy.--Rambutan (talk) 12:32, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I think those concerns would actually apply even more to your "fancrap" proposal. And can we please de-Bowdlerize the title? It's distracting. --tjstrf talk 22:18, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Expansion of subcategories

It strikes me that the function to expand subcategories on a category page would be useful, showing the number of articles within the subcategory as well. For example: when I go to Category:Ohio, I can expand the subcategory Category:Geography of Ohio to see its subcategories, including Category:Ohio counties, which can be expanded to show subcategories such as Category:Logan County, Ohio. However, only by going to a specific subcategory, such as the Logan County one, can I see how many articles there are in it. Could there perhaps be a feature, say, that after the last subcategory is listed, the number of articles in that category (that category only, not including in subcategories) would be given? It seems like it would be far easier on server load than the current way to show all subcategories, so I don't see any reason why they couldn't both be there. Nyttend 14:38, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if that will be implemented, but you can personally browse categories using Extension:CategoryTree. It doesn't give you the number, but all the pages and all the subcategories.
Ohio
–Pomte 19:45, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Sort Image page File links by namespace

Often the File links section for a popular image is swamped by results from individual User pages and other administrative namespaces. I think it would be useful either to separate File links from the main namespace from all other File links, or sort the overall File links by namespace (or namespace:title). --IanOsgood 16:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I second this. I often wish I could see image links from the template namespace (only). Andrwsc 21:04, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to support our sister projects

Please see Talk:Main Page#Radical proposal to help our Wikimedia sister projects and feel free to comment there. Thank you.--Pharos 00:55, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

External to interwikis/plainlinks

Somebody should make a bot that changes external links to other Wikimedia sites into interwiki links. This fumbles external link counts, and misleads people into thinking they are going out somewhere else. This, that and the other 07:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Make the request at Wikipedia:Bot requests, not here. Od Mishehu 09:49, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Also, external links to the Wikipedia site (like to edit a page) should automatically be set as normal or interwiki links, without needing to use <span class="plainlinks">. That's what I think, at least. This, that and the other 07:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Something for userpages

I say you should have the right to block someone from talking on you userpage. They have the right to talk elswhere, but a userpage is yours, and yours alone, so if you don't want a specific person talking on YOUR userpage, you should have the right to black them from doing so. and if they want to talk to you, they can have someone ask for you to talk to them on THEIR userpage. ¥→WikiDragon295 21:06, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Two points to that 1) how would you block individuals from editing specific pages (i.e. your talk page)(?) and 2) what if you blocked every single person, then nobody could say anything, no complaints, no complements, no nothing, and yes, I mean all 4.5 million+ registered users and all IP addresses you can find.
Also, if this is because of User:Nikro, did you every find out that he doesn't like the fact that your signature looks close to his? He even says "My signature is very priceless and I will report all and any forged [sic] signiture", maybe you should respect your brother's (he claims he's your brother) wishes and stop using it, although, he isn't allowed to complain because his signature is published in a GNU Free Documentation License and therefore you can "copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially". Jeffrey.Kleykamp 21:33, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

1)I say we should pitition WikiPedia, 2)that's your choice to bann everyone, 3)yes, He's my brother, 4)it ain't about him, 5)that's my right to create a signature similar to his, at least I changed it, I could have made exactly like his.

¥→WikiDragon295 21:41, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

You don't own your user page, and the whole point of your user talk page is for others to communicate with you. Please attempt to settle this dispute in a nicer way. –Pomte 21:46, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Did you mean "petition" instead of "pitition", and no, it isn't a choice to ban everyone, because the talk page is to talk about things related to the user's actions on Wikipedia (it's not myspace), and you don't have to worry about anyone talking to you that you don't want to talk to because you can choose to not answer, and if the person vandalizes then they'll, simply, get banned. Also, I said it was your choice to make a signature like his (read the part about the GNU Free Documentation License (above) or read the license completely). And, finally, I don't mean for this paragraph to seem harsh, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 21:58, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
This ideal could be used too much for ones own advantage and personal gain. Think about it, I'm agrueing about something, someone beating me to death, so i block them, and now i'm winning at the agruement, One could use it to block sertant people to help them win an argument. This ideal is too much of a way to get your way done. And everyone has to right to complain and compliment.§→Nikro 10:19, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
I would like to note that Wikipedia isn't for arguing, and if you win an argument that doesn't make you right, if you lay out the good, and verifiable facts and the other person can't lay out any reliable or relevant facts then you won. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 16:59, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

mever mind, new idea. I say you should be able to hide your History section of your userpage from other peaple, so that only the person logged in under YOUR name can see YOUR history, but only if you choice to hide it.

¥→WikiDragon295 19:37, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't really see this happening, it's not YOUR userpage, it's a Wikipedia page that is assigned for your use. You do not own it, except to have a modicum of editorial control over it. --Golbez 20:29, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
The history of a userpage can come in useful - to hide it is not a good idea - it spoils the spirit of "anyone can edit" and makes reverting almost impossible unless it's the user itself (or an administrator - should they be allowed to see?). It has also been used to track down role accounts and potential sockpuppets, by looking at suspicious edits to userspace. x42bn6 Talk Mess 01:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Wikidragon wants the history to be hidin because I managed to clear my name using his talkpage history. He set me up, he gave me permission to edit his page after I gave a reason to edit the page on his talkpage, then he deletes the reason from the talkpage and writes me up for fandelism, luckly i could get to his history and use it to find the evidence to clear myself. He's not happy that his plan to get me banned failed, so now he's trying to get a way to block me from his talkpage, and his talkpage history. His proposal isn't to help people, but help himself. The history is very important, even for the smallest reasons, and the most strangest, it should not be able to be blocked. As I said, it can be used to much for personal gain and advantages.

§→Nikro 03:07, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

  • I don't know if this has been said but why don't you just edit your talk page and delete their comments? Carsinmotion 05:53, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Hiding the history of any page (including a User talk page) would technically speaking be illegal. The GFDL has a provision that means that author information has to be retained; if I make a comment on a talk page, and then the history is hidden, technically speaking that violates my copyright. (I would be incredibly surprised if anyone actually sued off such a basis, but that isn't really the point.) --ais523 15:53, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with that interpretation. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 18:09, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Annotated bibliographies

Let's create some annotated bibliographies of reliable web sources on various subjects (such as "specific pharmaceuticals", "demographics of France", "political history of Canada", "interpretation and criticism of contemporary music" and "summaries and criticism of classic philosophy books") on the project namespace. This would help editors research new content as well as add missing references to existing articles; it would also be useful to students doing other research projects. NeonMerlin 18:01, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

This is an ideal task for WikiProjects, IMO. -- Visviva 04:35, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia's not a directory, though, and it sounds like you're trying to set up directories of web links. A wikiproject-specific page that indexes useful sources would be fine, but it wouldn't be appropriate for article space. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 15:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
See m:WikiCite and other things mentioned in WP:FOOT. (SEWilco 16:43, 10 June 2007 (UTC))

Proposal for making sick wikipedians feel better

I've been thinking: what if a wikipedian falls sick and he places {{User health inactive}} template on his user page... Wouldn't be nice to have a group of people devoted to greet them, something like Welcome Committee? --Neigel von Teighen 13:49, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Periodically browse Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:User health inactive. You could also greet other Wikipedians who are currently pregnant, cramming for exams, stressed out, etc. I can help set up a page listing all the groups of people devoted to these (except Birthday and Welcome), but I don't think a page for each of them is necessary, as they're not likely to be very active individually. –Pomte 16:05, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, of course. But I was thinking of something a bit more like the WelCom; I think it would be something nice. And also for exams, future-mothers and stressed (but this could fall into "sick", maybe?). Anyway, thank you for the links! --Neigel von Teighen 16:32, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Starting a user talk page

I'm just in the process of creating (making the first contribution to) User talk:DieterZimmer, and notice that it tells me that "No messages have been posted for this user yet. Before creating this page, please verify that User:DieterZimmer exists." The user exists (he has made a contribution), but the page doesn't. So in a sense, no, I can't verify the existence [of the article].

Experience tells me that the non-existence is an irrelevance I should freely ignore (and indeed the normal state of affairs for a new user), and that I should ignore this. A user much newer than myself might take it seriously.

