Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive D

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Village pump (proposals) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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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Simplify editing by separating article's data and metadata

I would like to propose article editor improvement. Currently both the article's content, categories and interwikies are mixed together. As other language wikies develop, most articles will have a link to every other language article. Articles categorization is piling up. To aid newcommers (and some existing editors), I think the editor should have two edit boxes - one for the page content, and another to add all metadata: categories and interwikies, anything that is not shown in the article directly. No articles have to be changed - the split-up can be done dynamically. Meta-edit can have a dhtml show/hide button to simplify editing, plus maybe some javascript automation for new users. --Yurik 09:25, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea. Somewhere, there's a place where you can propose new features like this. M:Proposed_system_changes or http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ maybe? There's also something called SourceForge, but I haven't got a link: can someone else help? Noisy | Talk 16:52, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Bookstore referrals section

This may have been discussed to death elsewhere, but I'm curious as to why the Book Sources page doesn't participate in Amazon.com's affiliate program (or any other bookseller's cash-for-links) program. It would seem like an easy way for WP to raise money without any of the sort of compromises that come from advertising. jdb ❋ (talk) 07:13, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I believe it was tried once and didn't prove lucrative enough to be worth doing; someone else will doubtless know more than I. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:33, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Use only American spelling

A proposal has been made to convert all British to American spellings. See Wikipedia:Standardize Spellings. Care to express your opinion? :-) - Omegatron 00:34, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think my keyboard has the right characters to spell my opinion. :-) — Jeff Q (an "American") 03:33, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sure it does. Hold down shift and mash the number keys. Assuming an English keyboard layout, that is. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:58, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

American or British keyboard layout? - Omegatron 04:08, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

I think either will work for this. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:22, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I thought I was going to be all clever and make a redirect from Wikipedia:Standardise Spellings, but alas! CesarB was way ahead of me. :( —Korath (Talk) 04:33, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

I believe I just topped you both. —Michael Z. 2005-03-27 05:00 Z

I just read this and expressed something. Must find a mop. —Michael Z. 2005-03-27 04:51 Z

Tsk-tsk, Michael. Obviously we're poking some fun about this variation on a frequent quixotic pursuit, but I think moving the page to a British spelling qualifies as biting the newcomer, at least to the meta-issue of Wikipedia style. Be nice and move it back, okay? — Jeff Q (talk) 09:31, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's now impossible (except for sysops) to move the page back, and that's why all the redirect templates must go (except perhaps {{R for as of}}). --cesarb 13:53, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I thought it was just a good bit of fun. Anyway, fixing it was easy, since the original, and my corrected spelling, were both miscapitalized. —Michael Z. 2005-03-27 14:43 Z

Don't worry; I was going to do the same thing. - Omegatron 16:58, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

For whatever reason, when I just checked, the article title still had a British spelling. I've moved it to Wikipedia:Standardize spellings, which conveys Juppiter's intent, and incidentally renders my comment about policy-based capitalization meaningless. We can have all the mean-spirited fun we want (hardly worthy of the WikiLove principle, but understandable given the provocation), but we should at least play within the confines of article text. — Jeff Q (talk) 18:18, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A proposal has been made that we convert all Wikipedia articles to Yoda-speak. See Wikipedia:Write like this we should. Grutness|^hello? 07:03, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Clearly, OVS is the way to go. If you don't like it, I suggest you make your own copy of Wikipedia and edit that. :-) -gadfium 09:34, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Both should be accurate. Colour, Color. English is most widely spoken with british spelling throughout the planet. British English is tipicaly the official language in for example NATO and International Law. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 05:15, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Village Pump Too Big

Village Pump is too big. All of the major sections are in One Big Page. The Pump should be divided into distinct pages.

I can never get the Pump to load on the first attempt; it usually takes several. In order to navigate to a more manageable section, I have to load the One Big Page first. It's slow for the user and hard on server resources.

Even the major sections -- News, Policy, Technical, etc. -- are way too big. Of course, any user can archive them, but most comments should remain visible for more than a day or two -- and a week's worth, let alone two, of comments in any one of these sections constitutes an excessively long page.

