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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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

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Abolish the silly headers

See also Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia Forever. Rd232 talk 11:34, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

This very long section has been moved to /Fundraising headers.

"our early fundraising efforts extremely slow (less than 50% from last year)" - Rand Montoya, 17 Nov. [1] Rd232 talk 09:20, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary_Hover: a JavaScript on double-click

Wikinews proposes a script to display the Wiktionary definition in a small board, when one double-click on a word. It's already been installed in the following Wiktionaries gadgets: in French and in Italian.

To add it here, we should vote for an administrator, in:

  1. MediaWiki:Gadget-dictionaryLookupHover.js, copies without the guillemets : "importScriptURI('http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-dictionaryLookupHover.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');"
  2. MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition, adds "* dictionaryLookupHover|dictionaryLookupHover.js"
  3. MediaWiki:Gadget-dictionaryLookupHover, describes the gadget.

JackPotte (talk) 23:01, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

To explain: this script is a javascript tool which will retrieve the top definition for a word based on the language of the website the word is on, and the user's language preferences. The following user languages are natively supported: Spanish, Russian, Italian, French, English, Dutch. Other user languages will default to English until they are fully supported.
The script is currently available as a gadget or via common.js on many WMF projects; a good example is at fr.Wikinews where it is installed so everyone can use it.
The tool is particularly useful for readers who are not native speakers of the website's language. - Amgine (talk) 23:15, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Fantastic tool. I don't see why we shouldn't turn it on. Fences&Windows 02:25, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
I agree. Count me as a !vote for immediate implementation.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 05:40, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Not working for me. Screenshot of what this does? --Cybercobra (talk) 13:31, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Here is a screen clip of the tool in use on a blogspot blog: clip. The blog is in English, and the user preferences are in English, so the definition returned is English. Here is a screen clip of the tool in use on fr.wikinews: clip. The website is in French, the user preferences are in English, so the definition is the French language entry from the English Wiktionary. - Amgine (talk) 15:25, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
As long as it does not function like the script at nytimes.com article pages (example) where, if you either click&drag-to-highlight or doubleclick-to-highlight a word, a small question mark link pops up, and prevents me (in firefox) from using all normal right-click functionality (copy, search google, etc). -- Quiddity (talk) 21:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
This script corresponds better to my needs than the http://nytimes.com one, I just invite you to test it individually, by copying my User:JackPotte/monobook.js, into yours. JackPotte (talk) 14:31, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Today, it's used by at least 13 sister projects. JackPotte (talk) 20:42, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

JackPotte (talk) 05:13, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia data extraction

An WP:RFC is being drafted on how to organise data on Wikipedia better, to enable easier organisation/maintenance and data extraction. Comments/contributions please on constructing the RFC. See WP:VPT#Infobox Template Coherence Proposal. Rd232 talk 11:16, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Movement Toward Clearer Language

Often times, I have seen the word 'as' used in the place of 'since' or 'because.' Most of the time this makes the proper use of the word 'as' less clear. I propose that we stop using the word incorrectly in what seems to be an effort to sound academic.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.111.190.206 (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia already has ample policies promoting clear writing. Having a policy for use of "as" (and presumably every other word in the lexicon that anyone takes issue with) would get daft. Anyone can rewrite passages that are confusing. Pseudomonas(talk) 11:20, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
(ec) As as a synonym for since or because is normal English, although particularly common in some specific contexts. It's certainly not incorrect to use it in this way, and I doubt that most such uses are motivated by the desire to sound academic. Of course it shouldn't be overused, had better not be used outside its proper context, and must not be used when it can be confused with the other meanings of as. But some kinds of texts would have an extreme density of since and because if we didn't have alternatives such as as. This arises most often in academic texts, and that's why academic texts are the natural context for this use of as. Hans Adler 11:25, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Didn't we just have this discussion two months ago? Anomie⚔ 12:44, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Excellent point, as both IPs are from the University of Virginia. Hans Adler 17:48, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

NPP from the back

Special:Newpages has a delightful link that sends you directly to the end of the unpatrolled log. I use that option a lot. When a page is marked as patrolled (action=Markpatrolled), you get a link back to special:newpages, but not to the end of the patrolled log. I would love to see this added to that page. I propose that we add that option to the page. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:39, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Edits to MediaWiki:Markedaspatrolledtext would fix that. The return to language is in MediaWiki:Returnto but I don't understand how that works. Hipocrite (talk) 15:24, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the info, I really didn't have a clue where to find it. Before changing anything there, I want to make sure that people agree on them though! Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:17, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
That sounds like a good idea, though I think it is non controversial enough so that a bold admin (who know what they are doing) could add it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:14, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea to me, too. Regards SpitfireTally-ho! 21:59, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I suppose it's non-controversial enough to go ahead and be Bold about it. If the trout hits my face, the shit must have hit the fan. Tally Ho! Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 22:48, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleted articles

For articles deleted with non-malicious content, would an administrator create a website where all these articles would be viewable? --William S. Saturn (talk) 23:36, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

There are many administrators who are willing to mail any user non-malicious deleted content. To host it however is not one of Wikipedia's aims, but I do believe there are other sites that host previously deleted Wikipedia content. As long as their licence is compatible with Wikipedia's, there is no problem with hosting the content there. There are probably some people here who can tell you where you can find these sites. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 23:40, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Isn't that was Deletionpedia is about? SunCreator (talk) 23:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Promote use of talk page for cleanup templates

I want to preface this with my personal opinion about cleanup templates: I think that they suck. I think that the fact that editorial tags are being placed on the article instead of on the talk page is the most obvious issue. More importantly though, the over use of these dang tags is just messy clutter that has always bugged the hell out of me.

Recognizing the obvious fact that many editors seem to take some pride in tagging articles however, I've never tried to TFD any of them or anything like that (deletions are not the answer to these sorts of concerns anyway, in my view). I do tend to remove tags that I come across though, either by simple removing those that don't seem to be supported (which occurs far to often) or addressing the relatively minor issue(s) which they are screaming at our readers about (which normally only takes as much time removing the tag!).

The biggest current issue with these tags though is that they are often simple placed on the article with the apparent expectation that the problem will be obvious to everyone else. Rather then being contentious about cleanup templates and their use, I think that the most constructive course to take is to try to encourage people tagging an article with a cleanup tag to post something about what needs to be done on the article's talk page. With that in mind I edited a couple of the templates to include a talk page link within the template itself. For an example, see: {{Anachronism}}, as well as several of the other (through "B") Category:Cleanup templates templates, which I edited back in September. The proposal here is to crowd source adding a similar talk page link to the remainder of those cleanup templates, as there are a tone of them (which is a whole other issue really, but that's something to be discussed elsewhere). If you're willing to help out please jump in and edit at least one template to include a link. Thanks!
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 04:53, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Tags should be applied to the article itself when they warn that there is currently a real problem with the article that the user should be aware of, such as not being neutral or seeming like original research. However, an acceptable article is not an ideal article. Tags made for issues for making an ideal article, rather than an acceptable one (such as {{Orphan}} or {{Dead end}}) should be moved to talk page instead MBelgrano (talk) 13:03, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
See WP:PEREN#Move maintenance tags to talk pages, MBelgrano. I do think the original idea here (encourage/require that the tagger actually use the talk page) is a good idea. Anomie⚔ 21:52, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I was sort of tired when I wrote this, and reading over it now I realize that I got a bit off track and rambled a bit... not that I want to retract anything, as everything said above is the way I feel and I stand by it. However, the main point to posting this is to get help in adding links to the talk page, onto all of the cleanup templates.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 22:21, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
They don't all need links to the talk page. The likes of {{unreferenced}} and {{uncategorised}} are obvious problems that do not require further elaboration on the talk page. PC78 (talk) 22:36, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Personally, I disagree. Even {{unreferenced}} should have something about it's addition to the article added to the talk page simply because if it's actually that obvious what the problem is then why not solve the actual problem rather then simply tagging the article? If there's a legitimate reason for the tag, then the person adding the tag should at the very least be able to say something like: "I can't find a source for (whatever) but I know it's true, so I've tagged the article with {{unreferenced}}."
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 22:53, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I see no reason at all to require any links to the talk page except for NPOV. Unreferenced is pretty darn clear - the article has no references. Ditto uncategorized. Its not for those who dislike tags to declare that those who find them useful must be forced to either fix the issue, write redundant and silly notes on the talk page to say "I tagged this as unreferenced because it is not referenced" or ignore it. Tagging articles for issues is valid Wikipedia work. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 23:08, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
You're mistaken in the belief that anything is being made to be "required" here. There's simply a link being added to the message boxes that points to the talk page. If the editor who adds the cleanup template does not wish to leave a message then (s)he doesn't need to.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 20:43, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Not valid work

I see nothing about "tagging articles for issues" that makes it valid Wikipedia work. What is the purpose of fishing around from article to article (most of which the "editor" knows nothing about) tagging things, often without going to the talk page and seeing if there was a reason, checking history to see if a major rewrite is underway, what the status of the article is, how often people are working on it, etc. Fly-by editors are disruptive and usually ignorant of the topic. If you go to an article, know the topic, and actually fix the problems or go elsewhere. If you can take 20 seconds to slap a citation needed template on a sentence then you have 2 minutes to use Google and find the stinking source that is needed yourself. Perhaps if we implement Ohm's proposal and make more steps for these trollers then perhaps they find it too hard to keep doing and stop, or at least it will slow them down. We are here to put information in an encyclopedia, not learn new ways to tell others to do that job. Perhaps everyone should be forced to do at least four improving edits a week or they loose the right to tag at all.Camelbinky (talk) 04:23, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Facepalm Facepalm — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 23:56, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Provide a metadata page for cleanup templates and wikiproject banners

Alternate proposal. Rationale: Many talk pages are created simply to hold WikiProject banners and are never used thereafter. A metadata page could hold both cleanup templates and wikiproject banners and said things could be displayed to users who want to see them based on prefs. Discuss. –xenotalk 17:01, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like an awful lot of work (almost every article has a project banner and more than 600,000 have maintenance templates). It has a high potential to break things (how many scripts, bots, and tools rely on the current system?). And the benefit seems rather minimal. I would like to eventually see metadata like coordinates and categories eventually switched to things that don't rely on the wikitext, but just creating a subpage to stick the templates on isn't that much better than what we currently have. Mr.Z-man 17:55, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Yea, I agree that this seems to be too much work for too little gain. Besides, I like the project banners and everything else being right there on the talk pages. I never really have understood why people are bothered by that (aside from not letting things rage out of control on page headers, of course). Aside from that though, there's been some effort at removing sub-pages in slightly different topics anyway, so I don't think most editors (myself included, really) would appreciate this sort of thing going forward.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 20:37, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Do talk pages created solely for placing talk-page templates constitute a problem at all? If so, why? MBelgrano (talk) 12:44, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
The bluelink indicates there might be some relevant discussion when in fact there is none. However, I do agree that this solution is a lot of makework with marginal gain. –xenotalk 15:26, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Syntax coloring on .js and .css pages

It would make editing such pages (ie. monobook.css, monobook.js) easier if there were color-coding, as most coding environments have. As such the colors would need to show up even during editing, in the text box, rather than only when viewing the page.

I know this isn't a major area of concern, but it would be a minor convenience, if it wouldn't take too much effort to implement. Equazcion (talk) 21:53, 12 Nov 2009 (UTC)

That's about the same deal as having syntax highlighting for editing wikitext. I think the Usability people are working on that, or were at least considering it at one point.
Personally, I just use It's All Text! to load it in a real editor when necessary. Anomie⚔ 22:17, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
WP:WIKIED. --King Öomie 15:35, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Hide project banners of inactive WikiProjects

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Discussion here has dwindled. Therefore I have moved it to Template talk:Inactive WikiProject banner. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:05, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

We have many WikiProjects which are inactive (see Category:Inactive WikiProjects); some never even got off the ground. Some of them have project banners which take up space on talk pages. If the project is inactive then the assessment data is not being used either. So I propose to hide these banners, by blanking their banner templates. The code and assessment would not be removed from talk pages, so the banner can easily be resurrected in the future if the project becomes active again. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:58, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

easy support. –xenotalk 22:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I can see people removing the banners if nothing is visible... --Izno (talk) 23:04, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Along the same lines, I can also see someone deleting them if they're blanked. A <noinclude>ed note explaining the situation would be better than a blanking to solve that. Just a minimal banner rather than none might solve Izno's concern:
WikiProject Foo (Inactive)  
(which could probable be done easily enough through {{WPBannerMeta}} by adding an "inactive" parameter) Anomie⚔ 23:23, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Hiding works for me, though why not just remove them or delete them. Most inactive ones that have been inactive more than a few months generally stay that way. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 23:09, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Question Are we just going to blank the banner visually, or are you also proposing to remove the code that places those articles into categories? The box blanking is easily revertable. The deletion of thousands of now empty categories is a little more difficult. If a project is later revived, the recreation of previously deleted catagories could result in a mess at CfD. Jim Miller See me | Touch me 23:10, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Why not just remove the banners, particularly if the project has been inactive for say 2 years, 1 year? There's no point in project banners on a talk page if a project is inactive. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 23:19, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
(to Collectonian and IP69xxx) Many particularly unnecessary edits to remove a short piece of code, and also the project can't be easily resurrected if we do that. –xenotalk 23:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I still think they should be removed if the project has been inactive for any reasonable length of time. I wouldn't say it's unnecessary to de-spam a talk page, and they shouldn't be left in place merely to facilitate the hypothetical resurrection of a project. PC78 (talk) 23:45, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
The project can be resurrected in the usual way, just get a bot to add the banners again, or save a list of the pages to the defunct project page. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 00:10, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I see no reason to do anything about them. They might lead to the Project being restarted and they might remind people to replace them with teh banner of a parent project. I do not see that removing them improves wikipedia so why do it. --Bduke (Discussion) 00:03, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how having banners to 3-year-old never active projects improves wikipedia. I see how it can make wikipedia an uninviting and confusing place for a new user, though. And that is, imo, reason to delete them. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 00:10, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with the removal if: a) there is still an active project banner on the page, and b) attempts are made to merge the inactive project to an appropriate parent project. I just removed over 600 banners from a defunct project that was converted to a task force of its parent project. Conversion is preferable to outright deletion, especially regarding the categories on those talk pages. Jim Miller See me | Touch me 00:25, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm okay with upmerging or finding a different task force, first. AIDs can go to medicine, etc. I don't understand a, though. It seems you're saying okay to remove the banner if the banner is left? Oh, you mean if any banner from any project is left on a page? I think that's the most frustrating thing for someone who comes to wikipedia and wants to engage in discussion about a talk page for the first time, click on a project banner, post there, then get ignored forever. I don't see the benefit, if that's what you mean. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 00:37, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
How about hiding the bulk of the banner so it says "This article was part of defunct project Foo, to discuss what should happen to the project go to WP:Projects for disucssion. " then people would have the choice depending on concensus:
  • Request removal of banners at WP:BOTREQ
  • Restarting the project
  • Up-merging to Project Bar with or without keeping the granularity info (|project was = Foo) either by [[WP:BOTREQ], redirecting the banner, or making one an expression of the other.
Rich Farmbrough, 05:59, 13 November 2009 (UTC).
(Or what Anomie said) Rich Farmbrough, 06:58, 13 November 2009 (UTC).

Thanks for all the comments on this. I agree that it would be a good idea to show something along the lines of what Anomie suggested, as just blanking the template would likely cause some confusion. So here is what I think I will do:

  • Instead of adding a new parameter to {{WPBM}} I think it would be simpler to write a new template (e.g. {{Inactive WikiProject banner}} or perhaps a new subtemplate of Template:WPBannerMeta for this.
  • The template should use the same parameters as WPBM, so to mark a template as "inactive" all one has to do is replace WPBannerMeta with WPBannerMeta/inactive (for example).
  • The output will be just one row (like Anomie suggested) both in full display and in its collapsed form inside a banner shell.
  • The word "inactive" could be linked to somewhere appropriate, so that editors can get more information about what it means.
  • The actual template page will also explain what has happened and how to reactivate it. It could also show what the template used to look like to save people looking through the history.
  • I don't see support for mass removal of these banners, although I think we should make it clear that editors can feel free to remove them locally on a page-by-page basis if it is deemed appropriate.
  • Wikipedia:WikiProjects for discussion is an interesting idea, but I think that it is relatively rare for a wikiproject to be discussed and so Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion should suffice.

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:28, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, {{WikiProject Elvis Presley}} is the first guinea pig. You can see how it appears outside and inside a banner shell. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:25, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
They look find. I still think, especially for projects that never did anything but post banners, the banners are just clutter, but I'm fine with collapsing to one line since there appears to be consensus for that. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 08:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Good idea, but it would be even better if the 'inactive' banners could be removed altogether after a certain period of time. One year? --Kleinzach 09:37, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Personally, I would oppose this move. To my eyes, it would make far more sense to try to deal with the essential problem of an inactive project, which is what to do with the project page itself. In general, the best way to deal with that is to see if the group can be turned into a taskforce of some larger group dealing with the same area. If that can be done, then there clearly would be no problem in having the banner of the new parent project in place of that of the older project that has been turned into a subproject. But, in at least some cases, these inactive projects may be the only ones that really deal directly with certain articles, and I would very much regret seeing the removal of a banner if in so doing the possibly sole existing assessment of an article is also eliminated. John Carter (talk) 15:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I prefer the "Inactive" styling per Anomie and {{WikiProject Elvis Presley}} / Martin's example. I am concerned that without showing that a project has existed, that is by deleting the banners entirely from talk pages, a second project might inadvertently be started with a slight variation of the project name. Unlikely but still possible. Further, calling attention to inactive status via the banner and link might help revive a dormant project. Sswonk (talk) 16:07, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Some of these inactive projects amount to a week's worth of work by one person. Someone made up a project name, got a template, added it to 50 articles, then disappeared. A second project inadvertently naming themselves similarly is not going to impact anything, it seems. If it is, please elaborate, because I don't understand the concern. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Using hypothetical, illustration-only names, suppose "WP Battletown" is inactive and the banner is removed from talk pages. A year later, without realizing the first exists another editor begins and recruits different members for "WP Battletown, Texas". The new user has created new banners, userboxes, project subpages, categories and so on. Then, the creator of "WP Battletown" returns from a 16 month hiatus and sees the new project. Both see a duplication of effort and waste of time that would have been avoided if the second editor had simply seen the "Inactive" banner and taken over for the first. Page merges, page moves and history merges might all be forced when they could have been avoided by leaving a vestigial, "Inactive" banner on Battletown related article talk pages. As I wrote, it is unlikely but possible that this might occur. Sswonk (talk) 22:13, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
  • To me, that's just way over-hypothetically worried. I think that happens once in the history of wikipedia and it's the only thing that ever bothers those constituents it's just not going to matter, particular, if instead of two inconvienced-because they're careless sorts you settle for 5000 inconvenienced because they're new readers, possible editors. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 05:29, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 05:29, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support Inactive Template Nice job Martin. I like this better than removing them outright. Editors interested enough in a topic to be spending time on the talk pages are at least given the chance to see the inactive link, and hopefully click through. The best result is to reactivate some of these projects. The next best idea is to get them merged into an active project. I also agree with Sswonk that the re-creation of these projects is work that doesn't need to be done. By maintaining the historical WP, interested editors can get a project back into active status. Jim Miller See me | Touch me 16:37, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment: Would a single banner specifying multiple inactive WikiProjects (when applicable), rather than one banner for each inactive project be better? –Whitehorse1 20:31, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
    It might be, if such a banner could tolerate the multiple revisions it would receive fairly regularly, with the related changes to the talk pages that the inactive banners are placed on. Just remember, every time someone tries to reactivate a project, they will want their separate banner restored, with the material removed from the inactive banner. For those projects which are, basically, seriously dead, like perhaps a group for a musical act that hasn't had anything notable happen to it in years, such a banner might be useful. But I think the amount of busywork related to changing it as people activate and deactivate projects might be more trouble than it's worth. John Carter (talk) 20:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
    That seems to be a lot of work for little (if any) real gain, to me. The inactive banner is already "collapsed", for one thing. Many of these will already be within {{Wikiprojectbannershell}} templates as well.
    — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 20:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
    A benefit would be compactness, cleanliness, Ohms. As said at the start "Some [inactive projects] have [b]anners which take up space on talk pages", which they (poss. multiple banners) still do irrespective of being collapsed or not. Edit: See below for more on this. –Whitehorse1 21:12, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
    The big problem with that idea is that all the talk pages transcluding the now-inactive project's banner have to be edited to swap in your multi-project inactive banner. With the current proposal, only the now-inactive project's banner itself need be edited. Anomie⚔ 01:57, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I fully support the 'display as inactive' proposal. We kill three birds with one stone: first of all, we declutter talk pages and assessment categories. Second, we avoid losing valuable data. Whether or not a project is active, the placement and extent of its project banners represents a huge amount of effort, labour, and valuable metadata. It is actively damaging to WP to erase that data by removing project banners from talk pages; there is absolutely no need to do so other than vague notions of tidyness. The more of the infrastructure of a wikiproject remains, the easier it is to restore and revitalise. Leading to point three: by presenting a banner marking the project as inactive, we let the banners fulfil their original purpose: as advertisments for the project. There is nothing more disingenuous or demoralising to follow a link from an upbeat project banner, to the dead shell of a wikiproject. Even worse is when editors fail to notice the project's inactivity, and join it anyway, only to realise at a later date that it's totally dead. If a project is marked as inactive, editors who follow its links are actively encouraged to take on the task of reanimating it, which can only be a good thing. A very promising development all round, I'd say. Happy‑melon 21:12, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Good third point, I had not considered. Still, for the make-an-effort and never get anywhere wiki projects, deletion would be better in my opinion. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 05:29, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
  • (Follow-on/expansion from above on single vs. multiple "Inactive" banners.) There are two banner-shell templates: WPBS, and WPB. WPBS is normally used when up to six banners are present, otherwise WPB is used. The difference between the two is that WPBS—which is much more common of course—defaults to displaying a one-line summary of each WikiProject banner, while WPB defaults to displaying only a "[show]" link. Although it's possible for the defaults to be overridden to hide/show or expand the one-line summaries, the ordinary aka default outcome of the current proposal means anything up to six one-colored-bar summaries (containing "Inactive") for articles using WPBS. –Whitehorse1 21:53, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Is this a problem? Unless a page is inactive (or over-archiving) you need to page down to get to any recent content anyway. I usually find that the most recent comments aren't on the first screen of a talk page anyway, or there aren't any comments at all. Either way, the use of the screen real estate for banners isn't something I have ever thought of as a negative. Jim Miller See me | Touch me 22:21, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
And does nothing for the new editor who does not realize that lots of wikiprojects go nowhere and isn't going to blank them. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 05:29, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I would support something like an |inactive=yes parameter in the metabanner (or a fork at /inactive) which would tell you that the project is inactive, with a link to a general guide (yet to be written?) on what to do and how to do it when a project is inactive (upmerge, convert to taskforce, revive). I'm not convinced that different colors are needed, or that they should be minimized. If it's a clutter, {{WPBS}} or {{WPB}} should be used anyway. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 17:23, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I'd like to see inactive projects' banners dimmed slightly, along with the current denotation method seen on, e.g., Talk:Cirque du Soleil. Powers T 03:40, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Sub-pages for Village Pump