How about "No messages have been posted for this user yet. Before creating this page, please verify that DieterZimmer is the user you have in mind"? Though I suspect that even this isn't necessary. -- Hoary 08:07, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, this message is located at MediaWiki:Newarticletext. The message "please verify that ... exists" is a generic message that shows up for all talk pages outside the main talk space, meaning this applies to User talk, Wikipedia talk, Category talk, etc. The relevant line of code is
|{{TALKSPACE}}=Before creating this page, please verify that ''[[:{{SUBJECTSPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}]]'' exists.
I agree that this is misleading in user talk. Maybe it should link to the user's contributions (Special:Contributions/DieterZimmer), so you can verify that they have made edits. You can request a change at MediaWiki talk:Newarticletext. –Pomte 15:44, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder of that talk page. I've just reposted my question there. -- Hoary 06:17, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

general discussion forums (again)

Last year, I suggested that Wikipedia should have forums for off-topic discussion. I understand that Wikipedia is an encylopedia and not an online chatting service, but having forums for chatting will encourage many new users to stay. Here is my idea on what the forums should look like. This would alsoput the Forum namespace to good use!

Any thoughts? --Ixfd64 19:52, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Really that is a truly bad idea. Editors are here solely to further the development of the encyclopædia; not to socialise. Adrian M. H. 20:24, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
That may be true, but having off-topic forums could attract more editors. On another note, would having off-site forums (outside the wikipedia.org domain) be a better idea? The only off-site forum I currently know is the Wikipedia Review, which is not an official Wikimedia site. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia Review is down at the moment, and many Wikipedians don't have very positive impressions of that site. Plus, the Wikipedia Review isn't very popular anyways. --Ixfd64 20:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
WP:IRC for real-time chatting. WP:FUN, WP:HUMOR, WP:REFDESK for activities outside encyclopedia editing. Various talk pages can get slightly off-topic, just not so much for personal unverifiable opinions. –Pomte 21:19, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I believe Usertalk pages are the best you are going to get by way of forums. If you (meaning any wikipedian) wanted to encouraged new wikipedians to stay, perhaps listing your AIM, Yahoo, MSN or any other form of public chat identity you may have would encourage them to interact with you and/or other wikipedians in a less technical atmosphere? Carsinmotion 06:12, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Promote the use of multilevel templates

Templates are often used for navigational boxes, where the same content must repeat on several articles. But editors with less technical/scientific training tend to make new navigational boxes by copying and pasting code and then modify the content. This is a bad practice. This is the number-1 not-to-do in the software industry. If something common to these copied-and-pasted templates must be changed, the the update would be a repeated process and a time-consuming effort.

How can it be circumvented? Templates can also be used to generate other templates. Right now this issue on navigational templates has been somewhat alleviated. And there are other examples that fit my proposal

Good examples
Bad examples

The benefit of migrating to using root template:

  1. Consistent look and feel
  2. Eliminate human errors when copying-and-pasting
  3. Update one place instead of many
  4. Easy to derive intermediate templates

But the migration itself is no easy task. What about a WikiProject? The closest thing I can find is WikiProject template sharing, which is about sister projects. But my proposal is more like consolidation. And Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates is too general.

But before there is a project, or whatever collaboration method we choose, I'd like to get opinions from everyone. What do you think? --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 11:24, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

A new project? Perhaps Wikipedia:WikiProject Navigational Templates with WP:NTE as a shortcut (WP:NT has been taken). Funpika 12:11, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Incidentally, I just changed the WP:NT shortcut today as it had been unadvertised and unused for a while. –Pomte 14:18, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
I just want to say, the scope of this proposal is beyond that of navigational templates.... --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 12:13, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Then what, Wikipedia:WikiProject Mutilevel Templates? If not that then the Templates project is probably not too general. Funpika 12:18, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't think this issue will have enough participation to warrant its own WikiProject. Places of discussion for different types of templates include WT:NAV, WP:INLINE, and WP:UW; these may be more useful as different standards apply to each. Perhaps a task force or a noticeboard (which links to discussions in other talk pages) as a subpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates? –Pomte 14:18, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Maybe you should start discussion in Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Templates by reporting on a single general template which you're writing, mention some templates which will invoke it, and report as you convert templates to use the more general one. If others do the same, start a subproject. (SEWilco 15:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC))

I personally see little benefit in small and very specific WikiProjects as they usually end up having too few or exactly the same members as more general ones, so I'd try working on this with Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates. —Ruud 16:32, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Suggest something like "template skeleton" as the description, as "multilevel template" might sound a little daunting!  Regards, David Kernow (talk) 18:37, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
  • There are templates which should be consolidated and templates which should not. There are benefits and drawbacks to each approach which should be considered with the specific types of template. For instance, you cite 'navbox generic' as a good example of consolidation. I like navbox generic. Indeed, I created it. But I would never want to see it replace all other nav boxes. Think about navigation boxes which are used on numerous pages and require frequent updates... Template:SuperBowl for instance appears on the article about each superbowl game ever played (and a few others) and needs to be updated each year. If it were replaced with 'navbox generic' then each year someone would have to go and update the parameters passed to that template on every page where this template appears. If it is a separate template, as it is now, then they go and add the new game link to that one page and it automatically shows up for all the pages it is used on. The call to 'navbox generic' can also get very long and complicated if there are alot of entries/parameters to set... five lines of parameters can be alot more confusing/intimidating to non-coders than a simple {{SuperBowl}} statement in the page source. If you need a navbox for something that is short and changes seldom or never (Indiana Jones movies navbox for instance) then navbox generic is a great choice. For other situations you could put navbox generic onto a page like Template:SuperBowl and get the best of both worlds... standardized format and updates made in only one place. However, there will always be a need for NON generic template pages. They are easier for non-coders to modify and re-use and they allow changes to be made in one place to impact all uses of the template. Which methodology should be used really depends on the type of template. --CBD 11:49, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Panorama of the day width

When the picture of the day is wider than it is tall, and per convention is displayed above the text, is there some way to make the image as wide as each users screen will allow? perhaps some code similar to [[Image:Dinkfuneral3.jpg|100%|center]] — Jack · talk · 20:52, Friday, 8 June 2007

Making the image as wide as my monitor (which can't be done anyway at the moment with software limitations) doesn't work well at all for my monitor as the image becomes too massive (1600 px wide) —METS501 (talk) 21:06, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Obviously, taking the 200px for the sidebar and margins into account; if I wanted to fill the main text block, I would set width to 1080px. Anything but typing in a number followed by "px" renders the image at it's true width. Is there no easy trick, or a quick software fix? — Jack · talk · 22:17, Friday, 8 June 2007
One could use something like <div style="width:100%; overflow:auto">[[Image:Dinkfuneral3.jpg|1080px|center]]</div>, which produces
How's that look? It fills up to 100%, and overflow is handled by a scrollbar. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 14:35, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Skin for colorblind people

10% of all males are color blind (red-green) like me. Comparing different versions of an article is very difficult for them. Single changed words in paragraphs are nearly impossible to find! I solved this problem for me with User:Wolfgangbeyer/monobook.css but I guess there are not many users who are able to install a monobook.css. Most of them are even not aware of such a possibility at all. Therefore I like to suggest to offer an additional skin on the base of MonoBook with the modifications I use. I should add that all predefined skins have the same color scheme for the diff view except "simple" which is also not bad for color blind people, but it has a complete different (terrible) layout. So far I see several attempts were made in the last years to suggest a skin default suitable for normal and color blind people or to find any other solution but the problem still persists. Just defining a new skin for instance named "For colorblinds" or similar should have a chance because it should be performed easily. 10% of all male authors would thank you very much ;-). --Wolfgangbeyer 20:57, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

On a slightly different note, some of my user scripts use colour-coding. I use red, yellow, blue and cyan at the moment, in the hope that they can be distinguished, but I'm not sure. --ais523 10:46, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
You can always check them via one of the free colour-blindness checkers, into which you enter the URL of the page that you wish to check, pick the type of colour-blindness, and you see it how a colour-blind person would see it. There are lots around (just Google) but http://colorfilter.wickline.org/ is one of those that I use. Adrian M. H. 16:33, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposed change in the WP:NOT#DIR rule

Moved to Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Proposed_change_in_the_WP:NOT.23DIR_rule, as it's a proposed change in policy. Firsfron of Ronchester 07:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Automatic talk page shortcuts

I've often thought it would be very, very useful if there was an automated way of having a short-cut to a talk page such that if, say you made WP:VLPNNAS as a redirect to Wikipedia:Very long page name needing a shortcut, WPT:VLPNNAS would automatically be created as a redirect to the page's talk page at the same time. Is there any way this could be rigged up? Grutness...wha? 01:47, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

You'd probably be looking for a bot to do this, in which case Wikipedia:Bot requests would be a better forum for discussion. Also, the shortcut would begin with [[WT:, not with [[WPT:. —METS501 (talk) 04:27, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I kind of fail to see the point, considering WP: shortcuts are overused as now, and most talk pages really don't need any kind of shortcut because of low usage. >Radiant< 11:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Many WikiProject talk pages are high usage and have very long names. Grutness...wha? 02:00, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

An aggressively friendly reminder to tag all shortcuts with {{r from shortcut}} when you create them. GracenotesT § 17:13, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Friends List Or Activity Group

One User Should Be given the freedom to have friends of the same interests,that will ultimately result in the broadness of wiki as more and more information is gathered.