Can we not consider perhaps 2 or 3 additional major sections? I don't care along what lines; it's a technical division. Then, can we not put each major section on its own page, and reduce the current page to a directory, with links to each major section and its archives? — Xiong (talk) 19:18, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)

Each VP section is already on its own page, Wikipedia:Village pump just transcludes them all. If you want to browse them individually, you can use Template:Villagepump instead. Goplat 19:54, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Dividing the VP further will not work. People already post things in the wrong section. Further division will only serve to make people watching it have to watch even more things. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:18, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, I understand the transclusion, now that you point it out. Of course I can create some private directory into the Pump -- and by that I include putting {{Villagepump}} in my user page, or some such workaround; {{Villagepumppages}} might work better for this. As it stands, Community Portal has only a single link to the Pump, which displays as one, big, browser-breaking page. I'd be immediately appeased to see {{Villagepumppages}} included within Community Portal.

You can only carry on a certain number of conversations within a single room. Even absent any structural reason for dividing the group, it's necessary. You're right that many users, including myself, lack a clear idea of where certain discussions should go -- Policy or Proposal? Technical or Assistance? There may not be a sure cure for this. People will tend to post questions wherever they feel they will get attention.

• I propose that all existing Pump page names be deprecated and the group replaced with colors. Thus, Wikipedia:Village pump (red room), Wikipedia:Village pump (blue room), etc. This makes it explicit that each room may contain discussion on any matter general to the Wikipedian community as a whole.

If structural division worked, this would be a foolish idea, but since it often does not, no harm is done. If some rooms get crowded, they may easily and naturally be divided, simply by adding another color room; I hope the problem of excessive page size would be eliminated before we run out of common colors.

Those who post to a given room will be more likely to find subsequent edits pertain to their concerns. Those who feel the need to watch over all the Pump may do so; I don't see this would increase their total workload -- more pages, but smaller ones. They can use {{Villagepumppages}} to navigate to them all. — Xiong (talk) 01:47, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC)

You can also go to Wikipedia:Village pump sections (WP:VPS). – ABCD 21:20, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Student projects contributing to Wiki

I would like to propose a project for schools and universities. Teachers can ask students to contribute to wikipedia as part of their class assignment, either in groups or individually. For example, a history teacher can ask students to research and write about some historical figure or event, science - about a new material or invention, and foreign languages - translation from/to interwiki.

Pros

• Applicable to most subjects, and different levels of complexity.
• Group and individual projects
• Students can appreciate their work is not thrown out when the semester ends.
• Wiki receives new, hopefully well researched, articles, and gets more attention in the academia

Cons

• Internet access (not all schools/countries have that)
• More demand is placed on the teacher (?)

TODO

• Lesson plans?
• Promotion
• School-only zone?
  • Group-level permissions to edit a certain article for one month. This way students can work in groups for a month on certain article without outside interference.
  • Teacher-oriented web site?

--Yurik 08:27, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:School and university projects. We also will not, and have no technical means to, restrict the editing of an article to only a certain group of students. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:21, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is help wikipedia should not solicit. Check out user [[1]] Check out the contributions of section 9. One article was particularly valuable "chemical abortion", with only a moderate amount of polishing needed. But check the histories of Cosmopolitan, rape on college campuses, and especially US Media and body image. It's worse than vandalism. Vandalism is reverted by one-step, but bad contributions must be refined in a manner loyal to the original work. THIS IS TEDIOUS WORK. I've been trying to edit the campus rape article - after 1 hour I've given up in frustration. And what is to be done about the media and body article? I doubt anyone wants to tackle editing that piece.

I'm not working up an elitist rant here. I can understand why the articles suck. I am an undergrad too. I find most of my classes unengaging and I often finish work minutes before section - quite normal. We don't want to encourage TAs to assign contribution demands upon students who have little interest in the task. The result will be last week's essays pasted in (body and US media), an entry about Cosmopolitan that revolves around 1 issue and is littered with bias, etc. Lotsofissues 20:06, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

First, it appears that the contribution to Cosmopolitan is slowly getting to a 'decent article' stage. I think that any contribution, even not well done, should be encouraged (that's how people learn). Secondly, teachers should be educated on how to ask students to write articles - good short teaching materials are needed. We need to suggest ideas how to present wiki to students in order to make them appreciate the significance of their contribution. And lastly, and most importantly, the goal of wiki is to publish knowledge in ALL languages, not just English. Some wikis are not doing too well, and any school support would be good. Simpler tasks, such as translating English articles into other languages can easily be set as simple foreign language class goals.--Yurik 11:04, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I assume that's "decent" article (rather than, say, one that is descending in quality). -- Jmabel | Talk 19:31, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Typpooo. Fixed. Thanks. That's why i should have done something like this back in school ;). Point remains.--Yurik 19:36, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Reform proposal: stubs and categories

Some articles are plagued by multiple stubs. Personally, I don't see it as a deadly crime. Some just don't like it. I think it is actually caused by the faulty design of the wiki syntax.

