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Proposal towards permanently semi-protecting January 1 to December 31

I would like to propose permanently semi-protecting all 366 articles about calendar days. Now I suppose that'll draw some opposition so I figured it would be best to discuss in the widest possible forum and of course there's no rush to do this. Let me first try to carefully state my case.

• These pages are all fairly stable. If one overlooks the vandalism and ensuing reverts, there are really very few meaningful edits on these pages.
• These pages are heavy vandalism targets. As anyone who has ever done recent changes patrol knows, the "1989 Cute guy John Doe is born" is very common.
• The ratio of vandalism-related edits to meaningful edits is about as low as it can get. Speaking recently to Riana, I used January 22 as a random example: out of the last 50 edits, more than 40 have been vandalism-related. The rest of the edits have been mostly cosmetic fixes implemented by accounts which would not be affected by semi-protection (I think this edit is the sole exception).
• These pages are heavily watched so any request for edits by IPs or new users would presumably be quickly implemented. They would also be quite rare since, as mentioned earlier these pages are quite stable.

Now the policy on semi-protection says that indefinite semi-protection should be used for "Articles subject to heavy and continued vandalism such as George W. Bush". There's no question that the calendar days are the subject of continued vandalism but I'll concede that it's not heavy if one compares it to the hardcore hailstorm that affects the beloved GW Bush article. Still, from a cost/benefit point of view, semi-protection would seem reasonable. If I can get consensus here, I'd like to experiment by protecting a dozen of them for say a week or two. We could see how that goes and make a more educated decision afterwards. Pascal.Tesson 04:49, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

As long as there woun't be a ugly tag on top of them all, then I'm all for this suggestion. They are a indeed a target for vandals. --Steinninn 04:57, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

No need for that, the template {{Sprotected2}} just puts a discrete little lock in the top right corner. Pascal.Tesson 05:02, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

(ec) Interesting idea. Semi-protection of these pages isn't WP:BITEy in the way that protecting mainpage articles is. I'd support a test. How about semi-protecting alternating days (July 5,7,9,11 for example) and comparing after a set amount of time (say a week) how those look compared to the before-and-after of the adjacent days (say, July 6,8,10,12). The idea here is that whatever the current day is seems to get a fair amount of vandalism. Also try the same with two heavier traffic pages (such as December 25 and January 1). Flyguy649^talk_contribs 05:03, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me, those are basically just index pages to begin with. --tjstrf talk 05:13, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Most IP-edits made to "days of the year articles" are indeed vandalism or nonsense, but I'm not sure it has reached a level that permanent semi-protection is needed. Each article on it's own is not heavily vandalised at all, all the 366 pages combined are easily watched (this link gives you all the recent edits), and the standard arguments for why pages should stay open applies. But I'm not strongly against it either. I've grown more and more tired of reverting prank edits myself like those these pages attract, and as articles become better and better, and we have more and more people who bother to sign up an account, I feel we now can afford to be more selective than we used to with who we let edit these articles. So, I guess I'm undecided here. Shanes 05:15, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I oppose semi-protecting these articles. Almost all the vandalism, as has been pointed out above, is of people adding their own name or their friends' names. This is relatively harmless vandalism - if someone reads the article in this state, it doesn't significantly detract from their experience of Wikipedia. In effect, these are harmless test edits, and while we would prefer that people use the sandbox, semi-protecting these articles won't move them in that direction. Some people who cannot edit their birthday article will make similar edits on less heavily watched pages, and others will never try editing at all.-gadfium 06:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

While I respect that stand I must disagree. Vandals are for the most part harmless kids. They go to the page of their birthday and think "he he, I'll be funny and add my own name" but I assume that a vast majority of them would, in the event that they can't make that edit, just forget about it. You, on the other hand seem to think they'll say "oh, I can't edit this so let me add my birthday to the article elephant." The problem of course is that we'll never know which of us is right about this. In any case, I believe that vandalism is a significant problem on Wikipedia not because of its malicious nature (by and large they are rather harmless edits) but because of the sheer volume of vandal edits. In any case, I'm certainly well aware that there are drawbacks to semi-protecting any page but in this case I think the advantages outweigh the concerns. Pascal.Tesson 06:50, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I think, if the next article they read is "elephant", they are more likely to add a comparison to their sister than their birthday, but in any case I think for someone to make their first edit to any page is important, even if it's not a productive edit and gets reverted very quickly. This has always been a part of the Wikipedia philosophy; it's why we use templates like {{uw-test1}} rather than cracking down hard on inappropriate edits. Test edits are mostly made by teenagers, and once they realise that they really can edit and have those edits appear to the general public, some proportion of them might decide to edit productively.-gadfium 23:43, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

But isn't that a bit too idealistic? I've always felt that the philosophy behind WP:BITE is not that "vandals become editors so let's be nice to vandals" but rather "incompetent newbies become good editors" so let's show patience with newbies even those who think their sister looks like an elephant. But all in all, a certain level of reasonable restrictions to IP edits (such as the inability to create new pages) does lighten the load on vandal fighters and I'm not convinced that it so dramatically scares away potential contributors. Pascal.Tesson 23:58, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Wikipedia is an idealistic project. So far, it's worked well that way.

Elephant is not actually a good example, partly because it's already semi-protected, and is probably watched by a substantial number of people. I think it's more likely someone would click on another name from their birthday page, and then add to that quite likely obscure article that 90 years later Tommy Smith was born to carry on their work.

If these pages are semi-protected, then the various year pages from say 1985 to 2000 should probably be semi-protected as well for the same reasons.-gadfium 00:10, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Wikipedia has done well because it stuck to its idealism for the most part but also because it was able to make pragmatic choices and turn away from idealism for the sake of idealism. Pascal.Tesson 03:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

This is a difficult choice. The conflict as I see it is that we're weighing the labour involved in constant useless reversions against the potential benefit achievable through anonymous edits, and second order effects where test edits might lead to successful recruitment. Because these pages naturally evolve very slowly, it's difficult to find useful anonymous edits. To me, it suspiciously resembles past arguments where some would encourage semiprotection of "finished" or "stable" articles, which I certainly don't support (we should never send the message that "this is done - don't screw with it"). It's for this last reason that I lean towards oppose: we don't want to send that message. Dcoetzee 09:16, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I support the semi-protection. I watch October 4, my birthday, and nearly all of its edits are of this sort. The good edits are nearly always by established users. Because I'm often the first to see it, I'll be the one to take the time to check the article to be sure it's a redlink and then revert it. I also agree that these articles are very static. In my opinion, these test edits will rarely result in recruitment. As said above, most are made by bored school kids adding themselves, unlikely to ever make a constructive edit. I know that I didn't make annoying tests. Regarding Dcoetzee's last statement, I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but for days of the year, it seems they are done, and that we don't want them screwing with it where we then have to revert it. Anyway, if the person has a constructive edit to make, a request on the talk page is encouraged. Reywas92^Talk 14:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm conflicted about this... I'm not usually a big fan of preemptive page protection, and certainly there are few enough of them that a concerted effort to make sure a few people are watching each one is probably sufficient to keep them clean. That said, however, of the ones I watch/see on RC patrol, by far the majority of the changes are new users or IPs adding themselves or other redlinks. I haven't seen any sign that people I've warned about this have turned into serious contributors afterwards, even when I've tried a more personal message welcoming and explaining why their birthday is non-notable by Wikipedia standards. So I guess I'd describe my position as slightly weak support -- I think it would be OK not to protect, but it would save us time to protect without causing much harm. Pinball22 16:14, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I also support the semi-protection per Reywas92's comment above. ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 18:25, July 3, 2007 (UTC)

I also support. Almost no IP edits are not reverted and not being able to add yourself to a date isn't going to turn a useful contributor away. Atropos 22:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I support this proposal, as well. The cost/benefit analysis here is strongly in favor of semi-protection for these pages. -Chunky Rice 22:49, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I too support this proposal. — The Storm Surfer 03:14, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Your opinion is well thought out Pascal, and eloquently worded, howver I'm afraid I oppose. I am in favour of anonymous editing in all cases, except where sprotection is totally necessary. The point here is, I don't think sprotection is necessary at all. On the flip side, I am perfectly willing to add every single one of these pages to my watchlist to increase their visibility to me, if this helps. --ɐuɐʞsəp (ʞɿɐʇ) 04:33, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh I'm sure they're all heavily watched. And I really don't feel so strongly about it: it seems like a reasonable idea to me but I'm perfectly ready to accept that there's no consensus to do this. I just hope that enough people will take part in that debate to gauge the support for it. Pascal.Tesson 04:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

why not make an option on the front page just for birthdays that ppl can post. maybe a separate column, in yellow or light blue frame or something. this will solve part of the problem. and the semi protection does seem reasonable nonetheless. But if the birthday thing is created then there is no need to make semi protection. :DVitalyshmelkin 10:50, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Support. The ratio of anon edits that are vandalism vs. constructive edits in these articles is persuasive. One benefit to semi-protection not yet mentioned is that RC patrollers spend time dealing with these edits that would be better spent addressing other needs on Wikipedia. Accurizer 11:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Alternatively, create 366 templates, with the meaningful data. Transclude the templates on the main article for each day. Casual vandals will just try to edit the day page, and not know/care about how to change the template. But, the main article for each day should be protected (the templates remain unprotected). End of problem?? Neier 11:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Support - 99.99% of edits by new/unregistered users to these pages are vandalism. WATP ^(talk) • _(contribs) 12:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Strong support - I've reverted lots of anon. IP edits on these pages, many of which had stayed there - never noticed - for weeks or longer. I too have thought of proposing generic semi-protection for these pages -- so I'm glad Pascal.Tesson finally took the inititative on this issue. Thanks! Cgingold 14:04, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Strong support - As a regular RC patroller, I can vouch for the fact that these are test edit/vandalism magnets. Semi-prot won't harm em, and anyone who really wants to improve them can do so easily. Excellent proposal.xC | ☎ 14:27, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Strong support. Taken as a group, these 365 articles have a very high proportion of IP vandal edits to constructive IP edits (any at all?). Let's free up editors to work on things beside reverting vandalism of these articles. (And, by the way, my brief look at one article seemed to show that it wasn't move-protected - why in the world not?) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:30, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I really don't see the need to semiprotect something which is (supposedly) heavily watched anyway, but I think it boils down to the wikiphilosophy you're adhering to. Let's say it like this: There is not enough vandalism to warrant semiprotection right now; just wachlist and revert. And just as a little caveat: if you start with dealing out semiprotection because the edits to an article are more than 90% vandalism, you will have more articles to be semiprotected. Lectonar 15:36, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Oppose I don't think that vandalism level is heavy enough to warrant protection. Vandalism that appears in these pages also tends to be the least malicious kind. I don't think the benefits obtained from this proposal is enough to further compromise our principles of open editing. Borisblue 09:46, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Strong Oppose philosophical approach, I agree with WP:PPOL Semi-protection should not be used With the sole purpose of prohibiting editing by anonymous users. Protection should be used only to prevent continuing disruption. Ultimately we should be striving to uphold the principal of "anyone can edit" Gnangarra 11:51, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Oppose, semi-protection in perpetuity is not done. Corvus cornix 18:18, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it is. For instance, pages like Auschwitz are semi-protected indefinitely and the last time someone tried to unprotect George W. Bush it was reprotected immediately with the summary "are you insane?!". There are good arguments against indefinite semi-protection but "it's never done" is not one of them. Pascal.Tesson 18:24, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I would like to see the results of this, as a supporter of the proposal. What happened to it? --User:Krator (t c) 23:52, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Support a test. As Flyguy649 suggested, a test of this would be interesting, and should be agreeable to most. Maybe July-December, as that is the period we're entering, and provides a clear end date for the test. --Quiddity 00:06, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I totally oppose this. We can just revert vandalism, and those pages have the potential to attract new editors that begin as "vandals" and can eventually become helpful editors. A.Z. 00:33, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. Yeah, it's a pain in the butt, but I'd be surprised if we don't have at least one or two "reliable" editors to watch each of the dates. I'll add my birthday to my watchlist now, in fact. Cmprince 03:14, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Weak Support - The concept is good in principal, but if you will notice certain dates tend to get more vandalism than others. Why not instead of semiprotecting all the dates, just semiprotect well known dates. Such as July 4, December 25, February 29, etc. Just a thought. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ) 22:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Support I've had many of these pages on my watchlist for a while and they are a target for vandals and a "my daughter was born on this day"-target for newb editors. It's a pain for the editors that maintain and vandal and vanity edits routinely remain unnoticed for long periods (i've seen 4 months). --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Support - I agree with the previous statement that RC patrollers can focus on other needs. I also like the idea to create templates for each day. Vandals wouldn't care enough to take the time to figure out how to edit the template. Although some may still post nonsense, it may deter many. LaraLove^T/_C 04:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Weak Oppose - Im reaslly torn here. Ever since I started on Wikipedia I've been an RC pattroller, and after seeing how much vandalisim these articles got, I now watch about 5 pages (my birthday, my congressman's birthday, and a few friends' birthdays — this also has the benefit of not making my birthday so obvious if anyone's trying to root out my identity for some reason). Is there a lot of vandalisim? definitly. Would semi-protection stop it? There's little doubt in my mind. At the same time however, semi-protection isn't the only way to deal with this. These pages can be and are closely watched. Semi-protection seems like trying to pound in a nail with a sledgehammer. It's overkill, but not by much. I just think using a regular hammer works fine as-is. I won't be dissapointed if they are s-protected (it'd be less work for me), but at the same time, I don't think it's necessary. (If we still wanted to do something, perhaps a bot could check "births" for each day for redlinks?) --Ybbor^Talk 01:22, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Totally unnecessary. I'd be surprised if these aren't among the most-watched pages on Wikipedia; my own birthday (May 21 gets hit about once or twice a day, which isn't really very much compared to a lot of the other pages I watch.--jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 16:06, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Oppose - overkill.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Turkeyphant (talk • contribs) 11:33, July 26, 2007 (UTC)

Unnecessary - I've changed my opinion after watching about ten pages for the past week. Although some of the pages did receive vandalism, it was all reverted relatively quickly. I'm sure that if enough regular editors watch 10 pages each, very little vandalism would stay for very long. Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 14:28, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

weak oppose - this is a very tempting idea which i sympathize with for its practicality for me. but it is a precedent to permanently semiprotect articles. user:Dcoetzee makes a good point earlier. further more, Wikipedia provides two services to the public, access to information and the ability to change that information. this compromises that idea out of an argument for convenience. some proposals improve others solidify. we are not the sole editors of wikipedia preparing for retirement. there will always be others after us. but for now, we are the few, the proud, the registered user. it has been our effort to not only improve wikipedia but keep it what it was to us when we first found it, open. openness is and always will be wikipedias greatest strength and most admired virtue.Some thing 05:04, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

An "essential" Wikipedia?

Is there any sort of database, or filter, or overlay, in existence right now for an "essential" Wikipedia?

As an example, if I was running a school in rural Congo with no internet access, it would be nice to have one CDR (or whatever size medium is required) that has just the essential educational articles, with all the trivia and pop culture stripped out.

I was thinking that would be an interesting idea - a way to be able to read, or download, only the essential articles.

I assume identifying the articles would just take the addition of a tag. As for a script to assemble the updated essential articles for download, though, that is beyond me. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad 19:51, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

You might be thinking along the lines of the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team's release versions. I don't think that their releases, which are more "general interest" than subject-specific, are exactly what you're looking for, but it's the closest approximation I can think of. John Carter 19:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia CD Selection in co-operation with SOS Children looks like the sort of thing you are thinking of. It looks as if the 2007 selection is available. There is also information on the 2006 Wikipedia CD Selection on Wikipedia main space.--Boson 17:17, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

How to get Uncategorized pages with only stub categories

Is there anyway to know which all pages have only stub categories and not normal categories as these pages needs to be put under proper category. Vjdchauhan 16:38, 27 July 2007 (UTC).

