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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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

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Guideline suggestion - Strikethroughs

As far as i know - the pump for proposals isn't to discuss trying to get some new stuff handled. I think some guidelines need to be established for strikethroughs. Any thoughts on this? I don't think we need an entire article, but certainly something with it's one "section" and even a direct wiki shortcut would be sufficent. We will of course need to talk about what the guideline says. Thoughts? Juan Miguel Fangio| ►Chat  12:17, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

  • That was "part of it", but strikethroughs of one's own comments probably wouldn't upset anyone. There have been a few instances when i have seen "strikethroughs" used - sometimes it seems quite appropriate, other times, I'm not so sure. Bare with me if you can - (and this is a hypothetical) User A refractors their own comments from an article talk page; and then replaces it with a new comment. The reasons are legitimate and done in good faith. However, the removal of said content renders some portion of the discussion unusable. It would seem logical that User B can re-insert the refractored text, but use a strikethrough to reflect the "change of opinion" issued by User A. WP:TPG doesn't really acount for this. One of the first responses I came up with is that a user removign their own comments could be looked at as a form of ownership; but that was the best reason i could come up with for not doing something like that. I think user b should reinstitute the comments as it keeps the flow logical...however, they should be struck as they don't reflect the "current" position held by user a. Am i making sense or have i lost everyone :-) I've also seen some comments on various WP:BAN pages discuss strikethroughs, but i think they are inconsistent with a lot of people's views and are not advisable (like going and striking a banned users comments is detremental and does not contribute to an environment of happy people. Juan Miguel Fangio| ►Chat  17:16, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Not sure I see the problem. If a user objects to their own comments being struck through by others, then they can remove it themselves. Striking through your OWN comments should always be allowed, and I have seen situations, such as at FAC with long lists of requested fixes, where people have striken through others comments in good faith, and this has not been a problem... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:16, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal To Split Lake Wylie Article

The article Lake Wylie, South Carolina has content for both the town of Lake Wylie, South Carolina and the body of water known as Lake Wylie. Lake Wylie redirects to Lake Wylie, South Carolina. I propose that this article should be divided into an article for the town and a separate article for the lake. Below are my argument points:

  • Much of Lake Wylie divides the states of South Carolina and North Carolina which means that not all of Lake Wylie (the lake) is actually in the state of South Carolina. Therefore the article name having ", South Carolina" is incorrect and misleading for somebody talking about the lake which is partially in North Carolina.
  • An article which tries to wikilink to the lake of Lake Wylie can't do so without confusing people with the town of Lake Wylie, SC which may be totally unrelated. For example, many other towns are located on the shores of Lake Wylie (the lake) so it would be ridiculous for them to mention that they are located on Lake Wylie and have it link to an article on a different town 20 miles away that just happens to share that same name as the lake. See Catawba Nuclear Generating Station and you'll see how the article mentions how the power station is on a peninsula on Lake Wylie - but they're talking about the lake and not the town.

This is both a proposal to gain consensus and a request for somebody with more experience to please take the action so I don't accidentally mess it up. I suggest un-redirecting Lake Wylie and placing everything about the lake in that article, while leaving everything about the town in South Carolina in the current Lake Wylie, South Carolina article. --Fife Club 16:06, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:BOLD. Go ahead. >Radiant< 12:52, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Yup, the more I think about this and the more I see tons of articles link to Lake Wylie but meant the lake only and not the town, this really is a slam dunk decision, isn't it. When I get a chance in the next day or so I'll personally take care of it (and add some better fact citations while I'm in there). --Fife Club 13:49, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Reference desk

I was wondering whether the Reference desk should have a new "biology" section. I've noticed numerous questions relating to animals, plants and human anatomy that don't fit into anything else. examples: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] - Pheonix 18:55, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I would argue that biology fits nicely into the science desk. I daresay at least one other person agrees with me, since the science desk is listed as pertaining to "Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Medicine, Geology, Psychology, Technology". The only reason I see to subdivide the science desk would be if it is too busy, and in that case we ought to be dividing it into more than two sections (ie. more than just biology and science-excluding-biology). People asking biology questions at the miscellanious reference desk does not mean we should create redundancy—that would make an appropriate place to ask about biology easier to find at the expense of making an appropriate place to ask anything else harder to find. BigNate37(T) 19:12, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
What I mean is to have a seperate section that doesn't have to be called biology but includes everything mentioned above. The science section would be more related to questions on cells or photosynthises etc. - Pheonix 19:31, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
This is really an issue for the reference desk talk page. Creation of new desks is usually discussed there. I created a psychology desk once, but people thought it wasn't a good idea. A.Z. 03:15, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Task force or Wikiproject for video compression topics?

I've looked through video compression topics in Wikipedia recently and many are badly written or completely inaccurate if they even exist, and many important topics don't exist at all.

I've created:

and done major overhauls on

and some others I don't remember, but the job is hardly even started.

Who else would be interested in some sort of collaboration with the job of

  • Finding video compression articles in need of improvement.
  • Improving those articles.
  • Finding references for those articles.
  • Creating new articles for video compression topics that aren't already covered.

—Dark•Shikari[T] 18:44, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Might want to check with Math or Computer Science related projects, see if you can find people with similar interests to form a task force on the topic. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:37, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Pornography

Wikipedian's are uploading to much pornographic pictures to the site. These pictures may be for subject articles (ie. Pornography or an anatomical subject) or merely just for the fun of it. Wikipedia should have a moderation system for this subject, shouldn't they? --Hothguard11 07:40, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Move tool be restricted to admin control

Any thoughts about making the move ability be restricted to administrators only? It might be a good idea as:

  • Allowing everyone to move an article discourages practicing the regular procedure which is listing the move on WP:RM and have it properly discussed before any move may occur.
  • Unilateral, controversial moves are on the rise, resulting in:
    • Painstaking move wars.
    • Good faith editors following the right procedure by requesting the article to be moved back on WP:RM, sometimes not receiving enough consensus for that to happen thus leaving us with an unilaterally moves article, unfairly perpetuated at its new location simply because someone moved first and now it's hard to have it moved back.
    • Did I mention painstaking move wars?
  • Closing move discussions would become an admin-only task, as already are most other tasks that require determining consensus or the lack of it on Wikipedia.

Please submit your invaluable feedback on this proposal.--Húsönd 01:26, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

  • That's an awful large burden to place on admins, and it also assumes that they are always going to act in the best interest of the community. Admins are no different from basic users, they just have a few more tools. WP:RM is an avenue available for two reasons a) when technical difficulties prevent an obvious move and b) assistance is needed with a controversial move. It's not a bad system as far as I can tell. Juan Miguel Fangio| ►Chat  01:28, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't think it's that much of a burden, the backlog on WP:RM is cleared fairly quickly and admins already do most of the work there. Usually the most tiresome work comes when an article has already been through a move war. The point is, all moves should go through WP:RM (even the so-called obvious, especially because they're often not that obvious and thus promptly contested), and all move discussions should have an admin to determine consensus. Húsönd 01:41, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Do you have any figures on the number of moves per day, the number of which are contested and didn't go through RM, and the number that do go through RM (and the number that go through RM trivially)? SamBC(talk) 01:57, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The regular procedure is not to discuss it on WP:RM. That is the procedure for contentious moves. WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY. If a move is not contentious and serves the encyclopedia, there is no need for lengthy discussion; there's no need to add move the the list of things that admins must do. Move wars can be dealt with by move protection, similar to edit wars. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:02, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

  • (double edit conflict) This seems draconian. I also echo Juan's concern about the burden. In the last 24 hours, there have been some 1,500 page moves on Wikipedia. Granted, a lot of them were bundled with talk pages, some were the result of bureaucrats performing renames, and some might have been prevented by proper prior discussion. Considering, however, that WP:RM typically gets less than a dozen requests per day, I think that we're talking about a difference of at least an order of magnitude. Also, instead of move wars, I can see people shifting to cut-and-paste wars, leaving even more of a mess to clean up. — TKD::Talk 02:03, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I would really oppose this. Like anything else, while vandals and edit wars and the like exist, this proposal will not make them go away or reduce damage to the encyclopedia in any way, it only makes wikipedia harder to use. I have moved a few pages myself; in the VAST majority of situations, most page moves are non-controversial. In situations where it is controversial, there are mechanisms for dealing with it; and those mechanisms are adequate... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:14, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, this proposal will obviously not get any support so I withdraw. Particularly due to TKD's well reasoned point. Still, regarding Jayron32's comment, I must say that the mechanisms for handling situations where a page is controversial are far from being 100% satisfactory, especially when the page has experienced a move war. But restricting the move tool to admins only might indeed not be part of the solution.--Húsönd 02:27, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

A number of excellent points have been raised. I also think it's imperative to keep the project as free as possible, and prevent any further concentration of power. While the admins do a wonderful job, I think it's in the project's interests to give admins the minimum powers necessary to maintain standards. Recurring dreams 08:36, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I am relieved to see that this has been withdrawn and won't go anywhere (although, if it prompts another, better way of reducing move wars, that would not be a bad thing). I use this tool a lot for uncontroversial naming corrections (often a result of new editors who mistyped the name in the search box or have not yet discovered WP:NC) and without it, RM would become overburdened with the really uncontroversial moves. Actually, this reminds me of the reasoning behind the recent proposal to create a fourth group of editors below admins; I opposed it at the time, but maybe it has some merits. Adrian M. H. 11:13, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Not to mention the increase there would be in c&p moves. Prodego talk 13:05, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
The solution to edit wars and move wars is as it always has been. People who are in positions of power to stop them should stop them without making a decision on who is right or who is wrong. If a page is subject to a war of any kind, it should be protected. If two people are involved in an edit war, they should be refered through dispute resolution. It should be noted that a person can be right and still a WP:DICK and they should be dealt with for their dickishness regardless of whether the are correct about the article they are warring over or not... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 01:13, 16 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)

Ability to download tables as XML or ODF for further analysis/sorting in programs

Quite frequently, I reference wikipedia for a table or matrix of some subject (e.g. Statistical Software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_statistical_packages) and base a decision off the information. I would like to propose the ability to be able to download this data in an XML or ODF format so it would be easier to view, filter, and sort said data.

Or if this is unlikely, how about an interface to be able to sort and filter this data. (i.e. with the above software table, i would like to filter the results to Unix/Linux capable software and that allows discriminant analysis).

It is currently possible to copy/paste the information into a spreadsheet, copy/paste another table into the same spreadsheet, link the records together, create column headers and filter/sort, but I think the feature stated above may be a more elegant solution.

thanks for considering, bryan smith smittex

If I was unclear about anything above or if you would like help creating this, please email me at gmail.com. username:smittex

Look through the options at m:Alternative parsers; there are certainly some tools for converting wiki text to XML, but I have no experience of using them myself. You should also be aware of WP:TOOLS, but I see only tools to convert from other formats to Wiki tables there, not vice versa. I may have missed something though.-gadfium 00:18, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Toolbar

I think it would be a great idea for Wikipedia to have their own toolbar, similar to the Google or Yahoo! toolbars. Some people with dial-up take minutes to load the main sceen.Its also a drag to go to Wikipedia.com when you can search Google without going th it. If a toolbar was avalible for download, it would be very helpful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.215.177.192 (talk) 14:29, 17 August 2007

See Wikipedia:Tools/Browser tools, e.g. Wikipedia toolbar for firefox (I haven't tested that). --Quiddity 16:07, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Importance ranking

I would like to draw your attention on a topic that keeps on appearing, but so far as I know, nobody has yet done anything about it. You can find a description of the problem and a proposal here. In short: it is not easy to find the relevant article on the disambiguation pages and in the categories. To highlight the articles with the hightest number of interwiki or interlingual links would be a good approach. An even better solution could be to use a "cloud view" a la Digg. With this solution the articles could be sorted acording to their relevance. --Micru 06:36, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I have read your biography of Emilie, Marquise du Châtelet and latter the biography of Voltaire. Some of the most mentioned facts in the biography of Emilie, Marquise du Châtelet is her relation with Voltaire where in Voltaire's biography she is not mentioned? 87.69.62.102 09:54, 17 August 2007 (UTC)


Disambiguation pages are often frustrating in that the page you want is one of the most popular pages under that name/ is the most popular page under that name, and yet it is way down the page. Would it be possible to have an automatically ranked top 3 or 5 or 10 at the top of the page? That way everything can stay organized, there is no bias in the selection of the most likely page, but it makes things easier on Wikipedia users looking for an extremely common page. Wikipediatoperfection 18:02, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

An idea for a barnstar...

How about a barnstar for a witty way of dealing with a troll or vandalist? Or would this be feeding the trolls? CrowstarVaseline-on-the-lens-Jitsu!fwends! 21:32, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

All attention is positive attention... The only solution is to ignore. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 01:08, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Why wouldn't {{subst:The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar}} or {{subst:What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar}} suit this purpose? They're both listed at Wikipedia:Barnstars. BigNate37(T) 15:05, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
The anti-vandalism barnstar would probably suffice. Melsaran 15:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Crowstar, is "vandalist" a correct word? I'd just say "vandal" :) Melsaran 15:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I dunno. I like "vandalist" better. CrowstarVaseline-on-the-lens-Jitsu!fwends! 12:35, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Erasure of episodes and lists by season

To have to erase all the episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants and to do them by season. Bucho457 15:25, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

That reads like you meant to post this in a discussion somewhere; here, it seems totally out of context. Can you elaborate? Adrian M. H. 16:14, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

some less straight-forward input to knowledge classification;

as ideas expand in multiple planes. 