What does everyone think about using sub-pages for the village pump? for those of you that may not be immediately clear on what I'm talking about, I'm asking about using a system similar to the AFD/RFA pages, where each individual discussion takes place on it's own page but is transcluded onto the main page (so that readers can see all conversations at once).
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 12:24, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

You mean have a page like Wikipedia:Village pump (all)? PC78 (talk) 12:45, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
You might as well wait for LiquidThreads, which is on its way Real Soon Now (tm). --Cybercobra (talk) 12:53, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
It's a good idea, but ANI is in much more dire need of this than Village Pump. Changes occur so frequently there as to make watchlisting almost useless in keeping track of individual discussions. I haven't found that to be so quite as much here. Addendum: It would be more practical here, though, since things happen more slowly here, and more by experienced users, so posting instructions for creating and transcluding subpages might be more acceptable. The ability to watchlist individual discussions here would be a major plus, even if ANI is a relatively more dire issue. As for LiquidThreads, it's only been in live testing for a couple weeks now, and in my opinion still has a long way to go before being implemented at Wikipedia. Equazcion (talk) 13:06, 13 Nov 2009 (UTC)
What are liquid threads? It would be nice even simply to have threads, you know, like every other discussion forum on the Web has been using for the past few decades... --Kotniski (talk) 13:30, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
See here for an example (its "beta" feedback page). A developer (User:Werdna) is working on just that sort of thread system as an extension to MediaWiki, which he calls LiquidThreads. When completed it will hopefully be implemented in place of the current wiki discussion system, ie. on all Talk: and other discussion pages. Equazcion (talk) 13:42, 13 Nov 2009 (UTC)
Man, I'm literally waiting for a LiqudThreads(LT) rollout on en.wikipedia with "baited breath". that being said... I'm not positive that a page(es) such as the Village Pump would actually directly benefit from being converted to use it. The discussion pages certainly should be converted to use the LiquidThreads system, but I'm not sure that the mainspace page(s) should do so. Maybe it's therefore a good thing that I brought this subject up prior to the eventual LT rollout here... (or not, who knows. I'm not that egocentric!). For the "proposals" and "policy" sections, at the very least, I would think that it would be desirable to keep the... er: "formal" statements as "normal" wikitext. It's possible that I'm actually conflating/anticipating the rollout of LiquidThreds in this proposal, somewhat; after a rollout we would then have the page and an LT driven discusion page for each "thread" on the Village Pump, after all.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 14:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Unsure

I don't know that we'd need subpages here. It makes sense for AfD and RfA to have a consistent location to link to and for archiving purposes, but this is essentially a talkpage for all intents and purposes. I don't think there's anything to be gained by splitting discussion up unlike everything else of this nature. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 13:39, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The gain in my mind is the ability to watchlist individual discussions, which would mean having to check the main page less often manually for changes to a discussion of interest. Equazcion (talk) 13:47, 13 Nov 2009 (UTC)
They would also be useful in loading at computers with slow conections, a single thread would be much more quick than the entire village pump. It may also prevent edit conflicts made by users who didn't really intend to say something in the thread, but instead start a new one by opening the last and adding a title header. MBelgrano (talk) 14:11, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, and manual/bot archiving might not be needed either (though the two advantages mentioned previously are far more significant). Hope they can get this working soon (as far as I can tell it really is just reinventing the wheel of standard threaded discussions, so maybe it won't take too long...)--Kotniski (talk) 14:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
well geez... I (or anyone else) could technically implement this change right now (ie: within 30 minutes) to all of the Village Pump. It's extremely easy for any of us to implement... the fact that it's that easy to implement and that it's not currently used gives me significant pause, is all. If no one really objects I'm certainly be more then happy to go forward, but my last attempt to do this wasn't so smooth (politically) so I'm being a bit more pragmatic in this case.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 15:50, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
You have my support. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:55, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Well I for one object. It just seems to be excessive slicing and dicing. This kind of approach makes sense for AfD and RfA - they are constantly changing pages where discussions are only relevant for a certain period of time, and direct, nonchanging links are required. The Village Pump is entirely different in setup, and is much more akin to a talkpage of an article. It wouldn't make sense to use a subpage approach for article talkpages, so why do it here? Moreover, RfA and AfD are really process pages, where this is most definitely not. Issues with watchlisting specific discussions are outweighed in my mind by an inability to watch this page in general. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:02, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
You could still watch this page for new discussions, as whenever a new one starts, another transclusion would be made. Village pump can be thought of as a talk page, but if so then it's a talk page for all of Wikipedia; As such it carries a group of discussions that are much more separate from each other, with a much higher degree of individual appeal (people likely being interested in one discussion but not necessarily another), than any article talk page. Equazcion (talk) 16:10, 13 Nov 2009 (UTC)
Yea, I've seen this argument before, and I don't quite understand it (meaning, I do, but...). I want sub-pages because it makes watching both the main <whatever> page and the specific sub-pages easier. It's easier to me... but maybe that's because I know what to expect?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 16:18, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Amory, compare it to WP:AfC where we used to have all submissions going on one page. It is a lot easier to keep track of things now with everything being on a separate subpage. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:27, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
I'll second that objection. I for one commonly read pages on my watchlist via the diff rather than by the actual rendered text, as it makes it much easier to not miss new comments. I sincerely hope before LiquidThreads is released that it gives the option to get one big diff of all the threads since a particular time/revision, as otherwise I am going to be extremely annoyed at having to dig through myriad little pages trying to find out what new comments have been posted. There's certainly no way to avoid that with a subpage-transclusion scheme. Anomie⚔ 18:10, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Really though, it's easier to track everything with individual sub-pages (to me, at least). As Equazcion mentioned above, you watch this page for new discussions and tag interesting ones (or remove uninteresting ones) from your watchlist (I actually use separate lists with page links, utilizing the related changes tool, but it amounts to the same thing).
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 05:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Except for how often an originally-uninteresting discussion here on the Village Pump becomes interesting (often for Chinese values of "interesting") due to topic drift. Anomie⚔ 01:36, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Previous discussion

Previous discussion on topics of this nature: archive 50 and archive 41. Initiated by the same person in each case, but the discussion from archive 50 has a good deal more in it. Just bringing these cases up. --Izno (talk) 16:05, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! reading...
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 16:18, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
no, no, no... the conversation that you linked to in archive 50 at least, is discussing documents within the Wikipedia namespace in general... which is an idea that I don't support myself. Having separate documents for (for example) Wikipedia:Naming conventions and "naming conventions (insert topic)" is a good thing (which is a particularly relevent topic by the way, considering that several of them were recently merged!).
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 16:25, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
The discussion contains a relevant proposal. Hence, it would be time-profitable to take the ideas and arguments used in that discussion and apply them here. :) --Izno (talk) 16:28, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Hey, good point... re-reading. Again, thanks!
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 16:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Partial implementation

I don't think the entire page needs subpages, however I do think when there is a seriously long threads, like the header and spoilers ones, they should be moved to subpages to save the watchlists of those not interested in them or only interested in them. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 22:18, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Eh... the half implementation compromise solution would only create a mess. It would very likely confuse many, if not most, discussion participants, and it would kind of mess up the archiving. I think that we're stuck with either full implementation or nothing.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 05:23, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it really would cause any confusion, since the edit link would go to the transcluded pages, the same as now...its done at ANI and the other admin boards now. I don't know how they deal with it with archiving, though. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 05:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Well right... the archiving with a sub-page/transclusion system is essentially automatic, since pages are started on a log/<date> sub-page already. If only some are done that way though, then it doesn't really work out. Actually... I'm not really certain how we could manage using sub-pages for only some conversations. Someone would just manually have to create and transclude the sub-page to the appropriate regular VP page. I just think that it would be messy and confusing.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 05:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
  • The way Collectonian suggest we do it is the way it used to work when the village pump had very high traffic. The issue about archiving is also not important for two reasons. As long as the section on the village pump is edited like this or replaced with a link to the new page archival integrity is maintained. That said, way back when we never retained archives of the village pump longer than a week, so it isn't actually that big a deal. I'd suggest splitting discussions off and making them sub-pages of WP:CENT when they grow too big, and just leaving a link to the discussion behind. That's what WP:CENT was created for, in some respects. Hiding T 10:24, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
    I think that this reply actually hits home on the real issue, in my mind. The disparate nature of the discussion forums on Wikipedia is bothersome, to me. WP:CENT is probably a net good kludge, but the fact remains that it's a kludge. The underlying technology of Wikipedia is very good for building encyclopedic content, but the fact is that it's a lousy platform in terms of community participation/discussion. I think that I've come to the conclusion that there is no good solution here, using what currently exists on the platform.
    — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:24, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
    The disparate nature bothers me too. I'd support merging most of the noticeboards and other central discussion areas into the village pump, so that we have "village pump (incidents)", "village pump (administrators)", "village pump (edit warring)", "village pump (arbitration)" and so on. That way, it might make future organisation better, and allow sections to split off to (topic) sub-pages rather than /topic, which would perhaps make organisation a little easier and allow continuity of discussion. Hiding T 14:40, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Transcluded

Well, whatever the merits of this as a general proposal, I've moved the two very long threads we had on this page onto subpages - they seemed to be affecting the usability of the page as a whole. --Kotniski (talk) 11:28, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I've transcluded the "Abolish the silly headers" sub-page back onto the main page. It was moved to a sub-page due to it's length causing accessibility/performance issues. I'm not positive about the impact (or rather, the lack thereof) of transcluding the content like this. If it's still a problem in terms of accessibility/performance, then please feel free to change it back to a simple link.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I did that. I guess there must be many people with slow links like my current one - transcluding the content is just as bad as having it on the page.--Kotniski (talk) 13:28, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
I mean, there's the advantage that you don't get the changes showing up on your watchlist if you're not interested in the thread - but many people will see this as a disadvantage, since they won't notice that the page is transcluded, and will think they're watching the conversation when in fact they're not (that's a general disadvantage of transclusion, I think, and means it should only be used on pages where transclusion is the norm). With huge threads like this one, we just want them off the page so that other people can continue to use it for other things.--Kotniski (talk) 13:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
OK. Like I said, I wasn't sure, so it's good to know. I do agree with the other points that you've made, incidentally.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:46, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, for something like ANI where you have a LOT of threads, and most of them are very specific to a few people, it makes sense, but here were you often want as many peoples' input as possible, it's best to just have a single page to watch. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 15:13, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
I moved this here off of the talk page, since it seems that we're talking about the wider use of su-pages and transclusion now. Personally I don't buy that view that sub-pages somehow limit wider participation. If there's anything to really support that viewpoint other then speculation I'd really like to hear about it. Interestingly to me though is that I've seen the opposite argument made as well, that sub-pages allow too much participation. I don't think that it really makes a difference myself, but I do think that sub-pages make managing the different threads easier, and it certainly makes linking to and tracking individual discussions much easier.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 16:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Change archival methodology

What about changing the archival methodology used across the Village Pump? I can envision a system where all discussions are begun on the main Wikipedia:Village Pump page and then aggressively archived to sub-pages. The existing bots can relatively easily archive discussions to sub-pages which create dynamic page names.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 14:31, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

When a new(ish) user creates an article, default to preview and show WP:LUC

Some of the problems that wikipedia creates for people in "real life" emerge from the fact that so many people come here to write articles about themselves without having a clue how this place works. Crappy autobiographies (or articles on companies) then get taken in hand by experienced editors, and sometimes the result is real distress. If the person or company isn't notable, the article can get deleted, but it takes time to make that happen. The incidence of these situations might be reduced if new users who create a new article have to see a preview screen that shows WP:LUC before they can finally save/create the article. As things stand, WP:LUC is entirely ineffectual: there is no way a new user is going to see it.

This is my first post at the pump; I don't see this one at Perennial Proposals, but please feel free to set me straight if I'm not doing this correctly. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 17:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

This is literally earlier on this page already. Check #Force preview before saving for new users. --Golbez (talk) 17:17, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I did see that. I trust it's clear that what I'm proposing is different, in its application only to creating new articles. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 17:22, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea to me. Applying this to all non-autoconfirmed users might help. Fences&Windows 17:50, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Can anyone guess my position on this? Are we up to 7 of these "restrict IP/Newby" proposals now in two months? I've lost count. Please, next time someone has this idea- think about how you would feel if a bunch of editors kept proposing to limit your ability to edit/create/move/etc! Would you like it? If you think you are more "reliable" or a "better" editor than an IP or newbie, what gives you that idea? We are all equal unless as an individual we show we are not reliable. Assume good faith. Trying to limit an entire group of editors is wrong.Camelbinky (talk) 21:30, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Who said restrict? I said: offer some helpful information they're not going to get otherwise. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 21:49, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
"Forcing" is the same as restricting in my eyes if the "forcing" is done only to those in a certain group (newbies or IPs). Wikipedians learn by doing, you do not need to read a "rulebook" before editing. Yes, newbies might make a bad article or a non-notable one; itll get deleted, and they'll get contacted on their talk page; hopefully the learn. In no way should anyone have to read a single policy/guideline prior to editing. It is in fact specifically stated in many places that ignorance and violation of policies or procedures does not negate a good faith edit (or a proposal or creation of a new template or wikiproject, etc).Camelbinky (talk) 22:16, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia's approach at the moment is like putting a big sign on the front door of the sweetshop next to the school "Come And Take One"... "Slap! Not that one, you eejit, it says so in the terms and conditions on our website". That's how newbies often end up getting treated, because they're not given enough information up front, nor enough indication that they really need to take certain information on board which is available buried somewhere in often not terribly newbie-understandable terms. In a perfect world, there'd be a handholding clueful, nice editor with lots of time ready to deal with each newbie edit appropriately. Can't see that happening any time soon, so exploring other solutions is absolutely a sensible thing to do. Rd232 talk 22:59, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict)WP:LUC is at best a restatement of the text underneath the edit box. At worst, it can be largely irrelevant and WP:BITEy. Any editor shown that page who doesn't feel they have a COI could reasonably be assumed to take offense. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 22:17, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
If the problem is them writing about themselves or putting in links about the company they work for then I'd support having a warning about common problems put on IPs edit pages. LUC does not seem a particularly helpful bit of text and it is far too long. You want something that is very short and shows the basic sort of things to avoid assuming they are editing in good faith. Dmcq (talk) 12:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
The proposed solution to this problem—defaulting to preview—will have zero effect, except possibly to annoy good faith new contributors. If this problem actually needs a policy solution, then a better approach would be to modify the default Editnotice that IPs and new users see to include something about this. 72.95.238.235 (talk) 16:16, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps a softer approach would work:
Add a few questions that must be answered before non-autoconfirmed people can create articles:
  • Is this article about you, someone you know, or a company, place, school, organization, or other thing you are part of? _[yes] _[no] [show/hide link labeled "explain this"]
  • Is this article entirely in your own words, and is it referenced clearly enough that people won't think you are making it up? _[yes] _[no] [show/hide link labeled "explain this"]
  • Is this article ready for publication or do you want to save it as your user name:article name and come back to it later? _[yes] _[no] [show/hide link labeled "explain this"]
This first question's "explain" text would include links to WP:LUC, WP:BLP, WP:COI, etc. The second would link to WP:COPYVIO. The last's would link to an explaination of user space.
Depending on what the user checked, automated messages with more details would be put on his user talk page. If he checked the last one, the article would be renamed user talk:USERNAME/ARTICLENAME before being saved, and instructions to move it added to the user talk page. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:27, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
I think it is better to warn people before they write anything than to get to a preview and then warn them. Dmcq (talk) 12:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Educational game idea

Hi,

I am a huge fan of Wikipedia and have an idea for a game which might be of interest to you to use on your site. The format is very simple and involves the player choosing a start page within Wikipedia (for instance 'HAIR'), then trying to navigate to a finish page in as few moves as possible (lets say 'MILK'). The player is only allowed to use word/subject links within Wikipedia.

So, using the example above starting on the 'HAIR' page you could navigate through 'WOOL', 'SHEEP', 'DAIRY', and finally to 'MILK' (the score is 4 moves). The number of pages navigated through could be automatically calculated by using cookies to trace the path taken.

I think it could help promote Wikipedia by marketing the game as a fun educational tool! Also, if it is placed in the sidebar it is a simple enough format which would not slow down your site. Or it could even have a page of its own?

Thanks for taking the time to read my idea. I'd love to hear if you think it is a good one or not!

Regards,

Graham

Have a look at WP:SDOWP, WP:Wiki Game, WP:Wikington Crescent, and WP:Wikirace. Algebraist 20:29, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Wikispeedia SunCreator (talk) 14:30, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposed change to MediaWiki:Welcomecreation

Please consider and comment on the proposal I made here. Regards SoWhy 12:46, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Lift the 1RR on Cluebot

Hello Wikipedia Community,

I have been thinking about all the time that fine editors spend combating vandalism, that they could instead be using for other things. I have also been noticing how good Cluebot is at finding various types of vandalism by itself. Now, as many of you know, Cluebot adheres to the 1 Revert Rule. That means:

This bot will not revert the same article and user more than once per day. There is one exception: This bot will revert today's featured article or any page listed in the opt-in list for angry mode as many times as it finds vandalism. The bot will not revert to itself or one of its friends (MartinBot/VoABot II).

I wanted to see how many editors here would be willing to lift/revise this rule as Cluebot has definitely proven itself (almost a Million Edits). I would love to see this wonderful bot allow users to spend their valuable time doing things other then hitting the revert button when a 12 year old decides to copy and paste "penis" 100 times on a page.
--Tim1357-(what?...ohhh) 02:02, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

It's not the number of edits that would prove its worth, but the accuracy. 1RR is probably to allow editors to correct false-positives. That said, I've never actually seen it make a mistake. Equazcion (talk) 02:09, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Exactly, Ive never seen it make a mistake either!Tim1357-(what?...ohhh) 02:28, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
I'd support it on a trial basis, until more is known about what it could do. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:40, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm not taking a position at this time, but rather just explaining why it has a 1RR... If a human reverts something they think is vandalism and and they are undone, the person might re-evaluate their choice and come to a different decision. A bot, however, will always reach the same conclusion. --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:48, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
This might be reasonable, but a dry run should be done first. The bot would post to a page each diff that it would revert, but didn't due to the 1RR rule. The main issue with this is that the damage caused by an error can't be simply repaired by reverting the bot, as there's WP:BITE issues to deal with as well. One possible way of dealing with the issue ThaddeusB notes would be to give second or later reverts a higher vandalism score so that borderline cases wouldn't be picked up as vandalism the second time. Mr.Z-man 17:08, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Wow, why didn't I think of that? Only edits that it is SURE are vandalism (i.e. have a very high 'score') would be reverted. And one other thing, despite repeated attempts, I cannot seem to get ahold of cobi to tell him about this, someone needs to do that. Tim1357--(what?...ohhh) 17:42, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Z-man's approach sounds reasonable, as a toe in the water: let's see how many false positives there are. Incidentally, does the bot take page visibility into account? Rd232 talk 20:12, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
So how do I move forward with this? Tim1357 (talk) 21:51, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
User talk:ClueBot Commons, I think. Rd232 talk 11:27, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Agree with Z-man, let's see if there is a problem here that needs solving before taking the handcuffs off. –xenotalk 14:36, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Seconded. Is there actually a problem that this proposal solves, or is it merely a solution in search of a problem? Shereth 15:27, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Not sure what you're getting at. The proposed trial - listing (a random sample of) reverts Cluebot doesn't do due to 1RR restriction - will tell us to what extent the 1RR restriction limits Cluebot's effectiveness, and whether the restriction could be relaxed in some way to enhance effectiveness. I can't see how else you would know. Rd232 talk 15:50, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Both of us simply agreed that having this listing is a necessary first step before lifting the restriction. –xenotalk 15:53, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
OK. Textual communication, eh. Rd232 talk 16:20, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
This is kind of after-the-fact, but as long as cluebot continues to follow the "never revert to myself" rule, I can't see lifting the 1RR having a negative effect. --King Öomie 17:01, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
True, I think. But doesn't it also mean lifting 1RR won't have any positive effect? Well maybe not, but it certainly limits it. That would be another area worth exploring - how many cluebot edits are foregone due to that rule, and what do they look like, and how many false positives. Rd232 talk 17:09, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
As a small, unscientific sample, I took a look at ten consecutive ClueBot edits from a month ago. None of them were reverted so I doubt that 1RR makes much of a difference one way or another and it seems to me better to allow humans to override the machine rather than the other way around. A bigger problem is that ClueBot would undo a vandal and the vandal would then immediately go in and make a completely different vandalism edit on the same article which would then often have to be reverted by a human. Perhaps instead of changing the 1RR rule there should be a cooldown rule to block an anonymous user whose edit was reverted from making a change to the same page for 15 min. Users who really are trying to make constructive edits will probably be annoyed but willing to wait a short period of time before trying again but I think a vandal won't have the patience.--RDBury (talk) 17:02, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
That sounds improvable - I'd say Cluebot could treat 1RR as meaning it won't revert the same change twice in one day, by the same user on the same article. Different changes by the same user should be caught equally. How many false positives for that? ... Incidentally, where's the bot creator/owner? Does he know about this discussion? Rd232 talk 17:19, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, that would require Cluebot to keep a running database of every change it reverts every day, and then compare every edit it scores against every one of those changes. At the end of the day, I think Cluebot would be running QUITE slowly. --King Öomie 15:44, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

(unindent)To follow up, I did another survey on 30 consecutive ClueBot edits (not including any of the previous sample. 28 of the reverted edits were from anonymous users. Of those, 7 users made follow-up vandalism edits on the same page, i.e. within a short time of making the original vandalism edit. Some of these made repeated edits for a total 10 follow-up vandalism edits. Of these 10, 9 were reverted by a human and 1 was reverted by a different bot. To respond to rd232, there wouldn't have been any false positives for his proposed rule in thie sampled edits. But I should note that while none of ClueBot's edits in the sample were reverted, some of the follow-up vandalism was very close to the original vandalism.--RDBury (talk) 18:02, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

PS. I left a note on User:Cobi's talk page.--RDBury (talk) 18:11, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Another followup, just to cover all the bases I looked at the 3 reports on ClueBot's false positives page. It appears then the users making the edits did the edit over rather than reverting Cluebot's revert. In all cases while the edits weren't vandalism, they were controversial and aggressive and usually re-reverted by a human. Maybe there should be a some instruction to direct users to try suggesting the change on the article's talk page instead of re-doing the edit.--RDBury (talk) 18:38, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Response by Cobi

After going over this discussion, I see a few suggestions here:

  • Make the unreverted caught vandalism public for further review. This will be trivial to do.
  • Turn 1RR off (turn the bot into angry mode).
  • Interpret 1RR to mean 1 revert per user per specific edit data per article per day. This means I have to store the edit data for the day. This can get large in RAM.
  • Add a cooldown. This needs to be done with MediaWiki, not ClueBot.