I think the categorization taskforce was doing something with Alai's bot. The place to go is probably the taskforce's talk page.--Boson 06:14, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Spell Check For Wikipedia Search!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

.Here's my point on the spell check many young students use wikipedia and some times it can be a simple mistake or someone may not know the spelling and these can all be solved with the google search but many of the youngster don't always know how to get to that search. I know that a spell check for an encyclopedia may seem like dumbing down to some flamer but it is relay a great feature .... added at 00:56, 19 July 2007 by Unsignedcomment (contributions)

Typographical exuberance doesn't make people mad; it merely irritates them, additionally suggesting that the writer is mad.

Perhaps you can explain your proposal in more detail, particularly in view of the way in which the software here already makes suggestions if the page somebody asks for doesn't exist.

Do remember to sign your comments (unless of course not signing them is your point). -- Hoary 01:09, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

This would not function, for the reason that the titles of many articles are deliberately spelled incorrectly for some specific reason. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 06:34, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

no it isn't a great feature. It is annoying when search engines think they know better than you what you are trying to find. Anyway, this seems to be more of a flamebait than a serious suggestion. There is already a solution to address the most common misspellings, {{R from misspelling}}. dab (𒁳) 07:28, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I might add that my comment on typographical exuberance was in reply to the comment Ah using exclamation marks like that make many of the people who are here that flame newbies mad that is why I use them; the OP subsequently deleted this. -- Hoary 13:44, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I think this is getting out of hand I get a hate mail from "Anonymous Dissident" saying there is no elitism on wiki and say I'm stupid and don't know what I'm doing. I may be stupid but criticizing someone for suggesting a spell check for Wikipedia search then telling them "You can accuse Wikipedia of many things, but certainly not of elitism. WP has an obsession with accessibility to and participation of, to put it bluntly, morons" yes that is elitism and each member of wikipedia is part of wikipedia and your comments ruin the good community of wikipedia. My post was mainly about a spell check a spell check offering suggestions for the search like the one on google yes it is a basic suggestion and not much to it thats why I suggested it I thought it maybe nice and easy to implement. I have learned from my first post everyone on wikipedia is perfect and can do no wrong but some people are not good speller like me I always use spell check on Open Office and it is easy and convenient. I like this response it so nice and polite "no it isn't a great feature. It is annoying when search engines think they know better than you what you are trying to find. Anyway, this seems to be more of a flame-bait than a serious suggestion. There is already a solution to address the most common misspellings" this is flame bait why are you so cranky you don't like it so it is flame bait boom you attack come on this is not the place for that as for thinking the search engine is better than you I just don't know why a suggestion of the correct spelling is so intimidating .My attempt to ferret out people who attack was just that people on many talk pages are mean and nasty and it should stop just because you are typing 10000 Km away. My user name is Unsignedcomment I thought it was mildly funny but even more I was lazy and do not care much but to Anonymous Dissident it is stupid maybe you think that but a user name is so meaningless here's what Anonymous Dissident had to say "To create a user account Unsignedcomment and then make a point of not signing your posts is just puerile obstinacy and doesn't buy you any points." . I have not posted much I just did not realize I had to sign my post some what like a forum I thought it signed the post for you. As for buying points if I get enough do I get a BB gun like with skeet ball tickets (joke in case you don't get it and are angered to the point of Anonymous Dissident ) .sorry for not reading the FAQ but that does not excuse the hat brought about by a mistake none of the geniuses above have read the FAQ or they would know the answer to why this is not possible and would have let me in on it wouldn't they or are the cranky and elitist.And my next proposal will be a proposal to rid Wiki of the intimidation and B!@#$ing above. Maybe you think someones Idea is dumb but does that give you the right to be mean no if someone is a new user help don't hate. Maybe only you guys and doctors should write the encyclopedia oh no that Nupedia what happened to that?-- User: Unsignedcomment 13:50, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

What 'hate mail' are you refering to? I have not spoken to you once before this, and I never said anything remotely hateful to anyone. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 21:26, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

He seems to be under the misapprehension that dab's comment on his talk page, which did not accuse him of being stupid, was from you. I don't quite know where the "stupid" thing has come from. Adrian M. H. 21:39, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

This post has become something of a joke I'm sad to say. The user feels that everyone is being 'mean and nasty' to him in what is a clearly civil discussion for something which I am afraid to say will not work. Sorry. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 21:41, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm very confused reading this. Is there another conversation that explains why dab would think this proposal was a flamebait? Atropos 00:15, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok I would erase the whole thing but i'm sure there is a rule that i can't karma points would help kindness maybe be called childis for something as dumb as a dumb screen name is uncivil maybe not maybe your user who flames as well just may.kindness and respect goes alongway —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Unsignedcomment (talk • contribs) 03:04, 20 July 2007 (UTC).

Atropos, some elements were evidently later deleted by Unsignedcomment, see what Hoary said at 13:44 Nil Einne 14:00, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah, this makes sense now. I'm glad you're around when my reading comprehension fails me. :D Atropos 00:51, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

STARTING OVER

I think this is an interesting topic so i'm trying to quarantine the previous insanity, and start anew. let me start by saying that this is primarily a software issue that may or may not be solvable here but it at least starts the conversation. i agree that it is annoying when a program/browser corrects your spelling for you automatically. and it is not always helpful for it to suggest "correct" spellings of things after you make a search. however, i think google in actuallity, after making a search provides you with a list of alternatives in case your search didnt bring the desired results. and i dont think google brings these results from a dictionary. it more or less provides similar words that are more commonly searched and successfully clicked on. wikipedia could potentially, using its existing articles title words, provide a short list of similarly spelled article names or words in the event that there are no exact matches from your search. this would be much more convenient than having to search through the index, or open a new tab to search it on google to check if it provides an alternative spelling that you can then copy and plug into another wikipedia search (which i humbly admit to doing frequently). so here are the questions. is this desirable? whats better? and how could it be made possible? Some thing 05:36, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

All things being equal, an option that helps people who've spelled things wrong would be a good thing. But this might be misleading (as pointed out above), it could well be a chore to implement, and (as you say) the same function is available directly from Google if you simply open a second window for the purpose. -- Hoary 05:48, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

concerning one of your counterpoints, "this might be misleading (as pointed out above)"- it would not provide alternatives from a dictionary but from wikipedias index of existing articles, there by always providing even the purposefully misspelled article title words. further i'll add that creating a more efficient wikipedia (ie. less dependent on outside forprofit services like google) is a benefit to society worth the chore IMO. Some thing 06:06, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Not having a spell check does encourage people to pay attention to spelling and to perhaps learn to spell correctly without a spell checker. It also encourages people to distinguish between words that are spelled the same but have different meanings, or between words that are spelled differently but have the same pronunciation. For those editors that make no effort to use correct spelling, this is obvious to other editors and tells us something useful about that first editor. Surely all this is a good thing? --Eriastrum 16:10, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Better search feature, summarized as "This is Mediazilla:974. The functionality exists, but is disabled for performance reasons."

See also Wikipedia:Go button for an explanation of how the current search works. --Quiddity 17:51, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Changes to talk page tabs

Change "+" tab to "leave a comment"

I've been informally interviewing my friends about their experiences with Wikipedia, and man, do we have a lot of work to do if we want more intelligent, normal people to contribute.

One newcomer couldn't even figure out how to leave a comment on a talk page, so I propose that we change the "+" tab to "leave a comment". She liked that idea.

I believe this is accomplished by editing MediaWiki:Addsection. I'd go ahead and be bold, but that's a little too bold...

What do others think? — Omegatron 16:18, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Not necessary. The plus tab made immediate sense to me, because it represented adding something. But that is just based on my own experience, since I do not know any other Wikipedia editors or serious users. On narrower viewports, it is cumbersome to have lengthy tabs because they are very close to the personal links. Adrian M. H. 20:59, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I worry that changing the plus icon to text that long might break screens at 800x600. x42bn6 Talk Mess 21:16, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I didn't even notice + for a long time, but that's just me. On talk pages, edit this page should be given less emphasis (unbolded) than + because + is probably used a lot more often than edit this page. People should only need to click edit this page when they want to change banners at the top or to refactor the entire page. To respond to an individual section, use the section's own [edit] link. If discussion gets shortened to talk and edit this page gets shortened to edit or renamed to the more intuitive edit entire page, then + can be renamed to add section or something. 800x600 should be able to handle it. –Pomte 21:27, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly with de-emphasizing "edit" on talk pages and emphasizing "new section" and the section edit links. — Omegatron 01:00, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I run 800x600 and "leave a comment" would fit fine. This, that and the other 07:22, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

This would need a lot of testing with various browsers and font sizes at 800x600. When the tabs overflow, they tend to disappear, a very bad thing. — Carl (CBM · talk) 08:04, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

When the talk pages are forum-structured, there will be a "new post" button and everything will make sense. They won't have to know how to create a section header or sign their post either. Dcoetzee 08:05, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, when I set my font size to 40, the tabs overflow; so maybe we should just change them all to single letters.  :-) — Omegatron 15:05, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I like the shortest possibler button labels up there. ^(H) 16:16, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

There are ways to customize everything with javascript and CSS for advanced users and sysops with 15 tabs, but the default user interface should be targeted at the newest of newcomers. "+" is almost meaningless in this context. — Omegatron 19:01, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I recall this proposal previously got rejected due to historical reasons or some such, but if it does go through, there are some other message in Special:Allmessages that may need changing as well. –Pomte 23:55, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

"Historical reasons"? Bah.  :-) — Omegatron 00:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

If we were to change "Discussion" to "Talk" (see Proposal #39, below), there would be room to change the "+" to "New Post". Two birds in a bush or something like that . . . Bielle 01:31, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I think "discuss" would be better if trying to save space. — Omegatron 00:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

'Edit this page' is an action that applies to the visable page. 'Discussion' and 'article' are places we go. I wonder if removing the grey line under 'edit this page' would make clear what the tab applies to? Then we could change 'edit this page' to 'edit'. That would give us room to change '+' to some friendly verb. Tom Harrison ^Talk 17:50, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of the tab until now. I fully agree with the change. It's a useful tab and there's no reason why editors must wait more than one year (the time I've been editing) to know that it exists. A.Z. 02:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

If it gets changed into "leave a comment" then in light of it being very long, I suggest changing "edit this page" on talk pages into "edit". It's good to say "edit this page" on articles, but it's not a good idea on talk pages. --Steinninn 09:21, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

One of the reasons I prefer the venerable "classic" skin for Wikipedia. Over on the left side I see "Edit this page", "Discuss the page", etc. -- simple enough for a simple guy like me. I only wish I had the stick-to-it-iveness to learn CSS & help keep that skin up to date. -- llywrch 23:05, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I made the change. As I said in my edit summary, this proposal's been here for nearly a month with a slight plurality support.

This is NOT necessarily final, but should encourage much more discussion and a global consensus instead of a local consensus. If it's causing problems on pages that transclude this message (besides the tabs), feel free to revert it. Otherwise please leave it up so people can see it, decide whether they like the change or not, and reach a good consensus on whether it should be kept. — Omegatron 06:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

This is way too long, IMO. Call it Add if you want it to be easier to understand, but tabs are getting way too long for example for people that add other tabs to their interface. I now need to be full screen to see my last tab. -- lucasbfr ^talk 10:53, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it's way too long to be useful. Either "Edit this page" needs to become "Edit" or this "Leave a Comment" needs to be shrunk back down to "+". I don't care which, but it's way too long right now. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 13:51, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that "+" means nothing. My suggestion would be "Add" or (preferably) "Add comment". --Edokter (Talk) 13:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

That's a good idea; perhaps this could only be reached from the talk page (to group meta-article material and pretty much insure that people will read already existing comments)? Ragaxus 03:32, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Talk Pages

Summary: change the tab title (MediaWiki:Talk label) from 'discussion' to 'talk'.

(the first few posts of this thread were moved from Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#Talk Pages)

When I first discovered Wikipedia, I spent much time looking for "talk" pages. I am a native speaker of English and I know that "talk" and "discussion" mean much the same thing, but the omnipresence of "talk page" led me to believe that something less formal was meant. Nowhere have I found a reference to a "discussion page", not then and not now. Why do we not change the tab from "discussion" to "talk" and save all the newbies some confusion? We're not likely to change the editors' text habit. Bielle 15:07, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

It couldn't make more sense. I agree with the change. A.Z. 18:04, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#Discussion Page Guidelines. Calling the discussion pages "talk pages" is jargon that is specific to the English Wikipedia; for example, talk pages on the French Wikipédia are des pages de discussion, while the German-speaking Wikipedianer have Diskussionsseiten. For the proposal to have a chance of having an effect, you should post it at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals).  --Lambiam^Talk 19:17, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

This probably happens because other languages have no equivalent to "talk pages". A.Z. 19:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

What? Of course they have talk pages- take a look at any of the other language Wikipedias, see a list. Friday (talk) 19:34, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Friday, I didn't mean that other language Wikipedias don't have the equivalent to talk pages. I meant that other languages don't have an expression such as talk page, and therefore their only option is to use the equivalent to discussion page. Romance languages and German all have a cognate of the word discussion which means the same thing, therefore making it the most obvious translation. A.Z. 19:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

The idea that other languages don't have a less formal word for talking than "discussion" is absurd. Atropos 21:28, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I was only referring to English Wikipedia in suggesting the change. I assumed that, whatever the tag in other Wikipedias(-pediae?), it is appropriate to its language, and the use of its language. Is there a need to have some congruence in the tag, as would be represented by the root orthography of "disc(k)uss"? That may be a silly question, now that I look at it, as there wouldn't be any visual connection with Chinese, for example. Thanks for the pointers to the pages where such matters are discussed, Lambiam, and to the better place for its discussion. As for having "a chance to have an effect", I have nothing invested in the suggestion or its acceptance. It merely reflects an editor's interest in (a) ease of use and (b) consistency. Bielle 19:40, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

As it is, the tags are inconsistent with the way that all Wikipedians call these pages, and, because of that and other things, they are harder to use. A.Z. 19:48, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I have looked at Lambiam's first link above. It asks the same question, but there is no discussion or decision that I could see. Perhaps I don't know how to look for follow-up. I have also looked at the Village Pump's FAQ, Perenial Proposals and current suggestions and could see no earlier similar suggestion. On Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), #33, there is a discussion of the "+" tab. This would appear, then, to be the place to hold a discusion on "Talk" pages. If someone who is following this thread knows how to move the relevant parts of it to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), please BE BOLD. Bielle 20:44, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Apparently, an user with the privilege of being able to edit protected pages needs to change this page. The change is uncontroversial and, if I were an user with such a privilege, I'd make it right now. A.Z. 21:52, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't know that we can say the proposal is uncontroversial until we have given it some time to be considered. Change is nearly always controversial for someone, and that someone (or those "someones") needs time to be able to respond. That's why there are Talk (Discussion) pages, after all. Thus, even if I had the privilege, I would wait a few days. There is nothing urgent here. Bielle 22:56, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I understand. I would wait a few days as well, then, but I feel this is rather uncontroversial. A.Z. 23:10, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I am wondering why we all call these pages Talk pages, the text seems to always have been discussion. Anyway, I think Talk is a better idea, the rest of the interface calls these pages talk pages (even the My talk page link) -- lucasbfr ^talk 13:16, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem is a subtle contextual difference between the two words. "Talk" could be interpreted as endorsing "chatting", which is not what they're for; whereas "Discussion" is a synonym with more formal connotations. However, "talkpage" is in general use primarily because it's faster to type, and because it rolls off the tongue/eye better than "discussionpage". If we tried to force everyone to refer to them as "discussionpages", they'd just create an inscrutable acronym! For these reasons, I would doubt any changes to the current state are likely (though anything is possible). --Quiddity 18:09, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Quiddity has hit the nail on the head with his description of the 'subtle contextual difference', so I shan't say anything other than to endorse his statement. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:30, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