A friends list seems like it could be helpful when sharing information on articles/topics that a group of users are colaborating on. My big concern with starting a friend's section is that users will begin to use Wikipedia as a social networking site like Myspace or Facebook rather than a site dedicated to gathering information about a myriad of topics. Good idea in theory but seems like it would be bad in practice. Plm209 (talk • contribs • count) 18:53, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Try a Wikiproject. KillerChihuahua?!? 11:08, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
maybe another tab entitled subject talk. You could then have general dicussions about the articles subject rather than just article accuracy or neutrality. Wardhog 22:51, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Request for removal of methods from magic effects

In many of the magic trick articles on wiki, the method is exposed. This is extremely damaging to the magci community because they are tricks that we, as magicians, perform regularly. It would be grealy appreciated if these methods were removed. It would also help promote magic as an art form and maybe also help prevent other sites from exposing. It might also help wiki gain more respect from magicians. Birdy2011

While I understand your dismay at having all your best moves set out in black and white for anybody to read, I would also point out that there are magicians who explain everything they do while they are doing it, on stage or on camera, and the audience is still mystified, entranced and lining up to see the show. As with anything requiring a high degree of skill, how it is done is not the magic (if you will pardon this use of the word); that it is done is. Bielle 02:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
This debate is very old and is already thoroughly covered. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Magic#Magic_Methods_and_Exposure. The primary point to make is that all material on Wikipedia should be attributed to a verifiable source, in which case you can't really say we're the ones exposing the trick. Dcoetzee 03:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
This should possibly be on WP:PEREN. You should expect an encyclopedia to contain information; if it's covered in reliable sources, we also cover it. >Radiant< 10:39, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I've watched documentaries on the telly detailing how this top magician do this and that. So, if anything, many secrets are already exposed, with or without mention on Wikipedia.--Kylohk 14:03, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
You've all made good points, however, these are copyrighted effects. I know what you are going to say, "methods cannot be copyrighted." While this is true, the names of the effects can and have been. The tricks I have already found have been reported and I was informed that action would be taken. I just figured it would be easier for everyone if Wiki simply removed the methods themselves. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Birdy2011 (talk • contribs) 19:25, 19 June 2007
What has copyright of a name got to do with it? Microsoft doesn't mind. Copyright issues only apply to copied content. Adrian M. H. 18:29, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
This is legal sleight of hand (no pun intended). Copyright cannot be applied to names, only trademarks can, and trademark use is only forbidden where it's a use by a competitor that could potentially confuse consumers. If you look into more detail at the link I supplied, they've thoroughly addressed the usual legal techniques magicians employ to attempt to suppress publication of their techniques. Dcoetzee 19:34, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
See also discussion at Exposure on Wiki!. x42bn6 Talk Mess 23:30, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't think special moves are copyrighted. If David Blaine did this, there is no stopping another magician to try and attempt his trick. I mean, it's not a logo or anything, it's just a set of actions.--Kylohk 19:50, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Place to discuss BLP disputes

Many of you will know that there is a dispute on what BLP is about. Some think it's about ethics, while some think it's to stop libel and legal problems. Looks like ArbCom decided that it's about ethics.

I am worried about this decision. If BLP is to stop libel and legal problems, it's easy to tell whether an article or section violates BLP. But if it's about ethics, it's not so easy to tell whether an article or section violates BLP. There will be cases of admins deleting articles, claiming BLP violations, when it is not clear whether they are BLP violations. And there will be cases of admins abusing their powers and purposely deleting articles based on fake claims of BLP violations.

Of course, obvious BLP violations should be deleted on sight. But Wikipedia needs a "BLP discussion" place. If I think an admin abused his powers by deleting an article based on fake claims of BLP violations, or I see a user add something which I'm not sure whether it's a BLP violation or not, I can go there.

--Kaypoh 13:47, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:BLP/N. If there is a problem with an editor regarding BLP, then WP:AN/I might be best. x42bn6 Talk Mess 20:06, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to create adult filter

The way search engines like google allow you to check filter adult content, it's true wikipedia is not censored, however someone (usually children) could easily be exposed to adult content, and I read from people complaining about it all the time on commons and here that they accidentally viewed an explicit image and trying in vain to request deletion, fact is that allowing people to be accidentally exposed to adult content is a potential liability and possibly unfair and this should be a good solution for everyone Bleh999 10:41, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

This is a perennial proposal. Setting aside the ethical issues, the practical problems with implementing something like Google's filter algorithm are legion.
  • Google spent a great deal of time and money to develop its filter. We don't have (very much) money, so we rely on people voluntarily giving up great gobs of time to accomplish things; this particular task probably won't draw the people with the necessary skills.
  • Google's filter is proprietary. We'd have to redevelop it from scratch.
  • Any filter – Google's included – will 'leak'. There will be false positives and false negatives.
  • We have no good, objective way to decide what is 'adult' or 'obscene' material. (Google doesn't tell us what they screen, probably for good reason.)
We can't screen easily on words. Are breasts obscene? Do we lose breast cancer then, and breast feeding too? Picture are even more complicated. It's legal for women to go topless in public in many countries; it's not considered inappropriate for children to see a woman's breasts there. (Indeed, recent court decisions have held that it's legal in many parts of even the prudish United States). Is full nudity acceptable if it's line art from the Voyager plaques? What about if it's painted in full colour on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Perhaps as long as it's done artistically in black and white?
Even if we could decide on universal standards for what constituted 'adult' content there's no way to maintain those filters. Evaluation of article content would suffer from errors, lags in maintenance, and malicious vandalism. In short, your heart's in the right place, but it won't work. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:45, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not censored, Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates, Wikipedia:Profanity (Manual of Style), m:Should Wikipedia Use Profanity, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedians against censorship. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Maybe I should be more specific, I don't just mean nudity but wikipedia hosts more explicit images and videos, such as sexual acts, masturbation, ejaculation etc, you can just click a random file and be exposed to it, I wonder if that would get wikipedia added to filtration software and lists used by educational institutions and many other places, I don't see why not since wikipedia is effectively hosting pornography. Bleh999 19:44, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Why is it censorship to not want to be exposed to explicit content? I don't believe that is true, if you present yourself as an encyclopedia you should give viewers the choice of not being unintentionally exposed to pornography. Bleh999 19:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Self-censorship is fine. But, as outlined above, it's impractical to develop an automated system for censorship on Wikipedia. Not to mention the false sense of security. As was mentioned, things will slip through the cracks of such systems. If you are concerned about children seeing things you don't want them to, be sure to be there when they're browsing Wikipedia and verify what they're about to click on before they go there. -- Kesh 02:40, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
We do not put images of potentially offensive material in articles where you might not expect to encounter such images. If you look at the article on ejaculation, you should expect that it might have an image which portrays that. If the image from that page was added to an unrelated article, that is vandalism and you should feel free to revert the article or report it. However, there are borderline cases, where some people might reasonably expect an explicit image and others might reasonably expect not to see one. One example is the article on woman. It currently contains a painting of a naked woman (but "below the fold") and has at times contained more explicit photographs or drawings of women. This has long been a matter of debate on the article's talk page.-gadfium 20:40, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikimania Presentation Proposal Idea and Request for Comment

Greetings. I hope this is the appropriate place to post this. If not, just let me know. I have posted this on the Wikimania Talk and Program Ideas pages, but there seems to be little traffic there. I would like to get some input on this idea, and so I am trying this potentially larger audience. Again, if I need to re-route this, let me know.