-quick associations: (e.g.
   "tire --> road";
   "tire --> rubber";
   "dog --> play";
   "dog --> pet") (But that list can be very long, so limit it to 5-10 just to give

several alternate directions to develop ideas), 

- A few "deep" quotes:  (e.g.
     "child" --> "A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic." ~Emerson),
     "innocence" --> "It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't." ~McLaughlin

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Afterguide (talk • contribs) 06:08, 18 August 2007

And your point would be..... Adrian M. H. 09:56, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

"Dog Day" coming up

This might not be the place to mention this. However, August 16 is the feast day of Saint Roch, the patron saint of dogs. Do you think this could be mentioned on the main page? Is there another place to make this kind of suggestion? Thanks. Steve Dufour 14:16, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I added it to Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 16 so it should show up on the main page. ←BenB4 14:35, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Steve Dufour 14:49, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Someone else took it off, saying it was not important enough. Steve Dufour 16:20, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
That removal was done by Tariqabjotu. I thought his edit summary "that's pushing the limits of notability" to be a bit high-handed. I wondered by what lights Tariqabjotu set himself up to judge the relative notability of one particular catholic saint over other catholic saints. I'm not catholic myself, though, and I am certainly not qualified to make such a judgement. I looked at List_of_saints#R and see that there is a list there, But St. Roch is not listed. I looked at List_of_saints_by_name:R, and see that the page does not exist, though List_of_saints_by_name:A does exist. I see that Category:Roman_Catholic_saints does not include Saint Roch. I see that there is a page for Saint Roch which redirects to Roch, a page about the Saint Roch. It looks to me as if some work needs to be done in this area. -- Boracay Bill 23:33, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
From Talk:Main Page#"Dog Day" coming up: "Not important enough, methinks." (from Mets501); "I agree with Mets501." (from PFHLai); "if there is other stuff that comes up that is arguably more important it could be removed" (from Nil Einne); "It probably isn't so important. I just thought that St. Roch's feast day coming in the dog days of summer was kind of cool." (from Steve Durfour, the person who raised this point himself). I'm not sure where you get the impression that I "set himself up to judge the relative notability of one particular catholic saint over other catholic saints" or how you see the edit summary as "high-handed". This was a judgment of the relative notability of one particular holiday over another and it seems quite clear few see this as a very notable event. Someone had to remove the item (I just got to it first) and the edit summary accurately portrays the rationale behind the holy day's removal – it falls just short of the (unwritten) notability requirement. If you read something else from that, that was not my intent. -- tariqabjotu 01:06, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Even the New York Times runs "kitten up a tree" stories sometimes, just for a break from "important" subjects. Does "notability" need to be an iron rule? MarkinBoston 03:49, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Articles without supporting cites

At this point, this is a semi-serious proposal -- a bot to tag with dated {{unreferenced}} tags articles lacking refs (yes, I do understand that source citations can be provided by other means), and to propose for deletion such articles which have remained so tagged for X months and still have no refs. Before dismissing this out of hand, click "Random article" 10-20 times. -- Boracay Bill 11:16, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I can certainly appreciate your point, as someone who is always keen to see proper referencing of sources in one form or another as appropriate. However, we already have monthly categories of unreferenced articles and these are a source of AFD nominations. I'm unsure whether this natural process should be formalised as you suggest. Adrian M. H. 11:57, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
You might want to review Wikipedia:Requests for verification for some recent history on this topic. Any kind of automation that leads to deletion of articles is not supported in Wikipedia. You are welcome to join Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles and manually sort through articles and make a good faith attemtp to add references. Jeepday (talk) 13:35, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem of using a parser to test whether an article has references is very difficult. I did it for math articles, and found the initial false answer rate quite high. Basically, you need to be able to parse English, since there is no standard format that citations use. So writing robust code for this bot would be a difficult project to say the least. Moreover, there have been several recent discussions about doing this sort of tagging by hand, and it has always been rejected. So the bot request would be very unlikely to pass. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

US-centrism

I think we should make "10 November" the standard preference, rather than "November 10". According to Calendar date#mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy (month, day, year), the "month day year" format (which is very odd, I must say) is only used in the US, and on a few little islands. Melsaran 21:41, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Be bold, I'd say :-). Melsaran 21:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not comfortable adding original research to an article. WilyD 21:59, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
When it's the "standard format", it's probably not too hard to find a citation, and when you add a citation, it is generally not OR. Melsaran 22:00, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Autoformatting and linking - dates can be entered in such a way as to display differently, depending on an editor's preference. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:18, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I know, but the default setting is month/day/year, you have to change your preferences to enable the normal setting. Melsaran 18:24, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by default. Isn't the software default to leave what the author put in? And doesn't the Manual of style carefully avoid specifying one or the other? I imagine any change would mean an inordinate amount of effort being devoted to edit wars.Or are you talking about dates generated by Wikipedia? I would be careful about using the word "standard". The only standard (in the ISO/ANSI/DIN sense) I know is ISO 8601, (and the equivalent BS, EN, DIN and ANSI standards), which specifies YYYY-MM-DD.--Boson 20:54, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Eh, no, I meant that the standard preference is mm/dd/yyyy, i.e. that's the preference set when you create a new account. Melsaran 21:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I see. Since I immediately changed my preferences when I set up my account (I think), I didn't remember what the default was. I suppose I assumed that the top item (no preference) would have been the default. I presume "anonymous" users see what the author wrote. Thanks for clarification! --Boson 21:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
You've missed mentioning RFC 2550, which is similar to ISO 8601 for present-day dates. BigNate37(T) 21:46, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

As I recall reading, this is a very big can of worms to be fiddling with opening. As I understand the matter, the debate was bitterly divided and never resolved—just depreciated due to the upgrade to the software which allows linked dates to be displayed based on user preference. As far as the comment about Canadians using month-day-year, this is in popular use due to cultural proximity to the US. As far as I know, as a Canadian, the proper form is day-month-year here as well. I may be wrong, but to my knowledge saying month-day-year is the official form in Canada is akin to saying the inch is the standard unit of length—most people using it doesn't make it correct. I'm also less inclined to respect WilyD's comment based on his use of the term Soviet Canuckistan. Are we supposed to take the comment seriously using slang like that? BigNate37(T) 19:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Ohh..... I read the part about Canada in Calendar date#mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy (month, day, year), and thought it was another of those stupid Americanisms that Canadians tend to import. When WilyD said "Soviet Canuckistan", I thought it was probably some region in Russia or something. I had no idea that he meant Canada :-). Melsaran 19:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Still, I don't really understand how the debate could have been so "bitterly divided". The US is the ONLY country in the world that uses such an illogical system (month/day/year), save a few little islands. Aren't we meant to be a global encyclopaedia? Why focus so much on the US? Melsaran 18:56, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

The default date preference is no preference. --- RockMFR 20:07, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

For wikilinks? Oh, that could be. Still, the default setting for articles such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_11 (notice the URL) is mm-dd, so without setting a preference, your default setting for date articles is US-style. Melsaran 20:14, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
I think you're going to have a very hard time trying to find consensus to move these articles. --- RockMFR 20:29, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
What are the arguments for preferring a chiefly American and highly illogical date notation style over the style that "the rest of the world" uses? Melsaran 20:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Maybe because the those date articles were created first using the month-day system. After that, there was no point in changing it. Sometimes, it's just better to leave things the way they are and avoid getting involved in a pointless argument that will go nowhere. --Farix (Talk) 04:34, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm also not sure how it's "highly illogical." It's just a date format. -- Kesh 19:21, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
There's an argument to it's illogicity when it's a full date, with day month and year. When it's just a month and day, I don't see how it can be argued as illogical. SamBC(talk) 19:40, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
August 11, 2007 might be illogical, but August 11 by itself is no less logical than 2007-08-11.
Yes, I meant the mm-dd-(yy)yy format. When you use 'August 11' in an article, and you are consistent, you also use "August 11, 2007", which is illogical. Melsaran 21:30, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
There is nothing illogical about MM DD, YYYY format. It is just one of the excepted ways of formating a date. What is illogical is continually complaining about it. --Farix (Talk) 01:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Middle endian is actually very illogical. Your number representations should always be in either increasing or falling order. Since arabic numbers has the most significant digit first in Latin text 2007-08-11 makes the most sense. Jeltz talk 18:44, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Man, I can't believe nobody got the RFC 2550 joke. Blah. BigNate37(T) 15:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Life must be very, very good if this is a priority problem to someone. :) Look up the word "arbitrary" and cogitate for a while. MarkinBoston 03:45, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Their is nothing illogical about the MM-DD-(YY)YY format: it's just like the 12 hour time system versus the 24 hour time system, thier both perfectly logical, thier just used in different parts of the world. Deathawk 03:32, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that the World Trade Organization, about 20 or 25 years ago, went through this same discussion. The end result was that ALL dates and times in ALL countries would be represented in descending order, starting with the year, and using a 24 hour time format. Right now, here, according to my computer it is August 26, 2007, 5:21 p.m. So, according to the WTO the time should be written 2007-08-28-17:21:32. In this manner even the most minuscule time would be written in the same format as something as vague as month and year. I thought this was a great idea, which is obviously why I remember it. Unfortunetly it seems like so many things, everybody goes "Oh, yeah, that's a great idea" and then everybody just continues on as normal. Jocsboss 23:27, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

WT:NC

Members of the community may be interested in knowing that there is currently a discussion at Naming Convention's Talk Page over the guidelines for naming US city articles. The debate starts at the section called "Requested Moves", and continues through several subsections. New England Review Me! 01:33, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Idea following Virgil Griffith's discovery: certifing information to prevent deletion

To prevent censoring I propose there be a number of designated "trusted posters" that are given the task of certifiying information (perhaps starting with relatively contraversial information). Certified information cannot be deleted anymore because it has been found to be a fact. This will maintain the integrity of wikipedia. MickeyJ65 21:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, so you are proposing the inverse of Virgil Griffith's idea, it seems. "Certified information" is what Citizendium claims to offer. Your proposal (the "do not delete certified information" part) may not work, because Wikipedia's inclusion criterion is more complicated than "include all true stuff, exclude all false stuff". There are also other issues of scope: for example, Wikipedia is not a directory. An article containing names and telephone numbers that are certified to be factually correct is still not in Wikipedia's scope.
There is also the sub-issue of notability, which is usually used in deletion debates. If all of the information in an article is true, that could provide reliable evidence of the subject's notability. It could also provide evidence that a subject isn't notable. Relatively recently, the issue of controversial information about living people has entered the equation. The solution is to remove controversial information unless it is sourced.
Aside from these criteria (defined in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Notability), the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. If someone is removing information because it is not sourced, they have the license to do so. Having trusted posters declare it true will have no effect, because that does not make the information verifiable.
Finally, if someone is removing sourced information that is in Wikipedia's scope, you should try dispute resolution, or use appropriate fora to determine if the information really is in Wikipedia's scope. Note that some kinds of information are sensitive, e.g. personal information, especially of Wikipedians.
The system you propose sounds closer to Citizendium's approach than Wikipedia's. Overall, the system we have (defining deletion scope according to policy) is a bit more scalable, and it has served us well so far. What may appear to be censorship could just be following out some of these policies to their logical conclusion. GracenotesT § 23:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Peren

Perhaps because of the ascent of WP:PEREN, the village pump for perennial proposals has been terminally inactive for almost half a year now. Like the News pump, I've esperanzified it. >Radiant< 13:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine. Melsaran (talk) 14:29, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. --Kevin Murray 14:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

"Users watching this page"

In a list similar to "What links here" in the toolbox, a list of users watching a page. My reasoning is that sometimes you post on a talk page and have no idea whether anyone will see your post any time soon, and also because if you knew a user who's attention you wanted wasn't watching the talk page, you could post on their own talk page so they wouldn't miss it (without having to do this for every post you ever make). If there is already such a function please let me know on my talk page. Didn't see this one on previous proposals but I wouldn't be suprised if I wasn't the first to suggest it so sorry if I missed it. Alex9788 15:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

See WP:PEREN#Create a counter of people watching a page. Cbrown1023 talk 17:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
That's a fair enough reason. Stupid vandals! Alex9788 20:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

A nontrivial matter of Trivia

So, what to do about Trivia sections? We already have a policy on the matter – Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections – and it seems to be fairly clear-cut. Trivia sections have no place in a mature article. Important material should be incorporated into the body of the article (or another article); random factoids must eventually find their way to the bit bucket. We have handy templates {{trivia}} and {{trivia small}} to identify and categorize articles with trivia sections; there's even a handy bot that sorts the trivia tags into dated categories. We've got a WikiProject that is dedicated to cleaning up trivia sections.

About the only thing we don't have is some way to encourage people to get around to actually fixing the thousands of trivia sections out there.

I just tried an experiment: I took a mature article with a sprawling Trivia section (Berkeley, California) and moved the section in its entirety to the article's talk page, along with an entreaty to the article's editors to merge content as appropriate back from the talk page into the article's prose. Most of the trivia was too trivial to include in the article, but I kept the whole list on the talk page because I didn't want to lose any babies with the bathwater. The trivia section had been identified on the talk page as a problem as far back as December 2006; a trivia template at least as early as May 2007, and a datestamped maintenance tag added in June. My move was reverted almost instantly (eight minutes later) with the summary rev. unilateral action without consensus.