True, there is a "subtle contextual difference". English is full of such things. However, no one is paying any attention to the diifference, as far as I can tell, which may mean it is "subtle too far". "Discussion" could equally well be "chatting"; the difference depends more upon the setting and the formality of the language of the conversation than on its content. Everyone refers to what is linked to the Discussion tab as "talk pages" or just plain "talk" and, whether we wish to encourage it or not, talk and chat do happen there, along with discussion, negotiation, argument, notification, diatribe, rant, positioning, advertising, pleading, demanding, and almost every other actvity possible on screen. The difference between "talk" and "chat" is another example of a "subtle contextual difference". "Chat" has a specific meaning on-line, however, and indeed, it is not what we wish to encourage. "Talk page", however, on English Wiki, means the "discussion page and what actually goes on there". It seems unnecessarily confusing to insist that the tab keep the "Discussion" label merely to make a point that talk isn't chat. (While the WP:POINT being made is not disruptive, neither is it helpful, especially to the newcomer.) Bielle 19:58, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd beg to differ or there would be no need for pages such as Wikipedia:WikiLawyering. I think there are users that will push the interpretation to the limit. For this reason anything that could be misconstrued as chat should be avoided. David D. (Talk) 20:56, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

For one thing regarding definitions, talk means to speak, as if with the mouth. Discussion can still mean writing it. The page titles are so because it is shorter. I personally am for continuing using 'discussion' for the tab. Reywas92^{TalkReview me} 22:33, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Nothing needs to be "miscontrued as chat", David D., for chat to happen. It is happening all over now. (I'd link to specific talk pages except that it might embarrass individuals who are no more chatty than a hundred others. For the most part, this is limited to User Talk.) I also disagree with Reywas92. On line, "talk" is understood to mean "write" unless a voice system is specifically noted. There is no doubt that there is a reason why "Discussion" was selected for the tab initially, and Wikipedia:WikiLawyering is a reality for the most minute points. Nonetheless, "Discussion" as a tab remains confusing, and there is a simple way to eliminate the confusion. No one has yet addressed this issue, which is the only reason for the proposing the change. And, in respect of the care and keeping of newbies, please see the opening comment in 33 above, and all the following flac about the "+" sign.Bielle 23:14, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand the confusion. The pages are for the discussion of the article content, that seems to be quite obvious. Agreed one might call it talk but the service that the page provides is apparently quite descriptive. At least, I have never considered it to be an inappropriate name. Are most newbies really that confused? David D. (Talk) 02:19, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I can't speak for most newbies. I can tell you that I spent considerable time looking for "Talk Pages". I found the "Discussion" tab and knew what it was for, and what went on there, but assumed, as the name "talk page" was everywhere, that it was something quite different from "Discussion". If you do an internal search for Talk Page you get to read about "Talk Pages" in all their manifestations. "Discuss" and "Discussion" are secondary meanings. The article even notes that you should look for something labelled "Talk" (or "discuss") at the top or side of a page. All I am suggesting is that we reflect the actual use, and what the "Talk Pages" article believes to be the case already, in the tab system so that there is one less hurdle for a newbie. Obviously, all of us figured it out, eventually. (Perhaps it is a secret test to see if a newbie really is Wiki editor material. Perhaps I am a slow learner.) The world will not collapse if we don't make the change. From the resisitance noted here to what I thought was a minor matter, it might be easier to try and get all the editors to refer to "Discussion Pages" instead of "Talk Pages" with the same objective, of being more newbie friendly. I wonder where I would make that proposal. :-)Bielle 02:46, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with Bielle that "talk" can be used to mean "write", especially online. It means something as "communicate" or "communication". That's why almost all Wikipedians feel comfortable calling them talk pages. Reywas92, do you commonly refer to those pages as "discussion pages"? A.Z. 19:50, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I agree that it is very confusing to label the tab "discussion", but have everyone (including the help pages) constantly refer to them as talkpages. Especially so for newcomers, young editors, and ESL editors.

I'm just guessing that it's a perennial proposal, though I can't see it at Wikipedia:Perennial proposals or at Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Proposals concerning Talk namespaces (and other discussions). However, here is the correct place to discuss(!) it, and I personally wouldn't oppose the change of MediaWiki:Talk to say "talk", barring any new persuasive evidence that the status quo needs to remain.

Any oldtimers know about any past history of this idea? (they're not exactly "unique terms" to use as search fodder..!) --Quiddity 18:20, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

It seemed to me such a simple idea that I, too, went looking for a history at all the places you mentioned, and failed to find anything earlier on such a change. I should have said all this in the opening paragraph, and saved others the effort. Anybody find anything? Bielle 23:00, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

1. We should really be emphasizing accessibility to newbies above all else. We need to make the site very easy for newcomers to contribute to.
2. Would "discuss" (verb) be a better choice than "discussion" (noun)? — Omegatron 01:03, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

"Discuss" suggests active participation better than "discussion", but the confusion about "talk pages" isn't remedied by the change. Unless we have something labelled "Talk" or "Talk Page", the confusion remains. Bielle 01:25, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree that we should be emphasizing accessibility to newbies above all else. Openness is the whole idea behind Wikipedia! Imagine if we had suggested ten years ago "let's let everyone edit an online encyclopedia". Someone would surely come up with something like "no, people will begin to chat, it will become a social network, it will never work", and things like that. Imagine that Wikipedia had been created and someone suggested "let's write on the main page that anyone can edit it". Surely someone would say "no, because it will turn the encyclopedia into a huge chat room". It's just fear. Changing the name of the tag will improve Wikipedia by making the website more accessible to new users, as people will more quickly understand what is a core aspect of Wikipedia, namely the talk pages, which will diminish a bit the feeling that Wikipedia is such a misterious place that only a selected few can understand. Letting the links to talk pages continue to be called "discussion" will only make people confused and prevent good editors from participating in the project. A.Z. 02:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

To (inaccurately!) summarize people's positions on this:

In favor:

• Bielle: "Why do we not change the tab from 'discussion' to 'talk' and save all the newbies some confusion?"

• A.Z.: Agrees with Bielle.

• lucasbfr: "I think Talk is a better idea, the rest of the interface calls these pages talk pages."

• Omegatron:"We should really be emphasizing accessibility to newbies above all else."

• Quiddity: "I personally wouldn't oppose the change of MediaWiki:Talk to say 'talk', barring any new persuasive evidence that the status quo needs to remain."

Against:

• David D.:"Anything that could be misconstrued as chat should be avoided."

• Reywas92:"Talk means to speak, as if with the mouth. Discussion can still mean writing it."

A.Z. 17:36, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

That's a terrible summary of my position! I specifically stated that I wouldn't oppose a change. I was merely pointing out why discussion was the currently used word, and why there was a disparity between the formal-name and the informal-usage. It probably should be changed, as far as I can see. --Quiddity 17:56, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I changed my post so you are in the group that supports the change. A.Z. 18:02, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks ;) --Quiddity 19:17, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I didn't say I was in favor of this change, either. Lumping people into groups based on your perception of their position is usually a bad idea. If you want to see what we actually think, take a poll or something...

Sign under any options that you like. Feel free to add other options. — Omegatron 01:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

A poll may be helpful for something, but I hope it doesn't become an election. I think the discussion above and more discussion like that are useful, and a poll would be useful if it were just a part of the discussion. I thought my post was useful because we could easily know who was left to be convinced. A.Z. 02:55, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

It's been ten days now. We can continue discussing, but I think it's time for an administrator to make the change. A.Z. 03:20, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

It's been twenty days now. A.Z. 22:34, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Reywas92 wrote that "because of parallelism (grammar), 'discuss' just wouldn't work", but there is a button called "edit this page" (perhaps it should be "page edition"?). Their argument for not changing the tab to "talk" is still that "talk" means to speak with the mouth, while discussion can still mean writing it. This is simply not true: people use talk all the time to mean communicating in ways other than speaking with the mouth. They also wrote that "I really don't think something needs to be inviting". Things are supposed to be inviting because of the openness of the project: the more people, the better. A.Z. 22:34, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

tjstrf and Gnangarra have the same argument for opposing the change of "discussion" to "talk": they say that the word "discussion" describes what happens on talk pages better than the word "talk": in their words, "The tabs are worded quite clearly as is and 'talk' is less descriptive, therefore more confusing, not less" and "I prefer 'discussion' as it has an implied context that one should actually listen to opinions of others. Where as 'talk' doesn't relate to an expectation that one should listen to the opinions of others." David D.'s argument is also similar, although he emphasizes a concern with the particular interpretation of the word "talk" according to which the talk pages are "chat rooms".

Nevertheless, the fact is that original argument for changing the tab is that the name of the pages is "talk pages", not that the word "talk" would be a better description of the activity that happens on talk pages. In Bielle's words, "Nowhere have I found a reference to a 'discussion page', not then and not now. Why do we not change the tab from 'discussion' to 'talk' and save all the newbies some confusion?" I have been through the same problem: I didn't immediately understand what people were referring to when they said "talk pages". If the tab said "talk", I would've immediately understood it.

The names of the other tabs are not an attempt to accurately describe the content of the pages that they link to. It's hard to guess what the tab "history" refers to, but people do call those pages "history". Tha sme with "watch": you have to learn what it means somewhere else, likely by clicking on it, or reading about it somewhere. Nevertheless, people do refer to "watchlists" and they do say "I'm watching that page".

No-one calls talk pages discussion pages, anywhere, and that does cause some problems to some newbies, which is the main reason that concerns Bielle and concerns me. Other people seem not to be so worried with newbies, yet they do support the change because it's sort of ridiculous for that word to be there ("discussion"), when there's no reference to it anywhere else. A.Z. 22:51, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I am astounded this hasn't been changed yet. Wikipedia usability is horrendous. 129.120.159.176 13:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I made the change to Mediawiki:Talk. As I said in my edit summary, this proposal's been here for nearly a month with a slight plurality support.

This is NOT necessarily final, but should encourage much more discussion and a global consensus instead of a local consensus. If it's causing problems on pages that transclude this message (besides the tabs), feel free to revert it. Otherwise please leave it up so people can see it, decide whether they like the change or not, and reach a good consensus on whether it should be kept. — Omegatron 05:50, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Another user reverted Omegatron's change, without giving any explanation here on the village pump... Now, Andre's decision is being discussed both here and here. I suggest that we centralize the discussion on the village pump, so everyone can participate and it all stays in one place. My opinion is that Andre's argument for reverting the change is wrong: he says that there should be consensus for the tab to be named "talk", but I don't see why it would be any better for it to be named "discussion" when there is no consensus that it should be named "discussion" either. I don't know what is the solution, though. A.Z. 18:20, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Two points: 1. I love how everyone just assumes that it's soooo simple, and seems sooooo obvious once it's actually been pointed out to them, that it MUST have been proposed before! 2. I'm also surprised no one proposed that perhaps the reason they're called talk pages is because they're in the talk namespace. Morgan Wick 06:56, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Poll: discussion tab

"discussion" → "talk"

1. Makes sense to me because of title prefixes like "Talk:" and "Wikipedia talk:". — Omegatron 01:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
2. This reflects tha language used throughout en.wiki and will be the easiest for newcomers to understand. This benefit outweighs, in my opinion, the possibility that the change will be seen as an invitation to "chat". Bielle 01:38, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
3. Clearest for newcomers, ESL editors, and young editors. Used almost-consistently throughout the help pages, and consistently in normal usage. --Quiddity 01:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
4. I'm in favor of the change. I explained why on the thread above. A.Z. 03:03, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
5. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 03:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
6. Moderately in favour, only to bring it in line with the namespace. And at least it is short. Adrian M. H. 15:46, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
7. Strong support - this goes along with the namespace names; it seems to me that the meaning is clear, and it's shorter. Od Mishehu 08:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
8. Strong support - As a new user (and a native English speaker), it took me a few minute to realize that talk and discussion pages were the same thing. In addition to it being clearer, it's shorter -- just as Mishehu said. Spazure 05:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
9. That's what everyone calls them. Why confuse the newbies. --Apoc2400 08:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
10. or "talk" -> "discussion", but, namespace aside, good luck getting everyone to stop calling them talk pages. --Random832 19:42, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
11. Because it's in the Talk: namespace, people are going to keep calling them "talk pages" no matter what they're actually called, and if you're worried that they'll become forums, just add one of the standard "This is the page for discussing article Blah." headers and warn people about what wikipedia is WP:NOT. Confusing Manifestation 03:48, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
12. The shorter, the better. The two meanings are "close enough for computer work". StuRat 23:45, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
13. I agree that it makes since for overall site consistency. LaraLove^T/_C 03:18, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
14. We already call then talk page, so... -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:46, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
15. Short and simple - also works with internal consistency. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 14:02, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
16. One less piece of jargon for new contributers to learn. --Ybbor^Talk 15:03, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
17. We all call them talk pages. The present linkage system is to [[user talk:NAME]]. And scattered throughout the project there are vast numbers of references to talk pages, including a lot within WP pages. Surely to avoid confusion the tab should say "talk"? --Anthony.bradbury^"talk" 12:37, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
18. Strongly Support Djmckee1 - Talk 06:27, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
19. It's in the talk namespace, after all. -- Ned Scott 06:38, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
20. It makes sense. The user interface should maximise usability and minimise confusion. This change would certainly minimise confusion. --WPholic (talk) 12:49, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
21. It's shorter and it's what the namespace is called. Perhaps "talk page" would be even better. Kusma (talk) 12:54, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
22. It's called a "Talk" page. --Edokter (Talk) 13:32, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
23. Doesn't everyone call it a "Talk-page" already ? It's user_talk too, not user_discussion. --Eivind Kjørstad 08:32, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
24. Per Omegatron. - Presidentman
25. Makes sense.  Tcrow777  talk  23:54, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

"discussion" → "discuss"

1. Saves space, more inviting than "discussion". — Omegatron 01:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
2. Not a bad alternative. I still don't like the idea of "talk", despite reading the many arguments above in favour of such a change. The title of the tab should be viewed as an invitation to discuss the page, or to a discussion. What does an invitation of talk conjure in the minds of editors? A monolog? An IRC channel? A dialog? Discuss represents so much more than these. David D. (Talk) 03:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

   Yes, David D., it does that, but "discuss" does not speak to the initial reason for the proposal: that everywhere on en.wiki there are mentioned "talk" pages, and yet there are no "Talk" pages. You can't read anything on English Wikipedia and fail to come across a reference to a "Talk" page, and yet, they don't exist. Bielle 18:03, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

3. I agree with Omegatron. ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 23:08, July 4, 2007 (UTC)

Don't change "discussion" tab

1. --Steinninn 01:45, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
2. I see no reason to change, however, see above for views on discuss which might be a viable alternative if people really find discussion too cryptic. David D. (Talk) 03:43, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
3. It is fine the way it is right now. +spebi ~ 07:35, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
4. Oppose 'Discussion' could be changed to 'talk', but because of parallelism (grammar), 'discuss' just wouldn't work. The 'article' tab would then need to be changed to 'read', perhaps. Why inviting? + may be confusing (not to me), but 'discussion' says it; I really don't think something needs to be inviting. Reywas92^Talk 14:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

   I don't agree that there is a grammar problem of any sort; "discussion", "article" and "talk" can all be nouns. Bielle 17:49, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

   'Discuss' can't, though. I believe my opinion is made. Reywas92^Talk 13:01, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