I am writing to elicit comment or suggestions about my proposed paper presentation at Wikimania in Taipei, August 2007. My paper is entitled "Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: The Mind of Wikipedia." The proposal has been accepted by the conference, in conjunction with a panel discussion I have proposed. I want to air this idea, because I think it is a unique take on the structure and value of Wikipedia.
My plan is to analyze and “theorize” Wikipedia through the work of Dr. Gerald Edelman, a Nobel Prize winner in Medicine who has written recently about the structure and content of human consciousness (the title of my paper is the title of Edelman’s 1992 book). Basically, my thesis about the “mind” of Wikipedia is that the project mirrors the structure of human consciousness (as proposed by Edelman). You can see the entire version of my abstract at Wikimania Program Ideas, http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_Ideas
Thank you. Who wields me, wields the world! 02:09, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

You say: These arbors, maps, circuits and boundaries evolve into ever-improved conceptual organization on Wikipedia, which are applied by Wikipedia users. I don't get the impression that the "conceptual organization" is improving at all. There's increasing dogmatism about the inclusion of certain trivial information at the start of any article. (There are few people for whom the precise date of birth is particularly significant, yet if you don't present that at the start of any biographical article you risk the wrath of the lemmings.) There's increasing use of "infoboxes", which typically repeat information (much of it trivial) that's immediately available in prose form. People are vigorously categorized by national and ethnic origin, actual or presumed religious affiliation, sexual preference, etc., rather than what they did. Top photo or illustration on the right, next one on the left, next one on the right, etc. etc. Crystallization of rather different trends in US and British orthography into the fictional monoliths of "US spelling" and "British spelling" (the latter with "ise" rather than "ize" endings; who cares what the OED says when it's challenged by Microsoft spelling checker?). As I look at WP I don't see that it mirrors the structure of my consciousness at all: if my consciousness were similar, I'd have to start by tossing out 95% of my books and DVDs and replacing them with Star Wars, Startrek, anime, manga etc. And sports and celebrities, of course. -- Hoary 03:41, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
You make very good points and criticisms. My aim is perhaps a bit "ideal," but I will also include certain failings and criticisms. Thanks very much. Who wields me, wields the world! 04:07, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

A way to read entire archive at once?

I have been a little frustrated with trying to bring up discussions on talk pages after finding that the topic had already been discussed way-back-when on some deeply archived page. Rather than have to cut through 15 individually archived pages, could we add some sort of button which would combine the archived pages in subfolder (like /archive/1, /archive/2, etc...) into one viewable page so that one can quickly do a CTRL-F on a search term? I don't think we need to create an actual page but perhaps some sort of mirror of preexisting archives just all displayed on a single page. Is this feasable? --Valley2city₪‽ 19:15, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem with that is (and the reason why we archive talk pages) that if we had one big archive, it would be impossible to view due to the page being so long - it would most likely crash many computers. Take a look at Wikipedia:List of administrators to see what I mean about a long page. We also have to think of those poor users using a dial up connection. Ryan Postlethwaite 19:23, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Right, I agree, but is there a way to have an automatic option to, say, transclude all of the archive pages into one, to be introduced onto the Template:Archive box template, as an OPTION for people who want to risk the increased bandwidth to avoid having to do a CTRL-F on dozens of archived pages to find what they are looking for. I think perhaps utilizing some of the all-caps variables in order to automatically include all pages that have the prefix /archive or whatever to which it is set might help, but I would want the advice of someone who is an expert on this kind of thing. --Valley2city₪‽ 01:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure that the pre-expand include limit would allow such a big transclusion. --ais523 17:20, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Though History isn't, I'm pretty sure that archives can be navigated through with a simple Google search. Specify to only search wikipedia, and include the keywords archive, and the page name. Reywas92TalkReview me 20:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC) I found an example of my proposal working, right under my nose here: The Village pump has a feature which you can view all of the sections at once by going to this page. Valley2city 22:38, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

There is a search engine for searching WP:AN noticeboard archives on the toolserver: [5] – maybe if you contact Eagle 101 or GeorgeMoney for the code we may be able to tweak it to make it an archive search engine? –Sebi ~ 01:36, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Why not just use tabs? Open up each archive in a seperate tab/window. When you get to the bottom of one, go to the next. -- Kesh 05:05, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

BRFA to edit protected pages

Members of the community are invited to voice their opinion in the second task request that has recently been made by Android Mouse (talk · contribs) on behalf of Android Mouse Bot 4 (talk · contribs). In the words of the author:

"The bot currently fixes internal link rot on several commonly archived pages. The problem is, it is unable to fix rotted links on protected pages. Many admins commonly protect their archived talk pages and some who leave wikipedia or are blocked, commonly have their talk pages protected. This means the bot will never be able to fix the broken links on those pages. For a more technical account of how it fixes the links see its original request for approval, and optionally check out some of its recent diffs."

The question is whether editing protected pages is a necessary function of the bot, from editors' perspectives, and whether the bot should be made a member of the sysop usergroup when Android Mouse (talk · contribs) is not a sysop. It is perhaps possible that the bot may be granted the 'protect' permission by a steward, thus not necessitating membership in the sysop usergroup or a RFA. BRFAs have always been open to community input, and this task request is not the least of BRFAs.

Cheers! — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 19:59, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Project concerns

While looking through WP:Council/P this proposal Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#WorldCat Identities - external links raises concerns about WP:EL and WP:SPAM. In short its a proposal for a Wikiproject to add links to WorldCat from all articles on wikipedia that have a corresponding listing in WorldCat.

I have brought it here because I'm concerned that this projects intent is only to advertise WorldCat within Wikipedia artciles, that such advertising should be done via the Foundation where it can negotiate financial benefit for Wikipedia. Gnangarra 03:17, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

What Wikipedia would be like

Some people wonder what Wikipedia would be like with or without certain policy/guidelines, like be bold or only allowing registered users to edit, so how about someone, like me (though I'm not that good at writing), writes an essay about what that would be like. Any suggestions or specific policies that would be interesting write about, or does someone else wish to write the essay, or does this essay, or technically more than one possible essay, exist? Jeffrey.Kleykamp 22:23, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Plenty of material in the archives for this page and Village pump (policies). (SEWilco 01:14, 23 June 2007 (UTC))
It would probably be better to check the page history for this, since the sections are only stored in the archives for a week before being removed. Tra (Talk) 01:24, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
This is pretty good for something like what I want: WP:PEREN. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 12:36, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
And this: WP:VPE. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 12:37, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
All policies! Imagine Wikipedia without all policies, especially NPOV! A.Z. 02:35, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

WikiMD

There should be a new sister project called like WikiMD, where there can be health advice, medical tips, a database of ailments/diseases, and their common treatments, and a catelogue of varius medicines/vitamines and thier side effects. This would be benificial for both medical students and potential patients. Naturally we would need some sort of discalaimer about such medical information, but i really think its a great idea and im surprised they havent done it already. King of the N00bs 05:47, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

  • One reason is that the paradigm that "everyone can edit" rather clashes with the concept of giving "good medical advice". >Radiant< 11:43, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure the Foundation wants to avoid lawsuits for injuries sustained by bad medical advice. No malpractice insurance here. bibliomaniac15 BUY NOW! 02:33, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Spell Checking on the project

I know this has probably been mentioned and discussed a million times before, but I think it is high time that Wikipedia have a spell checking function. Typos would simply be almost non-existent, and grammar problems too. It would make editing so much easier; and make wikignomes jobs alot easier as well. Is there anything that can be done? -- Anonymous DissidentTalk -- (dated 07:56, 18 June 2007 UTC)

LAutomatic spell checkers are a bad idea, as a lot of articles would have words which don't appear in it. Od Mishehu 08:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
You can use automatic spellcheckers in your browser while editing. There are some Wikignomes out there who search for common typos and fix them, but automation of that is undesirable (think of national varieties of English and deliberate misspellings in quotes etc.). Kusma (talk) 09:21, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
I think some editing tools like WP:AWB have spell-checking? x42bn6 Talk Mess 18:45, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Technical FAQ, spell checking is disabled because of performance reasons. Firefox 2 has spell checking. Gutworth (talk) 02:25, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
Firefox 2 spell checking is okay, but still pretty crappy. It considers British English misspellings for one, and its vocabulary is very limited. bibliomaniac15 BUY NOW! 02:31, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
You can download other dictionaries, including a British English one. Just right click in the edit box and choose Languages->Add dictionaries.-gadfium 05:51, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem

Moved to WP:VPM. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 19:11, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Inside every link is a tag waiting to get out

I've started a proposal called Wikipedia:Link intersection about a method of using wikilinks to do keyword searches to find similar pages. Feedback would be appreciated -- especially from a developer. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 03:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:FICT rewrite

A rewrite of WP:FICT is being proposed at Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)#Rewrite proposed. Needs polishing, clarification, and so on, but it's a start. — Deckiller 22:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

It has my endorsement already. —AldeBaer (c) 23:08, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

extra article space class

I'd like to propose a new class of article space, kind of a nirvana between deleted and released, so that ordinary registered users (IPs should not be a reason not to improve Wikipedia, if this involves locking them out, so be it) can work on it when logged in, but the public does not witness the embarassing state parts of WP are currently in.