I ask the community now—was I being too BOLD? How long do we leave these problematic sections in place? Is moving long trivia sections to the talk page a reasonable solution? Is there a better option? 'Someone will fix it eventually' doesn't seem to be working, and in general I find that the article quality is improved with the removal. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I favor keeping the Trivia sections as they are, within the corresponding articles. I find them almost always to be interesting, informative, relevant and beneficial. --Steve, Sm8900 16:31, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
To TenOfAll: Your experiment is probably the most compelling proof for why this circumstance is not likely to change absent a dramatic and comprehensive overhaul of current WP practices. Although the editor who reverted your action appears to be experienced and reasonably familiar with the relevant issues, one of his responses to you is quite familiar, and a lot of proponents of "trivia" (who are probably less experienced) are very likely to agree:
they are nonetheless commonplace, which would seem to indicate that there is actually no settled consensus
Conjecture: the most avid among contributors to "trivia sections" are probably the least likely to be involved with this discussion, or the discussions at Wikipedia talk:Avoid trivia sections. Those contributors will therefore not take cues from discussion, but rather from what they have seen "in other articles". Moreover, "trivia" is the kind of knowledge that has the second-lowest acquisition and distribution costs, second only to "personal opinion". Because of these circumstances, the situation is not going to change unless "trivia" becomes totally forbidden as a matter of policy, and that ain't gonna happen. (End conjecture). dr.ef.tymac 16:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Much "trivia" is actually valid information that is simply uncategorized and poorly integrated. If you make people move it into the article you'll get paragraphs that seem out of place. Frankly, for readability, comprehension, and usefulness of the article it may be better to keep them in a list. Also, I think people don't understand that popular culture is culture, and that a subject's effect on modern thought and opinions, the ways two famous people affect each other, where something came from and what it influences, are often very important stuff. Case in point, Extraterrestrial life in popular culture -- not a great article to be sure, but a notable subject. Wikidemo 17:46, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
The "move to talk page" suggestion is getting to be a perennial proposal: see an earlier discussion Wikipedia talk:Avoid trivia sections/Archive 3#Moving trivia to talk pages, one of several. It just defers the problem: better to just do the integrate/move to other articles/delete what remains approach on the spot if it's an important article.--Father Goose 01:41, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the best way to handle trivia sections is to incorporate the information back in the article. That way, no one can accuse you of deleting relevent information. But that takes time and effort. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:58, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
These are interesting points - certainly if you've encouraged people to integrate/classify trivia with a tag or something, and after a while they haven't done it, removing the content may be justified (providing it actually is trivia, and not a targeted list). Mere wholesale removal of a trivia section without warning though, is quite likely to get treated as too bold. The objection that the people adding to trivia lists aren't reading the policy is groundless. They don't have to know the policy, as long as people who do can clean up after them - it may be better that they add content that eventually gets integrated than nothing at all. As for objections that a list may be the best format, yes, but a targeted tailored list, not a sprawling unorganized list without inclusion standards. Dcoetzee 18:51, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Trivia should be treated appropriately for each individual item--when it means cultural references, there should be a section with that title; when it means details about monuments to people and so on, there's a place for that too. If there seems to point to it at all, then it should go out. But if it means interesting details about, then there is a point to the section, if the items can be justified, but even here, I'd suggest looking real hard for a better word. It shouldnt be treated as if all the items in all the articles were necessarily either of great importance of negligible altogether. I remind the people trying to improve the situation that it will take work. The only sort of content we should be removing pending work is apparent copyvio or blp violation. It's taken several years to get WP to even its present level, and it will take probably at least as long to make it fully respectable. DGG (talk) 08:22, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
As is frequently the case, I find myself very much in agreement with DGG (talk · contribs)'s reasoned comment. And Wikidemo (talk · contribs)'s as well. We should not be allergic to the material that is often rounded up in "Trivia" sections - it is often valid and interesting and sometimes works best in list form. Cultural references add a vibrancy and tangibility to articles, and they should not be wholesale deleted as they often are. The problem is in the word "trivia" because it is too much of a catch-all. But the items within these sections should be evaluated individually and handled appropriately. And I could not agree more with DGG's last comment - the only material we should be avidly and promptly removing are real copyvios and blp violations. These are actionable, and they have to go - but we should relax about the rest and take the time we need to figure out the best way to characterize information, not just remove it because we're not sure how to do so. Tvoz |talk 09:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree with this last point. What we need isn't a Draconian---and boring---anti-trivia policy, but rather a policy regulating trivia. The best trivia are actually tidbits of useful and interesting information that do not readily integrate into the rest of an article's text. They are akin to the footnotes one finds in professional-grade writing, the ones that are not simply citations to references. They add detail without disturbing the flow of the main text. They also add interest for many readers, readers who are not denizens of these editorial discussion boards or policy-making bodies. There are many Wiki readers who LOVE the trivia sections, and would be alienated if they vanished. Yes, we should have some policies that will allow the elimination of certain types of trivia outright as mentioned, but for questionable items, it should be a matter of consensus via the discussion page for the article in question. Tmangray 18:29, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I think Jayron is on the right course. The best way to deal with an unsightly trivia list is to do the integration yourself into the prose. Now this doesn't mean that "everything" should be incorporated but you would have a stronger foot to stand on with deleting the cruft if you made a concentrated effort to keep some of the more relevant and worthwhile info. If its a subject that you are not the most familiar with it maybe wise to try the BOLD effort of moving it to the talk page to try and encourage the article's regular editors to do the integration but if that doesn't produce results then ultimately it falls back on you. AgneCheese/Wine 09:27, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I've generally found good results with that. I've removed several trivia sections outright when there was simply nothing sourceable or of much relevance, and in many other cases integrated a few things and killed the rest. Haven't been reverted so far, to my knowledge, most everyone is just glad to see them gone. (And it's good to get them gone, before someone spins off yet another "Every work of fiction X has appeared in" article. Save an AfD at least.) Seraphimblade Talk to me 10:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
(And as an addendum to last, my standard exhortation: Deleting isn't bad! Cutting is part of the job of an editor, and around here, we're all editors!) Seraphimblade Talk to me 10:38, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

treatment of temporary "throwaway images"

Recently I've had the need to upload a few images to WP, solely for the purpose of illustrating a discussion point on an article talk page. (See here for an example Image:01junk.gif). Another need I have had for "temporary image uploads" is to test whether an SVG image renders correctly when processed by the SVG to PNG converter used on WP servers.

Because of this, I have a few questions:

  • Is there an implicit or express prohibition against uploading images for strictly "temporary" purposes?
  • If no to the previous, it seems as though the "image upload" form assumes all images are intended to be used in WP articles, and therefore must be compatible with GFDL. Is GFDL compliance necessary for images clearly identified solely for temporary use outside the article space?
  • Is there a "speedy deletion" template that users can apply in order to request deletion of temporary images? Is {{db-userreq}} enough for this purpose?

If there are no clear answers to these questions, I would like to propose that this issue be addressed somewhere. Comments and constructive criticism are of course welcome. Thanks. dr.ef.tymac 15:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Images uploaded not for articles are fine (we have crops to show off certain features on WP:FPC all the time), but they need to be free. Not necessarily GFDL, but a free license. It's even less acceptable to use images without proper copyright when you're not serving the purpose of illustrating an article. Keep in mind that deletion of images is now no more permanent than deletion of article text, so you're not saving any server resources by doing so. If it's part of a discussion, I'd recommend not deleting the image after, so that it'll still be around when someone checks the archives, but if it's a simple temporary test, db-userreq works just fine. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:21, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Deleted images do still take up disk space on the server yes, but they will no longer clutter the image database or bloat the image dumps (which they have enough trouble generating as it is aparently). Depends on the image I guess, but free image hosting sites are a dime a dozen so just upload temporary images somewhere else on the web and link to them from your discussion I'd say. --Sherool (talk) 06:57, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Special:Linksearch

What are people's thoughts on possibly adding a link to the crosswiki linksearch on Special:Linksearch? The page is very helpful in finding spam here and the crosswiki search (based on the toolserver) allows searches in the top 57 wikis. I think its a good idea but since it is an interface page, I should probably get consensus before adding things to it. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 17:58, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll take the silence to mean there are no objections. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 23:40, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Trivia/"popular culture sections" - move to new Wikimedia project?

Firstly, apologies if this idea has been discussed before, but I skimmed through the archives of Wikipedia talk:Avoid trivia sections and found nothing resembling it. I merely want to float the idea and let wiser heads debate and decide on its merit.

As a contributor/editor at the level of making the order of tens of edits a week, I often run across debates over the inclusion of trivia sections or "references in popular culture" sections in articles. The thought occurred to me:

We have Wiktionary for dictionary definitions, Wikinews for current events, Wikiquote for quotations, Wikibooks for "how-to" material, Wikitravel for travel guides, and so on - none of which fit into Wikipedia under existing policy guidelines. Yet they are integrated enough that a simple cross-reference link can refer the reader to additional material in these associated projects, if they choose to follow them.

My proposal: Create Wikiculture. Allow this to be a repository of cultural references to things. Move existing trivia and "in popular culture" sections into Wikiculture and cross-link to them in the same way that Wikitravel, Wikiquote, etc. are linked into Wikipedia articles. Any trivia deemed important enough to remain in the Wikipedia article (i.e. not really trivia) should be integrated into the article rather than migrated.

In practice:

Advantages:

  • Removes these sections from Wikipedia, in accordance with WP:TRIVIA.
  • Retains trivia and popular culture sections for the benefit of those who value them.
  • Provides a suitable location for adding such material.
  • May grow into a repository of cultural trivia that many readers may well find interesting and valuable, but that is currently being excluded from Wikipedia.

Disadvantages:

  • Requires new Wikimedia project to be set up. (I have no idea how difficult this is.)
  • Requires education of Wikipedia editors and transmigration of much data (though this will naturally occur incrementally as part of the inherent growth and modification of Wikimedia projects).
  • May be some confusion over what qualifies as Wikipedia material versus Wikiculture material. (May be no worse than current confusion over adding material to the article proper or to an existing trivia section within it.)

I'm sure there are many other points to raise, both in favour and against. I trust the Wiki community to discuss and make a suitable decision.

-dmmaus 23:56, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Considering Wikiquote, Wiktionary, and Wikibooks all had similar origins, it's not that bad an idea. incubator.wikimedia.org is what you're looking for.--Father Goose 06:23, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
The proof is in the implementation but it sounds like a great idea. Wikimedia could become the world's biggest repository of trivia and pop culture references. Can we push all the "list of" sections and articles there too, as well as fan art, fan fiction, original user-submitted artworks, and links to the same? The new project would have a lot to consider in terms of sourcing, attribution, verifiability, etc. Wikidemo 07:56, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
WP:ILIKEIT. Neat solution, additional reference material, answers to the various trivia concerns, repository for reasonable kinds of fancruft and extra information on popular cultural matters (that does have legitimate place as reference material, just not on an encyclopedia).... nice. The above editors have itemized its benefits well -- count me in on supporting it, if it goes further. FT2 (Talk | email) 22:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to Father Goose for getting me started.
Just thought I'd get it started. I hope others will follow and discuss/help move this along.
01:10, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
PS. The project still needs to be officially posted as a proposal, by someone willing to take responsibility for (spearhead) it, at meta:Proposals for new projects. Feel free anyone. 02:15, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I would support this if it moved forward; I recently had a similar idea myself, not really developed, but basically porting all that stuff to Wikia somehow, with the possibility of a little tag as for Commons or Wiktionary saying "WikiPopCulture has more information ..." I was trying to sort out how it could be structured and my idealet had a digg-type interface for moving an item up or down to get consensus on what was important, but then I realized everything would end up with the Simpsons on top. ;-) Anyway, overlap is not something I see as a major deterrent here and if there were a real editorial community some nice guidelines could develop. --Dhartung | Talk 08:46, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I just visited Uncyclopedia and I noticed that the "featured article" star at the top right corner of featured pages now includes a link to the revision that passed the nomination to become featured, so that editors can compare the current revision to the one that was originally featured. Here is an example page. If Uncyclopedia has this, then Wikipedia should definitely have it, because it will make keeping up articles' featured status way more easy, and provide a link to a featured-quality article at all times even if the article's current revision has declined in quality.

But perhaps an even more important way that Wikipedia could benefit from this is with official policy pages. Wikipedia should provide a similar link on official policy pages to the revision which passed the nomination to become official policy. This could be extremely helpful in making sure that the contents of the page do not get altered without consent, and then passed off as the original policy.--64.149.189.119 18:49, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

You might want to take a look at Wikipedia:Flagged revisions. dr.ef.tymac 18:56, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
To rebut your first point, the one about linking to the version of a featured article that passed the nomination, Uncyclopedia's template says those articles were featured, past tense, on a given date. Something similar is done at, for example, Talk:Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia. The featured article box has links to the various milestones in the process. However, highlighting one version on the actual article may be undesirable since it would encourage reverting back to it and undermine the dynamic nature of a wiki. On to the second point, that of having one version of a policy page which is official: were this a concern, protection would be a better solution. However, it is not—policy pages are typically watched keenly and updated by editors when consensus decisions are made that suggest a change in the popular opinion. Allowing policy to be edited, reverted, and then discussed like a normal article helps keep policies up to date—a two-year-old revision may seem like it is no longer relevant, whereas a policy which routinely gets odd-ball additions that are quickly reverted is obviously still observed by the community that watches it. Wikipedia policies are, for the most part, codification of consensus on particular matters. Consensus can change. BigNate37(T) 19:08, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have a wikibot that seeks out links in articles that point to redirect pages and changes them to point directly to the appropriate page? I've run across numerous links in articles that point to a redirect page; sometimes the redirect page will have dozens of articles linking to it. I'm actually kind of surprised there isn't such a bot already.

FredMSloniker 16:45, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Might well be possible. See Wikipedia:Bot requests. Also see WP:AWB if you use IE (I don't, but I think it can do what you want). Adrian M. H. 16:57, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
It has actually been decided that the load made by redirecting a link even thousands of times is less then the load created by making all the edits to change the link. Because of this, there is no real reason to change them. Prodego talk 17:10, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, no need to change them en masse. There are circumstances where it's appropriate. The really useful thing would be to detect links to double-redirects and fix them, because they do cause a problem. SamBC(talk) 18:12, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I missed the bot requests section. I'll move the request there. FredMSloniker 18:22, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
There are existing bots that fix double-redirects. Non-double-redirects work just fine and should not be replaced in favor of "direct" links in most cases.--Father Goose 21:36, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, this is a patently bad idea. Redirects should not be unlinked unless they are unprintworthy. BigNate37(T) 17:57, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to prohibit non-Metric units

I feel it might help to broaden the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Metric/SI only. There is a proposal to prohibit conversion of metric units to miles, pounds, feet except in articles that pertain particularly to the US. On the other hand, some editors have questioned whether the needs and feelings of American readers would be properly addressed by this. Chris the speller 23:45, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

In the 21st Century there's no place to using different measurement systems. If there is the SI, let it be used solely, independent of countries interests. The IMPERIAL units should be banned completely.Tiago65 (talk) 15:21, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Criteria for death articles on ITN

I would like to propose an amendment to the current criteria for including deaths on the ITN page on the Main Page. To refresh your memory the criteria are;

A death should only be placed on ITN if it meets one of the following criteria: (a) the deceased was in a high ranking office of power at the time of death, (b) the deceased was a key figure in their field of expertise, and died unexpectedly or tragically, (c) the death has a major international impact that affects current events. The modification or creation of multiple articles to take into account the ramifications of a death is a sign that it meets the third criterion

Specifically section b. in that the person has to be a key figure in their field and died unexpectedly or tragically. Ignoring the fact that almost every death is tragic it seems that some deaths which are particularly noteworthy and are covered widely by other (print/tv/etc) media should also be included.