   Sorry; I misread your original sentence. Indeed, "discuss" is not a noun; "article", however, can be a verb, if you are a law student. :-) Bielle 17:34, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

   There's a tab called "edit this page." A.Z. 03:45, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

5. Pointless. The tabs are worded quite clearly as is and "talk" is less descriptive, therefore more confusing, not less. --tjstrf talk 17:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
6. — Deckiller 18:01, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
7. I prefer "discussion" as it has an implied context that one should actually listen to opinions of others. Where as "talk" doesnt relate to an expectation that one should listen to the opinions of others. Gnangarra 13:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
8. Leave good enough alone. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ) 22:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
9. No, it's fine and please advertise this better before changing it. Andre (talk) 06:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
10. "Talk" actually strikes me as likely to be more confusing to an unfamiliar visitor. I prefer a noun over a verb, because a verb implies participation. By contrast, a "discussion" is something a visitor can view passively if they choose. Dragons flight 18:18, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
11. No change is needed. "Talk" reads like an invitation to banter. However, the talk page guideline is clear that talk pages (except maybe user talk pages) are not used to be for idle chatter and random talk. Their purpose is discussion. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 02:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
12. It's fine how it is. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:05, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
13. 68.39.174.238 16:20, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Poll: + tab

"+" → "leave a comment"

1. Clearer for newcomers. — Omegatron 01:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
2. Likely the best in terms of new-user comprehension, but may take up too much space. The overall best, then, is "New Post" Bielle 01:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
3. --Steinninn 01:45, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
4. Weak Support. I would prefer just "comment" or "add comment" — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 03:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
5. Yes. This, that and the other _[talk] 07:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
6. Good idea. Not everyone is good at figuring out cryptic UIs. --Apoc2400 08:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
7. Everything needs to be spelled out because we want normal people contributing. A.Z. 18:06, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
8. Probably my favourite out of the options here, but all of them are clearer than '+'. (From my Real Life interactions with non-Wikipedia editors, it's clear that the usability does need a lot of work; for instance, it's not at all clear that you can determine an image's copyright status by clicking on it, and the usual assumption (in my experience; this is anecdotal evidence and therefore probably wrong) seems to be that all Wikipedia images are public-domain. Clearer labels are one way to further this aim.) --ais523 12:41, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
9. I think this is a good idea, although kind of long. I didn't use this tab for months after I started using Wikipedia because I had no idea what it was, and I just didn't click it. Now that I know what it is, I use it frequently. LaraLove^T/_C 03:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
10. I also think its a good idea. Most people don't ever click the + tab because they didn't know what it does and not everybody is "curious enough" to experiment with all the buttons so making it clear what it does is a good thing. --_Hdt83 ^Chat 18:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
11. I loved seeing this change and I'm upset that it got changed back. This is much clearer for newcomers than the cryptic "+" which I remember being puzzled by myself. Haukur 00:23, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
12. Strong Support Clearer for newcomers and looked great when it was changed. Djmckee1 - Talk 06:29, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

"+" → "new post"

1. This is language generally recognized on the Internet and is clearer for newcomers than just the "+" Bielle 01:41, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
2. The tab is useful and it's hard to figure out what it means. It's even hard to see. A.Z. 18:08, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
3. "Add a comment" does not imply it's a *new* comment, so with both systems you have inexperienced users adding a section every time they want to add a reply, which is inefficient and annoying. Implying that every + is a new post will help clear that up. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 18:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
4. If the + has to go, "New Section" would be clearer, since each comment is often referred to as a post. Adrian M. H. 18:14, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

"+" → "new comment"

1. Not quite as clear as "leave a comment", but saves space. — Omegatron 01:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
2. My second choice, per discussion rationales offered above. --Quiddity 01:57, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

"+" → "comment"

1. Not as good as the more verbose ones, but acceptable. — Omegatron 23:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
2. "Comment" has a clear advantage over all the other suggested alternatives. "+" is confusing - I had no idea what it meant when I first come across it and had to click on it to find out, which many editors won't do for fear of "crashing Wikipedia". "Add a comment", "leave a comment" and "new comment" waste space with unnecessary words - "comment" is part of the language of the Internet; it isn't unique to Wikipedia. --WPholic (talk) 12:54, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

"+" → "add comment"

1. Pretty clear, short. — Omegatron 23:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
2. I like this one best. Short and concise. LaraLove^T/_C 03:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
3. My fav. It's concise, and doesn't look awkward. the_undertow ^talk 09:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
4. --Kaypoh 15:38, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
5. I like this best;the implication of adding something is important. I'd been here 3 months before realizing what the + meant. --Thespian 22:38, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
6. No room for misunderstanding what it does. --Edokter (Talk) 13:34, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
7. I hadn't known what the + does until I saw this proposal. "Add comment" is small, clear, and per Edokter. Ragaxus 03:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

"+" → "new topic"

1. Clearer, more accurate, and shorter. — Omegatron 12:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
2. Ditto. --Quiddity 17:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
3. While I still prefer "+", this option would be acceptable as well, as it is clear. (relatively) concise, and most importantly accurate. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 20:31, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
4. While I personally prefer "+", I recognize that one of these options is probably simpler for newcomers. This one has the advantage of being minimally ambiguous with the idea of adding a new comment to an existing discussion (especially as compared to the other proposals). Nihiltres^(t.l) 01:08, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
5. I'm fine with just +, but I'm equally fine with this option as well. -- Ned Scott 06:41, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
6. Definitely the most clear, though I'd be fine with no change too. Atropos 00:35, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
7. Yep, this seems to be the only unambiguous one. You don't have to start a new header to leave a new comment, I guess people may get confused about the difference between a new comment under a new header and a comment under an existing header. - Zeibura ^(Talk) 15:37, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
8. Makes more sense then the others because {{Talkheader}} uses "Click here to start a new topic," not "Click here to start a new comment."  Tcrow777  talk  00:04, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Don't change "+" tab

1. I think of it as just a shortcut for experienced editors, plus editing the whole page or just a prior section, gives newcomers an example of wikicode to glance through. Plus it has a tooltip which explains itself. --Quiddity 01:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
2. As I wrote when the "+ tab" issue was raised recently, I see no problem with it, based on my own experience of finding my way around WP. It logically equates to adding something new. Adrian M. H. 15:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
   • Please restore the + sign. The width of the tabs is too wide when all tabs are visible, leaving the Twinkle tab for SD right under the watchlist link. Having to make sure I don't click in a hurry. Adrian M. H. 15:36, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
3. Leave it alone or remove it. I see no real need for the tab anyway. If people are curious they can click it and find out what it is. Does everything really need to be spelled out? David D. (Talk) 03:46, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
4. Concur with David – if people are confused about the button, it is easy enough just to click on it and find out. +spebi ~ 07:35, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
5. Do not remove it, as it allows a more automatic edit summary and goes directly to the bottom of the page. "Leave a comment" is too long. Not to be rude, but it is very simple to realize what + means. If I had to chose, it is the shortest, "new post". Reywas92^Talk 14:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
6. Keep it simple + is a recognised symbol for add, as such its appropriately used. Gnangarra 13:27, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
7. Once again leave good enough alone. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ) 22:35, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
8. Yes, please leave it. Andre (talk) 06:40, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
9. Restore +. If necessary, make a tooltip. Wait, we already have one. It says 'Add a comment to this discussion'. If that isn't clear enough, change it, but leave a message is just taking up space. --ST47Talk 11:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
10. Or something very short, as "Add", but personally I think that "+" was quite clear already -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:46, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
11. Restore the +. It's short and concise - and simple enough to figure out. Additionally, the new version is actually more confusing because it implies that to leave a comment you have to use it, when in reality you only use it to add a new section of comments. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 13:59, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
12. Restore the + This is a well-known mathematical sign which means Add. What could be clearer? --Anthony.bradbury^"talk" 14:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
13. Restore the + - As an administrator, I have many tabs. I'm no fan of the crowding, and "+" seems very intuitive - I understood it on first sight. It's also frustrating because I seem to see a majority of users opposing any change from the original - we need a consensus here, and for site-wide, hugely visible changes like this, it is frustrating to see such a short discussion change the interface against the wishes of many. Nihiltres^(t.l) 14:50, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

    Omegatron commented on this post on my talk page, and on reflection, I don't think this comment was the best approach to the problem, or that its rationale was sound: it amounted to a well-written "NOOO CHANGE IT BACK!". While I personally prefer the "+" and find it intuitive, it'll probably be useful to new or inexperienced users to have a more descriptive tab - besides, I can customize my tab text using my personal monobook.js page, a solution I already have set up (but not entirely active) there. Nihiltres^(t.l) 00:43, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

14. Please restore +. I'm sure many people (like me) did not participate in this discussion so far simply because they expected the proposal to fail ∴ Alex Smotrov 17:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

    They might have also not participated because they expected it to pass. You can't really guess what someone's opinion is if they don't give their opinion. Tra (Talk) 17:50, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

    Hmm… I think it's unrealistic to silently expect something to pass when there are several new options to choose from. Anyway, my point is that most proposals seems to fail rather than the other way ∴ Alex Smotrov 19:34, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

    Or, as in my case, they may simply not have known the discussion was going on until they saw that the tab had changed. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 17:59, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

    That was the whole point of changing it before the discussion was finished. I see now that his was a dumb idea, though, since people are just going to say "NOOO CHANGE IT BACK" without actually reading the discussion or alternative proposals. — Omegatron 12:38, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

    Actually, I did read the whole thing - and I suspect that others did as well...most of the comments have well-reasoned statements. Simply because they don't agree with the previous discussion doesn't mean they didn't read it. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 20:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

15. It's a shortcut. It doesn't need to have one of the largest tabs on the list. Dragons flight 18:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
16. Takes up way too much space. Prodego ^talk 18:45, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
17. Like Quiddity said, it's more of a shortcut for expierenced users than new ones, and gives them a chance to see wikicode. Also, as other stated "leave a comment" would also apply to replying to an existing section, when the tab is really only for new discussion. --Ybbor^Talk 01:33, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
18. No change is needed (or rather, no satisfactory alternative has been suggested). In addition to being longer, "Leave a comment", "New post", "New comment", "Comment", and "Add a comment" all hold potential for confusion since each individual indented edit within a thread can be considered a distinct comment. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 02:35, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
19. I have quite a few tabs, and after this change they run off the screen for me. And, also, I don't think there's a need for a change. I was never confused by the + tab; since it's not completely necessary anyways, there's no need to make it massive. — thesublime514 • talk • 02:46, July 14, 2007 (UTC)

    If you use "talk" instead of "discussion", there's room enough to change the + to "new post". You can use user css/javascript (not clear on the details, though) to change it back for you alone...

20. +1 on leaving it alone. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:05, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
21. 68.39.174.238 16:20, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
22. I find the + pretty self explanatory. I don't see any need to change it. ZOUAVMAN LE ZOUAVE 17:20, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Stop voting on everything

Oh, and this change is a stupid idea. Don't fix what isn't broken – Gurch 09:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I strongly concur. Haven't they always been like this? Reywas92^Talk 14:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

• Try not to call people's ideas "stupid". It's rude, especially when there are some obvious, logical, and intelligent reasons behind the discussion (As in, it's the 'talk:' namespace, lots of newcomers have expressed confusion over the years, etc).
• We're not "voting on everything"; this is the first poll I've seen at VPp in a while. They're sometimes useful. An admin started this one.
• Appeal to tradition is one perspective, but it's not an argument ender. --Quiddity 18:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
• Anything that decreases the chance that a new comer will stay and be comfortable here should be changed to something more welcoming or easier to use. No experienced editor will be bothered by either the "+" or the "Discussion" tabs. We don't know how many potential editors a fruitless search for a way to add a comment or a guide to finding the omnipresent (but entirly absent) "talk" pages has driven away. We do know that some new, but not entirely inexperienced, editors mentioned that they have had some problems with these matters in their early days and were confused by them. Why not just make everything a simple as possible? Bielle 18:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Stop voting on everything

This isn't a vote; it's a poll. Both polls and votes are discouraged, but can be useful in certain situations, especially for decisions like this (you have to agree that a UI change is significantly different from an editorial decision about an article.) I've intentionally structured the poll so that people write their rationales for supporting different options instead of just saying "support", and so that new suggestions can be added to take into account different rationales and narrow in on an idea that more people will agree with. It's more like a structured discussion than a vote. I've seen this style used successfully elsewhere and thought it would be appropriate here.

Don't fix what isn't broken

Several people disagree. You should sign under the "no change" section if you don't think it needs changing.

Haven't they always been like this?

Way back in the day it said "Discuss this page", actually (see http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org), but why does that matter? Tradition is completely irrelevant. The user interface should be as usable as possible.

Also, everyone needs to realize that this poll is not very meaningful in the grand scheme of things. There seems to be a consensus that the interface should be changed, so it probably will be. But as soon as we make that change, everyone will become aware of the issue and there will suddenly be hordes of people with opinions on the subject. There will be much more discussion after the change is made, and an even better solution will most likely emerge. Relax. — Omegatron 23:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Please don't change without a consensus -- a plurality is insufficient. Andre (talk) 06:40, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

This whole thing is mountaineering a molehill, but "leave a comment" has to be the worst change possible. Its far too long, and its not very clear. Its very easy to leave a comment in a previous section, as I am doing now. New comment is far clearer and more aesthetic. Atropos 21:19, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

And thank god talk was changed back to discussion, I felt so unprofessional clicking it. The idea that the word "discussion" is "jargon" is a little frightening to me. Atropos 21:22, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I changed them both back, as I don't think there's a consensus for "talk" and "leave a comment" here. Andre (talk) 22:10, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. "Add a comment" is not only too long, it is incorrect, as the action of that button is to start a new section and add a comment to it; most comments can't use that button. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:49, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

There are several other proposals. You wouldn't be happy with any of them? You wouldn't be happy with something different, like "New topic"? — Omegatron 11:36, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I see now that changing it in order to generate more discussion was a bad idea. People are just saying things like "Please change it back, this takes up too much space!", completely ignoring the discussion and several other proposals that do not take up as much space. — Omegatron 12:28, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

So. Should we archive this, and try again some other year? --Quiddity 03:08, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I think consensus is starting to emerge. We should try talking to opposers on their talk pages. People often vote on something, then go away and don't read further discussion on that matter. They may change their minds now, if they see that so many people prefer "talk". In this case, it makes a difference how many people prefer a version: since the intention is to make things easier, even people who personally would prefer "discussion" may support "talk" because it is less confusing to more people. A.Z. 03:12, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Move-protection

It may be something to consider to move-protect established articles that shouldn't need to be moved. For example, there is no reason at all that the article George W. Bush Rat or Jerry Falwell should ever have to be moved, so the only "benefit" of not move-protecting those articles is opening the possibility of page-move vandalism. Melsaran (formerly Salaskаn) 19:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Your first example is move-protected. The second is not. What specifically is your proposal? Who exactly should decide when an article's name is "right", and therefore should be move-protected? Should they do this for less important articles too? If not, who decides what is "less important" and what is "more important"? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:18, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Have a look through the archives if you can, because this proposal was raised a couple of months ago. I think the response was a bit mixed. Adrian M. H. 20:57, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

List it at WP:PEREN :) Melsaran (formerly Salaskаn) 21:12, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Bad example then. Still, this applies to many articles for which the name is stable and doesn't ever need to be changed. Melsaran (formerly Salaskаn) 21:12, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea, per se. But as John pointed out, there are some decision-based difficulties in its implementation. Adrian M. H. 21:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

As noted by others this creates issues of ownership. I can think of articles where you'd think the name should be permanent but to some extent is open to question, for example Lewis Carroll, which is the prominent penname of the real-life Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (redirect), which it might conceivably make sense to move. Dcoetzee 22:20, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Special:Newpages

I was wondering if it would be possible to add a "hide bot edits" option to new pages, as per on the watchlist? There's currently a bot going on a species article creation spree and it just makes it harder to read.. I realise this spree will probably be over eventually but if this bot article creation is going to be a regular occurence, this might be a good idea if possible. Couldn't find a relevant MediaWiki file so I'm posting here, thoughts? - Zeibura ^(Talk) 00:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Haha Polbot. I've seen him too. Good idea. I think also hide registered edits would be good also. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 02:35, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

User:Lupin/Anti-vandal tool can display an updating list of IP edits. I make frequent use of this particular feature. Raven4x4x 10:44, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Good ol' Polbot. I think it's a great idea. But the hide registered edits one wouldn't really work for Special:Newpages since IPs can't make new articles (right?) — Bob • (talk) • 05:54, July 30, 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the proposal, and I did a search on bugzilla a while ago only to find that it's been suggested as a MediaWiki feature few times. Confusing Manifestation 01:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

IT issues on Wikipedia

Let me first say I also live in Saint Pete and I'm proud that wikipedia is located in our city, as proud that we are the Monaco of the Indy 500.