I'll create a page shortly for ClueBot to post unreverted caught vandalism to. -- Cobi(t|c|b) 19:17, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The bot will create a page at User:ClueBot/PossibleVandalism when it first has an unreverted caught vandalism. -- Cobi(t|c|b) 19:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Score 1 a bunch for the bot so far... Can you tell it to log new entries on a new line rather than blowing out the old ones? –xenotalk 20:49, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Second that - maybe with a limit of some kind to prevent the page bloating unmanageably. Rd232 talk 20:52, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Could you have it so the bot doesn't clear the contents of the page whenever it adds new ignored vandalism.? That way we could see just how much vandalism is not reverted because of the 1RR. It would be nice to see how long that page gets after a week. Tim1357 (talk) 21:55, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The Possible Vandalism log is a good start. You say "Interpret 1RR to mean 1 revert per user per specific edit data per article per day. This means I have to store the edit data for the day." I had imagined you could compare a user's edit with any prior edits they made that day; is that too computationally or bandwidth-wise intensive? Also, is Cluebot's user warning message (this one) editable? I think it may be improvable. Rd232 talk 20:17, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Special:Prefixindex/User:ClueBot/Warning -- Cobi(t|c|b) 20:29, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Cool. Is that linked from the bot page? I did look there. Anyway, I've proposed a revision at User talk:ClueBot/Warnings/Vandal1. Rd232 talk 20:47, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
It appears that the 1RR makes the bot miss an average of 130 vandalism's a day. Tim1357 (talk) 19:59, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
Just curious, have there been any developments on this? Equazcion (talk) 08:05, 8 Nov 2009 (UTC)

Where do we go from here? The BRFA? Or do we just let it die? Tim1357 (talk) 01:36, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The BRFA indicated it would stick to 1RR, so a new BRFA lifting the restriction would be ideal. Alternatively, an informal note at WT:BRFA asking a BAG member to simply rubberstamp may be adequate. –xenotalk 15:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't think rubber stamping this proposal is a good idea. Community members don't like being reverted by bots. I see that this is not going to revert the same editor twice, but I'd like a full discussion on the issue. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Can you point out a diff where the bot reverted a community member, as opposed to a mere vandal? –xenotalk 14:54, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for Debate Pages/Debate Wiki

I was recently on Conservapedia, and I noticed that they have a very cool section called "Debates." They have moderated debates on that site, and knowing how many contributors there are to Wikipedia and its sister projects, some interesting debates could be had on this site. Granted, it could degenerate into some nightmare-ish version of a "Youtube" comments section, but if it worked, it could be very interesting and entertaining.

I'm thinking that the debates should be reserved for members of Wikipedia, but it would be interesting to hear from non-Wikipedia people as well.

As for what the debates section would be on this site (a separate Wiki, perhaps?), I leave you to decide.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Sean 0000001 (talk) 07:01, 20 November 2009 (UTC)


I forgot to say that I'm fairly new to Wikipedia, so I don't know whether you need to take that into account when considering my proposal.

Sean 0000001 (talk) 07:03, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia / reference work, not a debate club (though I admit it can be hard to tell sometimes). You can propose that Wikimedia, Wikipedia's parent organization, undertake new sorts of wiki's by making a proposal on Meta-Wiki (this is how Wikinews, Wiktionary, etc. got started); your idea is particularly similar to Wikireason, so you could go and register your support for that proposal. --Cybercobra (talk) 08:20, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Redesigning the citation errors

I posted this on VP:T, but after it was pointed out that it could be better here, I've decided to redo this, but with a change of plan.

Right now the "errors" are a bit scary looking and don't fit within our system of cleanup tags and such, so I think that for the citation errors that occur inline, we'd do it with the {{fix}} template styled messages, like say [Citation error: too many parameters] or [Citation error: no content]. Of course we could maybe change the colors to be a tad more noticeable or something but still.

Some situations may be better explained using more "cleanup tag" styled messages, like say:

Of course this would be placed at the bottom of the page, but anyway, get the picture? ViperSnake151  Talk  19:29, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me, would be better then my eyes burning everytime I forget to add a reflist.--SKATER Speak. 19:37, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't think this last part is currently possible. The current message is "Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a <references/> tag"; it is generated by MediaWiki:Cite error refs without references. That MediaWiki message does not support wikimarkup, nor do two other messages; see T19865. Wikilinks and the like look good on the MediaWiki page, but don't transclude properly. We might be able to do this if it uses only HTML, but we will have to test this somewhere. Most of the inline errors look doable. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 19:41, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
When I'm less busy, someone should remind me to fix that. Dragons flight (talk) 21:46, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Please don't change it. I know that I would probably ignore a template like the one listed, and I suspect many other editors would as well. I would prefer that calling the ref hook added a reference list at the bottom of the page automatically, but that probably won't happen anytime soon. Protonk (talk) 21:37, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You'd add a banner and 40 words that interfere with reading the article instead of adding a {{reflist}} to an article? Why? --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 21:48, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree, the whole point of the big red error is that its saying "This is really broken, fix it now." The ambox version loses too much of the sense of urgency by lumping together an actual problem that's typically trivial to fix with more general cleanup issues. Mr.Z-man 23:22, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
The technical issues are one thing, but this argument really gives me pause... there was something about the first proposal that seemed more palatable, for some reason.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 05:00, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Because cite.php wraps error messages in the error class, thus the references will be bold and red. Have to play to see if this can be overridden. I remember fooling with this and it wasn't pretty, but I don't remember the details. I'm not against improving the messages, just pointing out the technical issues, especially since I have had my head in those error messages a lot here lately.
While we are at this, I want to see if the British English versions of the messages can be redirected to the English versions. If a user has British English set as their language, then they see the default cite error messages (along with every other MediaWiki message). ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 23:27, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

OK- ran this on http://test.wikipedia.org. You have to escape the brackets and use an external link: 

{{ambox
|type=style
|text=This page contains references, but it '''does not contain a references list''', which is required in order to show the references.<br /> One can be added by adding <code>{{reflist}}</code> under a "References" heading. For more information, see <span class="plainlinks">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_templates Wikipedia:Citation templates]</span>.}}


---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:58, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Stupid question:If we can automatically introduce a banner, can't we also automatically include the references section? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
LOL! Great question! Here's an obvious answer: "of course!" :) i guess that the question should then be: "should we automatically include a 'references' section?" Personally... I'm leaning heavily towards "yes", now that you bring the question up.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 15:43, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
I checked it on the test wiki and it will work— we will have to figure out how to suppress the error class that makes the whole references section bold red, but we can probably add something to {{reflist}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 17:47, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
IMO, we should still include an error message and tracking category of some sort because quite often the very bottom of the article is not the recommended place for the references section, and we want to make it easy for WikiGnomes to find the problem articles. As for "suppressing" the error class, it may be as simple as putting "</strong>" at the start of the error message (and "<strong>" at the end). Anomie⚔ 18:04, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
My original idea for this was to use fmbox instead so it'd be a bit more, noticable.
Since the category box appears in a similar style, this would look a bit more "flush" into the footer and look a bit more fitting than just jamming an {{ambox}} down there. ViperSnake151  Talk  19:05, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Citation templates doesn't really help here. I would add a section to Help:Footnotes on how to add and style the reference list. I also recommend setting type=warning so that the message is highly visible. I know some just hate red error messages, but a missing reference list is egregious. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:49, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Here is what the message would look like with the warning style:

As to styling the inline errors like {{fix}}: fix and similar templates are really for content issues. Cite errors are an immediate technical problem. For example: "Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag" is caused by not closing the <ref>...</ref> tags, and it can eat huge chunks of the content. Making this look innocuous is not a good idea. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

That looks even more scary than the current one. Why we can't add kinda an "orange" colored level for fmbox to use for stuff like this, I don't want to know. And I meant as in "sorta" like {{fix}}, but maybe in a slightly larger font (like this?) ViperSnake151  Talk  19:33, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, everyone has a fairly good point that these messages probably should be somewhat "scary looking". These sorts of citation errors should scream at you, in order to get them fixed immediately. If the editor who created the problem doesn't know how to fix the problem, or is actually scared by it, then at least the next editor who comes along will fix it (and possibly the originating editor will ask for help). I like the idea of making them cleaner looking personally, but I'm not really supportive of making them "nice".
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 19:40, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Exactly. Content issues marked with templates like {{fact}} or {{unreferenced}} are notices; there are articles that have been tagged like this for years. They do their job by alerting readers that there are content or style issues. Cite errors deserve warnings and links to help pages because they can hide content and references. We have several editors who specifically work cite errors, so these messages should not stick around for long. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 19:59, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
I completely agree with the previous two editors. Ergo, no need for banners. Especially since we are talking about messages that are being added via MediaWiki, and should not be added manually at all. Which makes for a sounding "against". Debresser (talk) 20:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, I do think that it might be nice to make them look "prettier". It's hardly a pressing concern, in my view, but the plain text error message looks kind of... "ghetto".
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 20:07, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Please don't use {{fmbox}}, that's not what it's for at all. You're essentially saying "people see so many amboxes that they're getting banner blindness to them". The solution to that is most definitely not to introduce banner blindness in another set of warning box styles. We have three levels of ambox warning templates because some warnings are "more important" than others. No warning is objectively more important than the ambox series provides for. Are you really trying to say that a missing <references /> tag is more important than a CSD nomination? Reality check, please. Leafing through the collection of template styles until you find one that appears 'suitably scary' completely defeats the point of having a standardised set of warning styles in the first place. Why did you pick {{fmbox}} instead of {{cmbox}}?? That has some similarly-scary warning styles. But the "category message box" is intuitively and obviously not intended for the article namespace. Fmbox is absolutely no different, it is used for interface messages (the ones that appear around the edit screen and on special pages), not for content. Happy‑melon 23:35, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Missing reference list

Current error message:

Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a <references/> tag.

Using {{ambox}} styled for content issues:

Regardless of the style, we do need a better message than the cryptic current message. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:54, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't it just be far simpler for someone to run a bot which finds these defective pages & adds {{reflist}} at the bottom? The hardest part of this would appear to be writing the query that would compile a list of these pages; the rest could be done by someone with AWB or Huggle, without any special skills. -- llywrch (talk) 20:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Actually, that part is quite easy: the error message populates Category:Pages with missing references list. The reason I haven't added this to AnomieBOT yet is because I haven't felt like figuring out all the myriad variations on the standard naming and ordering of these end-of-article sections. Maybe I'll take a look later on. Suggestions and caveats are welcome. Anomie⚔ 22:15, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Don't forget to look at WP:LAYOUT as well. I'm not sure which document is more relevant (although I personally tend to give much more weight to non-MOS documents, honestly), but both certainly exist. I thought about doing something along these lines myself, but this is the issue that essentially stalled my development (and "stalled" here is intentional, note that I didn't say "stopped"). Unless I'm missing something obvious, my conclusion is that I need to essentially develop an AI... which is something that I'm slowly in the process of doing. I like AI development anyway though, so I may be self selecting here. :)
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 22:47, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
MOS:APPENDIX is a redirect to WP:LAYOUT#Standard appendices and footers ;) Thanks though. Anomie⚔ 22:53, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
er...oops.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 23:00, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I am strongly against adding another message box. An error message is just that, and shoud not be mistaken for a maintenance template. Furthermore, I see no consensus in the section above to make such far-reaching changes, rather to the contrary, so I don't understand why this subsection was started in the first place. Debresser (talk) 16:05, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

The current message is not informative. I linked Cite error, but I suspect it is being overlooked. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:56, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Better idea

If you think "scaring" users on the page itself is not a good idea, why not configure the edit filter to be able to detect these things and display a suitable message? ViperSnake151  Talk  00:07, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there a Special page or category or something to list pages in this error state? Pseudomonas(talk) 10:43, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

There is Category:Pages with missing references list and Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting. Which, incidentally, are rather shockingly large right now!
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 19:28, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Adding a missing list

One can modify the missing <references> error message to actually add a references list. It would be at the end of the page, but might be better than nothing. Dragons flight (talk) 15:17, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Seems like the way to go. To me.
Wikipedia messages seem never to be in least declarative sentences:

"The references will not show unless you add a {{reflist}} or <references /> to this article."

Still, a bot that adds one is better, imo. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 02:12, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't mind which of those two options are chosen. Doing it with an ambox is definitely not right though. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:23, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to include disambiguation tag for new biographies in Wikipedia

Given the number of biographical articles in Wikipedia, inevitably, there will be many articles on people who may share a name. I recently started an article on the priest who wrote to Jung, Father Victor White; it erroneously got merged with an article on a pilot who was also called Victor White. Fortunately, some one was quick to disentangle the two articles. If we do a "search" on Wikipedia and find some one shares a name with the subject of a biographical article, do we need a tag to the effect of "Disambiguation possibly needed" heading some articles? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 00:19, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you are saying exactly. We already have a system of disambiguation in place using parenthesis and hat notes. E.g. Victor White (priest) with a note on Victor White that says "For the priest see Victor White (priest). --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:49, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I think the suggestion is that we have a "needs disambiguating" cleanup tag along the lines of "unreferenced" or "please copyedit" - am I correct on this? Pseudomonas(talk) 10:06, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I think we sort of already have that with {{confuse}}. As a general rule if there are two or more other articles to avoid confusing something with a disambiguation page is appropriate. ϢereSpielChequers 11:07, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you - I think you are right, the template you see seems appropriate, provided that people are prepared to use it. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 00:20, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I assure you it's quite widely used; it is also known as {{distinguish}}. --Cybercobra (talk) 03:41, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Stats on skins/gadgets/preferences

I'd quite like to be able to see some aggregate (no personal details necessary) stats on how many new or active editors have different gadgets/preferences/customized signatures/alternative skins? I'm thinking about usability and help/guidelines, and it'd be nice to know what people are likely to be (so, for instance, whether it's generally worth referring to the possibility that their "new section" button might be spelt "+", as mine is). It'd be useful to have a way of assessing whether people generally fiddle with these things immediately on creating an account, or only after they Know It All anyway - has this been done? Pseudomonas(talk) 11:41, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

See mediazilla:19288 "Gadget usage statistics" which mentions translatewiki:Special:UserOptionStats. So in theory this is already possible with User Option Statistics Extension, which is not installed on Wikipedia (all we have is Special:PrefStats for 3 "beta" parameters). — AlexSm 14:59, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Remove ellipsis character from editing help section

The ellipsis character (…) is included in the Editing Help section below the Save Page/Show Preview/Show Changes buttons on the edit screen. However, per WP:ELLIPSIS, the ellipsis character is not recommended while the simple three-unspaced-periods solution is preferred (...). Since the ellipsis character is not recommended, I think it should be removed from the list of special characters on the editing screen. It makes no since to make it easier to insert a non-recommended character.—NMajdan•talk 23:22, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree and have removed it. However see MediaWiki_talk:Edittools#Ellipsis for possible objections. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:47, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

SPOILER ALERT disclaimers

Very long thread; copied to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Spoilers.

Edits by anonymous users

After some 60, 70 edits in the article Dodo the progress has been aproximatly zero. Isn't it time to stop allowing anonymous users making edits in Wikipedia articles? Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 00:53, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

No, no, no, no. We've been through at least three different proposals already in the last two months about restricting IPs and newbies. When will it end? What is the point in getting ride of IPs? Why is everyone so intent on keeping out new blood? Why not put on the main page- we have all the editors we need, dont bother editing unless you want to be one of us". (reference to an old horror movie "Freaks") No more IP or newbie bashing around here ok?Camelbinky (talk) 01:21, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
That was rather harsh (and ironic) considering by most measures Jan is also a newbie.
Jan, please see this link explaining why this perennial proposal is unliekly to ever be adopted. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:25, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
The other responses notwithstanding, we do semi-protect articles which are frequent or ongoing targets of anonymous vandalism. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:41, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, considering the fact that of the 5 effective improvements in that list only one was made by an anonymous IP (which sheds a doubt on the 82% mentioned here) this article applies for an everlasting state of semi-protection. All the edits minus one were with the benefit of hindsight vandalisms and subsequent corrections. Eventually people will get tired of reverting vandalism and will stop doing so. There are articles on the outskirts of Wikipedia, where barely anyone goes. The information presented there is by the nature of Wikipedia unreliable. The motto of Wikipedia is to feel free and improve. This means, we should improve Wikipedia itself also, by safeguarding against the presentation of mis-information. A "No, no, no, no" will not suffice. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 11:11, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Camelbinsky, well do I remember how you responded when, I think it was in September this year, just this very idea was put forth.

I hardly think I need to repeat that my own policy was we need to remember Wikipedia: Please do not bite the newcomers, and should not put new editors off who may still have to learn to set up userpages. A common response when this proposal was made before was why did the initiator of the proposal not check the "perennial proposals" - I rather think that if this proposal is made again, it should be sent to the "perennial proposals list" (sorry, I need an administrator to help me here!) ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:48, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Above it is claimed that requiring registration would "keep out new blood" by deterring new users. But the rationale at WP:Perennial proposals#Editing is that registration would not deter vandals because it take them only "10 seconds to register". Whoa, wait a minute, which way is it going to be? Does registration deter, or not? This is argument based on perception, and that it is being swung both ways brings its validity into question. For all that everyone here may have an opinion about this, I have yet to see any solid data.
Similarly for the implied argument that registration would simply eliminate the "76% or 82% of anonymous edits [which] are intended to improve the encyclopedia". The implicit assumption is that in such cases anonymity is an absolute requirement, without which these editors (and editing) will simply disappear. Again, we really have no data about that, but I rather doubt that taking "10 seconds to register" would deter serious editors. (See also WP:Editors should be logged in users.) - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:42, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, its a good thing that policy on Wikipedia is determined through consensus of the Community and not consensus of facts and figures. So really, I dont see why some want or need to see any solid data. If the majority of us figure it probably isnt a smart idea (and I'm confident the majority does not want to force everyone to sign up) then it isnt going to happen and it doesnt matter how much data you have to support your idea that forcing them to sign up would be beneficial to Wikipedia. Some things, like these perennial "Wikipedia Patriot Act" ideas to eliminate vandalism by controlling IPs and newbies arent acceptable due to their loss of our core ideas of being open and freedom of editing and equality for all. Whats next, IPs and newbies cant comment on Village Pump, AN/I, noticeboards, article talk pages?Camelbinky (talk) 00:07, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
It may not deter "serious editors", but most serious editors already create accounts. The issue is that it would deter casual editors - people who might add some info or correct an error in what they read, but won't go out of their way looking for things to edit. Mr.Z-man 01:01, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Mr Z, as usual, hit the nail on the head. Most of the IP editing I see are from IPs correct my poor spelling or grammar, and I assume but of course cant verify that they are doing so because they happened to be looking up something, saw the misspelling and corrected it, not because they are hardcore Wikipedia fanatics on a mission. Many seem to think that if your not a fanatic and not signing up you must be a vandal. Some just like to edit as they find things when reading things they are looking up, why force them to sign up or make it uncomfortable for them so they feel forced; we become a less effective source for the casual reader. And let us remember- the casual reader, our audience, is why we do this endeavor; we write for them, not for each other or for ourselves, in a way they are our boss. We should strive to function as they need us, and not attempt to convert them into editors or to force readers to understand our backroom bureaucracy (and despite resistance by myself and others, bureaucracy is what we have, unfortunately).Camelbinky (talk) 03:40, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree with Camelbinky's last comment. Some of us, such as those who have signed our names above, are happy to be logged-in editors - but there may be casual Wikipedians who only visit Wikipedia sporadically, who think they may have a go at editing and who have no intention of setting up a userpage. And why should they? That is up to them. To insist in edits from only logged-in editors would be a little like saying, in a parliamentary democracy, only members of politcal parties should have a right to vote. Each to one's own, some may be interested enough in Wikipedia to set up a userpage; others may have other pressing interests and not wish to do this. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:02, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I really don't have any opposition to "casual editing" as such. But I am rather irked at the invalid argumentation used here. Particularly this argument that registration (eek! scream! there's that nasty word again!) is both a massive deterrent to casual editors, and, simultaneously, a negligible deterrent to vandals. Unless someone wants to explicate how that can be (I could, but I leave that as an exercise for the reader) you're arguing a contradiction, which is usually an indication of error. Of course, perhaps that doesn't matter if there is consensus ("burn the witches!") that false and invalid argumentation is perfectly acceptable. I had rather hoped that the expected level of argument would rise at least to the level expected of articles, but so be it. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:51, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I have been thinking about J.Johnson's comments - and thank you, you gave me something to think about. However, I think the syllogism you present does not stand. It seems to be:

Some new Wikipedians, or casual Wikipedians, may be put off by having to register;

Some people intend on vandalism would quickly register;

Ergo, there is a contradiction here.