No doubt there has to be, and will be, rigorous debate as to whether or not they would meet the notability criteria but it seems absurd to arbitrarily ignore the death of that person on ITN when it is headline news elsewhere, just because they happen to live to a ripe old age. Yorkshiresky 19:56, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Template standardisation

Long ago we went through a process of standardising the templates for talk pages. This went very well and we have a theme that means we have standard colours, widths and styles on talk pages. But it was never translated to the article pages. This is a shame because we should be trying to ensure that we have a professional and aesthetically sound scheme in place. Just after the talk page standardisation I started to work on this but ran out of steam.

Take a look at User:Flamurai/TS/blanca, a scheme designed by User:Flamurai (we may wish to discount the spoiler notice). I think this would be a brilliant thing to implement for the following reasons:

  • Easily implemented
  • Colour-coded but without using an overpowering amount
  • Standard widths
  • Generally a better design than we have now

I suggest that we look at changing over to a scheme like that. Thoughts? violet/riga (t) 10:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

This is a first step into the right direction. We could use templates that look more professional and aesthetically pleasing. JoJan 13:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
A couple of us are having conversations along a similar string at Wikipedia_talk:Template_messages/Cleanup#Use_of_icons. Jeepday (talk) 15:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree on all accounts with the favorable review of User:Flamurai/TS/blanca. I'd also like to concur with those who expressed a preference for Tango and SVG as part of a sound design strategy for standardizing template appearance. I have been doing something similar with WP articles, please take a quick look at User:Dreftymac/Docs/ImageDisclaimer#ImageNode_series. dr.ef.tymac 16:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I thoroughly agree with the suggestion, and the praise of blanca. Very clean, professional, and pleasing aesthetics. --Quiddity 17:20, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
There's something to the idea, but I don't find it aesthetically pleasing at all. That thick colored bar on one side is totally visually imbalanced. I'd be happier with a bar on the bottom, or a thinner colored border all the way around, or slightly thinner bars on both the left and right side.--Father Goose 18:30, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I disagree - it acts as a margin and works very well. Having it on the side only helps with stacking as well. If it were on both sides it would look overpowering and wouldn't look right because of the left-aligned image. All in my opinion, of course. violet/riga (t) 21:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Per violet/riga: agreed 100%. —The preceding signed but undated comment was added at 23:15, August 22, 2007 (UTC).

To throw in my two cents, I really like the graphics that Flamurai put together. If I were to settle on changes to satisfy those unhappy with the left margin, I would say center the template text & image and put the stripe on both sides (but not the top or bottom). BigNate37(T) 21:22, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Left & right side, 8px, border-right:none looks good to me.--Father Goose 21:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Honestly, I really love them the way the look now. I think Flamurai (talk · contribs) did an exceptional job and I fully support their implementation. — pd_THOR | =/\= | 23:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I dig 'em. I like the color coding and standard size. Definitely makes a group of templates more aesthetically pleasing and more professional. -Chunky Rice 23:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Niiice. Wikidemo 23:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

A large improvement over the current system. Λυδαcιτγ 04:16, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I like it. -- Boracay Bill 04:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I was pleasantly surprised by this redesign. The colour-coding is particularly useful and achieving it with a small bar is tasteful and maintains the desired conformity. Adrian M. H. 17:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Flamurai's template standards look great to me. I especially like that they are all the same width and stackable. Making two line templates the same height is also good. I personally like the colors, but don't feel as strongly about them. -kslays 19:04, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Pushing forward

Great to see such support for this. I tried changing over {{cleanup}} and it's quite a direct changeover except for the class, which can be ignored and removed but would best be updated. I know also that it would take more than this to change to this new scheme as I'm sure that there will be those that revert it. Shall we start a discussion page specifically for this? violet/riga (t) 12:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. It'd be good to have a place to workshop the design a little to see what works best. (Way to show your agenda, Goose.)--Father Goose 17:02, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
How about Wikipedia_talk:Template_messages/Standardization?--Father Goose 19:58, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Please take a look at Wikipedia:Template standardisation and the associated talk page. violet/riga (t) 20:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

My $0.02 on CSS

First of all, good work with what's been done so far. The new design looks a bit odd, because it's new, but people would get used to it eventually. I also support the idea of standarisation. One point I'd like to throw in, however (and can't seem to find it proposed already, otherwise it's worth stressing again) is that we use as much CSS power as possible. The templates should IMO have minimal defined styles, mostly classes, and actual definitions be moved to Mediawiki:Common.css. In most cases I could imagine a class="articlenotice" that defines the 80% width, centering, background, borders, etc. while the only "native" definition would be the color of the bar (but that could also probably be solved using common classes like class="articlenotice bar-serious" for the table and a definition along the lines of .bar-serious tr td:first-child { background: #CC0000; } to make the bar red). Миша13 21:33, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Update: see my implementation of the stacked templates and the CSS that does the magic (rip freely). Also see the rather simplified code for the templates: [7], [8], [9], [10]. Миша13 22:09, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for "HOLD THIS ARTICLE" button

--Tracerake 02:59, 17 August 2007 (UTC) This proposal is to add a button (possibly in the top right of the window) that brings you back to the page that you are learning about (the reason you got onto Wikipedia in the first place). I know whenever I start reading an article, I get about two lines into the article and find myself clicking on a hyperlink of something I'm not sure of. I keep doing this after a while, and loose myself in a trail of link-clicking and it is sometimes better (faster) to type in the original article name in the search box again rather than hitting the back button in my browser ten times (only to find out I'm on a page that I was surfing way before I ever got to wikipedia.com). My suggestion stems from the fact that Wikipedia is a great learning tool, but sometimes it is easy to get sidetracked by a black-hole of links. It would be pretty easy to code one of two things (or both) into wikipedia.com, namely:

1. Add a button (possibly on the top right of the main page) allowing the person to "hold" the originally sought after page as home base. This allows the user to easily go back to the original page that they were viewing (the whole reason they came to wikipedia in the first place).

2. Add a button (possibly on the top right of the main page) allowing the person to go back to the first article that was visited, in that session. So...if I typed in "NAFTA" in google, and click on the first link (of course, a wikipedia article), that article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement) is what is "held" with the button. Then, once the user navigates away from the original page (NAFTA in this case), they can click this button, which says something to the effect of "Click here to go back to: NAFTA), they can easily go back to what they were originally learning about.

I think adding a button like this would help in many ways. For one (the biggest reason that I can think of), is that it allows the user to easily finish what they were learning about. I think it gives the user a tool to go back without putting the effort into typing it in again or searching for it on google and possibly click on another link that google has to offer (thus taking the user away from wikipedia.com). I know we are lazy...and this is just another "shortcut" and way to be lazy...but i think the overall benefit would be tremendous, the development time would be minimal, and there aren't any foreseeable (that I know of) negative impacts (after all, the user can still get lost in a black-hole of links if they want...with this button, however, the user has the option of going back to what they were originally learning about).

Thanks,

Trace

Try using a right mouse click on the link, then select open in new window. It will open the link in a new window, you can surf forever and the original page remains open on your desk top. Jeepday (talk) 03:10, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Similarly, I use middle-click (which works in Firefox, but not Internet Explorer as far as I know). This opens a new tab—the same as control-clicking. BigNate37(T) 03:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Internet explorer 7 has tabs now, as does every other browser, so I'd recommend using them to open up new links while keeping the original page around. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:57, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
If you want to bookmark the specific version for later or just want to make sure that the version you see when you click Back remains the same, click the "Permanent link" in the toolbox on the left. That way you can always get the version you had seen before. Harryboyles 05:57, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
If you ever get lost down a trail of links, that is why there are arrows next to both nav buttons on a browser's toolbar. Adrian M. H. 14:49, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Also, This comic by xkcd may interest you. Atropos 08:19, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Anyone ever tried creating a 'map' of the Wikipedia namespace?

Just wondering. It'd be useful for navigational purposes.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 18:25, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

There is User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia, probably the closest thing. A visual "map" would be a massive undertaking, with all the interconnected policies, guidelines, proposals, and essays. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 18:39, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks.-h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 22:30, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Porposal for Fictional Substance Infobox

I just think it would be neat for one to exist. One that looked like the mineral infobox but less complcated. Could someoen who knows how to make infobox make one of those?--Mullon 22:43, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

How many articles on fictional substances are we gonna have, though? Plus, fictional characteristics are inherently in-universe and rarely relevant to why the substance belongs in an encyclopedia. (What does the melting point of adamantium or mithril matter, for example) Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:47, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (Reality Television participants)

Wikipedia:Notability (Reality Television participants) has been proposed as a new guideline. Are these people significantly different enough to merit a new guideline? Or is this rule creep --Kevin Murray 18:15, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Creating an online wikipedia library.

This is my first post. I've been using Wikipedia for a while now to self educate myself. On lots of the pages (articles) I've been reading there are book titles and suggested readings. Being only 16 years old with little money and no car Im not entirely unique and figured many other self learners could benefit from the use of a free online library. I realize that there is Wikibooks already but it concerns only educational textbooks and not literary works. For example, I've researched philosophy and existentialism recently on Wikipedia and found a number of authors and books i would like to read, such as books by: Kierkegaard, Sartre, Aristotle, Kafka, and Nietzsche, to futher learn that which I'm studying. I Also realise that wikimedia and other "wiki" projects are furthered by volunteers. this is merely a suggestion i would like to see fulfilled and would be happy to volunteer. I hope in time I can become more adept in using the wikimedia system and eventually contribute to editing and the creation of new articles. I hope the founder of Wikipedia reads and considers my proposal, but anyone else akin to my idea, which I'm quite sure isn't original, please pass it on. Thank you for reading; 

                                Tristan B or --PakaLoloTristaN 17:09, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
You may want to check out Wikia. --B 17:13, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I checked out Wikia and it's mostly opinions and themes of popular books. It doesn't have any of the actual books.--PakaLoloTristaN 17:51, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

One thing that I have learned about Wikipedia is that it isn't enough to simply present a proposal -no matter how wonderful and beneficial it would be if implemented- in order for it to become something real. There will be people against it for many reasons, and it needs hard work and interested people for it to even have a chance of success. Just imagine if you approached someone ten years ago with the idea of spending money to create an online encyclopedia entirely written by non-paid anonymous volunteers that could edit any article. A.Z. 18:13, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Project Gutenberg sounds like what you're looking for. -Chunky Rice 18:15, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Try also Wikisource. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 18:16, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm a little surprised that Wikisource wasn't suggested immediately, since that's exactly what PakaLoloTristaN described. Atropos 19:58, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, I find Wikisource to be much better than Gutenberg, as it is much larger and is on-site (It dosn't need downloading). Reywas92Talk 23:52, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Link names on page history/user contribs

Compare these:

  • User contribs: (Newest | Oldest) View (Newer 50) (Older 50) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500).
  • Page history: (Latest | Earliest) View (previous 50) (next 50) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500).

It would probably be better if both used the same names, preferebly not "previous" and "next" which mean exactly the opposite of what one would expect in the page history. Any thoughts? Zocky | picture popups 09:13, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

It does not matter in the slightest since the meaning is still clear. Adrian M. H. 09:18, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't think "previous" (which means "later") and "next" (which means "earlier") are very clear. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:00, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I always hit the wrong one when it's "previous" and "next". Thanks for drawing attention to this problem, it never occurred to me that it needed fixing.--Father Goose 15:28, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I've been confused by this on numerous occaisions, I agree that it should be standardised, and I agree with BigNate below. SamBC(talk) 17:44, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
This has also confused me. Atropos 20:00, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
I have to agree with the others that it's extremely unclear. — The Storm Surfer 22:10, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Standardizing on new(er|est)/old(er|est) would seem logical. Can we have this changed via a MediaWiki page, or does this need to be changed behind the scenes? BigNate37(T) 16:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

In newer versions of the MediaWiki software it's easy to customize these kinds of messages (you enter something on a page overrides the default messages). The reference is somewhere around Meta:Help:System message. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikidemo (talk • contribs) 19:41, August 24, 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to transplant copy this thread to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) to get the developers' attention, since it should be fixed in the distribution, not just by user customization.--Father Goose 20:20, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

US-centrism

I think we should make "10 November" the standard preference, rather than "November 10". According to Calendar date#mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy (month, day, year), the "month day year" format (which is very odd, I must say) is only used in the US, and on a few little islands. Melsaran 21:41, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Be bold, I'd say :-). Melsaran 21:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not comfortable adding original research to an article. WilyD 21:59, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
When it's the "standard format", it's probably not too hard to find a citation, and when you add a citation, it is generally not OR. Melsaran 22:00, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Autoformatting and linking - dates can be entered in such a way as to display differently, depending on an editor's preference. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:18, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I know, but the default setting is month/day/year, you have to change your preferences to enable the normal setting. Melsaran 18:24, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by default. Isn't the software default to leave what the author put in? And doesn't the Manual of style carefully avoid specifying one or the other? I imagine any change would mean an inordinate amount of effort being devoted to edit wars.Or are you talking about dates generated by Wikipedia? I would be careful about using the word "standard". The only standard (in the ISO/ANSI/DIN sense) I know is ISO 8601, (and the equivalent BS, EN, DIN and ANSI standards), which specifies YYYY-MM-DD.--Boson 20:54, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Eh, no, I meant that the standard preference is mm/dd/yyyy, i.e. that's the preference set when you create a new account. Melsaran 21:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I see. Since I immediately changed my preferences when I set up my account (I think), I didn't remember what the default was. I suppose I assumed that the top item (no preference) would have been the default. I presume "anonymous" users see what the author wrote. Thanks for clarification! --Boson 21:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
You've missed mentioning RFC 2550, which is similar to ISO 8601 for present-day dates. BigNate37(T) 21:46, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