Anyway to the point, is there a way to create a new category or is there one - answering the issues of system messages like Syslog(Unix, Linux, Cisco) and Event Log(Windows), all of them have code type and sometimes section like:

Cisco Example: 188 CRYPTO IKMP_NO_SA - IKE message from XX.XX.XX.XX has no SA and is not an initialization offer

Windows Example: 3019 System MRxSmb[Warning] - The redirector failed to determine the connection type

Linux Example: 83 N/A sshd - Error Bind to port 22 on 0.0.0.0 failed Address already in use.

All tree examples have in common 4 fields- %Code% %Section% %Type% %Message%

My idea is for unifying the fields and create link like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki-admin/Cisco~188~CRYPTO~IKMP_NO_SA where an IT guy or a IT newbie can look up how can deal with that type of issue, no matter of the type of operating system.

The problem is that there are thousands of issues and there is always somebody who have resolved the problem, but those who are looking for the problem is too hard to find it on the web space. And with wikipedia it can be done very neat.

P.S. I've done script create that kind of links for my forum. But it's better if done in place that everybody knows like Wikipedia.

Thanks for your time and please write me if I can help with something,

Ivan

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.186.95.161 (talk • contribs) 20:42, 30 July 2007

Ivan, there isn't anything like this on Wikipedia right now. However, there are a couple problems with the idea you have proposed. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a manual, guidebook, or textbook, this sort of directory isn't really appropriate for Wikipedia. The other problem is that all article content needs to be verifiable and therefore properly sourced; only notable subjects receive sufficient secondary source coverage to be included in an encyclopedia. This does not include the vast majority of IT issues that exist. Having said all that a different wiki made specifically for IT issues would definitely work (with some effort in the setup) for what you are thinking about, and there is even a possibility that one may exist or that the Wikimedia Foundation would be willing to start a sister project for this purpose. See Wikipedia:About#Sister projects for a list of the sister projects the foundation has. BigNate37_(T) 21:28, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Rename computing desk

I suggest that the Computing reference desk be renamed to Computing and Consumer Electronics, since (a) some users have questions about video game hardware and don't necessarily think of a game console as a computer, and (b) the people who are knowledgeable about computers would probably be knowledgeable about other consumer electronics as well. NeonMerlin 17:07, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Video gaming is more appropriately inquired about under the Entertainment reference desk. While many people are interested in both computing and gaming, the two fields overlap very little unless you get down to electronic design (which falls under technology in the Science reference desk). BigNate37_(T) 17:11, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Developing Articles

Maybe we could create a place where we could develop articles, then when they are fit to be a appropriate article, or in the case of lists, finished, moved to the article title. - Presidentman 22:47, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

We already have such a place - the userspace. If you wish to create a page in your userspace, just type in "Special:Myspace/name" in the search bar and create the page there. For example, I initially developed the page for WikiProject Iowa at User:Tim4christ17/Wikipedia:WikiProject Iowa, and then moved it to its final resting place at Wikipedia:WikiProject Iowa later.

The one thing I'd mention though is that all of Wikipedia's articles are works-in-progress, and that even the one-sentence stubs have a place in the mainspace. The userspace idea is just for if you wanted to work on something privately before moving it into the more "public" mainspace. Regards, Tim4christ17 ^talk 23:01, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I know, but it could be like it a place where more experienced users could help out newcomers. - Presidentman 23:21, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that the mainspace and the userspace can be used for that. A.Z. 23:41, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I've hit this issue before. The primary advantage to starting an article in your userspace is to make sure that the article is not speedily deleted, in case it initially fits one of those criteria, before you can finish an initial workable version. For example, my sandbox currently contains a draft version of an article for which I haven't gotten my hands on the references which I know exist but which someone in real life hasn't given me yet, so what I have there would be speedily deleted if it were in the mainspace -in fact, I would speedily delete it myself were I to come across it. Leaving it in my sandbox allows me to keep it around and edit it without risk. Given that we have the userspace, I see no need for an alternate space. Nihiltres^(t.l) 15:22, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Anyone who needs assistance with something in a user sub-page is free to request it in a number of ways, whereas yet another project page that has to be monitored and managed (sweeping out orphaned material, for instance) is an unnecessary addition to the already quite heavy workload. In addition to EA, we also have the drawing board. Adrian M. H. 16:59, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Tabbed Browsing

Having now become addicted to tabbed browsing, I find it frustrating that the Wikipedia search entry in the left column does not support this. I doubt that I am the first to raise this point. So sorry for any duplication. --CloudSurfer 21:19, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Its not just wikipedia, anything similar is exactly the same and I have a feeling that it would need a fix that is beyond just wikipedia. Tabbed browsing is great for wikipedia, SqueakBox 21:25, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Well MS Internet Explorer ver 7 has finally caught up with tabbed browsing. Others have had it for years. Surely, it is possible to detect if the browser supports tabs and if so display a button to allow your search to open in a new tab. --CloudSurfer 02:24, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I believe the trick is to hold down some sort of modifier key when you click the submit button. An additional button is surely not needed. — The Storm Surfer 02:50, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a javascript mod in your monobook would help, Think outside the box 12:53, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Got Firefox? You can add it to the search bar next to the address bar. You can set it up to always open a new tab. I'm not sure about IE7. MER-C 13:40, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Template Sandbox ({{X1}}, {{X2}}, etc.) headers

The template sandbox ({{X1}}, {{X2}}, etc.) headers are not inside a <noinclude> block (hence they are transcluded) on pages where the template is used. This inhibits usage for testing templates. (assuming that the user follows the instructions and only touches the lines below the comment or the page is quickly reverted because the instructions weren't followed)
I propose wrapping all boilerplate headers (possibly excluding the comment) in a <noinclude> block.
BTW, I'm not sure if there's a better place to ask this. I would normally ask on the talk page but that's a sandbox as well. (My guess is this is a change that doesn't require formal approval but might need bots to modified to properly reset the pages) --Jeremyb 06:46, 31 July 2007 (UTC) Note: I transplanted this from WP:VPM --Jeremyb 07:15, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Interactive Multimedia Content: Scratch at Wikipedia?

Interactiv Media Content is missing at Wikipedia. There are many things that could be explained and learned more easy, if there was a method including it. Some other encyclopaedias include Interactiv Media Content as one of their bigest advantage against Wikipedia (e.g. Encarta). But where the datatype of other Wikipedia media seems to be obvious, interactive media has a problem.

• It should be strong "sandboxed" (to cause no harm to the user of Wikipedia)
• It should present itself in an alternatively printable way and a clear frame (like a picture)
• It should be based on openSource and common technology
• It should be easy created even by non-programmers
• It should have an educational background

Please feel free to enlarge this list. Most known ways to create interactive data like e.g. Java, Flash will not fulfill these demands.

I think that the new visual programming language Scratch could fulfill it.

Scratch is made by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab for educational purpose and has a strong growing community of teachers and students. It's sandboxed, framed, openSource, very easy to learn and has an educational background (originaly it's invented for school kids). Even if the Scratch Player is based on Java, it is the only Java program needed, because Scratch code is interpreted by this player and so much stronger sandboxed.

Here are some Scratch Project that could ilustrate that, even if they are not created to do so and some are made by children:

• Do You Know Europe?
• Heart simulation
• Vacuum
• Simple Electrical Circuit
• Photosynthesis
• Composer
• Lego Model Creator
• Architectural Stamps

At a Scratch-Forum we had a discussion about connecting Wikipedia and Scratch and I was encouraged to suggest it here. When having a look at The home of Scratch don't laugh about the sometimes childish projects: Children are our future and the potential of a technology they love is big.

Thank you for your feedback in advance. Mtwoll 19:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

One way of doing this would be to enable uploading of scratch files and then allow the java scratch player to be used to display them, perhaps either on the image description pages or inline on other pages. This would require an extension to be written to enable this. Tra (Talk) 21:51, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I am leading the development of the Scratch on-line community. I would be happy to help in making it easy to push projects hosted in the Scratch website into Wikipedia if this is needed. I have seen pictures from Flicker in Wikipedia. Is this done manually or is there some automated system? In any case, let us know if there is anything the Scratch team could do to let non-professional programmers contribute programmable media to Wikipedia. andresmh

In the past, Wikipedia has avoided hotlinking media from other websites (apart from Wikimedia Commons and some Toolserver scripts, which are sister projects). This is mainly because if the media is on another website, it's not possible to connect it with a Wikipedia username and see the full revision history and there's a risk that third party servers may fail, or the media may be deleted or modified in a way that is unsuitable for its use in Wikipedia. There is also the problem that it is very easy for someone to just link to anything that may violate someone's copyright.

This is just in a general sense. Depending on how the Scratch site is designed, some or most of these problems might not apply but it's still best to be on the safe side and not hotlink media on third party sites. As for the Flickr pictures, those were downloaded from Flickr then uploaded separately to Wikimedia Commons.

Even without hotlinking, having Scratch projects embedded in Wikipedia pages would still require developer involvement, since an extension would need to be coded for the MediaWiki software to make it possible to type in a reference to the Scratch file in wiki-code and generate a link to the applet. Enabling Scratch uploads also requires developer involvement, although it is much simpler by comparison since it just requires adding a file extension to the whitelist.

As for what you can do at the moment, the only currently possible way of including Scratch files in Wikipedia is to link to the page on the Scratch website with a basic hyperlink. Tra (Talk) 03:24, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

"Super" watchlist

Could another field be added to the watchlist that would be for users to tag high priority articles and pages that they want to be able to look at quickly - a sort of super watchlist? This would be helpful for people who have edited many pages and have very large watchlists, but only want to look at the full list sometimes. Tvoz |talk 16:23, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Use alternative watchlists via m:Watchlist#Related changes feature ∴ Alex Smotrov 16:42, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Articles entirely written by a single editor

An article entirely written by a single editor have a high probability to :

• be POV,
• not be peer-reviewed,
• need wikification and spell check.

I have written a script which lists all such articles.
Browse the list, check the articles, edit the ones you want to improve, and come back to tell me how to improve this tool :-)

If it proves useful, this tool could be added to the "Fix-up projects" section of Wikipedia:Community_Portal. But first I need your feed-back, and feel free to ask anything about the script or project. Contributors are welcome too :-)

Nicolas1981 11:13, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Articles written entirely (or almost entirely) by a single editor also have a much greater chance of becoming featured articles. -- Qarnos 11:36, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, some of these articles are really good. But I doubt any featured article have been entirely written by a single editor (I haven't checked, though). I think that nobody can be totally unbiased. Nicolas1981 13:51, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the list, it might be wise to drop (for now) the articles beginning with a numeral. Many appear to be articles following a templated or placeholder format, with information about a specific date or an event that took place in a specific year: 104 AH, 1622 in art, 1856 English cricket season, 1770s in archaeology, etc. Because of their automated or template-driven creation, these pages tend to be formatted properly and well wikilinked; I suspect that many are the products of various wikiprojects. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:06, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Even among the articles beginning with a letter, a large proportion of the articles have been automatically created, their content is so small, and their topic so specific, that it's hard to improve them. But anyway, I think it's a good idea to check automatically-created articles, even though most of the time they are more boring than human-created articles. Nicolas1981 16:03, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Watchlisting sections

As the name implies, I propose that watchlisting individual sections be enabled, where, next to the little '[edit]' on a section, there be a '[watch]'. This is useful in places where there are often much discussion under certain sections, but the page as a whole is very busy. WP:ANI would be an example of this. Thoughts? -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 16:59, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

It's been proposed before, and it is a very good idea, but technical limitations disallow it, I believe. Reywas92^Talk 17:00, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't even be responding to this proposal if I could have just watchlisted one section of this page. But I did watch the entire page, and here I am helping discuss others' proposals. A watch section feature would eliminate this incidental involvement on a number of pages, and in my opinion that is a bad thing. BigNate37_(T) 17:19, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, really, its a relatively small loss to quite a good gain when you consider it. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 17:21, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Are you saying you're unable to follow discussions on pages with more than one active discussion? What is the good gain you are referring to, other than convenience—is it actually going to avoid the loss of discussion participants? BigNate37_(T) 17:47, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Possibly. It will allow tracking of more specific pieces of text easier, and would, as you say, be convenient (not that I can see anything wrong with that), with the downside of, in my opinion, minimal loss. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 17:54, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

BigNate37, I understand your point about participation. However, I can see this being extremely useful on high-traffic pages. For one, it would make it easier to focus on a specific issue. Secondly, from a technical perspective, some of us have a lot of watchlisted pages - but the watchlist only displays a maximum of 1000 changes. If one is monitoring a high-traffic page that has hundreds of edits daily, that can drastically impact the "reach" of the watchlist. --Ckatz^chat_spy 00:29, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Once again, this is a problem that would be fixed by a proper forum system. User:Dcoetzee/Why wikithreads are bad. Dcoetzee 19:03, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

As written this feature request is not going to work, because it's too easy to renumber sections (if I add or remove a section above, the number changes). >Radiant< 12:10, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I think that's the least of its problems, really. Not that I'm not in favor of it!

And yes, this has been discussed before: last change before automated deletion (which would have been much easier to find if you could watchlist sections, by the way) — The Storm Surfer 13:43, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Centralized Wikipedia geographic database?

Based on the recent visibility of Wikipedia geographic coordinates on Google Earth, I have collected a set of 600+ significantly incorrect geographic references. For example, 300+ of them are communes in the Calvados department of France which were placed east of the Prime Meridian, instead of west.

I have been told on the general help desk that there is no central database for such information. That would imply that the Google Earth presentation could be wrong in other languages, even if I manually fixed the English pages.

Surely, there must be a way to introduce a centralized geographic database which could be automatically referenced by templates for each language translation, and for any other georeferences.