The reason I'm proposing this is with special regard to the fact that there are far too many articles written competely in-universe style. In my opinion, even when those articles are carefully using the word "fictional" instead of just kickstarting with e.g. a planet's galactic neighboorhood and the different races living there, they are still a pain. Often, they contain absolutely zero information of any relations between the subject and the real-world. That's because fiction fanboys hate actual research, and they rather write about the hundredth minor character (which appears only in a misprint of a special edition of the non-canonical cartoon series they bought at a convention), instead of adding anything actually encyclopedic (yes, it's a valid term in this case) with regard to, say, the production history of their favourite fantasy fiction universe's franchises. I strongly believe this must change. We must make it clear what Wikipedia is not. I'm not sure how this could be achieved (in a way that not only rids us of cruft-only articles, but also of the people who keep adding to them), but I believe the enforcement of some basic standards may be a good start and an incentive for people actually interested in encyclopedic article production to research the subject at least a bit. —AldeBaer (c) 16:15, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the readers should know that every released article has the potential to be incomplete and embarassing. The mere fact that an article is really bad is not a reason to delete it, as it can be improved eventually. A.Z. 17:22, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
There are simply too many articles like Dark side devotee or Ludo Kressh to deal with them on an AfD for AfD basis, in my opinion. The problem is, those articles clutter up mainspace for readers and editors. —AldeBaer (c) 17:54, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Fancruft for context/details. --Quiddity 19:08, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointer. —AldeBaer (c) 19:13, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Links in images/graphical exploration

In looking at the image below, it occurred to me that being able to click the individual names within the image would be most useful. Looking at this Village Pump page I see that someone has proposed a graph of Wiki pages Site map. That, on a limited scale, would also be a very useful way to explore within a topic. I realise that this would require additional programming but maybe it can be a long-term goal to add graphical interaction? 89.243.213.208 09:47, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

This is possible with mw:Extension:ImageMap. See Category:Wikipedia imagemaps for working examples. –Pomte 09:54, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Template:Given name

I'd like to propose a {{given name}} template in the vein of of {{surname}}. Right now, articles on given names are not tagged with anything specific, so this template might be useful. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 04:49, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Looks reasonable to me; why not create it yourself? — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 05:09, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Note that we do have {{hndis}}, for human names in general, though it is perhaps not sufficient. -- Visviva 12:22, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
But hndis is for a complete article title (first-name/last-name), and puts the page in the disambiguation category, while encyclopedic articles about surnames or given names are not disambig pages. I think we just need the counterpart of the surname template. Chris the speller 17:09, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 Done since no one seemed to have a problem with the proposal. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 23:24, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Uneditable pages

Is it just my imagination, or are more and more pages being locked against editing (at least for those who aren't logged on), with no obvious explanation as to why? Matt 00:14, 24 June 2007 (UTC).

Yes, they are, but it's because of vandalism. We are working towards a new solution; for more information, see Wikipedia:Flagged revisions. This will (hopefully) eliminate the need to "lock", or protect, pages from editing. —METS501 (talk) 00:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Semiprotection is used because the large majority of vandalism is carried out by IP addresses. The ones found semi-protected are the more high risk ones that vandals, such as high school students are likely to target. Such as Wii when it became the today's featured article. All hell broke loose there, and I am not surprised that it's semi protected the following day.--Kylohk 11:36, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Need a format (template?) for 'name' pages

References:

Name pages are ripe for abuse and poor wording and formatting, and a guideline on this would greatly help. My suggestion is to follow what Molly (above) has....listing persons, places and things exclusively known by the single word, followed by a section of people, places and things that are notably known by that word. One of the biggest difficulties (as seen in Nancy above) is the temptation for people to add anyone famous whose first name is Nancy, and often this bleeds to people who aren't even notable enough to warrant their own page (resulting in non-linked or redlinked entries).

Can we come to a consensus on a guideline for this? Maybe a 'Name Group' to undertake continuing efforts in maintaining name pages? --Kickstart70-T-C 00:17, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

  • WP:MOSDAB has guidance on these sorts of pages, and basically what it advises is sticking to things that are known by the name you're disambiguating. Don't list everything with the word as part of the name, or else it'll get too crowded. That's not limited to human names, although the problem gets especially bad. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:40, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't see quite an example that covers this...basically, I agree with you but the name pages, as you say, are especially bad and could use some more directed focus to clear up. --Kickstart70-T-C 04:25, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Manual of style (names), anyone? >Radiant< 08:48, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Sounds like a good idea to me. Who wants to write up a core set of guidelines? --Kickstart70-T-C 04:30, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
A number of ideas have already been collected on MoS:DP in the section "Should we create a style guide for Title (surname)?" I suggested it, and am sort of on the hook to carry it out, but if anyone wants to take the lead, please feel free. Chris the speller 19:01, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

W3C Icon

I propose that the W3C Icon be displayed in the footer of Wikipedia, where the WikiMedia and MediaWiki icons are. Since the main page passed the validation test I see no problem with displaying the icon. I think it would serve not only as a pat on the back to our coders, but also to show people browsing Wikipedia that our coders care about quality assurance, passing a test that even Microsoft did not. Thoughts? Masterof148 04:15, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

"Even Microsoft"? Do you actually believe that Microsoft cares about meeting the standards? But to your main question: I don't know. The only DTDs against which many WP pages could be validated are the awful old "transitional" ones, thanks to the love by various users of <FONT> and suchlike garbage. (Indeed, I've used <U> myself.) I don't think that validation against a transitional DTD is anything worth mentioning. -- Hoary 04:36, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Although it's very satisfying to have valid XHTML, I don't think it's worth putting the sticker on. Anyone who cared would do what you did and used the validator. Gutworth (talk) 02:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

New id attribute in MediaWiki:Common.css

In my opinion, there should be an ID "#roundcorners { -moz-border-radius: 1em; }" as to have to avoid typing {{Round corners}} when they are wanted. But that's just me. « ANIMUM » 18:26, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

You probably mean CLASS, not ID. Instead of using {{Round corners}}, you will have to type class=roundcorners, and have no way to specify the exact CSS value. So far I don't see any advantages ∴ Alex Smotrov 19:18, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
Make an {{editprotected}} request at MediaWiki talk:Common.css if there is consensus. –Pomte 07:05, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
You can't rely on it for appearance because it will only work on the Gecko. Gutworth (talk) 02:32, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Search Page

I realize that there's a Site Search available from the Home Page, and I do have that bookmarked, but using it means waiting for the Home Page to load, which sometimes takes quite a while on a dial-up connection. In fact, since the Home Page takes considerably longer to load than many of the encyclopedia pages, searching via the Home Page can easily triple the time needed to look up one little thing.

What I would prefer to bookmark would be an uncluttered search page analogous to Google's regular search page. It would have the Wikipedia logo at the top, a nice prominent box to type the search object into, one or more go/search buttons, and probably a *few* links (e.g., to the Home Page) -- and that's it.