At first we have only {{msg:stub}} and no category flags. Then we have categories. Later, we have categorized stubs. We seemed to forget the fact that stub is only a quality of the article. We shall not use it as a categorization tool.

I propose that we abandon all categorized stubs and merge all {{stub}} and [[category:]] categories. If an article has the {{stub}} or {{substub}} flag and belongs to 6 categories, it will be listed under the stub or substub sections of said 6 categories.

This is much more efficient and consistent. -- Toytoy 09:51, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

It also does two things:

1. It makes it impossible for editors working on separate wiki projects to find stub articles on those projects in order to extend them.
2. By having one stub template on what would be some 40,000 articles would cause an enormous strain on the servers, especially if you expect all those items to be in one category.

You might as well say "Having all articles categorised according to what they're about is inefficient - let's just have one large category called "Articles", and put all 500,000 of Wikipedia's articles into it." The stub categories are not there for readers, they are there for editors. The separate categories are vital if the articles are ever to be extended. As to the multiple stubs, yes, a small percentage of stubs are multi-stubbed (probably about 10%), because they are on subjcts associated with two different fields of expertise. Double stubbing them gives twice as much chance for them to be extended. In cases where a lot of articles are doube stubbed with the same two stubs, work is in progress to make a single "complex" stub (for example UK-politician-stub to replace UK-stub and politician-stub). As far as I am aware very few stubs have more than two stub categories, and none have more than four. You may say that multi-stubbing makes stuib articles ugly, but all stub articles are ugly by definition, and multi-stubbing gives more chance that they will be "beautified" by being extended. Grutness|^hello? 23:56, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

My point is to categorize stubs using the [[category:]] categories and let {{stub}} become just a flag. Currently, "stub" and "category" have distinct categories. This is a waste.

Take the article Tomato for example, currently it is listed under three categories:

• Categories: Fruit | Vegetables | Vegetable-like fruits

If you click each link, the wiki server shows you articles categorized under each category.

Under current method, you need to append three stub notices if you want to advertize it under three stub categories.

• Categories: Fruit stubs | Vegetable stubs | Vegetable-like fruit stubs | Fruit | Vegetables | Vegetable-like fruits

These stub categores are my inventions. Currently, there are much fewer stub categories and they are not hierarchal.

Using my method, if you append {{stub}} or {{substub}} in the article, the same article will read:

• Stub categories: Fruit | Vegetables | Vegetable-like fruits

or

• Substub categories: Fruit | Vegetables | Vegetable-like fruits

Without the {{stub}} flag, the wiki server will generate a list of both non-stub and stub articles (stub and stub articles will be marked). With the {{stub}} flag, the wiki server will generate a list of stub articles under each category.

Currently, stubs are categorized while substubs are not. This is not good enough. -- Toytoy 05:30, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

There is only one problem with your proposal... who would redevelop the software to support it? People have been bugging to have the ability to use a union function between two categories for some time now. Granted, it would be a lot easier if all the articles had some kind of option flag to mark if it needs improvement, etc. -- AllyUnion (talk) 10:32, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

New articles (newbie)

I found it difficult to post a new article. Specifically on U.S. coin mintages. This sort of specific information is at the heart of numismatics and could spark interest in numismasist. Generally people who are into coin collecting are into research and would be a perfect addition to this community. Unfortunately after beginning and making some progress on this work my internet connection was lost. This has never happened on any other webpage and I wonder if it is common here. It was discouraging to waste all of that time for nothing. Anyway I reccomend U.S. coin mintages as a topic (that is if you can write on this system). Thanks, Dan