Equally, I would expect that the multilingual links on the left-hand side of each page should be derived from a links database fopr each page, so that if a new language translation were to be created for a page, all of the pages for the existing various translations would get the new link, and the links would always be in the same pseudo-alphabetic order. Fairfax Geographer 05:37, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

mw:Wikidata and m:Wikimaps might hold the answers. (I think the projects are more active than those doc pages would suggest. Dig around a little. Tell us what you find :) --Quiddity 17:30, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers. They point to areas of considerable complexity and uncertain or unlikely action. We're all volunteers in these efforts, which means that newcomers with specific queries, ideas, or concerns must spend days or weeks working through Wiki terminology, multitudinous forums, etc. I had posted this question in several places before being directed here. I don't have the personal time for continuing research to become a Wiki guru, and I can't afford a trip to the August Taiwan convention to talk to other experts. So, I will get some volunteer efforts going for the 600+ manual edits (and growing daily) in English for the time being, and leave the other languages to a future day. Fairfax Geographer 09:20, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

User:The Anome is running a bot that adds coordinates to articles automatically. He uses the coordinates in other wikipedias for this (among other sources). You may want to contact him; he can probably make a list with problematic coordinates very quickly. Have you already found Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates? If you want volunteers to correct the coordinates, that is one place that you can find them. Eugène van der Pijll 12:43, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Welcomebot

Is there a bot that automatically leaves a welcome template on new user talk pages. If not, could one be created? just a thought - Pheonix15 17:14, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

This has been opposed in the past because of the concern that a user being welcomed by a bot is not as 'personal' as being welcomed by a human. Tra (Talk) 18:02, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

But some human welcomers welcome so many new users, it's like a bot is leaving the message. Why not just have newly registered account automatically be redirected to WP:WELCOME? Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 18:05, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Because it would not be personal. A.Z. 01:05, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I know it wouldn't be personal, but even a welcome message left by a bot could be made to look like a human entry. Most new editors on Wikipedia really aren't going to be able to tell the difference, and it would save the time of many who could be doing better things, such as writing new content. As long as the bot's username doesn't contain the word "bot", we'll be set. Chrisch^Talk 14:21, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Also, a bot would be unlikely to reply if the new user had questions. — The Storm Surfer 14:36, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

While it would be impersonal, I think such a bot would be very useful... If you look at the standard welcome message, it achieves two goals... the first is to let the new user know that someone else has noticed that they have created an account and joined the project. To makes the new user feel good about joining the project and want to contribute. The second is to provide them with links to the core policies and guidelines, so that they can learn how Wikipidia works. It is the second part that I want to focus on... While our Welcoming Committee volunteers do a great (and often thankless) job, they don't (can't) get to every new user. Thus, we have new users that never get welcomed... which means they never are provided with the links to the core policies. A bot would take care of this. I don't think we should abandon the Welcoming Committy... we should have both a bot and human volunteers. Blueboar 15:20, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't really think that the links to core policies matter to newcomers. I think the welcome matters most, so I a message such as "Hey, I notice you! Welcome!" would be enough. A.Z. 19:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

As with most issues, I find that I see both sides of the issue, and while I do agree that having a bot may be helpful in some cases, here are the reasons I would probably vote to keep the Welcoming Committee:

I personally don't just drop welcomes on any new user. First, I go through and check their contributions, and talk page. If they've received many warnings, or a bunch of notes regarding CSD or Image deletions, I tend to not drop my personalized welcome, because it shows they've previously ignored attempts to have them review the help info.

I have noticed while doing this, that many of these new accounts are created exclusively with the purpose of defaming/vandalizing pages (see information posted today on Morton's Page .) In that specific case, an article was published online, specifically directing people to create accounts with the express intention of targeting this member and vandalizing his pages. Now, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to welcome people who come here with the solitary intent on doing damage. ;)

I will also drop a welcome on a new user's page if I notice while on RC/VP that they've never had any activity on their talk page. Especially when they are contributing constructively, and especially if they seem to need a little help with formatting (like not 'indenting' paragraphs lol).

Probably the most important reason, if those folks the bot welcomes have questions, they have nobody to ask. Yes, there are the many help pages, but I can tell you from personal experience that that is a whole lot of information to wade through to find the one answer you need sometimes.

I've responded swiftly to new user's questions after I've welcomed them, and I take great pride in that. If a bot was going around welcoming every individual, it would take a lot from the community. Those in the Welcoming Committee seem to be more than happy to do it, and I'd hope between everyone, they get a good majority of the contributing new members. For me personally, I live a pretty solitary life, and I feel at least vicariously, that welcoming new users is spreading a smile that I'm not able to do in real life. And there's nothing I enjoy more than getting that orange box telling me I have a new message! ^Ariel♥Gold 15:34, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Another shortcoming of this proposal is that the default template is, frankly, inadequate. It provides far too few useful links and is not sufficiently visually interesting for new users (although some customised templates go too far in the other direction). I use my own template, because none of the published custom design quite fit the bill for me, but if you wanted a better template for a bot to use, I can envisage arguments about whose template should be chosen. Yet another shortcoming – mentioned by ArielGold – is that a bot cannot estimate the nature of a new editor by viewing their initial edits; a human can, and I prefer not to welcome anyone who has made nothing but obviously unconstructive edits because giving them more information may actually be counter-productive. People who sign up solely for the purposes of spamming, vandalism, or other bad behaviour tend to become obvious to a human eye quite quickly. Adrian M. H. 21:33, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't oppose the idea because it would be impersonal (most users welcome people using a template, so it makes no real difference). With help, a link to a help page is enough. But I agree with the above point that vandals should not be warned. Hence I would oppose a bot for now. Recurring dreams 11:56, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

While it is somewhat distasteful, it might be worthwhile if each bot post returned a helpful user (i.e. randomly from a list to which welcomers might add themselves) who might help a new user if they need guidance, rather than signing as "WelcomeBot". The welcome itself is somewhat dry - In my opinion, I don't think many newbies actually read it all. Nihiltres^(t.l) 14:05, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, Nihiltres, if the welcome bot's message included links to a live user (picked from a list of volunteers) to refer them to for questions, that would make a big difference. However, I personally still like the Welcoming Committee, and I'd be sad if that was done away with by bot welcomes. ^Ariel♥Gold 14:23, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

• Remember that most new users in fact aren't, so the bot would be pretty pointless for those. >Radiant< 12:11, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Dealing with entirely in-universe articles

I've been suffering through two Afd discussions related to Harry Potter battles. A lot of the people arguing to keep are using the What about X? argument, often citing Star Wars and LotR battles. I'm wondering why exactly we have stuff like Category:Star Wars battles and Category:Middle-earth battles- the articles contained within them are entirely in-universe with no real-world significance, cruft, composed entirely from primary sources, and basically extended plot summaries.-Wafulz 22:09, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

See the last two examples at Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)#Examples --Tim4christ17 ^talk 22:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

• Basically because they're easy to keep neutral and verified, and because a lot of people care about them and are interested in them. >Radiant< 12:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Random Article Feature

First and Foremost I just want to thank all of you for producing such an incredible tool.

Quickly I wanted to mention an idea I had for the website:

I use the random article feature all the time. If I am sitting around at night watching a baseball game i will click on random article to learn different things about different items. What I would like to see is the option to some how filter what goes through random article. (i.e. history, sports, US, entertainment, ancient history, etc.) This is just an idea that I thought might be useful to some of the users.

I want to thank all of you again for all that you do.

You can browse through the Wikipedia:Categorical index page, (or this one [1]), and choose random articles from a particular cateogry. That's close to what you're looking for, I think. Recurring dreams 12:00, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm definitely sure it is possible to create a random featured article tool – look at this used on Portal:Middle-earth. –sebi 11:02, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism Parole

Please see here for a proposal about unblocking users and giving them parole. Feel free to comment/add. --(Review Me) R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 03:06, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

An "essential" Wikipedia?

Is there any sort of database, or filter, or overlay, in existence right now for an "essential" Wikipedia?

As an example, if I was running a school in rural Congo with no internet access, it would be nice to have one CDR (or whatever size medium is required) that has just the essential educational articles, with all the trivia and pop culture stripped out.

I was thinking that would be an interesting idea - a way to be able to read, or download, only the essential articles.

I assume identifying the articles would just take the addition of a tag. As for a script to assemble the updated essential articles for download, though, that is beyond me. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad 19:51, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

You might be thinking along the lines of the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team's release versions. I don't think that their releases, which are more "general interest" than subject-specific, are exactly what you're looking for, but it's the closest approximation I can think of. John Carter 19:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia CD Selection in co-operation with SOS Children looks like the sort of thing you are thinking of. It looks as if the 2007 selection is available. There is also information on the 2006 Wikipedia CD Selection on Wikipedia main space.--Boson 17:17, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Project-specific clutter on article pages

Just curious other opinions about the practice of placing huge honking project-specific tags onto articles, as for example here. IMO, it's bad enough that the top of many talk pages are occupied by multiple project banners -- but now expanding the clutter into the article space seems a bit too much. I mean, in this case, it is not like the article is horrendously bad in a general sense -- it seems that it just isn't up to snuff by some standards of a wikiproject. I thought that sort of tagging is one of the things that the project banners on the talk pages were for. older ≠ wiser 02:15, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree - a simple cleanup tag would do here. And then only if it violates actual wikipedia guidlines, etc. If there's a project about the standard "format" of a page, it should be brought up on the talk page, not the article itself. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 12:18, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Roadcruft has about gone far enough in considering itself some type of separate entity as it is. I get more and more tempted to write an MfD every time I see something like this. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 12:29, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I find it interesting and very frustrating that tags that could go onto the article page - visited by those that are into improving / looking abit further - are put onto the talk page e.g. (see 1911 (encyclopedia Britannia)). Such like should go onto the article page so that the 'casual researcher' has the easily accessible information about the subject... But no instead it is put on the talk page - somewhere they may not even know exist, let alone visit. Wikipedia is an platform for knowledge - we should not clutter the article page with development demands at the same time hide under discussion buttons the sources of such knowledge. --Edmund Patrick 14:41, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Are you talking about Template:1911? As it states there, it should be placed on article pages, and at the same time Template:1911 talk should be placed on the associated talkpage (in order to categorize it). (For future reference: When describing a problem, linking to an example article will always make things clearer ;) --Quiddity 17:21, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

It seems really clear to me that the template example you present should have been placed on the talk page. — The Storm Surfer 17:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Edmund the Martyr is a perfect case. a casual researcher arrives reads and leaves, why would they go to tabs - discussion - history - watch etc. And where did some of this information come from but Encyclopedia Britannia, as it says on the discussion page. And actually there is a bot that moves such Template:1911 from the article page to the talk page. (It once was there). Sources of the knowledge should be easily accessible to the casual research so that they can verify elsewhere if they so wish. --Edmund Patrick 07:06, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

sorry people I knew I could find it somewhere; please see Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_July_18 for an earlier discussion --Edmund Patrick 07:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I"m confused -- A reference to the 1911 encyclopedia has been present in some from or another for the entire existence of the article. And as near as I can tell, {{1911 talk}} was added to the talk page by PbBot (talk · contribs) on 09:21, June 7, 2007 (UNC). older ≠ wiser 11:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I suppose I could say case proven- as I had missed the statement at the bottom of the article page - but not the large tag at the top of the talk page. It maybe just me, or possibly others also miss that statement. Thanks for the pointer. --Edmund Patrick 12:04, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I've sorted the sections at Edmund the Martyr, per WP:LAYOUT - it should be a bit clearer now :) --Quiddity 16:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to block the indexing of anything which is not an article

I would like to propose that Wikipedia block all search engines from indexing anything that which is not an article. This includes User pages, User Talk pages, category talk pages etc. for the following reasons.

1. Many times people post information on their own user page or talk pages which they later do not want displayed, since it is being used to harass them. The blocking of the indexing of these pages will prevent them from being found in search engines. Removing the content is not always an option, due to scrapers that will still have the old information. Although not all scrapers follow robots.txt, this will help for the majority that do. This would also stop Google and others that cache the page from returning a result with information that is not wanted, as google and others update their cache only once every while.
2. Doing so will help prevent harassment from those posting false information about people on random talk pages, which are not monitored as often and carefully as regular article pages.
3. This will speed up wikipedia tremendously because wikipedia will not have the extra load that the search engines place while indexing the talk pages and user pages.
4. Wikipedia is meant to serve as an encyclopedia, while the user pages and talk pages are helpful for those writing it, they are not helpful for those looking for information. Clicking on a search engine result and ending up on a user page or talk page, is very confusing for the visitor.
5. This will cause more pages from wikipedia to be properly indexed, as wikipedia will have more bandwith and server load that could be used for regular pages.

--PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 22:56, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

You more than once made a false assumption. Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines don't impose any signficant load on Wikipedia as we have arrangements in place to provide them with independent dedicated feeds. In exchange for which they have provided material support in the form of servers and space in their data centers. As to the more general point, as an editor I find it useful to be able to use third party search engines to find content from those other namespaces, and in my opinion the rest of your argument don't provide a very compelling reason to stop that. Dragons flight 23:16, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd note that Google would still search the mirror sites - I'm unsure whether this is relevant to the indexing or not (I believe it is relevant to your first point, regardless) ... but a quick Google search for my User page brought up three mirrors - one of which has already caught an edit I made just a few hours ago. [2][3][4] --Tim4christ17 ^talk 00:41, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I often use Google to find templates, I don't think this is a good idea. Tim Vickers 01:23, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I support this proposal but I thinks it's clear there's no consensus on this. How we approach Google indexing should be about readers not editors. Notwithstanding this I do think redirect pages should be excluded from indexing. Indexing them serves no purpose other than search engine spamming! In the meantime anyone with some time on their hands could have a go at creating a customised google search (See [5] for more info). This could be used to exclude non-articles and mirror sites from google. (I'd use it.) Alternatively it could just search wiki articles and could be used as a more useful alternative to wikipedia's internal search. Caveat lector 15:06, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

• It appears the proposal is moot, and cannot be successfully implemented with the result the proposer intends, as mirror sites will be indexed, and the mirrors are under no obligation to keep such blocking templates or commands on pages they obtain. There are a lot more search engines than the big three or four. Further, the user pages are freely available for download because of the license they are created under: basically anyone may obtain all of the data under GFDL. If the pages are not indexed here, you can count on them being indexed in multiple places elsewhere, or to be done so privately. Preventing local indexing will provide editor/users with false sense of privacy and security which cannot be obtained. -- Yellowdesk 13:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

For User namespaces only?

I think it would be reasonable to remove the User namespaces from search engines. It aids in the privacy of our editors and discourages user space vanity articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:20, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

But that's how we find them, too. And spammy userpages. MER-C 03:21, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. We can start talking about this when our internal search engine gets better. Right now, Google is too useful for maintenance work to disable it. Kusma (talk) 09:21, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not liking this idea at all. If it weren't for google, tons of stuff (including discussions, userpage stuff, etc) would easily get lost and not be accessible when it needs to be. It's already a pain in the ass to find stuff, lets not make it any harder. If you do not want the internet to know something, then here's a good idea, stop talking about it in a highly public and visible place like Wikipedia. If anyone is worried about privacy then they shouldn't be putting sensitive information on any page of Wikipedia. -- Ned Scott 03:38, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

We also need to search Image space, not only article space. (SEWilco 04:11, 18 July 2007 (UTC))

What we really need is a bot that could find spammy or otherwise "bad" userpages, to reduce our dependance on Google. Nathanww 14:44, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I personally search wikipedia using a google directed only at the site in my toolbar, and often search for non-articles, including users. This would seriously inconvenience me for the sake of provided privacy.. to people who have published the information on the internet. Everyone with a userpage knows that they have no expectation of privacy.