As I recall reading, this is a very big can of worms to be fiddling with opening. As I understand the matter, the debate was bitterly divided and never resolved—just depreciated due to the upgrade to the software which allows linked dates to be displayed based on user preference. As far as the comment about Canadians using month-day-year, this is in popular use due to cultural proximity to the US. As far as I know, as a Canadian, the proper form is day-month-year here as well. I may be wrong, but to my knowledge saying month-day-year is the official form in Canada is akin to saying the inch is the standard unit of length—most people using it doesn't make it correct. I'm also less inclined to respect WilyD's comment based on his use of the term Soviet Canuckistan. Are we supposed to take the comment seriously using slang like that? BigNate37(T) 19:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Ohh..... I read the part about Canada in Calendar date#mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy (month, day, year), and thought it was another of those stupid Americanisms that Canadians tend to import. When WilyD said "Soviet Canuckistan", I thought it was probably some region in Russia or something. I had no idea that he meant Canada :-). Melsaran 19:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Still, I don't really understand how the debate could have been so "bitterly divided". The US is the ONLY country in the world that uses such an illogical system (month/day/year), save a few little islands. Aren't we meant to be a global encyclopaedia? Why focus so much on the US? Melsaran 18:56, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

The default date preference is no preference. --- RockMFR 20:07, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

For wikilinks? Oh, that could be. Still, the default setting for articles such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_11 (notice the URL) is mm-dd, so without setting a preference, your default setting for date articles is US-style. Melsaran 20:14, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
I think you're going to have a very hard time trying to find consensus to move these articles. --- RockMFR 20:29, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
What are the arguments for preferring a chiefly American and highly illogical date notation style over the style that "the rest of the world" uses? Melsaran 20:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Maybe because the those date articles were created first using the month-day system. After that, there was no point in changing it. Sometimes, it's just better to leave things the way they are and avoid getting involved in a pointless argument that will go nowhere. --Farix (Talk) 04:34, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm also not sure how it's "highly illogical." It's just a date format. -- Kesh 19:21, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
There's an argument to it's illogicity when it's a full date, with day month and year. When it's just a month and day, I don't see how it can be argued as illogical. SamBC(talk) 19:40, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
August 11, 2007 might be illogical, but August 11 by itself is no less logical than 2007-08-11.
Yes, I meant the mm-dd-(yy)yy format. When you use 'August 11' in an article, and you are consistent, you also use "August 11, 2007", which is illogical. Melsaran 21:30, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
There is nothing illogical about MM DD, YYYY format. It is just one of the excepted ways of formating a date. What is illogical is continually complaining about it. --Farix (Talk) 01:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Middle endian is actually very illogical. Your number representations should always be in either increasing or falling order. Since arabic numbers has the most significant digit first in Latin text 2007-08-11 makes the most sense. Jeltz talk 18:44, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Man, I can't believe nobody got the RFC 2550 joke. Blah. BigNate37(T) 15:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Life must be very, very good if this is a priority problem to someone. :) Look up the word "arbitrary" and cogitate for a while. MarkinBoston 03:45, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Their is nothing illogical about the MM-DD-(YY)YY format: it's just like the 12 hour time system versus the 24 hour time system, thier both perfectly logical, thier just used in different parts of the world. Deathawk 03:32, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that the World Trade Organization, about 20 or 25 years ago, went through this same discussion. The end result was that ALL dates and times in ALL countries would be represented in descending order, starting with the year, and using a 24 hour time format. Right now, here, according to my computer it is August 26, 2007, 5:21 p.m. So, according to the WTO the time should be written 2007-08-28-17:21:32. In this manner even the most minuscule time would be written in the same format as something as vague as month and year. I thought this was a great idea, which is obviously why I remember it. Unfortunetly it seems like so many things, everybody goes "Oh, yeah, that's a great idea" and then everybody just continues on as normal. Jocsboss 23:27, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup template design

You know these templates that are used by other editors to indicate an problem section? Is there a reason why they are so thick and wordy? I mean, those on the Cleanup list and others are all these huge boxes that significantly bump down the page. Is there anything wrong with a thinner, picture-less notification to alert editors? Instead of:

The writing and tone in the introduction of this article is too specialized and erudite and so needs a rewrite to include more introductory material and assume less is known by the readers.
To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, it should be expanded and revised to be more suitable to the lay reader without a grounding in the subject.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page and read the lead section guide to make sure the introduction summarizes the article.

which has a picture of a broom (why? I get the symbol, but why?), two line breaks which themselves say use sparingly, four different text styles, two links to the same thing, says the same thing twice, and directs the editor to rewrite, assume less, expand, and discuss all at once. I suggest something like

This article's lead is too pedantic. The introduction should be revised to be more suitable to readers without a foundation in the subject.

obviously, with better writing and a better message. I don't have any revolutionary design ideas, but something about the giant boxes spoils the article.

As an editor, usually, upon encountering one of these I read the very first sentence only and then try to address the problem. I didn't even know there was a Fact Check WP before I posted this. But as a reader, just cruising along Wikipedia becomes a hassle when those especially ugly (sorry to the creator) neutrality boxes are there (these ones).

Regarding the images there, they are totally unnecessary. Look at the {{Peacock}} box - there's a cute icon, but it's not like Wikipedia's templates have some sort of graphic identity they need to hold up. In that neutrality section alone there are five different styles of icons, from 3D glassy to flat and roughly anti-aliased circles.

This unorganized complaint isn't just about aesthetics. All of these templates are blocky hindrances to reading, and I know you can just scroll by them. Someone, I don't know who, pioneered to use the little lock instead of the top article notice we had before (see George W. Bush), and I push this for the same reasons. I started some templates on Scots Wikipedia in this smaller style, and I don't understand why it wouldn't work here (see {{POV}}, {{stub}}, and {{Fixscots}}). ALTON .ıl 05:15, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

There's a current push to implement template standardization at Wikipedia talk:Template standardisation. Although the intention is to substantially keep the content the same, you may wish to comment there. Flyguy649 talk contribs 05:23, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Hah, okay. Thanks. ALTON .ıl —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alton (talk • contribs) 05:31, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

Special:Linksearch

What are people's thoughts on possibly adding a link to the crosswiki linksearch on Special:Linksearch? The page is very helpful in finding spam here and the crosswiki search (based on the toolserver) allows searches in the top 57 wikis. I think its a good idea but since it is an interface page, I should probably get consensus before adding things to it. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 17:58, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll take the silence to mean there are no objections. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 23:40, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm proposing a little link next to each recent change listed in My Watchlist (the recent changes part). Perhaps at the end of each line, a small link: (unwatch) to stop watching that page. This would help so that we didn't have to click on the article first, then click unwatch at the top, then go back to the watchlist and continue our rounds. I know this is minor and there are other ways of doing it, but I know it would be real simple to implement. Comments welcome. Thanks. --Pilotboi / talk / contribs 19:28, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

This would actually be pretty useful. What I have been doing is using navigation popups to get an "unwatch" link, then middle-clicking it and closing the tab that opened once it's done loading. If this link could be JS enabled to not need to open another page (or simply force a watchlist refresh, resulting in that entry being delisted) that would be great. BigNate37(T) 19:35, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

This can already be achieved by editing your monobook.js. See User:CBM/simple.js for a working version or WP:US for a version they claim doesn't work anymore. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:42, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

  • The new Ajax version (which is imho better anyway) can be found here: wlUnwatch. As for the "claim", the old Unwatch script indeed doesn't work anymore. It should however work if you choose alternative unwatch href as suggested (uncomment the second var query_prefix); that's why it works in your simple.js. You're welcome to come and "fix" the old script in this sense ∴ Alex Smotrov 20:23, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I've been using Alex's and it works pretty well. Should be built into the site, though. Has anyone filed a feature request? — Omegatron 08:22, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

This is a bad idea to have built into the watchlist page. I can already see myself meaning to click something else, and removing a page by mistake, and then having to track it down again, if I can even remember which one it was --lucid 08:26, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried it? It stays on the list until you refresh, but is crossed off, so you can uncheck it if you checked it by accident, and it will be watched again. — Omegatron 23:49, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Trivia/"popular culture sections" - move to new Wikimedia project?

Firstly, apologies if this idea has been discussed before, but I skimmed through the archives of Wikipedia talk:Avoid trivia sections and found nothing resembling it. I merely want to float the idea and let wiser heads debate and decide on its merit.

As a contributor/editor at the level of making the order of tens of edits a week, I often run across debates over the inclusion of trivia sections or "references in popular culture" sections in articles. The thought occurred to me:

We have Wiktionary for dictionary definitions, Wikinews for current events, Wikiquote for quotations, Wikibooks for "how-to" material, Wikitravel for travel guides, and so on - none of which fit into Wikipedia under existing policy guidelines. Yet they are integrated enough that a simple cross-reference link can refer the reader to additional material in these associated projects, if they choose to follow them.

My proposal: Create Wikiculture. Allow this to be a repository of cultural references to things. Move existing trivia and "in popular culture" sections into Wikiculture and cross-link to them in the same way that Wikitravel, Wikiquote, etc. are linked into Wikipedia articles. Any trivia deemed important enough to remain in the Wikipedia article (i.e. not really trivia) should be integrated into the article rather than migrated.

In practice:

Advantages:

  • Removes these sections from Wikipedia, in accordance with WP:TRIVIA.
  • Retains trivia and popular culture sections for the benefit of those who value them.
  • Provides a suitable location for adding such material.
  • May grow into a repository of cultural trivia that many readers may well find interesting and valuable, but that is currently being excluded from Wikipedia.

Disadvantages:

  • Requires new Wikimedia project to be set up. (I have no idea how difficult this is.)
  • Requires education of Wikipedia editors and transmigration of much data (though this will naturally occur incrementally as part of the inherent growth and modification of Wikimedia projects).
  • May be some confusion over what qualifies as Wikipedia material versus Wikiculture material. (May be no worse than current confusion over adding material to the article proper or to an existing trivia section within it.)

I'm sure there are many other points to raise, both in favour and against. I trust the Wiki community to discuss and make a suitable decision.

-dmmaus 23:56, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Considering Wikiquote, Wiktionary, and Wikibooks all had similar origins, it's not that bad an idea. incubator.wikimedia.org is what you're looking for.--Father Goose 06:23, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
The proof is in the implementation but it sounds like a great idea. Wikimedia could become the world's biggest repository of trivia and pop culture references. Can we push all the "list of" sections and articles there too, as well as fan art, fan fiction, original user-submitted artworks, and links to the same? The new project would have a lot to consider in terms of sourcing, attribution, verifiability, etc. Wikidemo 07:56, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
WP:ILIKEIT. Neat solution, additional reference material, answers to the various trivia concerns, repository for reasonable kinds of fancruft and extra information on popular cultural matters (that does have legitimate place as reference material, just not on an encyclopedia).... nice. The above editors have itemized its benefits well -- count me in on supporting it, if it goes further. FT2 (Talk | email) 22:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to Father Goose for getting me started.
Just thought I'd get it started. I hope others will follow and discuss/help move this along.
01:10, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
PS. The project still needs to be officially posted as a proposal, by someone willing to take responsibility for (spearhead) it, at meta:Proposals for new projects. Feel free anyone. 02:15, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I would support this if it moved forward; I recently had a similar idea myself, not really developed, but basically porting all that stuff to Wikia somehow, with the possibility of a little tag as for Commons or Wiktionary saying "WikiPopCulture has more information ..." I was trying to sort out how it could be structured and my idealet had a digg-type interface for moving an item up or down to get consensus on what was important, but then I realized everything would end up with the Simpsons on top. ;-) Anyway, overlap is not something I see as a major deterrent here and if there were a real editorial community some nice guidelines could develop. --Dhartung | Talk 08:46, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Alt text popups for wikilinks

Hi gents,

This is just one of a million ideas I'm sure you all have heard before, but I figured I'd throw it out there and see if possibly there is something I could do to help. Have you all considered modifying the engine of wikipedia to allow the viewing of alt. text popups (yellow box with text from the article of the word the cursor is hovering over) during the reading of an article? Perhaps just the first few lines of the article referenced would be an excellent way to expedite researching. Just an idea. Let me know if I can help with this if you undertake the project. Thanks all for your work--I try to edit whenever I get the chance, though usually someone beats me to it! Open Source rocks my socks off! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.187.115.115 (talk) 00:37, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

See WP:POPUPS — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 00:44, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Spell Checker

Am I the first person to realize that there should be a spell checker above the edit box? Or does one already exist that I'm not aware of? If there isn't one, then it should be considered. Oddmartian2 20:45, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Integrating one into the software would require a lot of work and processing power on the servers and create redundancy with a feature already available in a number of ways, including copying text into a word processor or adding a browser plugin. Many web browsers now include spell checkers, including Mozilla Firefox. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:50, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Indeed. Editing directly in the textarea of a web browser should be considered the "low octane" method of editing, as there are *many* alternatives with much greater flexibility and functionality. This is true even though more web browsers support spell-checking (either natively or through plug-ins).
Here is an example of a "high octane" option for editing Wikipedia, there are many more, this is just off the top of my head: [11]. dr.ef.tymac 02:48, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
The Google Toolbar offers spell checking to users of Internet Explorer as well as Firefox. -Henry W. Schmitt 03:54, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Does the Google Toolbar really have a Spell Checker? I have an AOL toolbar with various Google features, but perhaps I should consider getting the actual Google Toolbar. My old computer had the Google Toolbar, and I do seem to remember it having a Spell Checker. Oddmartian2 14:25, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Obtain linked-in research / sourcing database(s)

Many Wikipedia article suffer from a lack of sources. Searching for sources can be a difficult process, and putting the source into proper Wikipedia reference format can daunt many editors. Even where editors are determined, many of the public domain sources (e.g. Google News / Google News Archive) are limited in the depth and breadth of their content.