The trick is to do all your writing of the article first on a text editor, and save it on your PC's hard drive. Only when you have a sufficiently finished piece should you attempt to upload it.You do this by copying the text to clipboard and pasting it into the MediaWiki edit screen for final tweaking. Should your connection fail when doing this, nothing is lost. By using a text editor, rather then a word processor, you will have a clean text with no peculiar codings. I use NoteTab Pro, since this allows me to insert the ASCII codings for accents as I type. I hope this helps.Apwoolrich 08:40, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Another trick is to use a browser like Mozilla Firefox which doesn't lose the form contents when you submit. If you get an error, you can simply go back in the browser's history and the text will still be there, and can submit it again (beware: most of the time the error happens after the text has already been saved, and you will get an edit conflict against yourself). And yes, it is unfortunately common here. --cesarb 16:48, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Merge lists to categories

I have written and posted a proposal and embryonic project page at Wikipedia:Merge lists to categories. The idea is to merge redundant lists into categories (preferably using automated processes such as scripts or bots). If you are for or against this, the talk page is open to comment. I have already carried out a test case between the article Gay icon and Category:Gay icons. Philwelch 23:49, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Automatic insertion of thin space after italics?

• I really would like a thin space to be inserted after italics.
• This created a tiny space to be inserted which looks better on screen.
• This means italics would look more like this one  in sentences.
• This would not affect justified text, so I have made this a bulleted list.
• I really  would like a thin space to be inserted after italics.
• This would be automatic  and look cool.
• This would be automatic and look cool.
• This can be done with that "after" thingumajig in CSS.

What do you think? MediaWiki 1.5, maybe? Note the difference between some of the sentences. I think the addition of this would be good. r3m0t ^talk 10:27, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

The space is a bit too large. More useful is an automatic space if there is no space, between italics and normal, e.g. in a formula, compare f ) with f).--Patrick 12:51, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't know about that. It looks ridiculous to me. I don't understand the point of it. Cigarette 14:25, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If you try to compensate for a font-rendering flaw in an old system/browser, you will be second-guessing newer or better systems. In this case, it's probably not a good idea, because:

• The Unicode thin space character (&#8201;) is rendered too wide by most, but not all, fonts (sample: - -).
• The Unicode hair space character (&#8202;) is not well supported (sample: - -).
• Some browsers already compensate by adding a full space after italics (Netscape 4, if memory serves).
• Adding space wrecks the display in systems that already displays italics correctly (e.g., on Mac OS X; R3m0t's added thin spaces above look bad in my browser).

—Michael Z. 2005-03-24 14:46 Z

Here's what I see in Safari 1.2.4 (it's automatic and looks cool): 20050324-italics.png. —Michael Z. 2005-03-24 15:10 Z

This is a browser issue. I was just going to complain about my browser and say "yeah, I wish Firefox implemented italics better". But then when I looked at your source, only some of them have the thinspaces, and the ones without it look fine. So I guess Firefox fixed it. - Omegatron 23:40, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

How about just doing this for IE5? The problem only appears at my school. I'll send in a screen shot. We already have hacks for old (and new!) IE versions, so why not add one or two more? r3m0t ^talk 09:19, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

WikiRacing

First of all let me apologise if this has been discussed before. I don't really know what to call it so I am unable to search for it. With that said:

My friend and I had this really cool idea. It's similar to googlewhacking, if you've heard of that. Basically the concept is:

• Two random articles are selected from Wikipedia.
• Racers compete to see who can get from one article to the other using only WikiLinks.
• Winners are chosen based on speed (i.e. least links used) and creativity.

I've made a section on my forum for this, which you can check out at Wikirace.tk. You'll have to register to post of course.

Once more, I apologise if this has been done before.