I also doubt that people searching for a topic in the encyclopedia would be very likely to get a userpage very high in their google results. Atropos 00:20, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

The idea is great in theory, but when you look at it in practice I don't think this is useful. Google searching of all the namespaces is very helpful considering the MediaWiki search engine has a few caveats. If people are using information from Userspace as a source of information it shows that they haven't researched the quality of their source. For example, if I am going to use some information in an article, I make sure that where I am getting it from fits all the appropriate criteria. If I was using Wikipedia articles as sources for something else, I would put a little research into Wikipedia first and realise that Userspace isn't a reliable source of information. Nicko (Talk•Contribs)Review my progress! 03:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Agree with the 1st two sentences: MediaWiki's internal search system is horrible! Frequently it just doesn work and instead... points you to Google and/or Yahoo. If that's still going to happen, we need to make sure what people are being directed to will not be artificially crippled v. the internal system. 68.39.174.238 16:24, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

It is very useful to be able to search all namespaces. What we could have as a compromise is a template to slap on pages which prevents them from being indexed... that way my templates under my userpage would be indexed while my userpage proper would not (for example). BigNate37_(T) 19:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

It would take more than a simple template to achieve that - the mediawiki software would need to be changed, or a table of pages that should not be indexed would need to be created. Would that have consensus? — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll support this; although I don't know exactly how it would be implemented. And I also feel that the built-in Wiki search isn't very good.--HereToHelp 01:32, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

• It appears the proposal is moot, and cannot be successfully implemented in the way the editor proposes, for the reasons stated further above. -- Yellowdesk 13:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: opt-in noindexing for user pages

I propose that a table be created that simply lists pages (in user space). Pages in the table would be served with headers to prevent indexing. Users who wish to do so could request to have their pages added to the list. This would require implementation in the mediawiki code. The point is to allow for greater privacy for users who don't want their WP page to appear in Google. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I would agree with that, as long as it was limited to user and user talk pages. Think outside the box 12:47, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• Well yes, of course it would require a change to the software. However, I don't see why the software change couldn't implement a magic word that could be worked into a template. Speaking as someone in the field, there is no reason to expect the devs to be unable to do what we want. If there's a problem with having it exactly how we want it, they will let us know what the next-best option is, and until then it is unwise to preemptively bastardize the proposed feature. This seems to be the rationale behind a table instead of a tag; in my eyes, a template or magic word like {{DONTCRAWL}} or {{DISALLOWROBOTS}} would be best. BigNate37_(T) 16:36, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• Side note: This was made possible through the page protection form in r23166, but this was removed by Brion due to future compatabilty concerns in r23226. Prodego ^talk 16:46, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

If this can be done with relative ease, I would support it and make use of it. Adrian M. H. 16:51, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• It appears the proposal is moot, and cannot be successfully implemented in the way the editor proposes, for the reasons stated further above. -- Yellowdesk 13:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I think opt-in no-indexing is the worst of all worlds except for the few things we already noindex though manual server config (AFD). External search on the policy and talk namespaces are just too useful.. and with a few exceptions they don't cause much harm. I have noticed, however, that some WP:FOO style redirects coming up in google as elevated hits. :(

I think, in particular, user NS is a special case. See below for thoughts on why user NS shouldn't be indexed. --Gmaxwell 17:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: Mandatory noindex/nofollow for User: ns

This was moved from Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#User_pages_in_search_engines.3F

Is there any reason why user pages need to be indexed by the likes of Google? I think we should modify Wikipedia's robots.txt to exclude pages in the User namespace (noindex, nofollow). That way people can feel more comfortable about listing personal information on their user pages. Besides, is there any advantage to searching the User namespace? Andre (talk) 23:00, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Right now there is a fair number of cases where folks have abused our hesitance to delete things from the User space of others, and have stuffed vanispamvertisments and POV article forks into userpages. Random people on the internet find these pages and can't tell them from a normal article page. Of course, we should delete the crud as we find it... but denying the gain is also productive. I'd also like to see "this is a userpage" notice displayed automatically on every userpage... but I'm guessing that it wouldn't be widely liked. ;) so at least we could take Andre's suggestion. --Gmaxwell 23:04, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any major reason why not to do this and I think that the advantages are, as you said Gmaxwell, stopping random people viewing all the rubbish people can put on the page because it's sort of "theirs". I think that removing it from indexing could also discourage users from making it a bit of a personal website, and maybe focus it more on Wikipedia. The "This is a Userpage" I can't see working for most people, as if the argument is people don't notice the "User:xxxxxx" title then they won't notice a small banner. And a big banner would annoy everyone. So overall I am in support of Andre's proposal. AndrewJDTALK -- 23:46, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

User space has long been nofollow territory on enwiki, precisely because of concerns about spam. I'd rather not see noindex in user space (or anywhere else on Wikipedia) because our internal search just isn't very good. Whether collaborating on an article or putting together an Arbitration case, there are a lot of good and useful reasons to be able to search the User: and User talk: namespaces through an external engine (okay, Google).

On Gmaxwell's and AndrewJD's comments above, who are these 'random people', and how are they coming across user pages in their Google searches? Because our articles are so heavily linked from the rest of the web, they tend to come up awfully early (if not absolutely first) in searches. I would have thought that someone would need to be using rather specific, targeted keywords in their search queries in order to come across a user page before an article...? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:00, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm well aware no follow for external links outside of the main ns, since I was the one to push that proposal for en in the first place. Spammers have now discovered that they can spam an unwatched article in main ns and link to it all over wikipedia, so I think we should also nofollow all links in userspace if we allow indexing to happen there at all.

In some cases we have no article, because it was deleted as spam. I've seen some stock pump-and-dump spamvertisements use Wikipedia user pages in this way. For vanity myspace pages in userspace there obviously won't be an article.

For POV article forks you'll see the user page as the third or fourth hit on google after the primary article but still in a top position.

If someone can demonstrate a need for search on User: namespace, I'll change my position, but as it stands I don't see why we shouldn't no-index. --Gmaxwell 18:19, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Can we at least somehow enable noindex on an optional basis for user pages? I would set many of mine to that. Andre (talk) 21:35, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Interactive Multimedia Content: Scratch at Wikipedia?

Interactiv Media Content is missing at Wikipedia. There are many things that could be explained and learned more easy, if there was a method including it. Some other encyclopaedias include Interactiv Media Content as one of their bigest advantage against Wikipedia (e.g. Encarta). But where the datatype of other Wikipedia media seems to be obvious, interactive media has a problem.

• It should be strong "sandboxed" (to cause no harm to the user of Wikipedia)
• It should present itself in an alternatively printable way and a clear frame (like a picture)
• It should be based on openSource and common technology
• It should be easy created even by non-programmers
• It should have an educational background

Please feel free to enlarge this list. Most known ways to create interactive data like e.g. Java, Flash will not fulfill these demands.

I think that the new visual programming language Scratch could fulfill it.

Scratch is made by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab for educational purpose and has a strong growing community of teachers and students. It's sandboxed, framed, openSource, very easy to learn and has an educational background (originaly it's invented for school kids). Even if the Scratch Player is based on Java, it is the only Java program needed, because Scratch code is interpreted by this player and so much stronger sandboxed.

Here are some Scratch Project that could ilustrate that, even if they are not created to do so and some are made by children:

• Do You Know Europe?
• Heart simulation
• Vacuum
• Simple Electrical Circuit
• Photosynthesis
• Composer
• Lego Model Creator
• Architectural Stamps

At a Scratch-Forum we had a discussion about connecting Wikipedia and Scratch and I was encouraged to suggest it here. When having a look at The home of Scratch don't laugh about the sometimes childish projects: Children are our future and the potential of a technology they love is big.

Thank you for your feedback in advance. Mtwoll 19:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

One way of doing this would be to enable uploading of scratch files and then allow the java scratch player to be used to display them, perhaps either on the image description pages or inline on other pages. This would require an extension to be written to enable this. Tra (Talk) 21:51, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I am leading the development of the Scratch on-line community. I would be happy to help in making it easy to push projects hosted in the Scratch website into Wikipedia if this is needed. I have seen pictures from Flicker in Wikipedia. Is this done manually or is there some automated system? In any case, let us know if there is anything the Scratch team could do to let non-professional programmers contribute programmable media to Wikipedia. andresmh

In the past, Wikipedia has avoided hotlinking media from other websites (apart from Wikimedia Commons and some Toolserver scripts, which are sister projects). This is mainly because if the media is on another website, it's not possible to connect it with a Wikipedia username and see the full revision history and there's a risk that third party servers may fail, or the media may be deleted or modified in a way that is unsuitable for its use in Wikipedia. There is also the problem that it is very easy for someone to just link to anything that may violate someone's copyright.

This is just in a general sense. Depending on how the Scratch site is designed, some or most of these problems might not apply but it's still best to be on the safe side and not hotlink media on third party sites. As for the Flickr pictures, those were downloaded from Flickr then uploaded separately to Wikimedia Commons.

Even without hotlinking, having Scratch projects embedded in Wikipedia pages would still require developer involvement, since an extension would need to be coded for the MediaWiki software to make it possible to type in a reference to the Scratch file in wiki-code and generate a link to the applet. Enabling Scratch uploads also requires developer involvement, although it is much simpler by comparison since it just requires adding a file extension to the whitelist.

As for what you can do at the moment, the only currently possible way of including Scratch files in Wikipedia is to link to the page on the Scratch website with a basic hyperlink. Tra (Talk) 03:24, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Move-protection

It may be something to consider to move-protect established articles that shouldn't need to be moved. For example, there is no reason at all that the article George W. Bush Rat or Jerry Falwell should ever have to be moved, so the only "benefit" of not move-protecting those articles is opening the possibility of page-move vandalism. Melsaran (formerly Salaskаn) 19:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Your first example is move-protected. The second is not. What specifically is your proposal? Who exactly should decide when an article's name is "right", and therefore should be move-protected? Should they do this for less important articles too? If not, who decides what is "less important" and what is "more important"? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:18, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Have a look through the archives if you can, because this proposal was raised a couple of months ago. I think the response was a bit mixed. Adrian M. H. 20:57, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

List it at WP:PEREN :) Melsaran (formerly Salaskаn) 21:12, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Bad example then. Still, this applies to many articles for which the name is stable and doesn't ever need to be changed. Melsaran (formerly Salaskаn) 21:12, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea, per se. But as John pointed out, there are some decision-based difficulties in its implementation. Adrian M. H. 21:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

As noted by others this creates issues of ownership. I can think of articles where you'd think the name should be permanent but to some extent is open to question, for example Lewis Carroll, which is the prominent penname of the real-life Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (redirect), which it might conceivably make sense to move. Dcoetzee 22:20, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedian of the Month

I think it would be a great idea to start a wikipedian of the month. We'll have candidates state their case for one month while editors vote for who they feel should be wikipedian of the month. At the end of the month the votes will be counted and whoever has the most will be wikipedian of the month.--Southern Texas 18:00, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

And where would the "Wikipedian of the month" be featured? On the community portal? Melsaran (formerly Salaskаn) 19:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh no, more backslapping? This kind of thing does nothing positive. At best, it massages a few egos and at worst, you'll see clique voting. Adrian M. H. 20:54, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

See previous suggestion at Wikipedia talk:Featured content/Archive 1#Featured project. To summarize: No. "Featured" status is for highlighting encyclopedic content, not for users, templates, categories, or anything else.

Things like this quickly devolve into the inanity that is currently at Wikipedia:Best User Page Contest. (Which someone really ought to MfD..) --Quiddity 21:08, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I think it would make editors more constructive because they would want to be wikipedian of the month and would work extra hard. It would be a plus for the expansion of the encyclopedia.--Southern Texas 21:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It's nice in theory, but in practice all this serves is to hurt feelings and exclude people. If you don't enjoy editing Wikipedia for the sake of editing, you probably shouldn't hang around --L-- 21:33, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with L. ElinorD (talk) 21:36, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

People should not need affirmation to know whether they are doing good work. Adrian M. H. 21:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

If somebody doesn't get it, it would be an incentive for them to work harder and would be a plus for the encyclopedia. There would be no votes against anybody, just for somebody and that can't hurt anybody's feelings because there won't be any insulting comments against people. If you don't vote for somebody you won't leave a comment and whatever votes they get will make them feel good. If they don't get any votes they will work harder.--Southern Texas 21:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

No. If they don't get any votes, they will likely get very disheartened. Adrian M. H. 21:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

The fact is that some people do need affirmation that what they are doing is good. I personally don't but I don't think people like this should be excluded. This will increase interest in productivitiy just like in a business with the use of the employee of the month. The competitive nature increases productivity. I think that admins should be excluded and there should be an edit limit. This will make more productive users and make articles better. Editors shouldn't be able to nominate themselves so they will at least get one vote.--Southern Texas 21:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Why wouldn't seeing that the editor got a barnstar or some other form of recognition be enough? John Carter 22:11, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Because that is rare for an editor with under 500 or even 1000 edits.--Southern Texas 22:21, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

So presumably you would consider that even editors with so few edits could be nominated. Presumably by themselves, as few others would have noted the name in that time. On that basis, I would assume that what you're talking about might be something more like "Newcomer of the Month", for people with only one or two months experience. I would think such a process might be even more likely to make people leave, as these comparatively new people might be even more likely to react negatively if their new contributions wouldn't be enough to win. John Carter 22:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

S.Tex, why do you think this will increase productivity? It will cause a LOT of time wasting, polling, popularity contesting, social networking, effort, and drama that could all go into making Wikipedia a better place instead. And think about how many millions of editors we have- do you really think that selecting twelve Wikipedians a year will do anything but discourage others who know they will never, ever be popular or well known enough to make it? Also, what you say concerns me--- Why do you think Wikipedia should have editors competing with each other? We're all about collaboration, if we isolate ourselves we're doing nothing but harming the project. We already have rewards for making GA, FA, DYK articles, we already have barnstars, but do you REALLY think that people are going to put more EFFORT into the ENCYCLOPEDIA from this or just TIME into the popularity contest? --L-- 22:26, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It was just an idea to increase productivity and add more productive users. I'm sorry I wasted everybody's time--Southern Texas 22:41, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Please don't be put off by one idea that was not well received. Adrian M. H. 23:18, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. The idea is not a bad one; unfortunately, there's a good deal of history already to indicate that the execution often leaves a lot to be desired, which is a separate matter. And it isn't a waste of anybody's time to propose an idea that you think might work. Personally, I wouldn't mind it myself, but the history seems to indicate that it is likely to get unforseen and unwanted consequences. Unfortunately. John Carter 23:30, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

How about this, a new editor who does the most constructive edits in a given month can be called the wikipedian of the month.--Southern Texas 00:59, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Use a barnstar. Ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject Awards about creating something like a "newcomer barnstar". Instead of inventing a new process, always try to use the ones already in place - that way you avoid extra pages of instructions to read, and in this case can give barnstars to many editors per month, etc. --Quiddity 04:15, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Quiddity and in regard to your most recent comment that is what the Exceptional New User Award is for. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (tαlk) 00:24, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

It's a bad idea and your response here showed why perfectly. If you feel someone did a good job, go and personally thank them on their talk page.--Svetovid 15:59, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Quotations

I have restored the {{proposed}} banner for Wikipedia:Quotations (WP:QUOTE) because it seems to have been replaced with {{historical}} a while back without discussion. If anyone can point to some discussion that formally rejected this proposal or otherwise discussed its removal from consideration, please note that on its talk page.

After a little time to get some notice for the old proposal, I would like us to review and edit it to reflect current practices and/or establish new ones. I am especially concerned about a growing problem with editors doing mass transfers of quotations from Wikipedia articles to Wikiquote with no regard for the edit history or other crediting required by GFDL. (See q:WQ:VP#Probable GFDL problems with improper transwikis for only the latest of heated discussions about this problem.) We at Wikiquote are beginning to simply delete these contributions because fixing the vast problem is far more work than we can reasonably do. (After all, there are at least 150 active Wikipedians to every active Wikiquotian.) Since simple deletion hardly serves Wikimedia's interests, we need to establish a formal, practical policy for where, when, and how to do this, and this proposal page seems to be the logical home for it.