Another problem is that few enough editors take the time to look for genuine paper resources. It is generally a bad thing for us to concentrate too hard on online resources. --Slashme 14:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

The proposed solution is to develop a relationship with various archive sites; search access would be limited to registered Wikipedia users; Once an appropriate source was found, a single click would build appropriate Wikicoding for the reference, ready to be pasted into an article.

But what about the normal Wikipedia users? How are they to check whether a source says what Wikipedia says it does? Also, do we want to help keep proprietary sources closed, or is it better to fight for open source resources? (for example wikisource and open access journals). But for simple citation of articles and books, take a look at the wikipedia template filling tool. --Slashme 14:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

By expanding the scope of available sources, pooling our collective resources, and simplifying the task of finding and forming references, it will be far easier to add references to the articles that need supporting documentation and to create articles on new subjects. Alansohn 02:26, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Age of living people

I'm surprised not to see this at WP:PEREN. Once we have a biog of a living person properly set up with their date of birth, wouldn't it be fairly easy to have a variable (let's call it #AGE) that returns that person's age as of the day of reading the article?

This would mean that readers don't need to do the simple but irritating bit of maths to work out 2007 (or whatever) - birthyear, because the article reads, "'''Anthony Norman Other''' (born 2 July 2000, currently #AGE)..."

Is this practicable? --Dweller 12:16, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't {{birth date and age}} cover this? {{birth date and age|1981|4|28}} produces " (1981-04-28) April 28, 1981 (age 43)". Nihiltres(t.l) 13:07, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Oh, and there's also just plain {{age}}. Nihiltres(t.l) 13:09, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Nuts. I guess it's not in FAQ, because it already exists. Now I feel daft. OK, I'm off to the Biogs WikiProject to find out why they're not sending out a bot to automatically add it. Thanks Nihiltres. --Dweller 13:16, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
"As of ..." is better than "currently", I think. A.Z. 04:10, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I believe this was discussed here recently (around July 31 ) under the heading "Biography Info Box Nonsense". It must be in th archives.--Boson 06:52, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Currently, when one looks at any changelog (history, watchlist, etc.), there are two links for differences for each page: (cur) (last). These always struck me as somewhat abstruse. It just occurred to me that (now) (then) might be a lot clearer. Thoughts? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:50, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Scroll up to #Link names on page history/user contribs, then also see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Link names on page history/user contribs. A change link labels request is already submitted to the MediaWiki issue tracker here. BigNate37(T) 05:07, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I thought of this. Some articles may have an ext link that gets blacklisted because of spam, and therefore has to be removed. How about creating a page which designates that certain links can only be added to certain pages without being blacklisted. Doesn't the site have a similiar page that prevents explicit images from being added to all but certain pages?--Avant Guard 01:09, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

There's a local whitelist. It's used so we can link to the main page of TinyURL for example, without letting spammers use the site to hide links to bad sites. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 05:20, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Why not create a Fair-Use Media Repository?

Wikimedia Commons is a wonderful success story. In September 2004, there were 30 Wikipedias in existence. Obviously, it made no sense to have 30 copies of the same image, so Commons was founded. Brilliant.

As of September 2007, there are 253 Wikipedias (as well as hundreds of other projects). Commons supplies all these projects with free images, but under its current rules, Commons does not allow fair-use images. Which is fine, and makes Commons that much more useful and usable. But as in 2004, it still makes little sense to maintain hundreds of copies of the same copyrighted image.

Obviously, we don't want to encourage the uploading of copyrighted images. But since these items are restricted in their use by law, it seems very sensible to have them all together in a place that can be closely monitored. Such a place would make good use of [check usage], and would have a rampant deletion system. It could also have plenty of opportunities to inform users of the danger of breaking copyright law, and most importantly, two repositories would put across a very clear distinction between free and fairuse; something the XFD people have struggled with from day one.

Our few (but often essential) copyrighted items do have to be stored somewhere ... and as they say: "Wikipedia is not a repository of media files". So if Wikipedia is strictly an encyclopaedia, why are there still 1,435,075 files scattered amongst the Wikipedias? — Jack · talk · 23:41, Friday, 31 August 2007

Not practical. The English Wikipedia is one of the few Wikimedia projects which uses fair use images. So not much need for a shared repository. A fair use image must also be connected to an article, the distance between a separate repository would make that harder. The images are also only fair use when used in an article. When it would be like Commons it would be one large copyright violation repository. Garion96 (talk) 00:40, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
You made a bit of a logical leap there. Just because few projects use fair use images (at least for now), doesn't mean that there isn't a need for a shared repository. When Commons was founded, there wasn't an urgent need for a repository. As for fair use rationales, would it not be possible to make them multilingual, like "Image:Google.png, as used on the pages en:Google and de:Google falls under..."? Which could of course be later translated where needed.
Like I say, necessary copyrighted media has to be stored somewhere, and the fewer instances the better. — Jack · talk · 01:07, Saturday, 1 September 2007

Several reasons. One that was mentioned is that different projects have different policies, and the creation of a central repository would have to reconcile them somehow. The bigger issue is similar to why we don't use fair use media in galleries--we want to spread it around as little as possible and only use it where necessary. A central repository would require the creation of galleries and categories and lots of other pages displaying the non-free media without using it in an encyclopedic context that justifies its inclusion. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 16:14, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

That shouldn't be a problem if the article namespace and galleries were both disabled. Categories would be inevitable; just look at Category:Wikipedia non-free content, which is allowed to exist on the English Wikipedia. So long as the categories don't display the actual image (as in Commons), there's no violation, right? How can the rules vary between projects when they're all subject to the same laws? — Jack · talk · 18:45, Saturday, 1 September 2007
they're not all subject to the same laws. Fair use and fair dealing laws vary widely between jurisdictions, and Germany and France for example have very different terms for copyright than the United States. Thus it's logical for the local editions in those countries to have different policies. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 18:50, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, Night Gyr, I see your point. But still, The French Wikipedia isn't just used in France, etc. (see map). And the English Wikipedia conforms entirely to "fair use" as defined by US copyright law, despite being used in the UK, Canada, and Australia (and many more). Throw in 250+ other Wikipedias, and obviously the complexity of the situation means user's homeland can't be used as a judge. As the proposed repository would use mostly American servers owned by an American foundation, could it not just conform to US laws? — Jack · talk · 21:14, Saturday, 1 September 2007

The German and French Wikipedias etc are language-specific, not country-specific. They may statistically have larger audiences in countries such as Germany and France but they're still part of the U.S.-based Wikimedia Foundation and are therefore subject to U.S. law. Tra (Talk) 20:50, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
And the French Wikipédia is fair-use free, except in rare cases (corporate logos, coat of arms, stamps and currency) and has been for the past year. Bouchecl 02:27, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
That's quite interesting. It seems that pl: be: pt: da: all have too. — Jack · talk · 03:40, Sunday, 2 September 2007

Short answer is there is no legal way to do it.Geni 20:47, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I was looking for more of a complete answer than a quick, dismissive one — Jack · talk · 21:16, Saturday, 1 September 2007
Well once we have got as far as there is no legal way to do something there is little point in going much further. The odds that creating a central repository of image files would be considered fair use are minimal.Geni 21:34, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Welcome Bot

I proposed this before but after a lengthy discussion in which many people liked the idea, nothing happened. This bot could be extremely useful, ensuring every new user is welcomed (I still havn't been welcomed, by the way)

  • The bot could select users from a list of volunteers rather than have its own sig
  • It might look impersonal but as the welcome is a template, it's impersonal anyway

I'd like other opinions--Pheonix15 16:16, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I haven't been welcomed yet either. I don't know how "personal" the welcomes are already, but I think that a Welcome Bot is a great idea. Oddmartian2 16:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

The whole idea of a welcome is that another person has taken a moment to acknowledge your existence and given you some tips on how to edit. If a bot is doing this, it defeats the purpose and does nothing to actually make the person feel "welcome". When a light turns green at an intersection, do you feel welcomed by it? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 16:27, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Just a comment Please read the previous discussion. Most users wouldn't know it was a bot anyway--Pheonix15 16:37, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Not going to happen. WP:PEREN. Read the FAQ, please. --lucid 16:47, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment Yeah, I did read it. it says:
Reason for previous rejection: In general, this proposal comes up about once a quarter at WT:WC or the village pump. The reasoning is twofold behind rejection. 1) If a bot is used, it is cold and impersonal, and the bot is incapable of mentoring and assisting newcomers; 2) Many vandals are exposed when an edit made by them receives extra scrutiny, because one user page or another shows as a redlink.
I thought the welcome templates were cold and impersonal anyway. The fact that it could not help users would be irrelevant if, as I said above, the sig was randomly chosen from a group of volunteers. As for the extra scrutiny, the welcome is on the talk page, not the userpage which shows on the history--Pheonix15 16:58, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
It's the difference between a person opening the door for you, and an automatic door opening. It doesn't take significantly more thought for the person to do it than the robot, but it's much more personal, because it takes effort --lucid 17:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
But many welcomers just welcome new users one after the other without even remembering who they welcomed. The bot welcome will look like a normal welcome because of the already mentioned sig--Pheonix15 17:29, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Even if Welcome Bot is not personal, it will give good advice to new editors to help them get started. I think that it is a good idea. Captain panda 17:04, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

AFD Logs

I was wondering if when an AFD is closed, it could be unlisted from that days log so only open debates were listed. The closed ones could be added to a new log for closed ones.

It would look like this:

Open Debates: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2007_August_28/Open

Closed Debates: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2007_August_28/Closed

New England Review Me!/Go Red Sox! 21:20, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I think that's way too much work for the closing admin and is bound to cause problems if people forget to do it. I recommend you install a user script to do such a thing; If I recall correctly, I think User:Voice of All has a script which does that. —METS501 (talk) 21:24, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I looked over voiceofalls scripts but I couldn't find one there. If having pages for both open and closed causes problems, maybe closed debates could just be moved to the bottom of the page. New England Review Me!/Go Red Sox! 05:49, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I would strongly recommend against this. Closed debates are easy to skim past and moving them will just corrupt the historical record and make it hard to reconstruct the context. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 14:35, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

It would be a class, not an ID (can't have more than one identical ID per HTML document, you see) and the class in question is called "boilerplate metadata afd vfd xfd-closed", so you would add .boilerplate metadata afd vfd xfd-closed {display:none;} to your CSS file. Adrian M. H. 18:16, 30 August 2007 (UTC) Making the dot bold so that it's clear Adrian M. H. 18:18, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

The template actually has more than one class; each dot only lets you condition on one class. The relevant one is probably xfd-closed (which will also hide closed TfDs, etc., for you), so the relevant line is
.xfd-closed {display:none;}
to hide closed XfD discussions. Adrian M. H.'s solution won't work, because it means 'look for an xfd-closed element inside a vfd element inside an afd element inside a metadata element inside something with class boilerplate', which is not what you want. --ais523 18:43, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, that last one worked. New England Review Me!/Go Red Sox! 19:04, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Of course, now you won't be able to see how any debates turned out... Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I thought about that, but I already watchlist debates I participate in, or have a general interest in. New England Review Me!/Go Red Sox! 12:52, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist Alert

When somebody leaves a message on your talk page, a message shows on the screen stating that you have new messages. Shouldn't the same apply to watched pages? I know that one can easilly view their watched pages by clicking on the link, but a message would be an added convenience. The message would display which pages have been edited since your last visit, and who edited them. Oddmartian2 18:34, 8 September 2007 (UTC)My Talk

Many people have hundreds of pages on their watchlist, so such a feature is generally undesirable, and it would require a big technical change. You can subscribe to a rss history feed of different pages that you want to keep a close eye on though if you'd like. —METS501 (talk) 19:25, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
I didn't know that there are people with that many watchpages. I only have about twenty. Oddmartian2 20:01, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
I've got about 30 and when I first arrived I expected that to happen also. It would be a good idea though--Phoenix 15 21:04, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
I've over a hundred, but there's quite a few on there short-term. It's normally about 80, and As several are policy pages and their talkpages, they're edited rather frequently. SamBC(talk) 21:14, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
I've got 1300 pages on my watchlist, down from a high of 1800 or so. --Carnildo 21:17, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
A past study indicates that the average watchlist size is around 1000. --YbborTalk 02:00, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
My high was around 9K something if I recall. At that point the size of it will start causing glitches and make it pretty useless. I've trimmed it down closer to 7K, but I guess I should just wipe it clean and start over with a select few pages one of these days... MediaWiki actualy does have a feature that allow you to request e-mail notification when watched pages are edited. It's just not eneabled on enWiki though (performance issues due to the high edit rate I would guess), but some other projects (such as Commons) will let you eneable this from your preferences). --Sherool (talk) 02:00, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Displaying all subcategories on one page

I just brought this issue up over at Wikipedia talk:Categorization, and thought it would be worth posting here as well:

I'm under the impression that there is a way to force a large category with multiple pages to display all of its subcats on the first page, instead of spreading them out over succeeding pages. Assuming that I'm correct about this, I'd appreciate it if somebody would be kind enough to explain how to accomplish this. Thanks! Cgingold 14:39, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

The only way that I know how to accomplish this is by using the pipe trick to sort them all to the start of the list. --After Midnight 0001 17:07, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I see how that would do it -- but of course it would mean going through all of the sub-cats just to make that tiny alteration on each and every one of them. Ughh. Plus, it means losing the alphabetical dividers -- though they'd still be in the right order.
Hmmm. I was hoping there was a simple and direct way to accomplish the objective, through a tweak of the parent category. Perhaps something along the lines of adding __FORCETOC__ to make the TOC appear when there only 2 or 3 sections.
There really needs to be a simple way to do this, because I strongly suspect that many (if not most) people don't realize that there may be additional sub-cats spread out over successive pages. (I know I didn't, for a long time at least.) Any tech sorts want to make this happen?? :) Cgingold 23:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
See bugzilla:1211; it's a known problem and has been for a while. When I checked bugzilla a few weeks ago for a Signpost article, I found that this was the most requested bugfix ever, in terms of the number of people who had 'voted' for it on Bugzilla. There is, as explained above, a known workaround, but it's not an ideal situation. (Apparently, it's not trivial to implement in a way that doesn't cause excessive server load.) --ais523 14:44, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

campaign to incorporate TiggerScript into Wikipedia's pages with tables of contents

I would like to start a campaign to incorporate a tool called TiggerScript (see http://www.michaelpundit.com/tech/TiggerScript.htm) into Wikipedia. TiggerScript is a Javascript app that allows the reader to instantly toggle between table of contents and the current position in the article. TiggerScript is incorporated into this article about it :) and into some other articles on my website.