The fault in this syllogism is that "Some" does not equal "All". It seems to fall down because it assumes that "Some A is B" = "All A is B". Also, please remember that the Wikipedians who may be put off by registration are unlikely to be the vandals - so I think we can call the syllogism an error. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:01, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I think you've gotten it somewhat backwards, but at the core, yes, that's my point, that there is a contradiction. Try looking at this way: there is a relation, call it "R" (something like "registration is a massive deterrent to editing Wikipeida"), which when applied to one group is argued to be true, but when applied to another group is argued to be false. So we have a seeming instance of "R()" and "not R()" – which would be a contradiction, and an indication of invalid argumentation.
Not that this is necessarily a contradiction, for, as you have hinted, it could be a matter of different domains. E.g., that most vandals are tough-minded characters not easily deterred by anything, and the casual drive-by editors that some folks are so keen on encouraging mostly panty-waisted wusses. (Note that no one [?] is saying that "all vandals would be deterred", or "no anonymous editors deterred"; we're contemplating overall effects. For which data would be useful.) But until that or some similar distinction is made, it is invalid to argue that registration is BOTH a massive deterrent and a negligible ("10 seconds") deterrrent. I think it is likely to be one OR the other, on which suitable data might inform us, but it is invalid to argue both ways without some kind distinction. Indeed, at this point arguing "R" either way is only an uninformed opinion. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:06, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

What J. Johnson seems to be saying above is that we should leave attempts at a priori reasoning behind, and therefore we should not work by looking for contradictions in syllogisms (or pointing out when contradictions are apparent and not real), and instead go for empirical data. Is registration a deterrent or not? Well, perhaps some one has done some empirical research into this, and it would be good to have a record of his or her data. You seem, J.Johnson, to be calling for more empirical research into Wikipedia editing. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 00:15, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Close enough. What I have been saying is that in regard to the issue of whether anonymous editing should be allowed or not (our main topic here) a certain relation ("R") has been argued in a contradictory manner. Now it may be that this relation has some relevance to the issue, and as a side comment I have also suggested that suitable data could determine the truth or falsity of this relation, or even how it might appear to be both true and false. It is not so much empirical research as such that I am calling for as better argumentation – in which empirical data could play a role. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:32, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (architecture)

I propose (re)creation of this convention:

In 2006 this page was created, but it is not good, and it is inactive now.

I would love to expand it, and propose a lot of things, so it could be useful again (or for the first time). For all other information, i am here and willing! Just tell me what to do next!

Tadija (talk) 14:44, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

You should probably get in touch with the folks at WT:WikiProject Architecture, if you haven't already. Or write out some concrete proposals and mention them there (and probably at WT:Naming conventions as well).--Kotniski (talk) 15:58, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Opt-in advertising (not covered in perenneal discussion)

My proposal is that during a month every year, users are given the option (via an unobtrusive link or button next to the donate button, for example) to have advertising included in their Wikipedia experience. This would be an opt-in system, and users could potentially go so far as to be able to select which companies they were willing to receive advertising from.

I hope any people who read this will be able to appreciate that this proposal might overcome the previously stated reasons for rejecting advertising. If a user indicates that they are willing to view specific advertising, then it is hardly likely that such advertising will give them the impression that Wikipedia is commercially influenced. Moreover, advertisers would not be able to use their advertising money to influence the site administration, as the burden of selecting advertisers would be on each individual user, not on Wikipedia its self.

The reason I'm making this proposal, which to many might seem like just another advertising proposal, is that I'm too poor to contribute financially to Wikipedia, but if I were given the option, I would certainly be willing to spend a month of each year with an impaired Wikipedia experience, if it meant I could finally be contributing something financially to this great site.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Mjbat7 (talk • contribs) 19:00, November 15, 2009

Yes. —Noisalt (talk) 01:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Not even....-- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 01:28, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Hmm... hell, if I can opt-in to give the foundation a few extra bucks not out of my own pocket (and probably covered by ad blockers) then why not?--Unionhawk Talk E-mail Review 01:32, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
An ad-blocker would generate neither an impression nor a click, so that would be pretty useless to opt-in in that case. –xenotalk 14:44, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
You wouldn't get a large number of people opting in, so you wouldn't get much money. The reason people talk about advertising is that we have so many hits that we could make billions from ads. An opt-in would only really apply to Wikipedians, not regular readers (who don't log in), and that latter group is orders of magnitude larger than the former. --Tango (talk) 01:40, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, we could allow all users the option by having it remember the advertising preference for a users ip address. Otherwise, users could select their advertising preference for each individual session. I don't know if the current setup for the site would allow this, but I would imagine it wouldn't be too hard to implement? --Mjbat7 (talk) 10:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd have the preferences stored by cookie rather than ip address for those not using usernames, other than that it sounds a very reasonable proposal. Interesting, I wonder if the difference with people who switch on the ads would translate to a particular segment for advertisers. Anyway I support the idea. I'd want to be sure also there was no way pressure from advertisers could affect content. Dmcq (talk) 20:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh yea, cookies would be better. how does one implement things like this though? --Mjbat7 (talk]) 13:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
The usual way would be to provide a box and include some script for someone like google to put stuff and then every so often they give you some money. We'd just make inclusion of the ad spac optional. Hmm I can see people arguing over which crowd to team up with to provide the ads. Dmcq (talk) 01:17, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it's in WP:PEREN. Stifle (talk) 09:17, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Of course advertising is covered there, but it doesn't cover the possibility of optional advertising being discussed here, which in my opinion seems to overcome most of the objections usually raised to advertising in wikipedia. --Mjbat7 (talk) 12:05, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd be happy to give it a go. SunCreator (talk) 14:11, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
It still creates the situation where advertisers can threaten to withdraw their advertising and thus withhold income from the WMF. Even one such event will call our neutrality into question. Pseudomonas(talk) 14:18, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm sure prominent box at the top of such an advertiser saying "This advertiser threatened to remove support for Wikipedia unless content was changed therefore please check all content for neutrality and bias in favour of the advertiser" would deter any such advertiser. :) Dmcq (talk) 14:35, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Or, less intrusively, we could just take the same stance as WP:NLT: if they threaten to withdraw their advertising unless we do or don't do X, we preemptively drop them as an advertiser until they officially withdraw the threat. Anomie⚔ 16:57, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Indeed. Moreover I think advertising real estate on wikipedia would be of such value that we would hardly be at a loss if any given advertiser were to withdraw sponsorship. Wikipedia can function just on the contribution of users, and so we would not be at a significant loss if advertising revenue was threatened. The thing is, voluntary contributions may not always be enough, and so advertising revenue could be saved up for a rainy day, or for special projects. Such a system would ensure that at any given moment we would not be at any important loss if all our advertisers decided to walk away all at once, or more likely, if we decided to walk away from them. --Mjbat7 (talk) 12:07, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

A proposal for the use of 2D barcodes in museum

The problem

It would be nice to be able to walk through a museum and pull up the relevant wikipedia article on whatever you were looking at. Augmented reality currently allows this outdoors through the use of GPS when dealing with fairly large objects (say buildings) but most museum exhibits are too small for GPS to work, and being inside creates further issues.

GPS is however good enough for large exibits such as HMS Alliance and existing augmented reality technology will handle such cases.[1]

The 2D barcode solution

Camera phones can read 2D barcodes and the code can be used to transmit URLs. These URLs can be used to get people to wikipedia articles. At the present time QR code is the most mature technology. Other code types could be used but fewer people could read them at this time.

The implementation
A mockup. In this case the code points at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:1/1 With the first "1" being Southsea castle and the second being the number given to the cannon

A 2D barcode wiki or namespace would be set up. Tagged objects would point to entries in this namespace which would redirect to relevant articles (or in some cases disambiguate. The idea would be to have one code per specimen so even if several museums had say a biber submarine each would get it's own code.

URLs could be generated by assigning each object an arbitrary number or by assigning it an number (perhaps it's existing catalogue number) within the museum it is in and then assigning each museum a number. So:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:1/1


Where the first "1" is the number assigned to the museum or institution and the second is the item within the museum.

In the case of our example the page could point to Joseph Whitworth or Polygonal rifling. A mockup can be found at User:Geni/Code:1/1 the talk page would have a brief description of what the object was where it was (institution name and geocode of the institution) and probably a link to any photos of the object on commons. In the case of our mockup:

  • Hexagonally rifled 3 pounder cannon manufactured by Joseph Whitworth
  • Southsea Castle
  • 50° 46′ 41″ N, 1° 5′ 20″ W

The information could be held in an infobox or the like.

How to get started

A namespace would require dev coperation. It would be best to start with a small museum and we have a better chance of getting such a museum to agree. Chapeter contacts might be useful. Setting up a QR code generator on the toolsever would also be useful.

Advantages

Posible to do with current tech and fairly easy to implement and scale.

Disadvantages

Relies on museums cooperating.

References
  1. ^ http://mashable.com/2009/10/02/wikitude/

©Geni 23:37, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

OK... Sorry to be blunt but, what does Wikipedia itself have to do with this? Museums, or anyone else for that matter, are perfectly capable of taking the Wikipedia database and doing what they will with it. I don't understand what you're asking the Wikipedia community to do, here. Why would Wikipedia itself need to be adjusted to accommodate such an unusual usage pattern?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 01:31, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
We've already established that we are interesting in providing our articles through methods other than the traditional PC browser typing in article names with our mobile.wikipedia.org site. The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. It's within our remit. The changes on the wikipedia side would be fairly limited (the addition of a couple of new namespaces) and would allow us to disseminate the relivant information more effectively than museams likely could by themselves. As for the usage patturn it's not as unusal as you might think with our geocoded articles already being used in a number of augmented reality applications. Itcan be viewed as an attempt to get around the issues caused by the lack of a centimeter accurate GPS that works indoors.©Geni 02:51, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
I am not sure that this is workable but a partial precedent is established by the way we have written our geolocation codes to work with Google Earth. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 17:51, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
I think that worked more the other way around; Google wrote their crawling code to extract the information based on the format we provide it in. Mr.Z-man 23:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Which I would bet is probably a standard, already established microformat anyway. --Cybercobra (talk) 09:08, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
The level of cooperation between Wikipedia editors and any single museum is enough to make this proposal sound unlikely to succeed; the prospect of trying to create a system that will require cooperation between editors and numerous museums is beyond onerous. If museums want to provide QR codes on their displays to link back to Wikipedia pages, they can do so with simple urls rather than a special namespace; we'll leave it up to the museum to decide whether the code on the cannon links to an article about cannons or an article about the castle. Shereth 18:36, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Have to agree with the comments above, Geni. Sorry. Why would the museums not simply display this bar code, for example, and link directly to the current article?
Museum displays change so often and there are so many museums that we could never keep up. We are writing encyclopedia (on this project at least). Individual museums are more that capable of taking the content that we create and using it on their own websites in what ever way best suits them. We should not be aiming to duplicate the work of the curator of any individual museum or become a hosting company for them. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 08:53, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee 2 is now Closed

I have closed this Request for Comment. My detailed review of the issues and the results of that discussion may be found here. To summarize, I found that consensus exists as follows:

  • The Arbitration Committee shall consist of 18 Members elected to 2 Year Terms.
  • Arbitrators will be elected by Secret Ballot using the Securepoll extension.
  • Ballots will invite editors to Support or Oppose candidates.
  • Voters must have 150 mainspace edits before the election cycle to vote (Status Quo)

Questions or comments may be posted at The RFC's Talk Page. Thank you to all who participated. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 16:21, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

See previous Village Pump, and BRFA discussions regarding this same template (or similar templates)
So I am bringing this back again, because I think it has a reasonable amount of support. I want to get consensus to use the template : {{Dead link header}} on the top of sections that contain the template {{Dead link}}. Here is what it would look like

Section Name

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicin[1] elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

References
  1. ^ [example.com] [dead link‍]

The template is small, discrete, and provides a link to Dispenser's external link tool: check-links.

Tim1357 (talk) 02:25, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

O yea, and this would be automatically added by Skybot , or another bot, if he isn't still up to it. Tim1357 (talk) 02:32, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be better just reworking {{linkrot}} to cover both bare URLs and dead ones? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Why would we do this? We use in-article banners to notify readers of potential issues with article content. Unreferenced, COI, or NPOV tags are there to benefit the readers understanding of what is in an article and disclose what problems there may be. Dead links do not cause any problem for the reader that would need to be disclosed in the middle of the article. If we are going to continue to tolerate dead-link tagging (which I find ridiculous since they are as easy to fix as they are to tag) then the only place a banner like this might be useful is in the references section. Since the dead-link tag is already sitting next to the footnote, the template is redundant and seems excessive. Jim Miller See me | Touch me 14:04, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

So what about putting at the beginning of the references section? Tim1357 (talk) 04:15, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
At the beggining of the refs/ext links section, that would be great. Elsewhere would be horrible. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:42, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

we have special colors for stub links and new links. how about a special color for redirect links (and maybe even links to disambiguation pages)? While were at it how about being able to fix redirects(/disambiguation) automatically without having to go through the page edit dialog. Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 19:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually i guess stub pretty much covers both. most disambiguation pages and of course all redirect pages are short. Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 19:41, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't see any different colour for links to stubs... OrangeDog (τ • ε) 22:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
You have to change your preferences to see that. It's in the Advanced options section on the Appearance tab. Reach Out to the Truth 23:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I have code in my monobook which highlights redirect links in green and disambig links with a yellow background. Also non-free images in a double red border. I copied it from someone else's monobook page. It is extremely useful for finding and fixing links to disambig pages in articles. Can't remember the wikilink for a user's monobook.js page but if you know it have a look at mine. ZUNAID●FOREVER 15:54, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

You mean a link like: User:Zunaid/monobook.js? The script in question is User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js. Regards SoWhy 16:04, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
But it is still nice to see redirected links, especially when the article link is a misspelling or an Easter egg. The linkclassifier.js also shows disambugation links, which should be fixed. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:43, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Is there any (easy) way to make the linkclassifier script only execute on 'short' pages, or only in article-space, or only on-demand?
I loved the script, but it makes long pages (like Village pumps, or Featured articles, or WP:EIW) take a long time to finish rendering, so ended up removing it. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:36, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

copy as wiki code.

In firefox I have the option of copying as plain text or copying as html. It would be nice if one could highlight a section of text on an article page and right click and select from the menu the option of copying the selected text as wiki code. Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 19:46, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

You can always click "Edit" and select the appropriate wikicode.—NMajdan•talk 03:54, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Newcomer Here

Hi Gang

I'm an independent researcher/filmmaker/producer creating a factual account regarding a particular story about the War in North Africa 1942-43.

Would I be able to be eligible for a listing on Wikipedia?

Sorry if this question is already common knowledge.

Thank You Michael Fraticelli

Probably not. See the following page for Wikipedia's guidelines on notability for filmmakers: WP:CREATIVE. Also, check out the article wizard.—NMajdan•talk 03:51, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Move to republicanism?

Seeing as how we're way beyond the threshold of Dunbar's number here on en.wikipedia (as was recently pointed out to me), is it time to think about some formal governmental structure here? I'll freely admit that, as a self-admitted libertarian (and, in Wikipedia terms, an inclusionist) this is at least partially admitting to an ideological failure, but after a recent experience I think I can starkly see the issue in relief.

In my opinion a huge issue here is actually fairly simple. Wikipedia is, somewhat by design (technologically), anti-social. We're actually encouraged not to interact on site, which creates a natural disjunction between all of us. The fact is though, that there are enough of us here that regardless of the social mechanisms that could be available to us that we would never be able to agree to the level of "consensus" on most issues. That's great for those who hold conservative positions on issues, but anyone who wants any change (meaning you) is likely to receive resistance... which is really anathema to the current consensus based system. When the loudest minority can prevent any changes, who is actually helped?

So, after thinking on this long and hard, I've come to the conclusion that the best course of action is... to discuss this with what community actually exists here on Wikipedia. What do you think? Should we elect individuals to actual positions of power, in some manner? (actually, we already do with ArbCom, so should that be extended somehow?)
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 10:46, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, we should have structures for making the important decisions (i.e. on content and best practices), rather than the pointless structure that ArbCom has become (basically the Wikipedia drama club). Of course we do need to deal with bad behaviour, but that needs to be done on sight, quickly and effectively. When I say structures for making the important decisions, I don't mean people to make the decisions for us, but people to help the process along, judge what the results are and ensure they get implemented. --Kotniski (talk) 11:28, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
The problem is not only one of scale, but of time. No one but fanatics has the time and patience to read or grasp, let alone participate in every important decision, which means that something like the Manual of Style, the Village Pump or the public sections of Administrators' Noticeboard, while open to all, in practice can't accommodate more than a few dozen people (if that) at any one time. I don't know about executive authority, but since I tend towards the pluralist, libertarian, inclusionist, anti-prescriptivist, hundred-flowers view of Wikipedia, and away from other common views here, I think it might be healthy to develop very loose political parties and allow them to campaign when those elections come up. I was eligible to vote this year for (I think) Wikipedia's board, but couldn't summon the will to plough through twenty candidates' statements and Q&A. I could be more active in the various associations, or start my own, but until they can organize as more than volunteer fire brigades to either Rescue Worthy Articles or Stamp Out Creeping Cruft on a case-by-case by case basis ["Help! Help! My Favorite Band's trapped in AfD; won't someone please, please rescue them?" "Don't worry, little lady, the Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians will rally round to save the day! (without, of course, violating the Ban on Canvassing)"] and articulate a fairly-full programme, I can't see them as a democratically-workable conduit between ordinary editors (or readers) and the baroque workings of the Project. No one likes seeing a single article's Talk Page or open Requests for Comment artificially packed, but there has to be some way, without breaching that essential aim of the Ban on Canvassing, to let people know that Party X feels this way about this issue or that slate of candidates, while Party Y feels very differently, and here are the reasons why. And with a self-organized project like Wikipedia, I tend (from personal experience with vaguely-similar groups) to believe more in Robert Michels' iron law of oligarchy and Parkinson's Law than in the anti-party sentiments of Rousseau, Federalist No. 10 or Washington's Farewell Address. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:42, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
Well said, that pretty much sums up my own views nicely. Your central point, regarding lack of time, is really what gives me pause as well. I think that a large part of the issue here is that everyone is more used to a smaller, more tight-knit group. Usually most forums, web cites, games, etc... have a better defined central goal to them, which makes it easier for everyone to get along since most people will be there for whatever the "it" is. Wikipedia obviously has a much broader scope, and a much more political issue base as well, then basically any other internet site/project. So... I don't know. The ad hoc development of the Wikipedia community continues to more or less work as it has for the last 7-8 years, and nothing is likely to stop it (I'm not at all a doomsayer, or some sort of angry conspiracy type). There has to be something to make it better though, and with a group that is (and should be) as diverse as Wikipedia's I'm simply left wondering if some sort of Republican system would be a good solution.
Just trying to brainstorm a little bit here, but ...maybe we could put an individual or small group in charge of what can be an RFC/centralized discussion, and somehow formalize that process more?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 08:59, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
Can you explain what you mean by Republican? You mean something like an elected parliament or congress, that would take decisions by formal vote-count if it's not clear what the position of the "community" is on some matter?--Kotniski (talk) 09:37, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, more or less... although as I said above the ideas here are extremely nebulous even in my head. I guess "representative government" would probably be more accurate.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 20:18, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
Um, there are so many on-and-off users, one-time users, IP addresses, users who dont come on more than once a week, etc that "representative government" would quickly become "representative of the users who come on several times a day". I think that would be very detrimental to those other groups, especially IP addresses and newbies, who already get treated as second-class citizens and proposals are constantly put forth at the Village Pump (two that I know of in the last two weeks) regarding limiting their ability to participate and make it harder to sign up to Wikipedia. The "fanatics" would have more control over any type of "government" as they would be more likely to vote. While it is correct that many, regarding the US constitutional set-up deplored and railed against the potential of "factions" and "parties", the very way in which the US Constitution was written meant that if parties had not formed the US Constitution would not have functioned at all, which some believe was the actual purpose of the Founders (to have a Federal Govt that didnt work and therefore couldnt mess with the states or people). The same, if we werent smarter than the Founders (and actually we are smarter), would happen here. Parties would not be good for Wikipedia, but if we were to set-up a "governing body" we'd probably have to have them in order to function. "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other form of government tried by Man"- Winston Churchill. There would be those "conservatives" who believe the letter of the "law" should be strictly interpretted and all policies and guidelines would be enforced to the letter and IAR, commonsense, and consensus would be thrown out. There would be "progressives" who stress IAR, common sense, and hold policy as more loosely as a "this is what you should do idealy, but if you want to tweak it in a different case, go ahead". Those two positions I can see as easily rallying two groups from the get-go. Heaven help us all if that first group were to win. I'd spend every dime I have on a new competitor to Wikipedia if they ever did.Camelbinky (talk) 00:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Multiple issues

I think you actually have about three issues wrapped together here. At the top, well, I don't know about Dunbar's number; Brook's The Mythical Man-Month#The Mythical Man-Month would seem more applicable here. (Basically, an unstructured group of N people has N*N ways to communicate; as the group gets bigger communication becomes infeasible. This is implictly why "town-hall democracy" doesn't work at large scales – no one has the time to study all the issues.) But the solution to this is well-known: structure. Which, I hasten to add, need not be authoritarian and heirarchial. E.g., if a large group arranges itself as a collection of smaller groups (presumably the smaller groups have charge of or authority for certain areas or tasks), then only the smaller group needs to cross-communicate on the group's task, and the inter-group communications are simpler because because only a single channel is needed to each group. (Presumably the group has a spokesman or manager or some such external representor.) This should not seem novel, as it is pretty much how things are now on Wikipedia (though very informally).

The second issue stems from the inherent chaos of the idealistic "let everyone/anyone edit". I think we have plenty of evidence that not everyone is pointed in the same direction. Reality is more like a talented two-year old trying to stack some blocks while the rest of the kids run around, constantly knocking down his work. "Let everyone edit" arrays a lot of seeming randomness against any effort to order or structure anything. I don't think it is "anti-social" to resist this tyranny of the lowest common denominator of behavior (or goals). Sociality is the whole matter of how live in groups, which here transforms into the question of how to conserve the result of our efforts from the depradations of others. (In that sense I am all for "conservatism".) This leads to standards (e.g., references), the watchlist function, vandalism patrols, etc. For sure, this amounts to resistance to change. But consider the analogy of an electrical circuit (how appropriate!): certainly won't work without conductance, but also won't work without insulation. (Unless you want a big flash of self-destruction.)