Please leave comments on my talk page if possible. --HMP22 06:42, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Name any two articles. I win! --Alterego 06:47, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

Now, now. When blasting people's ideas into little pieces, one can at least exercise a little compassion. -- Cyrius|✎ 08:04, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

But that's cheating... besides, there's still the creativity part. --HMP22 15:18, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Check out Wikipedia:N degrees of separation I think this may be very similiar if not exactly what you're talking about. Jaberwocky6669 18:26, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

And if memory servers, the idea of adding a tasking/competetive element to the N-degrees has been discussed somewhere on Wikipedia:Department of fun. -- Solipsist 22:57, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

award for speediest vandal reversions in the west

i just let current (electricity) sit there with "barbies and seals rule so much!" for 2 hours. that is horrible. maybe we should have some kind of award for people who revert vandalisms the quickest. maybe hold a record for the quickest reversion.

oh crap; this will just make people vandalize so they can revert themselves. oh well. i shot down my own idea. - Omegatron 01:01, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

If you do that to a sex-related article, say, that you remove a juicy picture, it will be reverted in seconds. No need of an award. -- Toytoy 19:37, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Wiki Case Studies

How about a collection of psychological case studies on Wikipedia?!? Huh? Huh? Aint that a good idea? Whad't I tell ya? lol but seriously though wouldn't that be cool? It should be exhaustive with multiple case studies for each disorder. Old public domain case studies exist I'm sure. Jaberwocky6669 21:31, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Try Wikisource. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:57, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wiki-Law

What if Wikimedia added a "Wiki-Law" similar to "FindLaw" that included all the public decisions on all the major cases in history. For example, the majority and minority opinion in Roe v. Wade, alongside some of the legal decisions made by the English Parlament. Replace Lexus-Nexus with something like this. Could get this in some format from the national archives to make the addition easier Nick Catalano 18:02, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See the following:

Wikimedia on Wikilaw

Wikilaw Talk page

-Zephlon 21:38, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Navbox styling.

This is the code for a navbox (Template:Toolband), or will be with the changed outlined in Bugzilla:1707.

{| align=center class="toccolours"
! [[Tool (band)|Tool]]
|-
|align=center|[[Maynard James Keenan]] | [[Adam Jones]] | [[Danny Carey]] | [[Justin Chancellor]] | [[Paul d'Amour]]
|-
![[Tool (band)#Discography|Discography]]
|-
|align=center|''[[Opiate (album)|Opiate]]'' | ''[[Undertow]]'' | ''[[Ænima]]'' | ''[[Salival]]'' | ''[[Lateralus]]''
|-
!Popular Songs
|-
|align=center|"[[Stinkfist]]" | "[[Schism]]" | "[[Sober (song)|Sober]]"
|-
!Related articles
|-
|align=center|''[[Progressive rock]]'' | ''[[A Perfect Circle]]'' | ''[[Peach (band)|Peach]]''
|}

This is how it renders.

Now, a user stylesheet could change that around to look like

if they, I dunno, really liked limes or something, or thought the small text crammed into the body of the box was a poor idea. Someone with actual CSS skills could probably do something much, much cooler. The idea, really, is to allow navboxes to be written with purely semantic markup, styled after the fact with CSS. (The same might be possible with meta-templates, but CSS is really the place for it.)

Thoughts? Improvements? Stunningly brilliant and innovative applications of CSS? grendel|khan 17:55, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)

It's already possible. Go to your user stylesheet (or create one – probably at UserGrendelkhan/monobook.css) and enter this code:

.toccolors th {background:#aaffaa;}

This ought to give you what you want. Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 21:15, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Here's my stab:

What do you think? Noisy | Talk 15:19, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

You're both missing the point. I don't want to style my navboxes, I want to make it easier to write navboxes. To that end, I want to move some of the repetitive markup (necessary to make the boxes display properly for everyone) into the site-wide CSS instead of either writing navboxes which only look good for me, or writing fixed, unstyleable markup. The whole point of moving it into the CSS like that would be to simplify markup. Providing user-customizable style is a side benefit. grendel|khan 16:48, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

Instead of changing .toccolours, it may be better to create a new class (.navbox?). Then users won't see any unexpected surprises all over wikipedia, and you can build the CSS and HTML freely, in the best possible way. It gets implemented under editors' control, and as a bonus you get to use a class name that makes sense. —Michael Z. 2005-03-23 17:13 Z

I guess that is an extension of my point. That seems reasonable. What would be needed would be an admin prepared to add the new class to Mediawiki:monobook.css. Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 17:58, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good idea, except for those of us (me, for instance) who don't use Monobook. Styling of this sort is useless if it only appears in a single skin. See, rather, skins/common/common.css, which is included in every skin. I do agree that adding a .navbox class is a better idea than continuing to attempt to wrap .toccolours around everything. Good idea, that. I'm going to put a change on Bugzilla:1707. grendel|khan 19:12, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)

Ads?