I believe that this user interface invention will significantly improve reading comprehension of webpages, including in Wikipedia, and hence deserves widespread adoption to make the web a more readable place. Incorporating TiggerScript into Wikipedia, as I explain in the article, is very simple if the Wikimedia technical people go along.

Please read the article, play around with TiggerScript, and consider supporting my campaign for making Wikipedia a more readable, structured, and UI sophisticated place with this neat hack. Michael Lyubomirskiy 02:36, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's such a good idea:
  • It would bloat the pages (only by a small amount, but it all adds up)
  • It doesn't add much that you don't get by just clicking on the heading in the TOC, reading a section, and clicking "back"
Maybe you can implement it as an optional add-on to monobook, similar to the popups tool? --Slashme 09:35, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Another comment: I suggest you use j and k as up and down hotkeys, as those are already de-facto standard in programs like vi and less.--Slashme 10:00, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Slashme, although the point about Vi is probably not as crucial since I doubt most "general audience" readers are even aware of this convention. dr.ef.tymac 04:50, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Change to protected template template

I proposed a change to a template some time ago. I'm advertising this here because no one made any comment. A.Z. 20:12, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I suggest "Wikipedian Score system"

  • 1. Now, edit count is only(?) method to evaluate wikipedia users' contribution
  • 2. I suggest "Score system"

For example

  • 1. + 1K byte contribution = 10 score
  • 2. + new article = 10 score
  • 3. + new image = 10 score
  • 4. + one reply to other user's talk = 10 score
  • 5. if user never edit for lawt 7days, he lost 10 point
  • 6. etc

For example

  • 1. If user get 10000 point, he ranks "beteran wikipedian"
  • 2. If user get 20000 point, he ranks "elite wikipedian"
  • 3. If user get 100000 point, he is nominated administrator. he'll became administrator level user without "absolute deny"
  • 4. If user get 1000000 point, he is nominated administrator. he'll became burocrat level user without "absolute deny"
  • 5. If user get 5000000 point, he is nominated foundation's Advisory. he'll became foundation's Advisory without "absolute deny"
  • 6. if user lost some point he downgrade automatically

-- WonYong (talk • contribs • count • logs • email) 07:19, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Wait, so becoming foundation board would now require 500,000 edits? I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. --tjstrf talk 07:30, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
And vandalism = -100 points? Before you know it, this will become Wikipedia:Wikipediholism test. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 07:37, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
No, any such system can be gamed, some types of people will simply figure out the best "formula" for racking up a high score, with no regard to how usefull or not theyr actions actualy are. Adding text to an article is not always an improvement, soemtimes removing redundant, unsourced or just plain wrong content is the biggest improvement you can do to an article. Editcount and such can give some indication of a users commitment (or obsession) with the project, but litte else. The only way to accurately judge a user is to simply look at theyr work over time and how they interact with others. --Sherool (talk) 08:08, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Go play the Wikipedia Game and leave the rest of us alone. Rating editors by anything other than how well they help the encyclopedia is extremely silly. Trying to put a number on how good an editor is is like trying to put a number on how much two people love each other --lucid 08:20, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Not a great system. There should be an edit count and a byte count. That would be useful--Pheonix15 17:46, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
That Rodin guy would have made a terrible Wikipedia editor. The quarry kept giving him big, pristine pieces of marble, and he kept making them hundreds of kilograms smaller. Edits that remove text can be just as important – and often more difficult – than edits that add text. Who ever heard of an editor who didn't own a red pencil? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:48, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
As flawed as the suggestion that editors should be judged based on how many edits they make and how many bytes they contribute, you must admit its beyond ridiculous to compare editing to sculpting. Atropos 20:45, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Not really. Sculpting is taking away from the ugly mass to build something that looks attractive, deletion of content can go exactly the same way --lucid 20:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes really. Its not just ugly, its a meaningless shape. It would be like writing an article out of a random assortment of characters. Atropos 22:38, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Wow, that game is such a great idea. Users who'd otherwise be taking wikiholic tests and adding userboxes are out gnoming. Atropos 18:16, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
exactly. --lucid 20:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

How many points would it take to become Jimbo Wales? A.Z. 02:31, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Using whatlinkshere rather than categories for maintenance lists

Thread moved to Wikipedia talk:Maintenance#Using whatlinkshere rather than categories for maintenance lists. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:49, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Tips and reminders on the top of the page

I was thinking that it might be a good idea to add reminders to the top of the page (think of those texts on a loading screens of some video games), the reminders can range from simple things like "You can edit this page by clicking edit this page on the top of the page" and "If you see anything wrong in this article be bold and change it" to specific reminders that are only given out to members of a specific project.

There is also the issue of where to put these reminders, they could be visible all the time, only while you're editing, or you could opt out, etc.

And if we wanted to get really fancy, we could have a targeted reminder based on your contributions, e.g. if this is your first visit to Wikipedia it would say something simple like "You can edit this page by clicking edit this page on the top of the page", but then if you're advanced and really good at editing long articles then it could give you tips on editing long articles and provide links to long articles.

Don't get distracted by the last part about targeted reminders, I just thought the normal reminders might make people more aware of those Wikipedia features that they wouldn't usually hear about until they really really needed it. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 03:51, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like a feature request. Those need to go to the developers, so post it at technical for more input on feasibility or put it into the bug tracker. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:18, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
There's already too much being placed at the top of pages. I think that "Edit this page" is clear enough. Unschool 04:27, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I personally would hate having reminders annoying me all the time. A.Z. 04:32, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) With information already dense and redundant as is, I see no need for this, despite it being a fair idea in theory. Nihiltres(t.l) 04:34, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I have an idea. There could be a big red button somewhere called "I'm a newbie! Help me!" Then the user would click on this button and all the reminders and other useful things for newbies would pop up on their screen. A.Z. 04:36, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Although I disagree with the (apparent) intent of this proposal (to provide general-purpose or user-specific reminders on how to use the Wikipedia interface) I do agree that sometimes "reminders" are useful, and in fact necessary.
For example, if you take a look at Love (edit the wikicode) you will see a comment at the top of the wiki source code. Many times there is a need to add comments like this to "potential target" articles. Alternatively, sometimes there is a need to remind people (and WP:BOTS) that "Memoize" is not a spelling error. It would be nice if there were a way to ensure that such article-specific comments did not get ignored by first-time editors, as it can get tedious reminding people of issues that would be found in an article-specific FAQ. dr.ef.tymac 04:43, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Moved the discussion to here, notice how I changed some things based on your suggestions. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 21:28, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Intensive Care Unit

In a moment of alleged inspiration or boldness (or insanity), I've created the Wikipedia Intensive Care Unit, a place for articles whose subject is possibly or likely notable, but the article itself is in danger of being deleted because of other issues. How this project came to be is found at WP:ICU. If anyone else knows of another similar project, let me know so I don't reinvent the wheel here. All comments and suggestions, both here and at WP:ICU, are greatly encouraged. Realkyhick 02:36, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron. dr.ef.tymac 15:32, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I thought someone else may have had a similar idea. I'll talk with those folks. Realkyhick 15:56, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject feminism

Does anyone see the need of a wikiproject feminism? There is a wikiproject gender studies, but you wouldn't see there tag on, say, Amelia Earhart, not even on feminism. Just wondering. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bardofcornish (talk • contribs) 22:01, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't something promoting a feminist POV be a little out of place? I could see a Wikiproject Women. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:46, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
If there's enough interest in feminism as a movement and history, fine. The purpose would have to be to work with articles relating to feminism, not to promote a feminist agenda, which would be POV. Just like the California wikiproject is there to talk about California, not to promote a California POV. There is a fascism wikiproject to deal with articles about fascism, not to be fascist. There are military wikiprojects, not to promote warfare and the military but to study it. And so on. Women (and men, places, events, etc) would be included if they are feminists, or important one way or another to the issue and movement, but not solely because they are female or tend to be role models. Wikidemo 22:16, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Not sure about Earhart, but why the heck wouldn't WP Gender Studies not have a tag on feminism?? I'm not majorly fussed right now (in terms of wikipedia, not about feminism/gender studies/gender issues generally), but that just seems an odd assertion. SamBC(talk) 13:15, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
There is a wiki project peace movements, or something to that effect, so I wikiproject feminism would be a bit like that. A history of feminism, feminists, ect. I'd only start it if there is a neeed for it, and if I get the support/help of one other experienced user. I'm a relatively new user, and my technical skills are not many and not very advanced. Bardofcornish 14:53, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, feminism does have a Wikiproject Gender Studies tag.Bardofcornish 14:56, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

WikiChat

I tried to post this idea earlier, but apparently it didn't go through. I also proposed this idea last year under a different username. Anyway, I think that a chat room set up for Wikipedians who want to talk and decide things faster would help ideas get through easier. It's not that the Talk Pages aren't helpful, but I still think that a Wikipedia chat room is a good idea. Oddmartian2 Talk To Me 17:36, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Try looking around at meta:Mailing_lists/overview — Jack · talk · 18:35, Saturday, 1 September 2007
IRC--Pheonix15 19:30, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

There are already numerous wikipedia-related IRC channels. Try #wikipedia on freenode, or see WP:IRC for details. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Night Gyr (talk • contribs) 20:35, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I looked into the IRC articles, and while it looks pretty close to what I was describing, it seems that only certain users who have a program installed can use them, whereas a regular chat room would be open to anybody. Oddmartian2 13:16, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I downloaded HydraIRC which is absolutly free and I did it with a 26kbps dial up. ou can down load it at [12]. Read more about IRC at [13] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pheonix15 (talk • contribs) 13:58, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
If you don't want to download anything, you can use http://java.freenode.net/ which allows you to connect to a given channel through a java applet. Tra (Talk) 17:35, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Those solutions are all pages outside of Wikipedia. I really believe there should be something like that on-wiki. I created a page called "chat desk" once and it was immediately deleted by a bureaucrat. Conversations outside of Wikipedia about Wikipedia that are supposed to decide things about Wikipedia seem unprofessional to me because they don't allow all editors to see them --only a selected group--, they don't get recorded, etc. There is a lack of places where we can chat, so many people go to the reference desk, or Jimbo Wales's talk page, or their user pages to talk about something that doesn't already have a specific place to be discussed. Since there are objections against creating a conversation place on the Wikipedia namespace, maybe someone should create it on their user space. A.Z. 20:16, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

A.Z. seems to have the right idea about creating User Space conversation areas. I would try something like that myself, except that I don't have nearly enough knowledge of Wikipedia or the internet. If anybody else knows how to do such a thing, then they should. Oddmartian2 22:12, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Observation #wikipedia-en is the wikipedia channel and most of the stuff is just talk about stuff that has nothing to do with wikipedia. If anybody brings up a related subject everyone just carries on what they were talking about before--Pheonix15 17:35, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Enhancement.

Dear Sir / Madam, > Recently i went through the wikipedia website. Some thing that can > be enhanced struck me for which i am typing this email. Its just a > suggestion. > > In the first page you have got the wikipedia image and languages around it. > And in the same way you have got single letter of languages inscribed on the > globe image. By using flash or any web tool and say if you do mouse over the > image you can enhance that particular letter and if you click on it, it > should take to the page of particular language. This is a suggestion. > > thankyou. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.168.18.138 (talk) 17:28, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Which would be counter to accessibility guidelines. Adrian M. H. 21:32, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I really appreciate the underlining done by Firefox, though I've found that many words, spelling variations and proper names, for example, are underlined. So, I'd suggest caution as well as a review alternate spellings (as well as how such spellings are handled) that can be found somewhere in Wikipedia. Sorry, but I can't remember where, offhand. Brian Pearson 01:21, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Suggested improvement to category listing

I think the category pages could be improved by adding a short byline to the title of the wikipedia entry.

For example, the page[14] gives me an alphabetical list of software for burning cds, but if I am looking for Windows software I have to click on every entry to find out if it's for Linux or Windows.

The article on the first entry on this category page has this introductory sentence:

"AcetoneISO is a disk image manipulator for Linux."

So the category entry could be improved by changing "AcetoneISO" to "AcetoneISO - a disk image manipulator for Linux"

I believe the category pages are simply generated by listing the head words of the articles they reference, so a simple edit will not solve the issue. If there *is* any way I can help to resolve this, I'd certainly be willing to contribute. I am involved in web design and programming, so the capacity is there.

Timm 09:18, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

One word - subcategories. SamBC(talk) 13:44, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
That's what lists allow for. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 14:05, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

For all those curious anons...

Have you ever seen an anon vandalising, just so he could see how it was like to get blocked? I sure have! So, instead of wasting precious Wikipedian time, we could implement the "See How It's Like to be Blocked" program (SHILB for short). We'd have a consenting admin put the IP in a block for ten or so minutes (or longer as long as the IP isn't shared), and then all the little anons would be happily prancing in the meadows, now with the experience of being shunned on a website for ten minutes. Any thoughts on this? 70.58.35.196 05:30, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anyone willing to risk a block will care enough to go and find out if Wikipedia has a feature that'll let them see what it's like to be blocked. They'll just vandalize. 06:10, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like more rules and bureaucracy without any tangible benefits. Recurring dreams 07:17, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
We don't do blocks on request. It's in the blocking policy. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 14:06, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Obtain linked-in research / sourcing database(s)

Many Wikipedia article suffer from a lack of sources. Searching for sources can be a difficult process, and putting the source into proper Wikipedia reference format can daunt many editors. Even where editors are determined, many of the public domain sources (e.g. Google News / Google News Archive) are limited in the depth and breadth of their content.