The third issue, of how to organize the group, which includes the implicit sub-issue of how to govern the group, is thus driven by the need to conserve our efforts (else why bother?) and to organize generally, and constrained by the effective impossibility of doing this through simple, universal consensus. Which then gets deep....  :-)

I hope that helps to clarify matters. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:34, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Why should the choice of government be driven by "the need to conserve our efforts"? After all wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia, so I would think it's main focus would be on facilitating collaboration, encouraging people to improve each others contributions.
Of course maintenance of wikipedia is essential to guaranty the quality of its content, but restricting edits is not the only way to achieve that goal. And it should not in any case become the main focus of wikipedia, it would be like transforming a mean into an end.
...
This has probably already been discussed a lot so I'll stop here, but I guess we're already seeing the 2 parties Camelbinky talked about ;-) -- Ryk V (talk) 01:34, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
The conservation (or retention?) of effort means our results have some kind of endurance. (Why even bother if our efforts have no persisting result? Aside, that is, from some kind of performance art.) I once saw a group that had to repeatedly re-visit and re-decide a certain question because they were not able to retain/conserve their collective decisions. It is not at all a matter of artificial restrictions (as distinct from "liberty!" in the Hobbesian sense) on the means controlling the ends; it is a matter of arranging the means in order to attain (and conserve) the ends. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:28, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Decision making

Going back to the main issue which is, as I understand it : how to improve the decision making process on wikipedia, seeing as the current one, based on simple consensus, leads to immobility.

The initial proposition was to elect a governing body by, for example, expanding on the idea of the Arbitration Committee. I actually think that the wmf:Board of Trustees (at least the part interested in wikipedia) would be a more fitting starting point : unlike ArbCom which mainly arbitrates disputes the board is already the closest thing wikipedia has to a governing body.

Another existing project that could address part of the issue under discussion is the Wikimedia Strategic Planning. This is not a republican system as anyone who wants (and has the time and motivation) can participate. It is also designed to avoid the immobility seen on wikipedia by organizing participants into focused task-forces (obviously under the Dunbar's number threshold :-) that will assemble as much data as possible on their respective subject before discussing possible improvements. This process should allow them to avoid the kind of unresearched discussions sometime found on this page where each side gives its opinion without supporting it with verifiable data and without trying to address the other side argumentation, thus leading to no consensus.

Contrary to what is implied on m:Strategic planning 2009, this project should evolve into a continuous improvement process. However, it remains to be seen how the decision about each proposed change will be taken (if someone know, please explain) : a vote or maybe a less formal submission to the community with all the adequate research and argumentation ... -- Ryk V (talk) 03:19, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry to be late here. Wish I'd have seen this earlier. I agree with the proposer -- the whole consensus thing is getting to be almost arbitrary. Appropriate results are never insured because there are so many people with so equal a say and so little structure. There's a reason large organizations need structure, and I'm not sure how Wikipedia is any different. I used to believe in the ideals, being as the proposer is, on the liberal side of things, but lately I've been losing confidence in this having the ability to remain a fair and effective system that actually produces results in the encyclopedia's best interests, and those of the editors.
I posted a rudimentary administrative hierarchy proposal at Strategy Wiki a while ago, if anyone is interested. Equazcion (talk) 16:56, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Equazcion, you already know my view on Wikipedia and my dislike of any class structure so I'm sure you can guess that I must now take an opposing view on your hierachy system. Yes, a loud, tenacious minority can and often does prevent good changes (as you and I know all too well); but is the solution to that really to create a hierachy and more bureaucracy? A bureaucracy's first and foremost priority is to protect its "turf", once we create one it will protect whatever rights and abilities we give it and we'll never be able to destroy it, control it, or reign it in, it will appropriate new abilities it sees fit in order to do its job, whether we originally thought it should have those abilities or explicitely thought it should not, if it needs them for its job it will give it to itself. Arbcom was a mistake in my opinion and still is. We dont need more levels with more fancy titles and more rules and more bureaucracy that has nothing better to do than create more rules and enforcement, and editors out there thinking a fancy title gives their opinions more say (we see that problem with certain admins, and think about how hard it is to strip an admin compared to giving the title!). This is an encyclopedia, isnt our job to create and edit articles, this isnt an experiment in nation-building; I wait for the day when someone proposes a Wikipedia national anthem and flag.Camelbinky (talk) 00:37, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Perennial proposal

Perennial proposal. Activitiy on any single page tends to have rather less participants than Dunbar's number. Another way to put that: A wiki has its own structure. This is an interesting enough phenomenon that you could almost call a wiki a novel kind of political system all by itself. Yes yes, I said Almost. ;-)

Most "Real World" political systems have already been proven to fail on-line, because -hey- on-line is a different environment.

Wikis work better than most. I think the current community and system wikipedia uses is pretty much on its way to break the world record for longest-lived online community. (It has already broken the record for largest, AFAIK).

If you want to (re-)introduce concepts that have already been proven not to work, or that work contrary to what you can do on a wiki? No thanks!

On the other hand, would you like to design something that's actually better? I'm all ears!

Just realize that we already have something of a system, and that system still sort of works (however badly), which is a huge accomplishment by itself. Try to figure why the system works, and use that to build on. Don't blindly grab random system X you read about in a schoolbook yesterday. ;-)

  • Existing System X probably won't magically transform the wiki into something useful. That's because most existing systems are not designed for online communities, let alone wiki-communities. I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's unlikely.
  • In fact, just blindly implementing any philosophy or paradigm has never really worked out too well anywhere or anytime in history. Don't start a cargo cult, Make sure you Know What You're Doing.
  • Several traditional systems can lead to rapid death of a community (see even just work by Alvin Toffler for predictions and reasoning on this)
  • Anything that will actually work is therefore likely to be either esoteric, custom designed, or both.
  • What I said above: wikis are interesting. An empty wiki already has quite some elements of a successful political system. You can create projects rapidly and cross-link them. If people participate in the projects, you have a running system. Wikis are just at fast at politics as at writing encyclopedias. ;-) The trick is to get people to actually participate.
  • I'm not married to wikis, (dangit, I demonstrated mediawikiwave at wikimania!). Other paradigms exist. Investigate them!
  • Never underestimate the power or utility of a good programmer in an online community.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 04:51, 4 November 2009 (UTC) I tend to get a little worried when a self-professed-republican tries to call me 'conservative'. On the other hand, maybe I'm not the one to be worried <innocent look>

If anyone else, like me, is seriously (or even not seriously) worried about any move to a representative body that would create, maintain, enforce, and hand down policies and judgements for us, thereby taking that right from the Community at-large I have created a page here where we can show support for the basic ideals of Wikipedia that are most likely to be attacked by such a move. Even if such a republican form is never adopted it will still be of good use in giving a forum for those that agree with things like IAR, consensus, wp:notstatute, and common sense. It is a liberal view of Wikipedia as a place where all are equal editors with equal say and opposed to hierarchies or more bureaucracy.Camelbinky (talk) 23:14, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
I think there is a distinct sub-issue here, which really warrants a separate discussion. And I wish I had more time to get into this, but for a quicky overview: Are all editors – and implicitly, all editing – really equal? There is a certain sense or aspect where I think this should be the case (and this really needs to explicated), but in other respects (such as quality, depth, "tone", etc.) it is clear and obvious that editors and editing are not "equal". The connection with the separate issue(s?) of hierarchies/bureauracy/authoritarianism is that solutions for dealing with the first issue are being sought in the realm of the latter, but this need not be the case. In summary: I think (yeah, on a good day) that we need to better refine just what "equality" means, and to work up better (more nuanced?) possible solutions to some of the problems. In particular, I think the idealistic "everyone's equal, every edit is good" view needs some realistic reconsideration, but that does not mean submission to some kind of overlord. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:12, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Back

Interesting. I took a bit of a break from Wikipedia, but this topic is still here. It's funny how almost random, seemingly inconsequential thoughts can sometimes turn out to be more substantial then the more normal Village Pump topics, isn't it?
Anyway, there's some good thoughts here, and their still percolating in my own thoughts. I think that it's important to point out that I personally don't think that anything drastic needs to change with Wikipedia. One of the things that I did during my "wikibreak" is to look around at the off-site Wikipedia related forums. My sense is that there is a tendency for those who have been "jilted" by what passes for the Wikipedia community to immediately jump to attack the site. I understand the reaction, but at the same time it's not constructive at all in my opinion.
What strikes me at being the most problematic aspect of Wikipedia's "governance" is that there effectively isn't any. Currently, Wikipedia is essentially an Anarchist state, and it seems to be more so now then it was in the not to distant past. My (possibly, or even probably incorrect) personal perception is that "Jimbo" is less active now, but that he has acted as the single Wikipedia "Moderator at large" (for want of a better title) for several years. It seems to be appropriate for him to move on, or move away, for various reasons which I'm certain that many others are more familiar with then myself. However, that leaves all of us in something of an in-between period, and personally I'd rather see what I perceive as an ongoing transition be actively managed by us as a community rather then simply bearing through it in an ad-hoc manner, hoping for the best.
As I sort of said in the opening post to this thread, I personally tend to hold onto Libertarian ideals. That being the case, I would love to see Wikipedia uphold as much of it's current "do what you think is right" attitude as possible. However, my Libertarian views are decidedly colored by a desire for structure, order, or (gasp) lawfulness. Chaos tends to bother me personally, and ultimately I think that rampant chaos is what is currently harming the Wikipedia project the most.
As should be clear from my replies above, I don't have any clear answers myself. Since this topic has continued on for a while at least, I do think that it could be constructuve for more of us to comment here however. Thanks for reading!
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 04:41, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
"Chaos" is a bit ambiguous, but in the sense of "entropy" – yes, in whatever we do, it is usually because we want something better than would be produced by merely random or chaotic processes. Which generally requires structure, etc. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:52, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

democracy is bad?

I was just now reading through (you might say "dredging through"...) most of the commetary at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee 2. What struck me, in relation to this topic and that discussion, is the seemingly dogmatic and ideological position offered by many that essentially boils down to "democracy is bad". I recognize that I'm risking the start of an ideological political battle here, but I find that I'm almost compelled to continue. Let's start with this question: Is the "democracy is bad" viewpoint really something that has become dogmatic here on Wikipedia?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 12:19, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, let us step carefully. The specific and literal question you are asking is whether a certain viewpoint "has become dogmatic". Which I don't know, but I would say that is the wrong question. To see the real issue we need to back up one step and look closer at just what this viewpoint is. Particularly, the viewpoint (of many of us, including myself) generally (but imperfectly!) formulated as "editing should be restricted" (see discussion below at #Edits by anonymous users), and even my questioning (above) of the idealistic "everyone's equal, every edit is good", does NOT equate to "democracy is bad". This may require some careful distangling.
Note that the two views "everyone should be able to edit" and "editing should be restricted" are not necessarily incompatible. It depends on the nature of the restriction. These are analogous to "everyone can come into my house" and "no one can come in by the back door". (Because I don't have one!!) No problem, because "everyone" have the option of using the front door. Same way with editing: does "everyone should be able edit" mean "everybody should be able to edit anonymously"? Well, golly, is that a requirement, or not? It wasn't specified, and whether one implicitly assumes it, or not, leads to different results.
Similarly with the assumption that "everybody should be able to edit" is the same as "democracy". The latter certainly incorporates the idea of "everybody" (as in universal participation), but while the former might be deemed democratic (because it is like democracy), I think it is a profound error to conflate the two contexts. E.g., just because I live in a democracy doesn't mean that a bus driver has to let me drive. Well, I've run out of time, so here's long shot to beat the buzzer: taking this back to the top, I would say that some of the concerns about "republicanism" involve similar misperceptions as to the nature of democray. But that's for another day. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:19, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
As someone who's degree is in poli sci and is a grad student in poli sci with comparative politics as my discipline I most definitely do know what democracy is and how it works. On this I am most definitely an expert and know more than the average person/Wikipedian. I have got to say I dont quite understand the bus driver analogy, as "freedom of ability to do something" does not equal "democracy", the bus driver doesnt have to let you drive the bus because he's the bus driver, in the purest democracy a bus driver still doesnt have any obligation to let you drive unless you are saying the bus itself has been declared a democracy, in which case yes the bus driver does have to let you drive if the bus took a vote and the winner was you. The way Wikipedia is today is closest to pure communism than to "democracy", if people seem to have problem wrapping around that I can explain on an essay if you wish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Camelbinky (talk • contribs) 01:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
So my analogy wasn't the best. Let's try a different one: airplane pilots. Not every is a "Sully"; do you want just anyone having a turn up front? No. This why piloting is restricted to those with the training, etc. Is this undemocratic? I would say no, because the context of democracy is political, and whereas expert competency in technical matters is not political. (Or shouldn't be.) To take this back to the issue that was raised, I would say that it is not so much a matter of whether democracy per se is "bad", but whether the application of certain democratic concepts is valid in a given context. E.g., democracy applied in a cockpit is bad, but that is not the same as "democracy is bad". (And if I can squeeze in a few more minutes, a further comment in the next subsection.) - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:39, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Fears

What I am scared of in any move towards an elected body is that the elected body will be given x "powers" and "responsibilities" regarding our policies/guidelines. Factions/parties will form around specific core ideologies here on Wikipedia and an ideology that is currently a minority view may end up being carried by the majority on the elected body. Secondly- it is a fact that any representative body/bureaucracy (whether a legislature or a just a department within a government) will always take on powers and authorities beyond that given to it even if those powers were originally explicitely left out on purpose, if that body believes that those powers are absolutely necessary to fulfill its given function (as interpreted by the body itself). It is the "law of bureaucracies" and is the fundamental fact needed in order to understand how bureaucracies work, the most common example given is that the US Constitution in no way provides for the [U.s.] Supreme Court to have the ability to declare laws unconstitutional (or presidential acts), Marbury v Madison was a ruling by the Supreme that gave itself that power. We should all be aware of true bureaucracies and political structures before we attempt to construct one of our own. And of course- Wikipedia is an exercise in creating an encyclopedia, not an exercise in creating a better bureaucracy or "proto-state".Camelbinky (talk) 01:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The whole point of "creating a better bureaucracy" is to better manage the encyclopedia making. There is a widespread attitude that "bureaucracies are bad", therefore we should have no "bureaucracy". And by implication no management, no leadership, no anything by which the limitations of small groups can be transcended.
I think the reason for this attitude is just as you stated: fears. I suspect that at the bottom of the pile of fears is the particular one that someone else will interfere with what I want to do. Well, what if the ability to control certain aspects of one's environment ("power") were parcelled out so that you get to have exclusive control over there, and I get to have exclusive control here? (Like how it works out regarding property.) That is, decentralization. Which is not to say that different little entities are not trying to take on more power, but in being dispersed they are less powerful. (Just like the free market model.) My point is that though there are many possibilities of which we ought to be scared of, there are many other possibilities. And we should not let fears of some prevent us from considering others. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:04, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Very good points JJ, that definitely got me to thinking. It is true that what I am afraid of is can, perhaps, be summed up as "fear of the unknown". I like your analogy regarding property, but remember if we have a bureaucracy (or proto-state as some of these proposals seem), yes, we may end up having "me control this" and "you control that" but at least in the US remember there are zoning regulations, fence height regulation, property taxes, and etc (to continue your analogy's theme); perhaps some of these bureaucratic/"legislative"/"republicanism" ideas, if not well-thought out and properly vetted could end up costing us some freedoms we currently hold dear on our "little plots of land". To end my post on the analogy note- remember it wasnt that long ago that zoning regulations by local governments were considered unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, now pretty much every municipality has zoning or at least some form of regulation, so in Wikipedia things we currently think "oh, that would never be made a policy" or "that would never be taken out of policy" may one day be taken out or added against the majority opinion because our "elected body" deems it in "our best interest".Camelbinky (talk) 00:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
This closes in on the fundamental philosophical issue (and fear): that some entity might diminish my ability ("freedom") to do what I think is best, might impose on me in some way. The problem is the difficulty in having a say in every issue and at every point where we might perceive an interest. This is why in every sphere of society we necessarily delegate (or at least defer) to others: to "bureaucrats" in exective matters, to "representative government" in political matters, to various experts in other matters. Basically, we learn that we can't control or even influence everything, so we sort out and focus on where we have the greatest concerns, leaving other matters to others. In essence, just as I may claim some special authority (based on expertise, experience, or whatever) to impose certain decisions on you, I also respect a similar claim of authority by you. And on the whole this can work. (Indeed, there are whole areas I hope some one else will handle, because I can't. It can also fail, such as where authority is corrupted, but that is not so much a refutation of the principal as a matter of implementation.) And that, I believe, is the fundamental basis of 'republicanism': that yielding authority to others can work. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:25, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

WikiProjects

What about giving WikiProjects a more prominent role in the governance of the system? If we need structure, start from a solid foundation at the bottom. WikiProjects are already a very grass-roots method of applying structure to small areas of interest. Perhaps the WikiProjects should collaborate on a more formal level to form a larger structure and giving the WikiProject_Council a community mandate to do this would be the way forward. How to implement this idea is, naturally, left to the community consensus at large, but I think this would work better than a top-down traditional politic route. -- M2Ys4U (talk) 19:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Let's not fix what ain't broken

The most amazing thing about Wikipedia is that it works — and works incredibly well — without any organized editorial structure. In fact, I contend that the "problems" that this proposal is meant to solve simply do not exist. The "chaos" that some perceive is of no consequence to readers, and does not prevent editors from contributing. Those "problems" only seem to be perceived by a minority of people who like to discuss editorial policies; or who assume that one of WP's goals is to become as stylistically homogeneous as a classical encyclopedia. The latter is, to say the least, an exceedingly naive notion.
On the contrary, if more old editors are leaving than new editors are joining (as some statistics seem to indicate), it is probably because WP is becoming more structured and bureaucratic; so that contributing is becoming harder and less fun. Back in 2003, all that an editor needed to know before contributing was the wiki markup syntax. Today there are hundreds of style and policy pages that one is urged to read before typing the first sentence.
Wikiprojects (or any other federative structure one may invent) only contribute to this burden. Many editors can and do contribute to articles that fall under the purview of dozens of different WikiProjects. One cannot expect that every such editor will read and honor the policies of each project, much less take the time to join them or discuss and vote on their policies. Most editors would probably give up and find a more pleasant and productive way to waste their free time.
In fact, I conjecture that, for any WikiProject, most of the improvement that has occurred on articles under its purview would have been occurred just as well and quickly (if not even better and more quickly) if the WikiProject did not exist. For one thing, the time that was wasted by editors in purely bureaucratic Project maintenance tasks (such as slapping the Project's template on Talk pages) would have been better employed in editing contents.
As others have pointed out, Wikipedia editors are not meant to interact with each other; so Dunbar's number and other sociological theories are simply irrelevant. Editors do and should interact only with articles. When someone decides to edit an article, he/she should not have to know who else edited it, much less depend on their consent; all he needs (or should need) to know is the article itself, and possibly its talk page. (The fact that comments in talk pages are signed is irrelevant; there too, only the contents of the remarks matter, not who posted them.)
PLEASE, let's not try to "fix" what is working so well. If anything needs to be changed, it should be in the direction making WP more chaotic and less organized, with fewer policies and simpler editing protocols. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Completely agree with Jorge! What if we all decided- no more VPP, OR/N, RS/N, no more discussion on policies and what they should say, what the next new policy is, how it should be interpreted, should this be promoted to a guideline, etc? And everyone instead only worked on editing articles. If everyone simply did what Wikipedia is supposed to be used for (editing articles) we'd have fewer conflicts and I think it would work out better.Camelbinky (talk) 04:41, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Atlas/gazetteer entries

A regular and recurring debate over whether or not certain types of geographical locations articles (cities, streets, rivers, mountains, etc) meet the general notability guidelines typically results in some kind of assertion that a certain class of articles has been granted "inherent notability". Nothing to this effect has ever been formalized, and these classes of "inherently notable" topics appear to exist only in the mind of the community, not "on paper" as it were. As a result, this creates the following kind of circular debate at AfD (and other types of) discussions : "Delete, no notability established" -> "Keep, X are inherently notable" -> "Why are/who says X are inherently notable" -> "Well that's what we said the last time someone nominated an X for deletion" ...

The breakdown in this process is that subjects for which no sources to indicate notability can be found, are nevertheless deemed "inherently notable". This flies in the face of logic; a subject that is "inherently notable" should have abundant proof of notability. We have guidelines that set down requirements to determine when a topic is or is not notable, but then we have this informal notion that certain subjects are notable just because we say they are? This kind of reasoning is confusing at best and outright contradictory at worst. A large part of the problem comes about from the fact that notability as used here at Wikipedia is not the same thing as "notability" is defined in the dictionary. When we say a topic is notable we are not necessarily saying that it is (dictionary) notable. By contrast, we are saying that "all cities are (dictionary) notable, so they don't need to be Wikipedia notable". This kind of selective twisting of the definition of the term "notable" is simply unacceptable.

I used to consistently argue against the inclusion of articles that did not meet the general notability guidelines, in spite of being deemed "inherently notable" at some point, but I was consistently in the minority opinion in these discussions. The community as a whole clearly has no will to delete articles on things like cities and asteroids and species, even when there is not one shred of notability to be found. I finally was able to reconcile myself with the fact that these types of subjects do, indeed, belong on Wikipedia. Per Wikipedia:Five pillars, "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers." Almanac and gazetteer entries are not the same thing as encyclopedia articles; they are held to a different standard, contain different levels of information and detail, and cater to different audiences. Yet, our guidelines are written with encyclopedia articles in mind and have not given much consideration to entries of the gazetteer/almanac/atlas variety.

I would like to see some kind of solution that does away with the concept of "implied notability" and instead focuses on the fact that, as a bare gazetteer entry, an article on some little-known hamlet with nothing more than geographical, statistical and demographic information can exist without the need for any Wikipedia notability. This discussion at VPP has touched upon the subject of inherent notability and a few ideas were tossed about on how to help find a broader solution to this issue. Personally, I see a few different options open to us:

  • Do nothing. Continue to treat all subjects as encyclopedia articles while giving certain subjects a nebulous pass on the GNG by perpetuating the ill-defined notion of "inherent notability"
  • Create a new guideline/policy (or set of them) to define what types of subjects require verification only as falling under Wikipedia's role as a gazetteer/almanac. Specific criteria for determining what subjects may qualify as "gazetteer" entries can be created to ensure that the GNG isn't discarded and that editors are not abusing gazetteer entries to sneak in articles that ought not be here.
  • Optionally, and in tandem with the above, create a namespace dedicated to housing entries that are not encyclopedia articles per se, but that are of another type of entry. This approach would help ensure that the "difference" is readily apparent.
  • Creating a new sister project, something like Wikispecies, to fulfill the role of an atlas/gazetteer. This is not an entirely new idea. It would have the advantages of segregating encyclopedia-type articles and gazetteer entries and reduce any potential confusion by having them on the same project, but would be the most radical and difficult idea to implement.
  • Other options I have not considered.