Why not make an option (disabled by default, and not availabe for non-logged in users) to display ads on wikipedia? It'd be optional, and only people that were willing to endure some annoyance in exchange for supporting the Wikipedia would do it. Those that didn't feel that much loyalty for the Wikipedia or just really hated ads wouldn't pick it. It wouldn't scare any prospective members away because anonymous users wouldn't see ads and when they registered an account it would be disabled by default. What do you guys think? -Cookiemobsta

• It's been debated to death, and there won't be ads for the forseeable future. This quarter's fundrasing drive went comfortably over-target, and we would loose a fair few contributors if it happened. BesigedB ^(talk) 19:03, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Over target and closed half way through the amount of time we thought we'd need (11 days instead of 21). Money for servers and hosting is not the problem since each time we ask we get more than we ask for. What we now need are redundant and separate datacenters so if one goes down, the other can quickly take over (at least for read only requests). --mav 17:58, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Agree. -- Note the proposal's defaults. Nobody sees the ads who does not explicitly ask for them, and once turned on, they can be turned off. I don't know who will elect for this, but if we can get in money this way, it's all to the good.

Money for servers and hosting is not the problem since each time we ask we get more than we ask for. Don't think so small. Croesus did not have too much money. If you are getting more than you're asking for, you need to ask for more. You may be correct in the small, but if there are plenty of servers and money left over, then let's go buy redundant data centers -- preferably in different geographic locations. Then let's go ask for more money and do more neat stuff with it. — Xiong (talk) 14:28, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

Lend me your ears!

I noticed a while back that sound files were routinely being requested for featured article candidates. Would it be useful to have page like Wikipedia:Picture requests for sound files: spoken text, pronunciation, music...? This might be a way of increasing the amount of sound available with articles. Gareth Hughes 15:54, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Maurreen 16:29, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. Wikipedia:Audio requests? Wikipedia:Sound file requests? - Omegatron 22:23, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

WikiStory

I've been a long time viewer of Wikimedia, and I think it's brilliant stuff.

I've had an idea for awhile, and I think it's high time I brought it out. WikiStory - that is, an interactive story told by any number of storytellers, each story original, linked from various hypertext words that are prevalent towards that certain story.

For example, if you are telling a story about a man who killed a bear with his bare hands, and you mention that they fought in a certain forest, then that certain forest would be linked to another story, which is about that forest, or talks about that forest in greater detail, but is an altogether different story.

You could bridge genre with this sort of thing, telling a fictional, world-epic, of hundreds of different points of view, with hundreds of different stories - sort of like a human monolith of experience.

I'd be happy to discuss this more.

[2]

It's a fascinating idea. Have a look at Wikicities. You may be able to build your wiki there. Gareth Hughes 15:58, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please look at [3]. There is already a proposal for such a wiki. Greetings --84.169.75.152 22:31, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I took a look there, but it's not really the same idea as I've got. Mine is more a three-dimensional story, with each person writing a different story in a similar universe. I don't think those collaborative novels work, because a piece of writing is a piece of art, and being art, it needs a vision. Vision from a thousand heads needs to be reconciled, and usually in collaborative fiction, the time is not given for reconciliation. My idea is more along the lines of creating various story threads, that arc out in what could be termed, "parallel universes," in the sense that it is a universe of stories, sprouting from other stories. diaskeaus [4] 08:04, 22 Mar 2005 (PDT)

Just make a wikibook, explain the idea at the top and add your story. If it catches on you'll have plenty of support for making a separate page. WilliamJuhl 18:52, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

According to Wikibooks:What Wikibooks is not, fiction is not allowed at Wikibooks. There is a Fiction Wikicity where this content could go though. If there was support to move this to Wikimedia at a later stage, that could be done. Angela. 05:51, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Biographical Entries (Not) in Alphabetical Order

Hello,

I recently bought a 1GB SD card so that I could download the English Tomeraider Wikipedia to my Palm m515.

I quickly discovered that in this edition, people entries are not in order of surname but in order of first name. So, for instance, Erik Zachte would be under "E" and not under "Z". Apparently the German edition of Wikipedia is in surname order.

A lot of the time I look people up is that I can't remember their first names.