Another problem is that few enough editors take the time to look for genuine paper resources. It is generally a bad thing for us to concentrate too hard on online resources. --Slashme 14:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

The proposed solution is to develop a relationship with various archive sites; search access would be limited to registered Wikipedia users; Once an appropriate source was found, a single click would build appropriate Wikicoding for the reference, ready to be pasted into an article.

But what about the normal Wikipedia users? How are they to check whether a source says what Wikipedia says it does? Also, do we want to help keep proprietary sources closed, or is it better to fight for open source resources? (for example wikisource and open access journals). But for simple citation of articles and books, take a look at the wikipedia template filling tool. --Slashme 14:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

By expanding the scope of available sources, pooling our collective resources, and simplifying the task of finding and forming references, it will be far easier to add references to the articles that need supporting documentation and to create articles on new subjects. Alansohn 02:26, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Using real names instead of pseudonyms

I think that Wikipedia should encourage new users to register with real names rather than pen names. This might not make an enormous difference, but it might make it easier for Wikipedians to remember other Wikipedians. I hadn't gotten this idea until recently, so it's still a thought in process. Answer if you have any comments. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oddmartian2 (talk • contribs) 22:29, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Why didn't you register with your real name? A.Z. 22:40, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
I appreciate it when editors choose to provide some indication of their real first name or nickname, because it makes them somehow more approachable and addressing them by name becomes more natural. But we should never encourage them to provide any such personal information, for reasons which I hope are clearly obvious. It is their choice. I am never going to reveal what my initials stand for, so I don't expect any such info from anyone else. Adrian M. H. 22:53, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

In response to the first comment: as I said previously, I only recently realized that actual names might be better than pen names, so I didn't think to register with my real name. In response to the second comment: while actual names are in a sense personal information, they are only names. It's not as if users would give out their addresses and phone numbers--that would be far to personal. Come to think of it, users wouldn't even have to sign up with their real names. Instead, they could use a different name. If I were to re-register, I could register as Charlie Smith, even though that isn't my name. Oddmartian2 16:12, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

It's a matter of preference. I can remember non-"normal" names (sometimes better than real names, such as those in the Thai or Vietnamese language). For example: User:sj (short), User:TonyTheTiger (that cereal), etc. And I don't know, really, I'd feel uncomfortable remembering a first and last name, and then remembering who it binds to. Worse is if we come up with two John Does - do we rename one John Doe 2? Then we run into the same problem as above. But for me, the easiest way to recognise someone on Wikipedia is via their signatures, then their username, whether it is "normal" or not. x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I agrre totally. Plus I'm a minor so it's not a good idea--Pheonix15 17:41, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. I guess it is true that there might be two wikipedians with the exact same name. I guess that I can conclude--and you'll probably agree with me--that it's better if there are more letters and less numbers in usernames. The only reason I'm Oddmartian2 is because I forgot my password as the original Oddmartian and wanted to use the same basic name. Oddmartian2 19:57, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Not quite - I have an equal number of both in my username. :P I don't know, really - I have few problems remembering moderately-long strings of garbage (8-9 characters) and I identify to numbers and letters slightly easier. I just think that using non-normal names allows for better expression rather than a stoic name. x42bn6 Talk Mess 10:45, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedian suggested learning path

I spent quite a bit of time on Wikipedia before I discovered some of the excellent tools available, such as WP:POPUPS, WP:TWINKLE, WP:AWB, and so on. I think it would be helpful to have a help page somewhere designed to guide the technical growth of Wikipedians. We have plenty of documentation for the newest of the newbies, but after that you're pretty much on your own to find cool new tools suited to your skill level. Often, I would run across things well before understanding what they were, so I didn't even give them a second look until much later.

So ... I'd like to develop a sort of "suggested learning path" which would introduce users to new features of Wikipedia in an ordered sequence that would match their growing wiki-savvy. The first items in the list would link to our existing tutorials on finding information, basic editing, watchlists, article history, discussion pages, advanced editing such as templates and tables, etc. Section/Phase/Level II would introduce WikiProjects, the Community portal, the Wikimedia foundation, and so on. Level III would introduce tools like WP:POPUPS. Level IV: Bots, etc. Level V: ?. Obviously it would take a while to get this list in an agreeable order.

If others feel that this is a worthwhile endeavor, what should it be called? What should the major divisions be called? What topics should be introduced when? — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 01:12, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Finally I got to point someone to my page, see User:Jeffrey.Kleykamp/New User Study Guide, I guess it's not very complete but that's what you're looking for. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 01:14, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Alt text popups for wikilinks

Hi gents,

This is just one of a million ideas I'm sure you all have heard before, but I figured I'd throw it out there and see if possibly there is something I could do to help. Have you all considered modifying the engine of wikipedia to allow the viewing of alt. text popups (yellow box with text from the article of the word the cursor is hovering over) during the reading of an article? Perhaps just the first few lines of the article referenced would be an excellent way to expedite researching. Just an idea. Let me know if I can help with this if you undertake the project. Thanks all for your work--I try to edit whenever I get the chance, though usually someone beats me to it! Open Source rocks my socks off! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.187.115.115 (talk) 00:37, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

See WP:POPUPS — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 00:44, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Miliary Democracy

I am trying something new. I have a blog at the Daily Kos talking about something I call miliary democracy. I am trying to write a bill for a general election in a local community that can be downloaded and run in your county. The bill will create universal health care in one county at a time. This is how Germany and Denmark got universal health care. My idea is to allow people to read the basic bill I have and either make suggestions or directly edit the bill. People could then download the bill and introduce it at the next general election in their county when the collaboration is finished. One of my readers commented that I should utilize Wikipedia.

My concern is that health care is a hot topic and there are those that do not wish to see universal health care in America. People could do malicious things to the site like delete the bill entirely. Are there protections from such vandalism? Are there previous versions of Wiki entries saved some where? Thoughts about whether the idea is a good one or not?

If I did this I would put in 2 entries: One on Health Care Cooperatives and one on Miliary Democracy.

If this works for health care, I intend to expand to other issues that should be enacted federally but are unlikely to get there--campaign finance reform maybe?

DailyKos Dr A 15:51, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

What does this have to do with Wikipedia? Corvus cornix 16:52, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
It sounds like this user wants to post his political original research to the wiki, and then lock it so no one else can modify it. Sorry, but that's exactly what we do not allow on Wikipedia. -- Kesh 16:58, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Remember, Wikipedia is not a place to advocate anything. If the term "miliary democracy" is something you just coined, it is not yet notable and is a neologism. Save this for your blog for now, and if it gains traction there, let someone else write about it, as you would have a conflict of interest. Realkyhick 17:01, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
edit conflict On Wikipedia, all previous versions are always saved. But I'm not sure if Wikipedia is the right place for this. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a political tool. You can't create an article just to promote your idea. You might be able to create an article describing the campaign itself, for informational purposes, if it has become notable enough for an encyclopedia article. Otherwise you'd better stick with your standalone website. 17:02, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
  • WP is not a soapbox; however, if the concept is noticed by independent journalists it is a valid topic for an article. Additionally, the author of the WP article should be independent of your project. --Kevin Murray 18:08, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

One thing you don't know about Wikipedia (because you don't see it when logged in)

Has anyone else noticed anomolies with the newly-added "fortune cookies" that show up for WP users who are not logged in with an account? (Sorry, I use fortune cookie until someone informs me of the correct name).

I'm talking about these messages:

  • ten things you dont know about WP
  • tips for using WP in research
  • ten things you don't know about WP images
  • tips for citing to WP

Apparently, there is no way to dismiss these messages for non-logged-in users. Moreover, on some articles, duplicate "fortune cookie" messages display on top of each other rendering them unreadable; and they don't look quite right on certain browsers and certain OS platforms. dr.ef.tymac 02:55, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

They only display on top of each other because of caching issues; when users clear their cache or wait a couple of days they will all be gone. Second, if there are any browser and OS combinations that don't work correctly, please let us know of specifics so we can work on fixing the problem. Thanks. And no, there is no way to dismiss these messages since the whole point is to educate our readers. —METS501 (talk) 03:25, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
O.k. thanks for the feedback. The OS/Browser issue may just be another manifestation of the caching issue you mentioned, as I wasn't aware of that matter when I checked.
As far as "educating readers" ... yeah, I figured that much. I will leave it for the birds in the trees to answer how many of those non-logged-in readers find cyclical, countable, automated messages that can never be turned off to be more "annoying" than "educational" after a certain threshold of exposure.
My guess would be: "probably a lot more than zero". dr.ef.tymac 16:24, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Maybe a "ten reasons you hate these messages at the top of the screen" page should be written for them? Psychless 23:10, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Spell Checker

Am I the first person to realize that there should be a spell checker above the edit box? Or does one already exist that I'm not aware of? If there isn't one, then it should be considered. Oddmartian2 20:45, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Integrating one into the software would require a lot of work and processing power on the servers and create redundancy with a feature already available in a number of ways, including copying text into a word processor or adding a browser plugin. Many web browsers now include spell checkers, including Mozilla Firefox. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:50, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Indeed. Editing directly in the textarea of a web browser should be considered the "low octane" method of editing, as there are *many* alternatives with much greater flexibility and functionality. This is true even though more web browsers support spell-checking (either natively or through plug-ins).
Here is an example of a "high octane" option for editing Wikipedia, there are many more, this is just off the top of my head: [15]. dr.ef.tymac 02:48, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
The Google Toolbar offers spell checking to users of Internet Explorer as well as Firefox. -Henry W. Schmitt 03:54, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Does the Google Toolbar really have a Spell Checker? I have an AOL toolbar with various Google features, but perhaps I should consider getting the actual Google Toolbar. My old computer had the Google Toolbar, and I do seem to remember it having a Spell Checker. Oddmartian2 14:25, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

A sad day for Wikipedia

I would like to propose a minute's silence to mark the death of BJAODN, after a long and painful illness. Those of us who mourn its passing can take comfort in the thought that it is now amusing the angels in Wiki-heaven. Gandalf61 16:17, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I came here to propose the same thing. But then I thought, "It's a wiki; it doesn't make noise anyway", so silence doesn't make sense. Maybe we can get the admin's to lock the database against editing for one minute tomorrow at 12:11 Wikipedia time — exactly 24 hours after BJAODN ceased to be. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 17:08, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm very glad no one went through with that. I just found out an acquaintance was dead a few hours ago, and equating the deletion of a vandalism database to someone's death is completely inappropriate. Atropos 09:46, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Nobody is suggesting the end of BJAODN is as bad as the death of a real person. Nobody is even comparing the relative sadness of the end of BJAODN to anything at all. All we're suggesting that the end of BJAODN is a sad thing. That doesn't mean that it is the saddest thing ever. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 12:11, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
"[A] moment of silence is often a gesture of respect, particularly in mourning for those who have recently died or as part of a commemoration ceremony of a tragic historical event." Saying that the deletion of a page full of bad jokes deserves a moment of silence is nothing but comparing it to someone's death or an actually tragic event. This is completely inappropriate. Atropos 08:46, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Speaking as someone who has some experience of deceased relatives and friends, I'm afraid death is something we must all learn to live with. It is a fact of life for all of us. And as with all facts of life (the more so, unpleasant ones) humour is made of it. Indeed humour may be a way of dealing with life's unpleasant aspects. And when humour is made of an unpleasant subject (whether death, or anything else) then there are bound to be those in the 'audience' who have recently been affected by such an occurence. Some may be offended by it, but one cannot place a ban on humour for fear of offending an individual. There are individuals who will be offended by even the most (to an average person) innocuous subject. Wikipedia is about human perception of the world in which we live, and, for-better-or-for-worse, humour is part of that world. --JohnArmagh 09:35, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
The keywords there are "often" and "particularly". The comparison is not intrinsic to anything proposed here. You're bringing your own baggage to the party. That's understandable; you're grieving. But if this discussion is causing you new pain, I'd suggest (with respect, and in all seriousness) you stop coming back for more. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 02:24, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
We're not talking about "my pain" here, we're talking about how absolutely absurd it is that you want to mourn over the deletion of a list of bad jokes. It was a useless annoying distraction to writing an encyclopedia. Atropos 03:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, sorry, but I do feel Wikipedia is diminished by the deletion of BJAODN, and dismissing my feelings as "absolutely absurd" is hurtful and not at all constructive. But I guess having emotions such as humour, sadness and empathy is an annoying distraction to the all-important task of writing an encyclopedia. Gandalf61 13:00, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I never understood the argument that we need to have some fun. You know, we're not just robots, we can't work all the time. Writing an encyclopedia is fun. If you don't think its fun, why are you doing it? Atropos 23:45, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
*Doffs hat*
*Waits three days*
--Father Goose 17:13, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes. I propose shutting the servers down for one minute so we can all mourn. Melsaran (talk) 10:22, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

BJAODN is not remotely worth crying over, let alone having a "moment of silence" for. --Golbez 12:16, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Some disagree. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 02:25, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Some are wrong, not my problem. --Golbez 02:38, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
...................*hum*...........*cough*........................*people whispering*..SHUT UP!....................*phone ringing*...Sorry!..................................*baby crying*..............*people looking at their watch*. Thanks guys! -- lucasbfr talk 13:07, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

BJAODN is dead, long live BJAODN! (Remember "The king is dead, long live the king"? — Rickyrab | Talk 18:16, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Sad, indeed. BJAODN will never die, it has been immortalised in our hearts forevermore. --carlb 02:44, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikington Cresent Championship

I plan for a revival of the Wikington Cresent Championship (or WCC) with the following system.

16 or 32 players

groups of four

two top players in each group go through to knock-out phase

then complete knockout tornament. --MacMad (talk · contribs)  06:21, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

What's the Wikington Cresent Championship? Oddmartian2 13:05, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikington Crescent 13:51, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Well? --MacMad (talk · contribs)  14:55, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I'll create it. --MacMad (talk · contribs)  16:39, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

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