At this point I'm not really talking about details of how to implement a change to this effect, rather, I am trying to get some kind of feel from the community on how these things are handled. The fact that these kinds of discussions come up at fairly regular intervals seems to indicate that the problem is real and not imagined. What I am not entirely clear on is whether the severity of the problem is real or something I have merely invented in my head. Does the community as a whole have a desire to treat these atlas/almanac/gazetteer style articles as such and create some kind of process to deal with them, or would we really prefer to treat them like any old encyclopedia article and cling to the "inherent notability" concept? Shereth 17:40, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I think this is an effect of the fact that we present presume notability (and this is the WP-version of the word) is our only inclusion metric, when in reality there are several community-based inclusion principles that are unwritten that guide what content is included; the notability and GNG there usually for topics that don't fall under these. I've long argued for creating a more over-arching inclusion approach, with our current notability guidelines being supportive of that, but better asserting that we also immediately assume that every documented city, species, asteroid, road, etc should be covered here because of WP's goal to summarize human knowledge, and if they happen to also meet notability guidelines, great.
Now, of course, we have created sister projects specific for certain types of knowledge that split off well from WP: dictionary terms, how-to guides, etc - all part of human knowledge the Foundation wants to document. All these represent things that don't fit well into an encyclopedic format. So the question is, can we have a sister project or an equivalent means of separation of content from the rest of the encyclopedia? Unfortunately, I think the answer is no for most of these, because while there are a large number of articles that are stubby for an encyclopedia, the ones that are certainly not stubs are too inseparable in encyclopedic and reference content to work for the entire class. Take some cases:
If we were to create an atlas sister project for all documented habitated cities, articles on cities like New York City and Paris would be at a loss here because there is a lot more than just describing the location and population of the city.
If we were to create a gazetter project, you'd have the same thing for roads like U.S. Route 66 and I-35
Thus, for these types of classes, we can't split off a complete comprehensive project without harming the core WP content. Thus, we need to realize that either we need to be complete with them, and include all (within reasonable discrimination) of the classes as WP articles even if they are stubby and don't show notability, or try to assert notability and make this collection incomplete and not comprehensive. Preferably, I think we are satisfying the project's goals better with the former, including all of a class even if that negates notability, because at the end of the day, notability is a consensus-driven guideline - we define what it means we have to loosen it to complete our need to document human knowledge, so be it. --MASEM (t) 18:10, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Don't forget that the point of a gazetteer, which wikipedia already is, is to have these articles. All places are notable, they just haven't necessarily had any notable events in them. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 18:13, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
And remember that just because notability cannot be established about a town in, say, Djibouti, through our regular means of checking articles in primarily English-language sources, doesn't mean that the local newspaper, television, or radio news there hasn't covered it possibly extensively. Personally, I think the realization that the majority of those which might be of dubious "notability" are in fact probably very notable in their own country, but that little of that information is readily available to us outsiders, is one of the primary reasons, if not the primary reason, for this "pass" some such articles are given. In time, of course, if we really find that there actually isn't anything substantive to say about a given area, there is always a very real chance that the artcle will be merged. John Carter (talk) 18:35, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Let's take American High Schools as an example. In America, High Schools which grant diplomas are generally presumed notable unless someone makes a convincing case that they are not. Generally, those that would fail at AfD are those which are 1) relatively unknown even by locals, 2) are special-purpose, such as schools for dropouts or schools for students with discipline problems, and most importantly, 3) unlike most high schools, there is nothing about them such as interscholastic sporting events which causes them to make local and regional papers on a regular basis. Of course, some of these schools, such as Serenity High School, a high school in Texas for recovering substance abusers, meet notability requirements even if they don't have the usual "notability generating" things that a traditional high school has.
Yes, this "presumption of notability" does let some very small high schools that are basically unknown outside their own county or adjacent counties to have articles without risking defeat in AfD, but at the same time it's not an automatic "you are a high school, you get a free pass." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:12, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
The problem with "presumption of notability" is exactly that it is treated as a "you are an X, you get a free pass". Regardless of the original intent in deciding that high schools are presumed notable, the end result has been that any attempt to delete articles on high schools is pretty much aborted at launch by opponents parroting exactly that line : "Keep, all schools are notable". Now, I don't have a specific problem with the community deciding that all high schools are inclusion-worthy regardless of their notability, and that is at the heart of this discussion. "Presumed notability" is poorly worded, poorly understood and often misused, especially within the context of Wikipedia's notability guidelines. I am hoping that an alternate solution, one that does not rely upon nebulous concepts of presumed/inherent notability and more upon simple inclusion criteria. Dispense with the assumptions that schools "probably have some kind of coverage" and instead rely on a policy/guideline that states, in simple fashion, "High schools are always inclusion worthy to fulfill Wikipedia's role as an almanac". Shereth 20:27, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
A lot of this comes down to the (mis)conception that "notability is the GNG". Which is not true. Notability is what we as editors determine is notable, with one common case being the GNG because the fact that others (reliable experts, to wit) have talked about the topic means that it notable, and thus is a good semi-objective measure. But we do not have to limit ourselves to this, because we are consensus driven. We want reliability, for certain, and we need to avoid indiscriminate, so listing every person or the like is inappropriate. But if the community feels we should be included roads and villages and (discovered) asteroids and species, each which has a finite (if not large) number and can be sourced to at least a single reliable source, then that's the community assessment of these being notable, and thus we should include them. The problem is that too many people see the GNG as an absolute must for an article, and for several topics, I would assume to be the case. But the GNG is too artificially limiting if we are attempting to assemble the whole of human knowledge in an indiscriminate manner. --MASEM (t) 22:33, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I wholly support getting rid of the maligned "inherent notability" terminology in favor of the more accurate statement that notability is only one of several inclusion criteria the community recognizes. We could use WP:Inclusion criteria as a central directory to these inclusion guidelines (it's currently a redirect to WP:NOT, but it seems little-used by links or visits); if I get time and motivation I may draft something along these lines in my userspace. Anomie⚔ 23:07, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I started something at User:Anomie/Inclusion criteria. But without help, it's not going to get anywhere because I don't know enough about all the various areas. Feel free to edit it if you want to help. Anomie⚔ 23:19, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Sister projects, or even independent projects, probably make the most sense in the long run. Wikipedia is not a repository of all human knowledge. Once WikiSpecies gets going strong, transwiking articles about most species that most people have never heard of or which are only in the news the month of their discovery would be in order, saving Wikipedia proper for animals which a large number of laypeople have already heard of. Similar projects can be set up for planets, schools, geographical locations, government entities, and other things where most individual examples have no real notability beyond existence. In the short and medium run, things will probably continue the way they are, with more and more articles being written in WikiSpecies and other projects and fewer and fewer minor articles in Wikipedia. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:51, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
But will those articles on WikiSpecies for animals I've (so I'm told) never heard of be redirected to from the Wikipedia article of the same name, or will the wikipedia article redirect to a species that I have heard of (so I'm told)? How long before wikipedia is just redirects to other wikis? "Wikipedia is not a repository of all human knowledge" funny that Jimbo Wales said otherwise. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 20:43, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I think Anomie's work-in-progress looks promising. However, perma-sub-stubs on non-notable subjects aren't useful unless a proper listing and navigation system is used (like taxoboxes for species). Otherwise the only people who will see the entries are people who already know about them (or click "random article"). If a similarly effective system were set up for human settlements, roads, chemical compounds, stars, etc. then I would be less unhappy with their existence. On the whole, I'd prefer for the encyclopedia to concentrate on encylopedic articles, rather than amassing data with the excuse that "we're not paper". OrangeDog (τ • ε) 01:10, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Namespace

The idea of adding a namespace is something that I brought up in the linked to discussion we were having on VP (policy). I'm not extremely attached to the idea, but I don't mind "selling it" a little bit. I think that it makes sense for at least location based articles (Cities, administrative districts, roads, etc...) simply because it seems as though most agree that there is a fairly clear distinction in character between location based articles and other encyclopedic content. That seems to be the reason that we're "perennially" running into inclusion issues with these articles (some of the conversation above are touching on the deeper reasons for that). I think that using a (presdu-?)namespace would help to clarify the problem because we could then talk about policies and guidelines for location based articles without affecting the treatment of the "normal" encyclopedia articles. There may be some merit in extending a similar idea into other topic areas as well, but we should probably leave that question for later on (let's tackle one problem at a time). I might be overlooking some obvious problem with such an approach, but if there is such a problem then I'm missing it.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 19:35, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

You mean things like Paris and Rome aren't encyclopedic topics? Mr.Z-man 23:25, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
*scratches head* Is that really what comes across from the above? Of course their encyclopedic, but they have slightly different character to them as a group. I'm fairly certain that is where the "inherent notability" idea came from, because... well, places aren't really notable, but their importance as landmarks, cultural references, and just as parts of our lives makes them something that everyone wants to know about.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 11:06, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Surely "something that everyone wants to know about" is a large part of notability. Notability isn't a physical quantity like volume or mass. Pseudomonas(talk) 11:46, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
"everyone" is really over stating things, on my part. There does seem to be a consistent (apparent minority) group of people who are uncomfortable with including... less significant locations in Wikipedia, and they generally seem to cite notability as their concern. The thing is that locations can be kind of tough to make them appear "notable" to those unfamiliar with the locale, simply because their "part of the scenery". If you go to the area then the places (buildings, towns, roads, schools, etc...) gain an instant and obvious importance. The problem is that importance is localized, because the importance of an oasis in Arabia is vital to the people and the character of that region but the importance of it fades quickly with distance, and essentially becomes nothing to people living in Europe, America, or India. That's my main point here, that there needs to be a different and separate standard specifically for location articles so that we can effectively deal with them while not damaging the normal Wikipedia:Notability guideline.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 12:06, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I guess maybe it's just that I'm more of an inclusionist about places than about a lot of other things. I disagree with your assertion that places are in a particular category of being more interesting locally; a politician will be of more interest in their own constituency than on the other side of the world too; a transportation system likewise, and so on. Even if we could somehow make criteria for things that are locally but not globally notable a)it would seem to increase systematic bias, and b) I don't see how a new namespace would help. Pseudomonas(talk) 12:22, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
You're seemingly not alone in the desire to be more inclusionist when it comes to articles about places, though. What I'm trying to convey (poorly, obviously) is some of the possible reasons that many (if not most) of us feel the same way about this class of articles. Their fundamentally different from, to use one of your examples, articles about more local politicians, simply because places seem to be more universally important to us as people. A politician is likely to never be important to outsiders simply because there's usually nothing that a local politician does that impacts an outsider's life at all. A physical location is fundamentally different though, because... well, it's there, for one thing. The (at least apparent) permanence for physical features is probably a huge psychological factor here, for most people. It just seems to me that the main problem here is that we continually try to ignore the fundamental difference in character that information about physical locations have to us, which is why terms such as "inherent notability" have been both accepted and reviled by many. I don't think that continuing to adjust policy or guidelines in order to address all articles as a monolithic whole is going to be effective.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:39, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Too add to that: People come and go, popularity rises and fades. Places stay. The history of places is added to constantly. The same is not true of other topics. Why is that we can include every acknowledged medical condition and disease on the planet, but not every acknowledged location? Why is that one of the first things done on the encyclopedia was to set a bot loose that created village, town, city, county, parish, and district articles for every single political division in the United States, but that otherwise geography must follow general notability guidelines? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 20:36, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure someone couldn't get that from your proposal. You said that "location based articles" (specifically including cities) are distinct from "'normal' encyclopedia articles." Yes Rome and Paris aren't notable for their location, but their location is certainly relevant to the reason that they're notable (If Paris was founded in the Sahara desert, I imagine it wouldn't be quite the same) and they're inherently tied to their location. Trying to discuss a city without mentioning its location would just be silly, if not its actual location, its relative location in terms of rivers and other natural features. Mr.Z-man 19:16, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Humm... I think that you might be misreading one sentence slightly. In the original post above I said: "simply because it seems as though most agree that there is a fairly clear distinction in character between location based articles and other encyclopedic content.". Maybe I'm not punctuating that correctly somehow, but the intent was to draw the character distinction between articles such as Paris and articles such as (Just using Random Article here) Robert Morris (writer). I did say "and other", rather then saying something like "unlike other". Later in the paragraph I was trying to communicate the way in which using a namespace would help us deal with location articles specifically, which is where the comparison to "normal" articles came from. I certainly don't see location articles as fundamentally unencyclopedic or anything (actually, the exact opposite is probably more accurate). I most certainly agree with the point that trying to discuss a city (or any other location) outside of it's surroundings won't work, but that's not even remotely what I was attempting to talk about.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 20:06, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I guess I just don't quite see why we need to treat locations differently. If they're encyclopedic, what's the problem with keeping them with the rest of the encyclopedia? Mr.Z-man 20:28, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I think when it comes down to it, a separate workspace is redundant. If anything it creates an extra step in finding the location you are looking for. The question simply comes down to is: are, or can, geographical locations be exempt from notability? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 20:36, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
See, I don't think that we need to even think about notability when it comes to location articles. The paradigm just doesn't fit. I don't like the "inherent notability" idea any more then Shareth or others do, but the difference is that they hold dear to the fact that notability is the primary issue when it comes to articles, which is an ideology that I don't share at all personally. Notability is important to consider, but it shouldn't be the only consideration. When it comes to location articles though, I don't see a notability standard as being relevent to the discussion. As I've mentioned before, the fact that a place (city, town, road, etc...) exists is self evident. Personal property does not need to be covered simply for the fact that no one really cares about personal property (including most property owned by corporations, by the way. Buildings are an obvious exception). Community property, on the other hand, is something that we're all generally so interested in that we hardly even think about it. As I've been saying all along, there's a fundamental difference in character between location articles and other articles.
I don't at all support forking such content to a separate wiki. That "solution" strikes me as being rather Pyrrhic, for all concerned. Using a namespace is simply something that I thought would be helpful for us to show: "here are these encyclopedia articles that are slightly different from the rest". It just seems to be a logical solution, even if it is slightly imperfect in some manner. One of the best things about it is that all autoconfirmed users can maintain such a solution easily, which will prevent widespread issues with it's implementation.
PS: to answer the "extra step" criticism above, that is relatively easily solved. The "namespace" doesn't need to be different from the main article namespace.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 20:53, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
But how are they different? How is Paris different from Mauritian rupee, but the latter not different from Syrianska Botkyrka IF? Mr.Z-man 20:59, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Permanence? The simple fact that it's a place, rather then a person or a thing (or organization, in the case of Syrianska Botkyrka IF)... I'm not sure if there is a good answer to that question, which is what we all seem to be struggling with. The difference seems so self evident to me that maybe I'm missing something, and I'm very willing to accept the possibility that some of us may be viewing this from a different paradigm then others are, so I guess that turnabout may be useful here. Is Paris fundamentally similar to the Mauritian rupee or Syrianska Botkyrka IF in some manner (other then that they exist, obviously)?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 22:02, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
It is important to note that we're primarily discussing the policy treatment of location articles here, rather then any sort of... encyclopedic value metric, or some such thing. There seems to be some uncertainty on how to apply notability, in particular, consistently to location articles and other articles without giving anything special status. I honestly don't have too much of an issue with essentially doing nothing, but there seems to be quite a bit of angst over consistently "bending the rules" for location articles, so this seemed like a logical compromise.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 22:07, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

General Notability Guideline

I believe that we should stick with the general notability guideline as much as possible and avoid branching out into other ideas about notability just because "we're not paper". (I know we're well down this road already, but I've felt this way for quite a while.) If our goal is verifiability and encyclopedicness, then we need to phrase our debates in terms of the GNG. That's what I believe, though I know there's a huge faction that disagrees with me completely.
But even if we take the GNG as the gold standard (which we should), we can agree to be lenient in our enforcement (not lenient in the policy itself). Cities and towns have economies and politics, even small ones; most meet the general notability guideline because most have been written about in multiple sources. We give them a "free pass" (i.e. we won't indiscriminately delete them, but we can challenge notability if we choose) because there are simply too many cities to debate each one individually; it is more useful to have database-driven information on them, with the understanding that real source-based (encyclopedic) articles will arise as necessary, then to have tens of thousands of deletion discussions to weed out the minority of non-notable ones. We can aim for good rather than perfect.
Streets and mountains and rivers are more troublesome. We're not a database, and these things are not overwhelmingly notable. We should not be aggressive about these things, but we need to draw the line somewhere. Giving special status to rivers but not primary schools is the kind of thing that turns us from a republic into some kind of a democracy–bureaucracy, which is the worst possible structure for this kind of project. —Noisalt (talk) 22:45, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Verifiability and encyclopedicness is a wholly separate issue from notability. However, I'd be happy to see the notability requirement for geographic locations solely be verification. Is there a reliable article anywhere at all about this location? If so, its verifiable. Encyclopedic is a metter of writing style. Any topic can be made encyclopedic. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 23:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm curious about this thinking, though. What is it, specifically, that makes the notability guideline so important in your view? I mean, you're sort of deriding the "not paper" aspect of Wikipedia above (mildly, at least), which seems to be a common thread among those who hold the notability guideline to a similar standard, but... well, the fact is that Wikipedia is not really bound by any physical limits. I personally think that a notability guideline is a good thing to have, but frankly the number of AFD's started with "not notable" seriously damages not only the guideline but the entire encyclopedia. Not that this should turn into a discussion about AFD's, but it's worth mentioning in order to frame the conversation. I just want to know what it is about the notability guideline that makes it so important to some.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 00:40, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
Requiring articles to be covered in multiple, reliable, secondary sources helps to ensure that articles can be verifiable and NPOV. If there are no sources at all, the content can't be verifiable. If the only coverage is in primary sources, unreliable sources, or sources connected with the subject, then writing a fully verifiable and NPOV article will likely be difficult, if not impossible. Mr.Z-man 01:59, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
Exactly. —Noisalt (talk) 05:29, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
So then why isn't the criteria for inclusion verifiability? Notability is subjective, verifiability is objective. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 17:39, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Because verifiability is a content issue. Every individual statement has to be verifiable. Notability is an inclusion/exclusion issue: is there sufficient independently verifiable content to have at least a basic article? Furthermore, NOTPAPER does not mean "indiscriminate". We, as a community, are free to decide where the bounds of this encyclopedia are. If enough people wanted it to list every human that ever lived on Earth, then that would be the boundary. Because many people feel that that would make us less useful (a disambiguation page with thousands of "John Smith"s is not really practical for most people who will be looking for one of the more well-known ones), and would hugely increase the risk of vandalism, and for probably a myriad of other reasons, we have decided that we should not have articles on everything, but only on those subjects that have received considerable attention in reliable independent sources. However, due to an aim to have completeness in some areas, exceptions (implicit or explicit) have been made for localities and other geographic features, species (flora and fauna), astronomical objects, genes (I think), and perhaps a few others basic building blocks of humanity, the world and the universe. Fram (talk) 09:23, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it's from a "desire to have completeness", so much as just some desire to have permastubs. That stuff could be much better handled using lists and aggregating hundreds in a shot (List of populated places in Somewhere County), and I'm not really sure why we don't. What we really need for the GNG is enforcement, with extremely rare exception, and to quit making blanket exceptions for someone who warmed a bench for a pro team or got a paper cited a lot or got considered in the census or whatever other criterion du jour the case may be. Seraphimblade Talk to me 09:28, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
We want a little bit more than verifiability. We also want to ensure there is enough information to have a useful, somewhat comprehensive article, hence the requirement for multiple sources. If all we required was verifiability, we would end up with stubs on almost every person who died in a 1st world country (through their death notice in a local newspaper) and thousands of substubs about high school sports players. Mr.Z-man 19:30, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Allow trusted users admin tools in their own user-space

Allow established users the ability to change protection and delete pages in their own user space and/or user talk space upon request, similar to rollbacker or autoconfirmed autoreviewer rights. This would reduce administrator workload and eliminate the delay waiting for administrators. Note: For legal reasons seeing deleted pages or edits is not part of this proposal, but it could be added as a new proposal later if WP:OFFICE okays it. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:30, 25 November 2009 (UTC) updated 04:47, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

But its not just about the admin workload. Its giving editors the freedom and abilities they should already have in their own userspace. We should already be allowed to have these "powers" standard within our own userspace. Administrator=Janitor. Who hires a janitor to clean their own house? Let us clean our own little space of Wikipedia. Admin "powers" arent special that they need to be so guarded. We arent children who need them to "protect ourselves from ourselves because we cant be trusted". Give us good faith we wont "abuse" some minor tools.Camelbinky (talk) 06:15, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Its not about the admin workload at all, because there really isn't any. Any decrease in workload from not having to delete and protect a few userspace pages will be offset by the extra workload of giving out the userright. There's nothing in the software that supports this, its not something that could be accomplished by just flipping a switch. Unless there's some real practical reason for this, I don't see the benefits. Mr.Z-man 06:26, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I was initially in favor of this during the last discussion, but as was said there, the potential benefits don't justify the programming effort that would be required to allow this. Allowing users to "clean their own little space" would only be a benefit if it relieved the general "cleaning" effort in some way. Userspace author-requested deletions are the least controversial, thereby the quickest, and consequently the least likely to get backlogged. The above rationale sounds more like "why not let users rule over their own little domain so they can feel a little powerful," and the answer is because there's barely any practical benefit. Equazcion (talk) 06:29, 25 Nov 2009 (UTC)
Total agreement with Mr.Z-man and Equazcion. As it's not a simple switch, one must look at how much effort it would take versus what benefit it brings. Is allowing a user to protect/unprotect or delete/undelete pages within their own userspace something that drains the administrator pool? Is allowing that something that benefits the encyclopedia? Is allowing that something that provides a (useful) stepping-stone to full adminship (as rollbacking does)? The answer to all three questions is "no" (being able to delete or protect your own pages doesn't show policy discernment, whereas correctly or incorrectly rolling back edits does, which is how it fails the third question) EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:41, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Your analogy is flawed in that userspace isn't supposed to be your own house. Let me turn it around: Who cleans their own workplace when the company has a janitor whose job it is to do that? Or do they just put the trash in the trash can and let the janitor take it out? Anomie⚔ 12:35, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Pages moves would likely cause escalation of privilege issues. There's also a concern about perpetuating the view that users "own" their user space or creating even more bureaucracy (adding another user right, another granting process, a more confusing interface, etc.). I'm hesitant. --MZMcBride (talk) 12:43, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • MZMcBride is correct that this proposal combined with current page move privileges has the potential to make this equivalent to full admin privileges. It is not unheard of for someone who disagrees with the existence of an article to move it to their userspace, blank the resulting redirect, and then attempt to {{db-user}} the "offending" page. This proposal removes the issue of an admin checking the page history and reverting the page move. While I agree with the general sentiment behind this proposal, there potential for abuse is too high for my support. Besides, if a user is really "trusted" enough that we do not need worry about abuse then the user is also trusted enough to pass a Wikipedia:Requests for adminship nomination. --Allen3 talk 12:58, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • (ec) If I understand this correctly, the idea is that if someone really doesn't like an article they will get a new alternative to just blanking it: Move it into their userspace and delete it there. Or even better: move a BLP article into their userspace, add some libel, protect it, and move it back over the redirect. Add to this a draconian policy that makes such actions punishable with immediate permaban and no exceptions, and we might be able to get rid of some of our more disruptive users a bit easier. Any other significant advantages? Hans Adler 13:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Is it technically possible to begin with, give user rights for certain pages and not others? (which is not the same than granting some, instead of all, the user rights administrators have; as those rights still apply for all pages for the given user) If not, any discussion would be useless MBelgrano (talk) 13:22, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
No doubt the software would have to be changed for that, and given the issues around it that's unlikely to happen. What should be rather easy to do, though, is adding an intermediate admin level for people who are unlikely to "abuse the tools" but not really sufficiently trusted to win an RfA. We could generally think of splitting the function of admins into sysops (having most of the tools but e.g. no ability to read or restore deleted pages) and constables (able to block users, undelete pages etc.). This would probably lead to a dramatic rise in the number of sysops in the short term, but could also lead to a longterm decline in the total number of admins, and other problems, due to hierarchy becoming more complicated and more important. Hans Adler 13:33, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Hierarchical structures. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:31, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Withdrawing proposal - Interesting comments above, especially the bit about move-then-delete abuse. While I could spend time rebutting some of the specific objections, there are enough good objections that it's not worth the effort to change the code.
I will comment on one thing: Allen3 (talk · contribs) wrote: "Besides, if a user is really "trusted" enough that we do not need worry about abuse then the user is also trusted enough to pass a Wikipedia:Requests for adminship nomination." It takes more than trust to pass RFA. It takes a strong stomach/willingness to be under the microscope for a week to accept a nomination, demonstrated knowledge of broad policies beyond those needed for the tools in this proposal, evidence of good decision-making skills beyond those needed for this proposal, and other factors not necessary to be considered trusted not to abuse the tools requested in this proposal. Also, as with any referendum on an editor, there is always the chance that a few !voters will vote based on WP:ILIKEYOU or WP:IDONTLIKEYOU rather than WP:MERITS. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Most-viewed contribs

Unlike similar proposal, could we create a pageview tool, which ranks the selected articles, created by particular user and possibly add that gadget to the preferences (so that users can sort out, what are their most-viewed articles or downloaded pics to date)? Brand[t] 18:58, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Fundraising Suggestion: Targeted Donations (with a caveat)

I find the current use of banners to ask for donations both ironic (an ad which celebrates the lack of ads?) and rather ineffective (the same technique has been used for the past several years by Wikimedia -- marketing needs to be novel to be effective). I checked the "Perennial proposals" section and didn't see this listed, but apologies if I missed it.