If there already is such a page, please post its location. Then we can turn this into a discussion of how to make the page easier to find! Carol the Dabbler 21:21, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I use Google. To search Wikipedia page titles enter "allintitle: site:en.wikipedia.org" in the search box, followed by the search terms. to search article text, omit the "allintitle:" term. -- Boracay Bill 22:01, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Click the Search button in the lefthand sidebar, without typing anything into the box. You can also type something into the box to do a search directly from the sidebar. That also allows you to search using other engines (such as google) as well. I don't know how more prominent it can get, it's already on every page. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 22:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Another possibility is to use http://www.wikipedia.org as your search page. It defaults to searching the English Wikipedia.-gadfium 01:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Just as a note, it's not necessarily the Main Page that takes long to load. When your browser first loads any Wikipedia page, it has to grab some scripts and style sheets to display the page. Once your browser has done this though, it's able to cache the information for future requests and use those cached copies. Gutworth (talk) 02:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Full site map

How about creating a full site map, something like this:

but complete, and only between articles (and with smaller text, and maybe size of the text can be based on the the amount of links to and from articles), it would be interesting to look at and I would especially be interested how different articles are linked and to see if there are clusters. It's possible to do this with a bot or something. What do you people think? Jeffrey.Kleykamp 15:50, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

It would be much too large to view all at once. And don't get us started on how many server CPU cycles it would take to maintain it in real time. NeonMerlin 17:33, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Then, how about a one time thing starting from one article and moving three to six levels, start articles like USA, cheesecake, or lemon. It could also be a yearly or even monthly event starting from the article that gets linked to the most or a nominated article (along the lines of featured content). Jeffrey.Kleykamp 19:19, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Possible script of interest: Six degrees of Wikipedia. –Pomte 21:38, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I find it really interesting and extremely amusing that to get from "George W. Bush" to "fart" it only take 3 degrees of separation, even without date and year articles, but how does it work, is it pre-indexed or is it a simple search? Jeffrey.Kleykamp 22:09, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Preindexed, I bet, it'd take a long time to search through the 1 million plus entries.--Kylohk 16:59, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
This looks like a really neat idea in theory, but I agree that the sheer scale of Wikipedia mean that this would be quite an endeavor. With current technology, I'd say real-time is right out; but this may be feasible if limited to Wikipedia articles which are linked with a specified number of other articles; and perhaps containing a specified article size (in bytes or textual characters). That way, you'd clear out all the stubs and dead-end articles which make up a pretty significant portion of Wikipedia. Such runs could be reiterated periodically throughout the year to provide a visual representation of Wikipedia's growth. This might be easier on some other language's Wikipedias, as they are smaller-scale and may greater growth in non-stub non-dead-end articles. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 01:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I think someone should do what you said. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 21:41, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
I know that this will be too much but how about an animated site-map, that means it looks at the versions of the Wikipedia at different periods of time, starting from the beginning to now. It would look like water, as articles gain in size. Wow. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 14:24, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
The problem that I see is the sheer size of a full map. Look at a protein interaction map of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It's got something like 6000 protein-coding genes, and the "interactome" is a mess. With upward of 1.8 million articles, including redirects, this would be crazy. As suggested above, it might be a way to find small closed groups that link to others within the group, but fail to link into the rest of the project. Flyguy649talkcontribs 14:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
What would it do other than be really cool to look at? ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 18:29, July 3, 2007 (UTC)

FUI Wikipedia:Six degrees of Wikipedia `'Miikka 02:44, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

See also catgraph. --Quiddity

Vandalism is pointless

I saw an essay on Encyclopædia Dramatica, and although their content is generally inappropriate *cough* for Wikipedia, this one may just fit a nice purpose. I Wikipediafied [6] and the result was User:Salaskan/Vandalism is pointless. Perhaps it would be a good idea to link to this page in vandalism warnings like {{uw-v1}} and {{uw-v2}}? Better not link to it from welcome templates to avoid encouraging newbies to vandalise, but we may just convince a few potential vandals to go edit constructively with this page. Obviously, when this page is improved and gains some acceptance, I will move it to the Wikipedia: namespace. Any ideas? SalaSkan 00:31, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

We need acceptance for essays that don't affect our policies? FunPika 01:26, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Take a look at User:Persian Poet Gal/Why Vandalism is Silly! BTW, "silly" rhymes with "Willy". Shalom Hello 09:29, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
FunPika, not really, but we do need acceptance if we're going to link to this essay in a vandal warning template, so I listed it here because it could do with improvement. SalaSkan 10:52, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Your essay completely fails to address the reason people vandalize and seems preoccupied with the idea that vandals are generally malicious, either because they're angry about the article or because they want to ruin Wikipedia. I had one vandal who changed Pan's Labyrinth to Flan's Labyrinth, with the edit summary of "yummy flan :)" and then reverted themself. Did they have a problem with Pan's Labyrinth? Did they want to see Wikipedia suffer? No. Also, the tone of the essay isn't as professional as I would expect for something we're masslinking to vandals, who are by nature outsider. Atropos 02:06, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
That's why I listed it here; it is far from complete, and like I said I copied it from Encyclopedia Dramatica (and edited it), so obviously the content is not-so-kind (as you'd expect from ED). SalaSkan 13:47, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Standard series of vandalism templates

It seems as though a number of the more common warning templates link to articles which wind up becoming vandalism magnets. Many contain links to wikipedia or IP address or other articles which keep getting hit by persistent vandalism. Would it maybe be a good idea to remove all of these sorts of wiki links from these templates?--VectorPotentialTalk 20:22, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes - either that, or permanently semiprotect those pages. I think Wikipedia is under perpetual semiprotection, so I think it's a moot point. Also, suppose we change the link from Wikipedia (article) to Wikipedia:About (project page), and vandals attack the project page. Is that an improvement? Shalom Hello 09:31, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Searching in Different Languages

I am surprised that this is acually the case but its true. I often happen to search Wikipedia in Russian and in English. But, when I am in the Russian Wikipedia(.ru) and I try to search in English, the results don't show up at all. Then I am foreced to go back and change language on the website to English and then proceed with my search. For example, just now I double checked this typings "помидор" in the english version of wikipedia and got no search result. And then I switched the setting to Russian language and typed the thing again and found what I needed. The same way is when I tried searching for "tomato" (I searched for that in Russian in the exmaple above) in the Russian language setting and got no result (I just read the article on the tomato. It was presented as article of the day or something like that).

Anyways, to summarize my rediculous example, I feel that there shouldn't be a need to have a limited search just within the language. If a user wants to switch sear from any other language to english, or vise versa, it should be possible without hitting the back button a couple of times to change the language, or retyping the wikipedia.org hyperlink.

Vitalyshmelkin 14:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

a devout wikipedia user

if i posted this in a wrong place please let me know

An interesting idea, but one that could cause many problems. For example, take the word "Venus". That's a word in tons of languages! How would the software choose? —METS501 (talk) 03:34, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

—well atleast it would give you the search options and the languages. my problem right now is that its troublesome to reload to main page and select language since many times i am looking for translations and explanation of terms in different languages.Vitalyshmelkin 06:12, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Download By category

It would be very helpful, if along with the current wikipedia download mechanism, a download by category is also introduced. This will also help in decreasing the bandwidth constraints because people might not want to download the whole wikipedia. For example - a technical school in a place with low might want to have the wikipedia science/technology sections archived in their private network. For them download by category might come in use.