I would appreciate assistance in (re-)developing this potential guideline. I will also be requesting help from Wikiquotians, many of whom are Wikipedians, too. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:18, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Uh, on second thought, I think we can skip the question of the historical tagging. I've been led to understand that this can be a sensitive subject, and I don't believe we need to go into it here. Regardless of the history, we now have a compelling reason to have some guidelines on Wikipedia about quotations, even if they only address when to incorporate them in articles and when to move them to Wikiquote. (I'm sure there will be much more than that, but this issue alone is urgent justification for a page.) So let's just look forward on this. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:58, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

• Yeah, thanks for the attack. "Historical" means inactive, therefore if there is no discussion on something, it is by definition historical. What did you think this was, a bureaucratic procedure? >Radiant< 10:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Radiant, I'm sorry that you felt I was attacking you. My concern was that I am not familiar with the formal processes of Wikipedia policy/guideline proposal approval and rejection. I spent a few minutes reviewing Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, Category:Wikipedia proposals, Category:Wikipedia rejected proposals, this page, and Wikipedia talk:Quotations, and found nothing that suggested there was a dicussion to close this proposal, merely a determination by a single editor that the proposal had lost steam. But my quick review could easily have missed something not obvious to a first-time policy proposer (as is true for so many processes within Wikipedia, which can indeed be quite bureaucratic and has many times the formality of most other Wikimedia projects), so I wanted to be sure I was not missing something.

As I try to be thorough, I stated my findings to date and asked for any information I'd missed. Within minutes of my announcement, I was warned that some might take exception to my implied criticism; thus my subsequent caveat above. Criticism was not my intent. My primary goal here is to ensure that Wikipedia and Wikiquote have a place to establish how they interact, because we at Wikiquote are getting tired of fixing or deleting massive GFDL violations by those of us at Wikipedia who have the good intention of transferring quotes from WP but seem unaware of the requirements for crediting contributions.

I have no quarrel with your historical tagging. I believe I understand the rationale, and clearly no one disagreed with it back then. But we surely need something now. I hope that you will accept my apology for this inadvertent offense, and that we can move on to the effort of resurrecting and updating this proposal. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I've been mostly offline for the past few days due to some computer shuffling. I hope to present a list of issues I see centering around quotations on Wikipedia before the weekend is over. There is already some activity on individual questions going on at WPt:QUOTE, and I hope that with the addition of my laundry list, we'll get some action going there. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:10, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Resources

Hey all, I would like to know if there is a group of wikipedians dedicated solely to helping others find sources for articles? I have access to quite a few databases and would like to help out as many people as possible, so a central location for such requests would be helpful. --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 06:08, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes. (some of these are inactive and should probably be merged). See:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check (main)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange (newest, active)
• Wikipedia:Research resources (oldest, tagged as inactive) (see also the links in its top-right navbox)
• Wikipedia:Library (offline resources)

Hope that helps. --Quiddity 17:12, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow, there is (was?) an effort in creating a library listing? That's a surprise to me, especially since I came up with a similar idea independently and created User:BigNate37/Library... BigNate37_(T) 17:18, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

This does help :), I might be back with some proposals. Cheers--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 11:08, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Do consider these as well:

• Wikipedia:Newspapers and magazines request service
• Wikipedia group at LibraryThing.com

And there are a number of pages in the Wikipedia namespace that simply list resources; I'm omitting them here because you asked only about Wikipedians helping others. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:25, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Currency

I suspect that something like this may have been considered before, but if so then I don't know the outcome.

I think it would be useful to have a unified way that currency amounts can be quoted with templates, that result in useful links for the reader.

What I envisage (setting aside for the moment the fact that {{currency}} already exists as a redirect with a number of links to it) is a setup where you can enter something like:

{{currency|GBP|20}}

or

{{currency|CHF|30}}

and then this gets rendered in the article as something like "£20" or "30 Fr." (i.e. taking into account the symbol and ordering), but as a link which takes you to a page where there is a link to the relevant article (e.g. Pound sterling or Swiss franc) and also links to third-party websites showing the currently equivalent value of that sum in other currencies (something vaguely analogous to what is done with book sources).

This does somewhat depend on third-party sites supporting some URL format that embeds the query information appropriately, but if not then probably the prospect of traffic generated from Wikipedia would be enough to persuade those site maintainers to implement it.

No doubt there could be other template options like overriding the display symbol or possibly specifying a date for historical conversion, but this is the gist of it.

Does this sound desirable? Feasible?

I must admit that I probably don't have the time or knowledge to actually help with this, so it would depend on whether anyone else has the inclination.

Many thanks. — Alan^✉ 11:42, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia guidelines on currency are stated at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Currencies. If you want to make a proposal, the talk page of that guideline is probably the best place.

Having said that, I think there is may be some fundamental misconception here. First, it doesn't really matter if the euro to dollar ration is 1:1.37 or .95:1, as long as the reader understands that the two are roughly of the same value. That's because Wikipedia articles contain historical information: if an article says that "X purchased Y for US$100,000 in 2002", the current exchange rate is almost irrelevant. Second, as the MoS page states, it's always possible to use a piped link, as in ₮; the interested reader can then follow the link to the article, which (based my non-random sampling of one currency) will contain links to currency exchange sites, if the reader is so interested. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:43, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Biography Info Box Nonsense

Well, perhaps nonsense is a bit strong, but can someone please tell me why biographies include the age of the person along with their birth date? Not only do I feel that since the age will change, subsequently needing updating each year, I also feel it is indirectly insulting to any reader. Are we assuming that the reader can't subtract the current year from the birth year?

In any event, crack open an encyclopedia. You will find birth dates (and dates of death if applicable), but to include the age as of the writing of the entry would be silly. The only time I can think an age may be noted is for death.

I guess I'd just like to know the reasoning for including the current age of the person in the biography of a living person.

DeeKenn 15:59, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

There is a template in the infobox which automatically calulates the age so it doesn't need annual updating. I find it sto be a courtesy. Yes, it is very simple for anyone to do the simple math, but it saves you a couple seconds not having to think about it. I really don't see the point of complaining about it. Reywas92^Talk 16:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I find your last statement both rude and baiting. I posted a concern. If a concern is "complaining" to you, then why bother here?

Moving on, I find it unnecessary and un-encyclopedic. Regardless of Wikipedia's "dynamic" format, I find the information redundant. DeeKenn 16:23, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

The main reason print encyclopedias don't do this is because the information would become outdated. Wikipedia isn't paper. I have not confirmed myself that the age is generated automatically, but were it the case instead that the age was entered manually I agree it would be beyond futile. At any rate, I don't even see an age listed on the example at Template:Infobox Biography. Is this the template you were referring to? BigNate37_(T) 16:17, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

That template is a fine example of what it should look like, IMO. However, if you look at some of the actual biographies, there is a mark-up being used to automatically calculate the age. I did not know that, and to me that makes even less sense. DeeKenn 16:25, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind the age that much. What bothers me more is those damn flags. Can't people just read the word USA instead of also seeing the flag. :) Garion96 (talk) 16:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

So that everyone knows, DeeKenn is referring to the use of {{birth date and age|1931|03|22}} in the infobox field for date of birth, which gives a result of: (1931-03-22) March 22, 1931.

Add me to the list of people who think this is, at worst, harmless, and at best, useful. It makes the computer do the math, so the user doesn't have to. I don't understand the problem. --barneca (talk) 16:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Harmless? Perhaps. Useful? Not in my opinion. In fact, as I mentioned above, I find indirectly insulting. Furthermore, it is redundant. DeeKenn 16:59, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I find it very useful. I am good at math. Atropos 19:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Quaint, but far from useful DeeKenn 20:20, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this fits any definition of quaint that I can find. Again, I find it very useful; you aren't suggesting that you know more about what is useful to me than I do? Atropos 02:46, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, so it's Template:birth date and age. There's a problem with this—it is not consistent across different pages. Any functionality like this should be either not used at all or incorporated into the infobox. Since the infobox's page itself describes how to use it and makes no mention of adding the age to the birth date field, I would suggest that the use of the age-generating template in infoboxes is improper. Therefore, if we truly want this age generating behaviour, it should be built into the infobox templates, otherwise it shouldn't be happening at all. BigNate37_(T) 16:45, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree. At the very least, it should be applied uniformly. DeeKenn 16:59, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

There is quite a bit of redundancy and non-uniformity in Wikipedia, and this is one example. Redundancy is often a good thing. Most of the information in the infobox is also located in the article; it is redundant. It is still convenient to have the information in the infobox. As for non-uniformity, for example, there is a similar Template:Infobox Person, which does explicitly suggest {{birth date and age}} as an option for the birth date field. There is a discussion (apparently, if I am a judge of consensus, successful) at Template talk:Infobox Person#Merge to combine them all. I am puzzled by your taking offense at being insulted by this, DeeKeen; no one is saying users cannot subtract. This little box simply makes it so they don't have to. I'm all for keeping it, under the heading Benefit:small / Cost:zero. --barneca (talk) 17:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with you that redundancy is a good thing. "Good things, when short, are twice as good." - Gracián. Many Wikipedia articles are over-bloated with such redundancies. DeeKenn 17:37, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Everyone else, just end this. The simple convenience of telling us how old a person is even though the year is right there is perfectly fine, useful to some, and staying, even though it may be redundant and theoretically insulting. By reading User:DeeKenn's userpage, he must have a lot of concerns and we shouldn't take his comments too seriously. There, I said it. Reywas92^Talk 18:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

This should not be dragged down to a personal level, and may I note that this is your second disrespectful post towards me.

Sawyer, just because I am not thrilled with Wikipedia overall does not mean that I can not offer any valid suggestions/contributions. If you do not allow dissent, how can you expect progress? DeeKenn 18:28, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I see your point, though the first I was only disagreeing. Some just find it quite helpful to simply read a person's age, especially when just scanning, rather than doing the math. It definitely was never meant to insult anyone's intelligence. Reywas92^Talk 18:47, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how displaying a person's age, particularly if the birth date is common knowledge, could be a problem. It could also, somehow, be useful to some. I could see a problem if the counter kept going after the subject, well, died, but I don't know what happens in those cases, or whether the "counter" is removed after people die. John Carter 18:57, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Wait, so you're saying Beethoven isn't 237 years old?

According to the documentation for Template:Infobox Person, I believe the theory is that you switch to {{birth date}} after they die. Now, all we need is someone to create {{birth and death date and age too}}, so that a dead person's age at death is automatically displayed... --barneca (talk) 19:07, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

If the behaviour was built into the infobox instead of being manually added in lieu of a birth date, then the infobox could simply inhibit display of the age when the death date is provided (or even display age at death). Aside from consistency and simplicity, the age-generation behaviour could be more powerful if integrated with the infobox rather than implemented in a separate template, because of access to all the infobox's parameters. BigNate37_(T) 19:21, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I also find the age calculation useful. Doing the arithmetic (including month and day comparison!) when we have a computer in front of us is like keeping a dog and barking. It would be nicer, of course, if it were used consistently in all articles on living people. To help this, when the date of death is not specified the infobox parameters should (correctly) indcate the reason for this (not known whether dead or alive, date of death unknown or merely not known to the author). The infobox parameters could then be used to correctly generate the relevant categories. To accommodate those cases where an infobox is not wanted, perhaps the template could have a parameter to hide the infobox and merely generate categories and formatted data.--Boson 19:42, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Collapsible articleissues template

The {{articleissues}} template was created to merge seperate issue-type templates into one. This cuts down on the screen space the templates use and is more organized. The template is currently collapsible but there is a disagreement on if it should be initially collapsed or shown on page load. I think the discussion on this would benefit from more opinions to help reach conesnsus. --Android Mouse 19:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:wrongtitle

I am primarily an Uncyclopedia user, but I came here because I'm good at looking at recent changes and doing stuff pertaining to that. I've noticed that certain articles have titles that are impossible to render in MediaWiki. We, over at Uncyclopedia, have a fix for this. I didn't write it, nor do I have any stake in it besides my own personal use of it on an article of mine (click to see what it does). Perhaps you could use this to solve your woes (note: I would ask at the forum there before I sporked it, just because they tend to be testy.) Cheers.-Ljlego 01:26, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but I actually think our problems have been solved with {{DISPLAYTITLE:}}. —METS501 (talk) 01:34, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

English Wikipedia has similar template {{wrongtitle}} and similar code in Mediawiki:Common.js although it's much more conservative: it doesn't change the title if it wouldn't link to the same page. (Actually, now we can probably get rid of it and just use DISPLAYTITLE). The way it works at Uncyclopedia — change to arbitrary title and don't even warn the user — would be unnacceptable here.

By the way, if DISPLAYTITLE works at Uncyclopedia, I suggest using it when possible instead of {{title}} ∴ Alex Smotrov 02:25, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Gasp! Thanks.-Ljlego 19:30, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I changed {{lowercase}} a while ago so that it does use DISPLAYTITLE, but other uses are rejected by the software (as it only allows new titles that wikilink the same way as the old one). For the history of the {{title}} template (currently a redirect to {{wrongtitle}}) on Wikipedia, see User:One/Title and its talk page (MfD of userfied version (result keep), TfD of original template (result userfy)). ais523

User pages in search engines?

Moved to Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Proposal:_Mandatory_noindex.2Fnofollow_for_User:_ns

WP:COI redraft/refactor

There has been a lot of mention recently on WT:COI of the unwieldy, wordy, and poorly-structured nature of the current COI guideline. It has thus been suggested that some interested parties (not as in a conflict of interest, obviously) get together to find a better way of writing the same guideline in a more usable way. There is no intent here to change the meaning of the guideline, just to make it more usable.

Discussion of the redraft/refactor is invited at Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest/redraft, with the current intent to initially 'recruit' participants and discuss the aims of the redraft before putting together a precise plan of action. SamBC(talk) 20:27, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed proposel

this one needs views from a wider audience. Please feel free to go there and comment. Regards, Navou ^banter 19:49, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Treat WP:SELF references as we do sister projects

We currently avoid references to Wikiepdia's mechanics, on Wikipeida, per WP:SELF. I think we could formulate a way of doing so, where appropriate, by using side-boxes similar to those for Wikitionary, WikiQuote etc.; so that, say Manual of style could have a side box saying "Wikipedia has a Manual of Style". This would replace {{selfref}}. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 17:21, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

But the sister project and portal side-boxes are linking to encyclopedic-related material. Whereas selfrefs are leading to meta material. They are unconnected, so this would be very confusing for everyone.

What is the specific problem with {{selfref}} that you are trying to address? --Quiddity 18:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree what real problem is there with Template:Selfref? --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (tαlk) 00:27, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with (I assume) Quiddity. There's a huge difference between linking to Nelson Mandela quotes or the text of the US Constitution and linking to information on how to work on Wikipedia. In particular, the latter would be useless to a reader. Atropos 05:25, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:Pop-up

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 August 12#Template:Pop-up that concerns a template that allows popups to appear when the mouse if over an item. It can be used to translate terms. The argument there is moving towards deletion with the argument, that I agree has a lot of weight, that footnotes are less annoying and more general. However, I think the debate needs to be on a wider basis so I draw your attention to it here. It may turn out to be a key usage in future or it may just die. --Bduke 22:53, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to include Info on ATC Squadrons

Hey I was wondering that someone should add info on individual air training corps squadrons around New Zealand. I'm sure they would appreciate it. Wes45 21:48, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Maybe they would appreciate it, but it is clear that individual air training corps squadrons, along with individual scout troops, boys brigade companies, etc are not normally notable, and should not have an article devoted to one squadron. May be the oldest is notable. Is there a broad article on air training corps squadrons in New Zealand? --Bduke 22:47, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Removal of BJAODN

BJAODN was recently speedy deleted, speedy restored, speedy cancled out of MFD, and is now on DRV at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 August 14/BJAODN. If you are interested in these pages, please contribute at the DRV. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 05:39, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Requesting photo and licenses (a method proposal)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Uploading images#Requesting photo and licenses (a method proposal). 01:08, 15 August 2007 (UTC)