This proposal is focused on improving the effectiveness of Wikipedia's fund-raising:


Allow donations to be targeted to specific articles, categories, or themes.

e.g., a person who is enthusiastic about Ancient Greece could target their donation towards articles in that category. This would give people a very specific area of wikipedia, and when it comes to philanthropy, donors are much more likely to give if they know where their money is going, vs. into a vague "general fund." It gives folks a feeling of having a direct impact on a subject they're passionate about; that their dollar is uniquely important.

A "Targeted Donation" does not mean 100% of the donation goes where the donor chooses.

The more specific the donor makes their donation, the larger the percentage of that donation which is deducted and placed in a pool for the benefit of all items within that same category. So, for example, if someone targets a $10 donation towards the improvement of the article on amphora, 30% ($3.00) would go to the article itself, and 70% ($7.00) would go to the category on Greek Pottery (numbers are arbitrary). This is to help prevent very popular articles (Shakespeare, Presidents, Sex, etc) or categories from becoming valued to the exclusion of all else. Wikipedia is not a popularity contest, and targeted donations that were not limited in some way would inevitably lead to that type of unbalance. It also allows wikipedia to focus on building the collective knowledge of an area, so that there isn't, for example, an excellent, well researched article on Bill Clinton but only a stub on Benjamin Harrison.

How to convert donations into improvements.

Simply allocating money for the category on US Presidents wouldn't do anything, though. Instead, I think the money donated should be treated as a vote. i.e., $1 = 1 vote. The more money a topic receives in donations, the more Wikipedia should focus on developing that area. This could be in the form of internal advocacy for editors to contribute to that area, or even to hiring a well-recognized expert in the relevant field to enhance the quality the subject.

Benefits for Wikipedia

The core of dedicated Wikipedia editors will be able to see with great clarity exactly what areas of the encyclopedia should be improved. This would work much better than a system relying solely on the "popularity" of an article (traffic stats), as it would reflect the desires of people who are actively contributing to the support and growth of Wikipedia.

Of course, no part of this system would preclude people from giving traditional donations direct to Wikimedia or stop editors from contributing to whatever area of Wikipedia they desire. It would, however, allow Wikipedia to engender a greater amount of trust from donors (as their donation has a much more specific and targeted area of impact), and encourage smaller "impulse" donations. e.g., by having a small blurb at the bottom of each page which says something like "If you feel this article requires improvement, please click here to edit it, or click here to make a targeted donation towards the expansion and improvement of this article."

Monolith2 (talk) 22:11, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

The whole point of the fundraiser isn't to improve articles directly, but to cover the operating costs of the foundation. This could potentially draw fundraiser money away from where its actually needed (paying for servers, developers, accountants, etc.) toward where it isn't (paying for something we've been doing for free for nearly 9 years) as well as having additional overhead costs for distribution of funds. Mr.Z-man 04:57, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Nothing in this proposal would necessarily stop funds from being spent where it was deemed necessary, regardless of how the donation is targeted. I apologize for the somewhat jumbled description, I'm not the most eloquent guy in the world. The focus of this proposal mostly boils down to creating a better, more accessible, less obtrusive method for soliciting donations.

Currently, a small donation wouldn't even add a single pixel to the fundraising banners which sit atop the pages. A person with just $1 to give would tend to be discouraged from bothering to donate, as it's equivalent to a "pee hole in the snow." It's no secret that donors must be courted just as any other marketable audience, and many of the principles of retail marketing apply just as well to philanthropy. To attract donors, you must make them feel important, and that their contribution would make a real, tangible impact. Why do you think so many large donations to other charitable causes inevitably have the donor's name attached to the project, or a specific building, etc? Many smaller projects use the same system by, for example, giving donors the chance to inscribe a brick with their family name for incorporation into the project. You almost never see a donation given which is just added to the general fund.

If someone can see that they are one of only 5 people to have donated towards the support of the mousepad article, for example, it gives the donor much more satisfaction than seeing their name listed amongst thousands of others on a generic list of donors from the November 2009 fundraiser.

I tried to word the proposal such that a donation increases the reach of the donors "voice," but without constraining the funds from being spent where they are most needed. i.e., The donation is targeted to support the expansion and improvement of an article -- that obviously can't be accomplished if the servers aren't paid for. Again, the focus of this is on improving Wikipedia's methods of fundraising by making itself more attractive to potential donors.

Further, you did bring up another issue which I think needs to be addressed: that the fundraising goes to "cover the costs of the foundation." Regardless of how true this is in a literal sense, I think it would be best to keep the articles and content of Wikipedia as the goal of the fundraising. The bureaucracy which organizes and maintains that content isn't the goal -- it's a means to an end. I realize this can be reduced to semantics, but I still think it's an important distinction, even if just for the symbolic meaning.

Monolith2 (talk) 19:12, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

A $1 donation is mostly worthless because the processing fees and other overhead costs are barely covered by the donation. A targeted donation would likely have even more overhead. If there are laws governing the use of targeted donations (I think there are, but IANAL) a disclaimer saying "not all of your donation may be used for what you specify" may not be legal. Symbolism, unfortunately, does not pay the bills. Regardless of what percent of the fundraiser money actually goes to the foundation, the foundation still needs enough to cover its budget. If we did this for the current fundraiser and put 25% of the money to articles, we would need to raise $10,000,000 instead of $7,500,000 or the foundation would need to cut services. Obviously we can't cut servers and bandwidth and we still need some staff to keep the books and run the fundraiser (as well as attract the huge donations for things like the Usability Initiative). So cuts would probably be programs like Wikimania and paid developers who aren't necessary to keeping the servers running. Mr.Z-man 22:31, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Popups over links to subsections of a talk page

I believe that i may have found a bug. Popups over links to subsections of a talk page like this one-Talk:Chronology_of_the_Bible#"Descendents"? only show to the first reply. Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 20:21, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Popups always show a limited amount of material, don't they? Anyhow, this probably belongs at WT:POPUPS. –xenotalk 20:26, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Mine is set to show 10 sentences or 3000 characters. Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 20:33, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
I think it stops at a double line break. --NE2 21:13, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Requesting a suppression for request for edit summary...

Hello. I know that you can (and I have) enable[d] on one's preferences for WP to tell me that I haven't provided an edit summary. However, (like this message I'm posting right now, where I'm placing the headline for my message with the ==Title here== method) I don't need to type a "headline" and it will remind me again. I am providing the headline with the = signs. How about either 1) a method to suppress the message for the current edit with something like [CTRL] + clicking "Save page" or 2) the software detects the presence of == x == in the text? Thanks, and sorry if this is the wrong place. This is my first request on the PUMP. —Mr. E. Sánchez (that's me!)What I Do / What I Say 07:22, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments sought on community de-adminship

Comments from all interested editors are invited and welcome at Wikipedia talk:Community de-adminship/Draft RfC, where a proposal for community de-adminship is being discussed. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:57, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Time to welcome orphans with open arms

The policy of trying to "build the web" was appropriate when WP was 10-100,000 articles. Now coverage is wider it is unreasonable to expect Bulbophyllum abbreviatum, for example, to have more than one link, and I am perfectly certain that almost all people looking for the article will find it by search rather than link. Moreover for species, asteroids, stars, planets, genes, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, at least, we are in danger of creating, or indeed have created, main-space lists either as stand-alone article, or as dominant parts of articles, whose function is performed as well or better by categories - just to get that all important what links here. Time to stop deprecating orphans. Rich Farmbrough, 22:01, 18 November 2009 (UTC).

I don't really think that means we have to stop identifying and integrating orphans, and I'm not sure why having lists would be a problem. The reason we have lists is because some people do navigate that way, and expecting people to be forced to the search box for the obscure ones seems silly to me. --Izno (talk) 22:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
I, for one, like the webyness of wikipedia, and think that making connections between articles with the use of [[links]] is important. IMO of course. Tim1357 (talk) 23:02, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Many articles are massively overlinked. Wikilinks should be used when there is a reasonable probability that a typical reader would want to follow them, not simply because the target of the link exists. As a general rule, add a wikilink when the target is either closely related to the current article, or else obscure.
It is especially important not to wikilink extremely broad topics from articles that are either only tangentially related, or are much more specific than the broad topic. As an example of the first, in an article on Albert Einstein, when mentioning a visit to the California Institute of Technology, there is no need to wikilink California. (OTOH California probably should be wikilinked in the article on the California Institute of Technology.)
As an example of the second case, in the article on the Stone–Čech compactification, there is no need to wikilink mathematics. --Trovatore (talk) 23:13, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Identifying them is fine -- though I would have to agree with what Rich is saying, in that having them isn't inherent BAD or at all an indication or no notability. Sometimes there's just very little that COULD link to something, because of its specificness. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:10, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, encouraging sensible linking is fine, but it's "time to stop deprecating orphans". I can endorse that. --Kleinzach 23:27, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. A category is fine, but a big ugly tag isn't helpful. Why does the reader need to know that other articles don't link to the one they're reading? Fences&Windows 02:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Maybe a simple change to {{orphan}}, making it just a category, would work?--Unionhawk Talk E-mail Review 02:59, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Good idea. Sometimes the editor needs a reminder that an article that might be linked isn't — but it should be unobtrusive to the reader. --Kleinzach 09:02, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
I like this plan, with the proviso that the category be given some name meaningful to non-insiders - "Articles linked to by very few other articles" or something similar but less clumsy. Pseudomonas(talk) 10:59, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
I wanted to offer support for this plan as well. Note that I've also linked to this discussion from Template talk:Orphan.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 15:04, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
I wasn't aware that tagging orphans for cleanup was mandatory. We try to de-orphan articles because it is helpful to readers. We stop if that's not possible. So it has been, so it will be. There are no changes required here. I'm especially opposed to any changes to the display or placement of {{orphan}} itself. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:46, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
"De-orphaning" articles may be very helpful to readers, but that's a large generalization. No one can really agree on what puts an article into the "orphan" category anyway.
Anyway, the intent with all of the cleanup tags is that none of them are required to be used. Unfortunately, the reality for all of them in actual practice seems to be that there are many people who seem to think that they are required. I don't have any real statistics or anything, but the impression is that there are many people running around looking for articles to tag (an activity often referred to as "drive by tagging". The existence of such a phrase ought to give a somewhat empirical sense of the size of the problem). This sort of activity is at least marginally helpful, but... Personally, I'm very ready to support any proposal to move cleanup tags onto talk pages, but no one really seems willing (or able) to step up and make it happen.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 21:26, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
As I'm wont to point out, I'm in the top 250 contributors by edit count and I direct my work almost exclusively by "drive-by tagging" articles that have problems and coming back to them later to fix them. That the tagging system is so advanced at this point suggests that I'm hardly alone in this regard. I'm happy to have a discussion on the intricacies of what makes for an orphan, but not on the general principle of tag-first-fix-later which results in huge improvements in Wikipedia every day at the cost of offending the aesthetic sensibilities of those who dislike tags as flags. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 01:33, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Let me ask you this then, what would be the objection to placing the tags on the talk pages? I don't care how you work, honestly (and I really don't care what your edit count is, to be blunt), but it does bother me that your editing activities get in the way of my reading and sometimes even editing. Again, I'd like to reiterate that this has very little to do with aesthetics, and I frankly find it somewhat insulting to have my concerns in this dismissed as a minor aesthetic problem.
As for the orphan tag itself, I don't think that anyone really needs to pontificate on it's deeper meanings, but if you'd like to do so feel free. Rich seems to be making a good point though in that this particular classification has probably outlived it's usefulness.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:26, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
They can't be targeted to sections, we already have a separate tagging system for talk pages, it's more effort both to add and remove them. "I'm all for dismissing the weighting of an argument on the basis of edit count in general, but in this case it is intricately tied to the outcome of the discussion (because I'm heavily in favour of tags because I place a large number of them, and this demonstrably makes me more productive). If you want to hide all cleanup tags it's trivial to do so with a bit of code in your monobook.css; it is somewhat less trivial to suggest a workaround in the opposite direction. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:04, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Rich, I'm not clear on what you are proposing here. If you want to reduce the number of lists through some deletion campaign, then that needs to be handled with some sensitivity. Some lists are useful, & could be valuable contributions to Wikipedia. A list of species in a genera -- to refer back to your example -- could be seriously considered for FL status if it included a discussion of the various schools of thought on the taxonomy of a given genus -- authorities differ, sometimes quite radically, over what belongs to a given genus, & old classifications persist in non-biological works. Some lists are, well to be kind, relics of the old days of Wikipedia when we were all concerned about sufficient coverage & preserving orphans. (List of Egypt-related topics would be an example of that, although it is useful for its "Related changes" link.) If you want editors to stop reviewing lists of orphan articles to find ways to link to them from other articles, that shouldn't be done, because it serves as a useful tool for finding problems with existing articles; to provide one example (exaggerated for effect), if I discovered Bill Gates was an orphan, I'd immediately start looking at a number of articles I know that exist & ought to mention him to see what was changed. Or are you proposing something different from these? -- llywrch (talk) 21:57, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
No I certainly don't propose a list-purge - although the dynamic nature of categories is better for some lists. And explicit reciprocal link lists are often useful Dariusz Szlachetko maybe should link to the Bulbophyllum example above. "a useful tool for finding problems with existing articles" well so does "random article" or any of the cleanup categories. Rich Farmbrough, 11:04, 28 November 2009 (UTC).
Ohms law: "I'm very ready to support any proposal to move cleanup tags onto talk pages . . . ." Good, I'm not for putting all cleanup tags on talk pages, but this particular (orphan) tag would be better there. --Kleinzach 01:51, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
If anyone does decide to move forward with a proposal in this area, we should talk about the different cleanup templates individually as well as the group as a whole. It's generally a bad idea to paint whole groups of items with the same brush, after all.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 19:49, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes I agree, that is why I focus on the Orphan tag. Being an orphan is sign, not a symptom or a problem per se. I suppose a simple solution would be an <ok> paramter - that would simply hide the tag, remove it from the clean-up category, stop anyone re-tagging and leave an implicit message "we have spotted that this is an orphan but it's cool". Might also be applicable to some other tags. Rich Farmbrough, 11:04, 28 November 2009 (UTC).

Advanced search / regexp

Would it be possible to add an advanced search feature that allows regular expression based searches to Wikpedia, or would that just bog the servers down infinitely?

76.66.197.2 (talk) 14:44, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that it would be impractical on the technical level (especially if you wanted full-text search and not only title-search), but that does sound like a feature that could be quite useful. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 16:06, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
A toolserver-er could rig up such a search for titles only. Or you can download a dump and use AWB to full-text search it. Neither of which answer your point, but hey :) - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 19:46, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Mirroring Wikipedia would be ... bandwidth, time, and space consuming... especially if anyone wanting an advanced search would need to do this over and over again, assuming however large Wikipedia is right now would not exceed the maximum size of whatever tools one has ready access to 76.66.197.2 (talk) 09:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Even a title-only search would be quite useful. 76.66.197.2 (talk) 09:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
You can always make a request at bugzilla:. Cenarium (talk) 22:57, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Let us maintain interest in Wikipedia

On the BBC Radio 4 news at 18:00 (Greenwich Mean Time), on 25 November 2009, I heard how research had suggested that the number of Wikipedians had dropped dramatically, and how interest in editing the site is now waning. I later saw that day a piece on Newsnight on the same theme, stating that the number of editing Wikipedians had declined ten-fold. Has any one ideas as to how to maintain interest? One thing the radio report I heard said was that some people feel that so much editing had now been done to Wikipedia, there was nothing left for them to do. This is, of course, untrue, as new knowledge is coming in, and one will perenially be able to update Wikipedia entries (I get back to my old hobby-horse about how a great thing about Wikipedia is how up-to-date it is). Perhaps there could be signals somewhere in Wikipedia as to where there may be articles which need up-dating, so people will appreciate that there will always be work to do here? Perhaps such signals could go on the main page. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 00:08, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

The contribution count has dipped since early 2007, but it is certainly not by anything like a factor of 10. I imagine both BBC sources drew on the Wall Street Journal article referenced in the current Signpost. What that article also says is that traffic has massively increased in that time. Anecdotally, I would point out that the average quality of our articles has gone up hugely since 2007, and would suspect that part of the reaon for the drop in edit count was a) because Wikia now bleeds off things like Star Trek plotcruft and b) because the project has matured to the point where it genuinely is quite complete, i.e. there's not a lot that we don't have an article on compared to contemporary encyclopedias. As for flagging, we've got cleanup categories like category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating for tracking that already. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 00:06, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you - I am sure that many Wikipedians will find plenty of work to do, to prevent further decline. Since the number of different languages in which Wikipedias can be found now exceeds 235 (see List of Wikipedias], perhaps one way in which Wikipedians could find further work to do is to increase contributions to foreign language Wikipedias. The German Wikipedia was mentioned on the Newsnight programme. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:29, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

SVG scaling

In IE, some SVG images are not fully usable because they contain illegible detail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia-servers-2009-04-05.svg is an example. Unless I'm mistaken (in which case, please let me know), there's no way to enlarge this picture so as to be able to read the legends. Wikimedia Commons, on the other hand, provides links to render SVG files at a variety of resolutions; see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia-servers-2009-04-05.svg

I propose that these links to multiple resolutions are implemented in Wikipedia also. I assume this is fairly simple to do. I suggest that, in addition to a range of preset sizes, an option is available to render it at the "nominal" resolution, which presumably ought to have been chosen appropriately by the file's creator so as to make the contents fully legible. 86.133.240.156 (talk) 21:45, 27 November 2009 (UTC).

I thought we implemented this... last week? - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 21:47, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh... Could you explain how to access it then? Am I being dim here? 86.133.240.156 (talk) 21:52, 27 November 2009 (UTC).
No :) Apparently they had to revert the change temporarily while they tweaked the code, but it should be all working soon, fingers crossed. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 22:03, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I see. Thanks. 86.133.240.156 (talk) 23:21, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, they're back now. Hurrah. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 11:59, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Autocategorization of redirects

There is a proposal for an autocategorization of redirects (by the software itself), which would offer several advantages. Input would be appreciated. Cenarium (talk) 23:09, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Changing AN/I notice template

I'd like to change the AN/I notice template to be more accurate and serve its intended purpose. I've proposed a change and started a discussion at the template's talk page. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 04:16, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for counterhoax unit

There is a countervandalism unit, but most vandalism seems so crude and obvious, it will get corrected quickly. A more pressing concern than vandalism is the hoaxes that get into Wikipedia - as happened to the article on Ronnie Hazelhurst in 2007, or the article on Maurice Jarre earlier this year (2009). Do we now need a "CounterHoax Unit"?ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:35, 28 November 2009 (UTC) Just in case any one needs reminding about these hoaxes, I can give more information.

The hoax concerning Ronnie Hazelhurst happened after his death in 2007, when some one stated that he had written a song for S Club 7. He did not, but this - for a time - was hoax that led to quite wide media coverage. The hoax has how been corrected (see the talk page at the article on Ronnie Hazelhurst).

The hoax concerning Maurice Jarre concerns something he was supposed to have said during his lifetime.

Does any one remember either of these incidents? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The Jarre one is linked from his talkpage. The news story is still good. Basically, someone edited the aritcle right after he died to include a quote, and someone (or someones?) wrote an obit based on the WP article, including the quote. Many film score fans were peeved that it was done to Jarre specifically... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Trading Card Game

The Wikipedia:Trading card game (proposed/created by TomasBat), is obviosly a trading card game, but of Wikipedia. It is a project page still, but maybe one day it will be an article. There are several bugs and delays with it as the project started to be in inactivity. I, RatónBat, TomasBat's brother, suggest users to come and help this project. Actually, we are trying to have the rules, but we have 5 proposals, and we decided to make voting sesions (which is at it's discussion page) to decide which will be the rules for the game. So please come and vote so we get to a conclusion and finish this project. Thanks for everything!--RatónBat Talk 2 me!! 23:56, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

maybe one day it will be an article. Let's all hope not. People should not be creating User space garbage in the hopes that some day it will make it into article space. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 17:49, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
When I said that, I was saying that someday there will be a trading card game of wikipedia, and there would be an article of it.--RatónBat Talk 2 me!! 00:16, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Training room?