Rajmohan h 10:35, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Rajmohan h. This change has to do with a software change, which we here cannot do. To request a software change, please use bugzilla. Thanks! —METS501 (talk) 13:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Have you tried Special:Export? It does exactly what you're talking about. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 17:49, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Request for removal of methods from magic effects

In many of the magic trick articles on wiki, the method is exposed. This is extremely damaging to the magci community because they are tricks that we, as magicians, perform regularly. It would be grealy appreciated if these methods were removed. It would also help promote magic as an art form and maybe also help prevent other sites from exposing. It might also help wiki gain more respect from magicians. Birdy2011

While I understand your dismay at having all your best moves set out in black and white for anybody to read, I would also point out that there are magicians who explain everything they do while they are doing it, on stage or on camera, and the audience is still mystified, entranced and lining up to see the show. As with anything requiring a high degree of skill, how it is done is not the magic (if you will pardon this use of the word); that it is done is. Bielle 02:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
This debate is very old and is already thoroughly covered. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Magic#Magic_Methods_and_Exposure. The primary point to make is that all material on Wikipedia should be attributed to a verifiable source, in which case you can't really say we're the ones exposing the trick. Dcoetzee 03:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
This should possibly be on WP:PEREN. You should expect an encyclopedia to contain information; if it's covered in reliable sources, we also cover it. >Radiant< 10:39, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I've watched documentaries on the telly detailing how this top magician do this and that. So, if anything, many secrets are already exposed, with or without mention on Wikipedia.--Kylohk 14:03, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
You've all made good points, however, these are copyrighted effects. I know what you are going to say, "methods cannot be copyrighted." While this is true, the names of the effects can and have been. The tricks I have already found have been reported and I was informed that action would be taken. I just figured it would be easier for everyone if Wiki simply removed the methods themselves. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Birdy2011 (talk • contribs) 19:25, 19 June 2007
What has copyright of a name got to do with it? Microsoft doesn't mind. Copyright issues only apply to copied content. Adrian M. H. 18:29, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
This is legal sleight of hand (no pun intended). Copyright cannot be applied to names, only trademarks can, and trademark use is only forbidden where it's a use by a competitor that could potentially confuse consumers. If you look into more detail at the link I supplied, they've thoroughly addressed the usual legal techniques magicians employ to attempt to suppress publication of their techniques. Dcoetzee 19:34, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
See also discussion at Exposure on Wiki!. x42bn6 Talk Mess 23:30, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't think special moves are copyrighted. If David Blaine did this, there is no stopping another magician to try and attempt his trick. I mean, it's not a logo or anything, it's just a set of actions.--Kylohk 19:50, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to create adult filter

The way search engines like google allow you to check filter adult content, it's true wikipedia is not censored, however someone (usually children) could easily be exposed to adult content, and I read from people complaining about it all the time on commons and here that they accidentally viewed an explicit image and trying in vain to request deletion, fact is that allowing people to be accidentally exposed to adult content is a potential liability and possibly unfair and this should be a good solution for everyone Bleh999 10:41, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

This is a perennial proposal. Setting aside the ethical issues, the practical problems with implementing something like Google's filter algorithm are legion.
  • Google spent a great deal of time and money to develop its filter. We don't have (very much) money, so we rely on people voluntarily giving up great gobs of time to accomplish things; this particular task probably won't draw the people with the necessary skills.
  • Google's filter is proprietary. We'd have to redevelop it from scratch.
  • Any filter – Google's included – will 'leak'. There will be false positives and false negatives.
  • We have no good, objective way to decide what is 'adult' or 'obscene' material. (Google doesn't tell us what they screen, probably for good reason.)
We can't screen easily on words. Are breasts obscene? Do we lose breast cancer then, and breast feeding too? Picture are even more complicated. It's legal for women to go topless in public in many countries; it's not considered inappropriate for children to see a woman's breasts there. (Indeed, recent court decisions have held that it's legal in many parts of even the prudish United States). Is full nudity acceptable if it's line art from the Voyager plaques? What about if it's painted in full colour on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Perhaps as long as it's done artistically in black and white?
Even if we could decide on universal standards for what constituted 'adult' content there's no way to maintain those filters. Evaluation of article content would suffer from errors, lags in maintenance, and malicious vandalism. In short, your heart's in the right place, but it won't work. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:45, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not censored, Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates, Wikipedia:Profanity (Manual of Style), m:Should Wikipedia Use Profanity, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedians against censorship. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Maybe I should be more specific, I don't just mean nudity but wikipedia hosts more explicit images and videos, such as sexual acts, masturbation, ejaculation etc, you can just click a random file and be exposed to it, I wonder if that would get wikipedia added to filtration software and lists used by educational institutions and many other places, I don't see why not since wikipedia is effectively hosting pornography. Bleh999 19:44, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Why is it censorship to not want to be exposed to explicit content? I don't believe that is true, if you present yourself as an encyclopedia you should give viewers the choice of not being unintentionally exposed to pornography. Bleh999 19:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Self-censorship is fine. But, as outlined above, it's impractical to develop an automated system for censorship on Wikipedia. Not to mention the false sense of security. As was mentioned, things will slip through the cracks of such systems. If you are concerned about children seeing things you don't want them to, be sure to be there when they're browsing Wikipedia and verify what they're about to click on before they go there. -- Kesh 02:40, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
We do not put images of potentially offensive material in articles where you might not expect to encounter such images. If you look at the article on ejaculation, you should expect that it might have an image which portrays that. If the image from that page was added to an unrelated article, that is vandalism and you should feel free to revert the article or report it. However, there are borderline cases, where some people might reasonably expect an explicit image and others might reasonably expect not to see one. One example is the article on woman. It currently contains a painting of a naked woman (but "below the fold") and has at times contained more explicit photographs or drawings of women. This has long been a matter of debate on the article's talk page.-gadfium 20:40, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Instead of "Warning: This file type may contain malicious code; by executing it, your system may be compromised."

How about something that says "use caution" rather than "it's not safe to download this file"? It could be something like this:

Files of this type may contain malicious code, and are not scanned by Wikimedia Foundation servers or staff. Users are reminded to follow sound computer security practices, treating files downloaded from Wikipedia as untrusted, and that use of the content of Wikipedia is at one's own risk.

We could also, if necessary, create and link to a help page about handling downloaded files securely. NeonMerlin 00:25, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposal - Adding New Code to Autonumber Tables

I would like to propose the addition of code to Wikipedia. The purpose of the code is to have the entries within Wikipedia tables and charts automatically numbered (as opposed to the author having to manually enter these numbers). For lists and charts that are very long, it is cumbersome and tedious for the author to manually enter each and every number. Furthermore, these numbers are subject to constant change whenever an entry is added to or subtracted from the list. Example: say an author creates a chart that alphabetically lists all of the 535 members of the US Congress. It would be laborious to list the numbers 1, 2, 3, … 533, 534, 535 near each of the 535 entries on the list. And next time the list changes (at the next election, when names are added to or subtracted from the list of Congress members), the author would have to repeat the laborious process of numbering the 535 entries on the list all over again. A Wikipedia user has developed code that addresses this issue. An example is below. Please indicate your support or opposition to this proposal so that, hopefully, consensus will allow the addition of this code to Wikipedia. If you have any questions or concerns, please post them here or on my Talk Page. Thanks. (JosephASpadaro 20:31, 28 June 2007 (UTC))

Example of output derived from auto-numbered tables code:

Plain Numbered
Wikitext 
{| class="wikitable"
! Name
! Date
|-
| John
| April 1, 2007
|-
| Dick
| April 2, 2007
|-
| Harry
| April 3, 2007
|}
 
{| class="wikitable autonumber"
! Name
! Date
|-
| John
| April 1, 2007
|-
| Dick
| April 2, 2007
|-
| Harry
| April 3, 2007
|}
Display
Name Date
John April 1, 2007
Dick April 2, 2007
Harry April 3, 2007
# Name Date
1 John April 1, 2007
2 Dick April 2, 2007
3 Harry April 3, 2007


Since this is a feature request for the MediaWiki application, try putting it on MediaWiki's bug tracker. NeonMerlin 00:36, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Main Page

So, the Main Page is awesome. I frequently check it out and learn all sorts of new and fascinating things from "Today's featured article," "Did you know . . . " and "On this day . . . " all of which go a long way toward satiating my lust for trivia. But you know what would be an even more awesome addition? Most read articles--which I don't think would present the same security issues that a counter applied to every page would (as discussed in the Perennial Proposals), and might be really interesting.

We actually do have that feature (through an external server), available here. It looks like it is currently down however. Prodego talk 17:27, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Convenience templates for internal links in articles

See Wikipedia talk:Template substitution for details. 81.104.175.145 12:09, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

User template: namespace

The problem with migrating userboxes into user subpages is that it leaves them rather disorganized and makes it difficult to assemble a complete list. It would also make it difficult to export the userboxes in bulk to another wiki. (I think a userbox-based social site would have great potential.) Nonetheless, I've seen fairly strong evidence that the Template: namespace is too front-end to contain things like userboxes, and that the Template: space should be subject to the NPOV policy but userboxes shouldn't. Thus, I suggest that to help keep userboxes organized while still separating them from article templates, we create a User template: namespace for all templates intended for user pages and not intended for articles.