The recent news that Wikipedia lost 40,000 editors in the first three months of 2009 has got me thinking. When I joined Wikipedia three years ago, it was still possible to start an article that failed pretty much every one of the tests that would today get it listed for deletion. As I faltered and stumbled, I learned the tricks of the trade, I developed the article until I brought it up to feature status. Today, you don't really have the option of faltering, and new users are often turned off by the dismissive nature of reverting or rolling back their edits. Would it be possible then, to create a "training room", where new editors could, under the supervision of a (nice!) experienced editor, learn to edit pages without actually saving anything onto the mainspace? Say you wanted to edit an article, but clicked a "train" icon instead of "edit". Then your changes would appear not on the page itself but on a duplicate of the page created just for you to experiment on. A senior editor would then be alerted and could then explain, in a helpful and not nasty way, how to ensure that the edit survived for longer than three seconds. Seems like a good option to make Wikipedia friendlier to newcomers. Serendipodous 00:11, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the adoption center needs more highlighting, that´s all. In my opinion, this project can do pretty much of help in this matter, but I don´t see much newcomers to direct themselves there or even notice the existence of that page. - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 18:35, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
Maybe a different approach is needed? I'd like to see projects take on 'apprentices' (my word - substitute another if it sounds old fashioned). This would be more successful than a centralized approach, because it is easier for an experienced editor to help a newbie if they are both working in the same field. --Kleinzach 00:36, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
WP:Articles for creation is a non-confrontational environment. Fences&Windows 01:05, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Mmm. Unfortunately the chances of the IP recommending a new angle on Sexual dichromatism (or an article on a town in Sumatra) meeting the right editor through WP:Articles for creation must be close to zero. --Kleinzach 03:20, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't know, I got some gems when I was doing heavy AFC work a couple years ago I accepted about 50-60 articles over about a month's time. Now how many of them benefited from me being the "right" editor, I can't say. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:03, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

There is a an RFC at Template talk:Refimprove. It would be helpful to include a link to a commercial search engine in the template. But this means that there will be external links outside the "External links" section in hundreds of articles. Do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? See Template talk:Refimprove#RFC: Should a link to a commercial search engine be included in the template Refimprove? -- PBS (talk) 17:44, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

PROposed Redirect similar to PROposed Deletion

When doing NPP I see articles that probably could be PRODded away but instead I redirect. However, what I really would like to do is a "proposed redirect" with a bot doing the work a week later if nobody removed the "dated redirect" template. It's a lot less work for me to slap a proposed redirect tag on something than to slap a merger tag then remember to come back a week later and redirect it.

Before going to the bot approvals group or working out the details, I wanted to see if anyone else would find this useful. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:07, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

It's a pretty sensible idea, I think - a variant on PROD, which retains the automatic "object or let it be" approach but doesn't automatically lead to deletion. Perhaps we could modify the existing PROD templates in order to have an optional "redirectto=pagename" parameter, or something, and blend it in that way? Shimgray | talk | 19:20, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
This is how redirects work already - be bold, redirect, and if anyone objects you're back where you started. --NE2 19:48, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
See WP:BRD for more detail on that, in case anyone doesn't know about it already. Anomie⚔ 20:11, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
NE2, Anomie: What I propose is a bit less bitey and more in the spirit of cooperation than WP:BRD, but much more lightweight and, when there is no objection, automatic than WP:MERGE templates. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:23, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Make the redirect and tell the creator "you can undo it if you want by going to [undo link here]". That's how prods work anyway. --NE2 20:28, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Bold, Revert, Discuss can work in an article, but is far more of a hassle for renamings, merges and redirects, because what's happened is often far from clear to those who might want to discuss (or object to) the action. They just find themselves somewhere strange (or may not even notice that the name has changed). —— Shakescene (talk) 20:29, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm actually not opposed to this. I could certainly do with a "proposed editprotected" and "proposed page move" along the same lines. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 00:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Proposed editprotected would result in every single article being edit protected, since some editors prefer it that way. - we already have a proposed pagemove see the uncontroversial section of WP:RM 76.66.197.2 (talk) 06:13, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I love this idea. PRORs would be much less intimidating to the newcomers who create similar articles but are unware of better ones. They would also give people a chance to chip in before the thing happens, rather than wake up one day and have their articles redirect for reasons they don't understand. BRD is good, but telling people "BTW, I'll redirect this if no one objets" is also good, and much less offputing.
Propose editprotect makes no sense. How could you place the template on the page if it's protected? Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:25, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
This sounds like a good idea, but what about "be bold" and "bold, revert, discuss"? It seems that they work the same way. If an article is prodded for redirection and another editor opposes it, he would remove the tag and then I assume discussion would occur. Likewise, under "be bold" and BRD, an editor will go ahead with the redirection and after another editor notices it and objects to it than he would revert the first and discussion would begin. In both cases if noone notices or noone objects the redirection would go ahead. I myself prefer the status quo, as that appears to work fine and most incidents with redirection occur when BRD turns into edit warring, which is a behavioural issue and not a content one. The current way of doing things seems less to do the same thing with less beaurocracy. ThemFromSpace 06:31, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
It'd be a hell of a lot easier to just make use of the article's Talk page. Propose the redirect, wait a week, and go ahead if there's no objection. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 15:24, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Draft namespace

Have there been previous discussions regarding a Draft namespace? I'm curious why one hasn't been implemented yet. It could be automatically noindexed from search engines and it could neatly categorize userspace drafts, among other things (like the Article incubator). Anyone have links to a previous discussion or know why it can't be done here? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:50, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be a recipe for lots of half-written articles going nowhere. How would I come across a "draft" and add to it, build it up? Would it not be little different from a userfied page, with just one or two editors working on it? What if two people are working on the same "draft"? Why not just put it in the main space and let everyone work on it (and allow it to build up naturally)?
I don't want to put the idea straight down, those are just questions, it has potential but it would be quite a change to the normal early life-cycle of an article. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 00:23, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Well, userspace drafts have the most obvious issue of "belonging" to a particular user (which is almost always entirely arbitrary). Namespaces are for content separation and categorization. This mountain of crap content exists already (mostly in the User namespace, though in the Wikipedia namespace to an extent), this would just be a cleaner way to store it. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:37, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's a good idea. The whole purpose of a wiki is to make articles EASILY findable from the start, so that they can grow organically as people who happen across them and know a bit that's not already in there can add it themselves. Stashing incomplete articles somewhere where they won't get Googled makes this almost impossible. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 01:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Between userspace for 1-person or 1-person-led collaborations and the incubator for peer collaboration I think we have enough places to draft articles. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:29, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
The incubator is nice because a common prefix makes for easy exclusion in robots.txt, though a separate "folder" for this kind of content doesn't seem crazy. It's a bit strange how the namespaces are used currently (some breakdown is available here: Wikipedia:Database reports/Page count by namespace). --MZMcBride (talk) 01:33, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I had questioned this proposal above but now have an anecdote from this morning that would cause me to re-think. I am (was?) in a content dispute with another editor. As part of it, the other editor suggested that we bring our dispute to a wider audience. I opened a subpage on a relevant task force and put the bones of an RFC together. I then invited the other editor to put their piece in before the page be advertised. The other editor took offense to this because he perceived that I as jumping the gun and catching him off guard. Fair enough.

Userspace would not have been an appropriate place to create the subpage (it belonged as part of the collaborative effort). Project space proved an inappropriate place also - because it is 'live'. If a Draft namespace existed it would have been clearer that the other user was being given time to get their speak and their references in before we both took it to the wider community. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 16:35, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Something to add to a warning template

something could be added that discusses how easy it is to revert spam, so there should be not point in even doing it.Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 20:28, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

No one has anything to say about this?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 14:08, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Well, give it more time. Less than a day here isn't likely to get many initial comments. Personally, I'd say there's no point; spammers will spam, regardless of how easy it is to revert. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 15:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree, you can only do soo much to fend off the idiots. At a point, the information will scare off more of the normal contributors than they will scary of vandals/spammers etc. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:18, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
It's also quite simple for one to delete unread spam messages from their email inboxes, but spammers still send spam don't they? PCHS-NJROTC (Messages) 04:14, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Only when there is not a billion of them, and the spam folder dosn't automatically delete its contents.Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 17:20, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposed new 'small text' button

See commons:File talk:Button small text.png. 91.84.208.36 (talk) 00:06, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Rethinking the term "administrator"

"Adminship is no big deal," right? But the very term "administrator" implies that someone is "in charge." We all know there are plenty of "administrators" who see themselves as masters of the community; we all know there are plenty of people who come here seeking adminship because they're convinced it's some sort of elite status. After all, who doesn't want to be in charge?

But if the purpose of this role is to be the community's servant than its master, its title should reflect that. People who think of themselves as servants rather than masters are more likely to accept that their job is to enforce the will of the community rather than their own preferences; they're more likely to deal with others deferentially and politely; and they're more likely to take a less heavy-handed approach. How could anyone not support this?

Words have connotations, and those connotations matter a great deal in influencing peoples' perceptions. Let's take a step towards making Wikipedia the cordial, collegial, egalitarian utopia we all know it can be. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 18:42, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Which other names do you suggest? MBelgrano (talk) 18:57, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I've long advocated the term "Community servant" Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:29, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I seriously doubt that the reason some administrators exceed their authority is because of the name. Chillum 19:06, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
So you don't think that someone who finds the title of "Administrator" bestowed upon him is likely to think, "Wow, cool, I'm an Administrator! That means I get to be in charge and tell other people what to do!" whereas someone receiving the title "Community servant" is more likely to think "OK, I'm a Community Servant, so I'd better listen to people and see just what it is they'd like me to do for them"? Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:29, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
No, not really. People are who they are. Administrators who exceed their authority do not do so out of some sort of misunderstanding regarding their job title, they do it because it is in their nature and they think they can get away with it. Chillum 19:31, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
And people who are predisposed to go on power-tripping benders are more likely to seek out positions that they believe put them in charge (thus giving them more power to abuse) than those that they believe make them submissive. And the masses are more likely to resist abuses if they come from those they see as servants rather than those they see as masters. The term "administrator," because of its connotations, makes the view of administrators biased (especially from new people, who don't know the proper role of an "administrator" on Wikipedia yet) towards being seen as masters. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I dunno, we have an office administrator here and they aren't in charge of anything. They do stuff like lock the door at night (protect), make sure the paper shredders pick up our recycled documents (delete), and hand out key-cards to new employees (userrights).Nothing glamorous... –xenotalk 20:20, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
As has been said elsewhere, the time is far past, unfortunately. If this were 2003, it'd probably be workable, but I think the statute of limitations is way past gone. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 19:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, the name is entrenched. Changing it now would be more trouble than it's worth. –xenotalk 19:13, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
It's easy to sow the seed, and then it grows on its own. But we have to actually sow the seed first. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:29, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
It is the same seed, just under a different name. To extend the metaphor you can call a seed whatever you want, the same plant is going to grow. Chillum 19:33, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't think your particular extension of the metaphor is quite valid, though. Plants don't have psychologies that are affected by connotations and language; people do. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, we clearly disagree on this matter. You can seek consensus for this idea, but it does not have my support for the reasons I have already given. Chillum 20:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, even if you called it a stenchblossom. It would be more effective to rethink the role of the administrators in whatever areas you see as problematic. The name itself means absolutely nothing to those who are aware of their role as an administrator. Only someone who hasn't a slightest clue about what's expected of an administrator is likely to infer a meaning of awesome power from the title of "administrator" and those people will get tarred and feathered at their self-nominated RfA. Not that all self-noms are from the power hungry type, just that most members of the community generally have enough sense to not nominate someone like that in the first place. Big Bird (talk • contribs) 20:47, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there has recently been a similar discussion, to a similar outcome, at WT:WikiProject Administrator. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:57, 27 November 2009 (UTC) In the year 2006, on BBC Radio 4, Clive Anderson presented a programme about Wikipedia (I think it was called "The Wikipedia Story"). On the programme, he interviewed some one who was a Wikipedia administrator. He asked the administrator whether he saw himself as some type of lord of Wikipedia, and the administrator replied "No - I see myself as being more like a janitor!" So, please do not think that all Wikipedia administrators see themselves as being Wikipedians of high or privileged status. I am not an administrator myself, and I can only say that in my own profession (lecturing in higher education) the term "administration" is often seen as a term used for all the dirty work jobs which lecturers see as the poor relatives of lecturing and research. I suspect this is the same in the health professions. In my own country, the United Kingdom, administration sometimes gets a bad press, as being the term for the boring but essential jobs in one's profession, and I suspect this is how the term is viewed by many Wikipedians. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:18, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

No sane person would say anything else in a public interview--it would be suicide. That doesn't necessarily reflect how they really feel about the job or see themselves, though. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I would add that what are termed administrators on Wikipedia would really be called moderators on any other web forum. Serendipodous 23:12, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

It's probably worth noting that on most of the forums I'm on, moderators are a level below administrators. –Juliancolton | Talk 02:34, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
In my experience, on other forums, admins are the people with access to the source code, whereas moderators are the people with the power to block users and delete posts etc. Serendipodous 02:39, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Moderator probably does fit more than administrator for Wikipedia, but might not solve the problem. Moderator connotes "objective observer" rather than "participant with added duties", and from a power degree standpoint may actually worsen the problem. I'd actually rather see the term changed to something more descriptive of the position as subservient, like "janitor" (as an extreme example). Merely making the position sound less glamorous may decrease the incidence of power-seeking individuals seeking it out, while increasing the number of people who are genuine about wanting to actually pitch in with the workload. Equazcion (talk) 03:13, 1 Dec 2009 (UTC)
How about "caretakers"? Serendipodous 21:58, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I've always liked referring the admin package as the "Wikipedia maintenance tools". Forget discussing the person (X is a sysop, Y is an admin) just say User X has access to the maintenance toolbox. -- Avi (talk) 07:17, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Well the user rights group needs to be named something, from a technical standpoint. Equazcion (talk) 07:23, 2 Dec 2009 (UTC)

User-rights - "Maintenance". -- Avi (talk) 07:24, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I second this proposed renaming. --William S. Saturn (talk) 07:26, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I think I like "Maintenance" as well. Equazcion (talk) 07:35, 2 Dec 2009 (UTC)
I'm slightly opposed to it, not because I think its a bad name, but because it's trying to fix something which isn't broken, which is always (imo) a bad Idea. Others have stated above some of the reasons why a rename is unnecessary. Kind regards, SpitfireTally-ho! 09:41, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

'Janitor' Josh Parris 00:41, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Like ACEOREVIVED, I was a little surprised by the connotation that "administrator" has in US English. In Ireland too, the term has no connotation of authority. As several have already commented, the problem I believe is to do with perception rather than reality (among admins as well as among non-admins). Deliberately demeaning titles (like "janitor" or "servant"), would do more wrong than right. Every other term will suffer the same fate as "administrator" unless perception is changed.

Like what Avi wrote, I too believe that it's bad practice to refer to any other editor as being an "admin". All editors, admin or not, are equal. It is normally unnecessary to draw a distinction between editors. If you do, just say that they are someone who as access to the admin tools. That really is the only distinction. Never treat any editor differently because they have access to those tool.

Remember too that we do have another term for admins: sysops. Use that word. And don't forget the euphemism that is the "mop". If you feel an admin is going on a power trip, you can simply and gently remind them that there is no need for them to get above their station just 'cos they got a mop. That sort of gentle reminder for an admin you feel needs to be taken down a few notches is better than kicking all admins with titles like "servant" or "janitor". --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 22:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Make admins "Wikifiddlers" cus they generally fiddle with things and it's already used by the popular press. A jokey name? Well adminship is no big deal so why give airs and graces. Nanonic (talk) 01:17, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with User:Josh Parris and have often used the sentence "Remember Admin=Janitor; they are here to clean our messes". Just as a janitor is a school cleans things up, they do not in fact have power to "punish" the students. And neither should admins, unless the Community as a whole wants them to "enforce" a "punishment" decided upon by the Community. Admins need to learn their place and not treat us as children or "beneath" them. We are all equals, and if a name-change is what it takes to teach the few bad-apples among them a lesson in humility then I am all for a demeaning name to replace "administrator".Camelbinky (talk) 01:27, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Increased usability through breadcrumbs?

We have location-based breadcrumbs enabled over at WikiFur. I think they aid usability, and might do so here, especially now Google displays them in search results (example).

I'm aware Wikipedia has an aversion for subpages, in part because there are many potential categories that a topic might belong to. However, for many topics I think it is possible to reach consensus on a single hierarchy that is most relevant/useful. For example, Mint chocolate might have:

Culture > Food and drink > Confectionery > Chocolate > Mint chocolate

Each breadcrumb tree would start from a category within Category:Main topic classifications and work its way down to the "most relevant" category of the article. Of course, if the feature can be designed to coped with multiple inheritance in a sensible, compact manner, so much the better.

The extension WikiFur uses would not meet Wikipedia's needs; it works on a per-category basis, rather than per-article, and only allows administrators to edit the breadcrumb definition page - even on a wiki with 12,000 articles, this page can get rather large. It also does not check for categories efficiently. I'm sure a scalable solution could be created, though.

As for the feature itself, what are your thoughts? GreenReaper (talk) 00:07, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I think "Mint chocolate" should fall under "mint" rather than under "chocolate". --Carnildo (talk) 01:54, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Then you would be bold and edit the breadcrumb section of the article. If others disagree (I would, since mint chocolate is still a variety of chocolate - it just happens to have the same flavour as mint), then it may be subject to a debate on the talk page, just like any other part of the article. As suggested, it might be possible to have both trees, perhaps in the category bar. GreenReaper (talk) 16:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I would be incredibly skeptical about implementing a bread crumb on article pages. For many of the articles I am involved in wars over "chocolate" or "mint" would be very entrenched and never ending. Breadcrumbs work best also when there is only one taxonomy. We (correctly IMHO) use multiple categorizations, which would result in multiple breadcrumbs.
That said, I have always found Category pages very difficult to navigate. I think a some kind of overview of where you are in the hierarchy on Category pages would be very useful (and auto-gernerate-able) - but we would still have the same problem of some categories being in more than one parent category. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 22:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Hypothesis testing for Flagged protection and patrolled revisions

My understanding is that Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions is the consensus model that we will "sometime soon" trial on en.wikipedia for two months. A trial implies there is an expected outcome, and that it will be tested. I believe the expectation is that (visible) vandalism will almost disappear, and because of this, vandalism will drop dramatically. Myself, I'm also hoping that my watchlist will become very manageable as others do the watching for me. Josh Parris 01:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Are there existing plans to test for success?

Looking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vandalism studies/Study1 shows that having a statistician involved from the start helps enormously; for a +/-2% band at 95% confidence, apparently we need 475 articles sampled - more, even, given that in a given two-month period many of those articles aren't going to get edited. Study1 found 4.64% of edits were vandalism (actually 1%-9% at 95% confidence). Has anyone got vague plans to gather statistics to test this expected outcome? Or, for that matter, detailed plans? Josh Parris 01:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

What metrics should be gathered?

Has anyone got any specific measures we should look at to evaluate the trial? Josh Parris 01:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Are specific measures required for valid testing?

Should a random selection of pages be thrown into the trial specifically for the purposes of statistical evaluation? Josh Parris 01:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

General comments

All very good questions. I would suggest however that there would be more to flagged revisions than just anti-vandalism. For topics that are heated it would take some of the pressure of editors to get their version out there and so might reduce edit warring. A test would also require some measure of impact on the editor community also. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 19:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

'insert' section below text edit box

when you edit a page there is a section down below the text edit box that lists things you can 'insert' into the text area by clicking on them. Is there some very good reason why that list isnt immediately below the text edit box? As it is now I have to scroll down to see it. Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 23:29, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

In the future (See Beta) it will be in the toolbar, so I don't think there is much use in moving it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:53, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Add this code to your monobook 

/* Hide stuff */
#minoredit_helplink {display:none}
#wpSummaryLabel {display:none}
#editpage-copywarn {display:none}
#editpage-copywarn2 {display:none}
#editpage-copywarn3 {display:none}
#mw-wikimedia-editpage-tos-summary {display:none}

to clear some breathing room. (Log out to see/reread it occasionally, to keep up with changes that are made). -- Quiddity (talk) 09:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

☺ Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 06:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Something like Automatic Filter Block?

This popped into my head the other day. We have a special page that logs all attempted abuse. And we have tools like Huggle that can tell what level (1, 2, 3, 4, or 4IM) of warning we gave the user. What if there were something in the software that 1) could read the trips in the filter by a user/anonymous IP and 2) tell what level of vandalism warning was last given and automatically block the user for something short, say, 12 hours, until an administrator can look at it, review the automatic block, and either lift it, or extend it? There's my two cents. —Duncan (that's me!)What I Do / What I Say 02:01, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

It should be doable (just that the "block" would be actually a throttle-disallow). However, I don't think there's a way to detect who put the warning there, so it's subject to abuse. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:32, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Revival of the WP:Mentorship Committee

Title says all. OutlawSpark (talk) 23:43, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

No it doesn't. Are you proposing that the committee be revived, or are you posting an announcement that it has been revived, or what? ThemFromSpace 23:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
I am proposing that the commitee be revived. OutlawSpark (talk) 23:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
This may be a solution in search of a problem. If there are enough people being put on some type of restriction instead of being blocked through community discussion, then we would need a volunteer pool. Until then, I'm not sure we need this. By the way, as admins usually lead community discussions that can lead to blocks, and admins are required to block, without admin cooperation or even admins as a group championing the idea this will be a non-starter. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal/Question Re: Where You're Brought When Clicking on Entry in Watchlist RSS Feed

I think this is the appropriate forum to post this request. I think it's wonderful that Wikipedia's Watchlist is accessible via RSS feed. However, while individual entries in the RSS feed document specific changes, following them takes you not to the change, but to the article's main page. That has felt both a little counterintuitive and a little less useful. Are there any plans to change this behavior to what might be expected? If not, and this is a brand new idea starting with me, is this the appropriate forum to suggest such a change, or should I make it somewhere else? Thanks in advance. MikeHarris (talk) 17:14, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

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