This namespace would be treated the same as all others from MediaWiki's point of view; besides not requiring any new code, it eliminates the confusion that would result if the same template-transclusion code meant one template on article pages and another template on user pages. And while {{User template:whatever}} is a little awkward, it's a lot cleaner than {{User:Somebody1337/boxes/whatever}}. NeonMerlin 05:23, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the idea of a userbox namespace has been rejected before, and I think it was by User:Jimbo Wales himself. Unfortunately, I'm not sure of what link I can give you to find that discussion... Wikipedia:T1 and T2 debates maybe? That probably mentions it. --tjstrf talk 05:31, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
This is a former rejected proposal; see Wikipedia:Migration of usercruft into new namespaces. --ais523 15:50, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Both the "usercruft" proposal and the May poll predated most, if not all, of the migration of boxes into user space. The idea has not AFAICT been discussed since. One alternative raised in the usercruft poll, which I would support, was the creation of a separate wiki for userboxes and personal content, with interwiki transclusion of templates similar to what happens with Commons images. However, this would take a lot of new code on MediaWiki. NeonMerlin 18:56, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Anon election notice

A well intentioned admin added a notice about the WMF election to Mediawiki:Anonnotice, the site wide notice shown to not logged in Wikipedia visitors. Since non-editors can not participate in the election, I feel this is a pointless distraction to the vast majority of Wikipedia visitors, and he disagrees. Since nearly no one watches Mediawiki talk pages, I am posting in a couple common places to hopefully draw further attention to this.

Please comment at Mediawiki talk:Anonnotice#Election notice is bad. Dragons flight 03:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Trusted Users

I was talking to some users on IRC, and one was talking about giving trusted users some "special" features that admins have, like roll back and being able to view deleted pages. I was thinking about this, and it makes sense to give trusted users these abilities. This kind of goes along with the whole "partial admin" thing, but really it will just make things simpler. I think trusted users should get rollback, the ability to view deleted pages, and the ability to protect and unprotect pages. Yeah, this has been proposed at before for roll back at WP:ROLL and at WP:LAM, but with the increasing attention and vandalism Wikipedia is getting, this would lighten the load on the current admins (who can't seem to keep up with the backlog). I know this has been shot down, but the proposal at WP:LAM was nearly a year and a half ago, and things on Wikipedia have changed a lot since then. What harm could come out of having Trusted Users, or whatever term you want to coin? It would only be for the positive. This would help lead into RFAs because !voters would see what a user has done with there tools, and wouldn't go off of edit count so much, because edit count is generally something a !voter uses to see how well a candidate will perform with the admin tools because they don't have anything else to go off of (major run on-sentence there :-)). I don't see anyways in which this could really be harmful. You're not giving a user the ability to delete pages, so you don't have to worry about a "rob-rage" user (deleting the main page) and you don't have to worry about a user making a bad block and screwing the foundation over some how. Like its said in WP:LAM, give roll back (which you could use with TW, but it doesn't hurt anything), give the ability to delete pages created within two days (this would help with CAT:CSD, which seems to be backlogged more often then not), give page protection abilities (which again, doesn't hurt a user directly (see also:m:Protected pages considered harmful)), access to Special:Unwatchedpages (which will help with vandalism), and give the ability to view a pages deleted history (which again, can't possibly caused harm). All of this can't hurt anything, and would help with backlogs. Again, this would also lessen all the crazy standards at WP:RFA, and help deal with vandalism. Read over this and WP:LAM instead of marking it off as stupid. Thanks! ~ Wikihermit 03:12, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Like you say, this has been proposed, in part, at WP:RFR, it seems the community wants to keep the status quo -- those additional functions are what admins are for.
The ability to view a page's deleted history can definitely cause harm, as can the ability to delete pages, even new pages. It just means that more people need to keep a watch on more people. The oversight process takes a little while to complete, and before that, a page's deleted history can contain very sensitive information. That may be why it was deleted.
In my opinion, WP:RfA, though broken, is the best way we have currently to ensure that users who can rollback with one click; delete pages, even new pages; protect pages; and view a page's history are trusted users. If users would just remember that adminship is no big deal, there wouldn't be a need for proposals like this, any additional usergroups, or any additional bureaucracy. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 17:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
That's the problem. Users don't get that "adminship is no big deal." ~ Wikihermit 00:07, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Indeed. But adding another usergroup isn't going to solve that problem; it's just going to create another level of (arguably unfairly) scrutinization and another point of contention. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 03:16, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
If adminship is no big deal, why was everybody freaking when 4 admin accounts got jacked? Why do we have such a rigid system to promote users to admins by consensus? Why did we pay so much attention to RFA's like Danny's and Gracenotes'? I very much dislike it when people use "adminship is no big deal" as a blanket proponent statement. bibliomaniac15 BUY NOW! 20:55, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I never said that the hijacking of administrator accounts was no big deal; administrators have access to potentially dangerous MediaWiki functions. However, the RfA process had nothing to do with that; the community trusted the users in question not to abuse their administrator tools, and there was less of an emphasis on password strength at that time. The hijacking was not a process problem. I think your second two questions relate to problems with the current RfA system that would be not have been problems if editors could remember that adminship is no big deal. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 02:14, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Paraphrase: Adminship (i.e., being trusted with potentially dangerous MediaWiki functions) is "no big deal." Cognitive dissonance anyone? dr.ef.tymac 02:20, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
With regard to the last question, I think it's primarily because processes like RfA attract people to whom they are a big deal; people who, frankly, are more interested in power than they are in the community or its reason for being. This tends to include both supporters and opponents... Thus the process (when it goes wrong) tends to degenerate into squabbling over ridiculous minutiae rather than the larger picture of maintaining the encyclopedia, leading to bitter infighting and bad feelings all around. With regard to the other two questions, there are various reasons (IMO mostly oriented toward making sure that the community has ownership of its own processes), but I don't think they're relevant to the broader point that adminship isn't -- or shouldn't be -- a big deal, even if RfA squabbles frequently are. -- Visviva 02:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
It looks like Wikipedia:Flagged revisions may be implemented, and that will change the environment upon which this proposal is based. (SEWilco 03:41, 1 July 2007 (UTC))

The mess of company and corporation-related page

Right now, information here on concepts like company (in the business sense only) is rather convoluted, as even within the world of business, the term does not seem to have one set meaning — additionally, laws relating to companies are distinct all over the world. The best summary of various meanings seems to be {{CompaniesLaw}}, but even it is still lacking many definitions. I don't think that Company should redirect to Corporate law any more than species should redirect to biology (or alpha taxonomy). What in the world can be done about this? Is there really no single primary definition of "business entity" to which "company" might redirect, where all the different meanings can be explained properly? Lenoxus " * " 17:22, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Page Counter

While checking to see what laughs Conservapedia had I noticed that on each page it has a counter telling how many times it has been viewed. Is there any way that this could be implemented, even if only as a choice registered users have. Yorkshiresky 19:12, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

No, because it would prevent us from displaying cached pages. Basically, if you don't know what caching is, just know that it allows us to display a static page many times without reprocessing it, so it can be delivered to users faster. When any content on the page changes, it has to be re-cached. —METS501 (talk) 20:31, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
A link to cache is useful. A.Z. 21:41, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
We do have a crude tool which shows the most popular pages. See [7].-gadfium 04:24, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Archive.org External Link Templates

Would it be appropriate to create external link templates to resources on the Internet Archive, if we haven't already? I would assume the IA would come under the first criterion (primary sources) listed on Category:External link templates, so this site would be eligible for this. Andrew (My talk) 23:28, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

There are are templates - see Wikipedia:Using the Wayback Machine. And the Internet Archive is in no way a "primary source"; it's a (gigantic) mirror. More to the point, the original source of information should always be cited even if a copy of that information happens to be on the Internet Archive, just the way that (for example) an Associated Press news article should always be credited to the Associated Press even if it happens to be published in (say) the Indianapolis Star. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:18, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Standard series of vandalism templates

It seems as though a number of the more common warning templates link to articles which wind up becoming vandalism magnets. Many contain links to wikipedia or IP address or other articles which keep getting hit by persistent vandalism. Would it maybe be a good idea to remove all of these sorts of wiki links from these templates?--VectorPotentialTalk 20:22, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes - either that, or permanently semiprotect those pages. I think Wikipedia is under perpetual semiprotection, so I think it's a moot point. Also, suppose we change the link from Wikipedia (article) to Wikipedia:About (project page), and vandals attack the project page. Is that an improvement? Shalom Hello 09:31, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
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