Doing a full search takes far too long.

So, all in all, I think something needs to be done; and I'd be willing to help.

I've had a short e-mail conversation with Erik Zachte about this. He was the one who suggested I raise it here. The conversation is appended to this post (apologies if that makes it rather long but as I know very little about Wikipedia technology I thought I'd better let Erik speak for himself rather than trying to paraphrase him and get it all wrong).

Anyway, I think this is important and, as I said, am willing to help. Unfortunately I don't speak Python although I have a smattering of Perl and Java.

What do you folk think?

If you are interested, please do e-mail me off-list at harold@wolfeden.demon.co.uk

Harold Fuchs, London, England

Here's my e-mail correspondence with Erik.

start of e-mails ------------------

From: Erik Zachte To: Harold Fuchs Sent: Tuesday, 08 March 2005 11:03 Subject: RE: Wikipedia Entries

Harold, what I meant was a project where aliasses would be added manually. The actual term on Wikipedia is 'redirect', an article named 'Fuchs, Harold' that only contains text

  1. REDIRECTHarold Fuchs

When you request article 'Fuchs, Harold', you will automatically be redirected to 'Harold Fuchs'.

There are mass updates done by bots, mostly written in Python. But this would need thorough discussion first, and it probably would not qualify for complete automation, as there is too much ambiguity in detecting relevant articles and composing proper redirect. Some bots are half automated, proposing a change and waiting for an OK after manual inspection.

Just drop the question at the village pump and see what comes out of it.

Oh, you can help by improving an article. Below every article there is an edit button so that you can expand or correct the text. Thats the core idea of a wiki, where Wikipedia is shining example of. Contrary to intuition this low barrier does not hamper overall quality of the database.

More introductory info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal

Erik

.

Original Message-----

From: Harold Fuchs mailto:harold@wolfeden.demon.co.uk Sent: Tuesday, 08 March 2005 09:43 To: Erik Zachte Subject: Re: Wikipedia Entries

Erik,

You said "If you are really motivated you could start a project to add aliasses for all people articles"

1. Is there a way to identify "people articles"? Or do you just mean an entry that starts with either <letters>[space]<letters>[space}<letters> (name1 name2 name3) or with <letters>[space]<letters> (name1 name2)? This would be very easy to program in Perl using regular expressions. One would have to allow for dots (John F. Kennedy) and hyphens

2. What do you mean by "add aliasses"? I was thinking about the following pseudo code: if the entry starts with 3 names then

  add an entry in the form name3, name2 name1 "see" [link to] name1 name2 name3

elseif the entry starts with two names then

  add an entry in the form name2, name1 "see" [link to] name1 name2

endif

Is this what you meant? Or?

For the 3-name case one could add two new entries. One would be for name3 name2, name1 to cover people with two surnames and the other for name3, name1 name2 to cover people with two "first" names

Unfortunately, The ^&*% English have made it harder. I just found an entry "A. A. B. Bussy" (four names). The complete entry is like this:

[M] Antoine Alexandre Brutus Bussy (May 29, 1794 - February 1, 1882) was a French Chemist. He was the first to prepare Magnesium in a coherent form in 1831. [image] - This biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

Unfortunately it doesn't say how I can help Wikipedia :-(

Regards, Harold

Original Message -----

From: Erik Zachte To: Harold Fuchs Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 12:22 AM Subject: RE: Wikipedia Entries

Harold,

You might raise the issue at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump which is a discussion forum for all kinds of things related to English Wikipedia.

I just realized that the category system offers some clues for which articles are about persons, but I have no idea how complete categorization is. There are also lists of famous scientists, sportsmen, politicians, that offer further clues.

If you are really motivated you could start a project to add aliasses for all people articles. This seems more feasible than the German templates. The hidden template system presupposes automated processing and I'm not sure many people would get enthusiastic to do his just for the TomeRaider version (German WIkipedia is also processed by other publishing software)

If after discussion you decide to give this a chance, you might add a project page, solicit coworkers and you might be amazed how many hands might be on the job, making it lighter work than you would expect, and a project that can be finished in weeks, or at most two months.

You could also discuss it at the Wikipedia mailling list, http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l but I would start with the Village Pump.

Cheers, Erik

---

Original Message-----

From: Harold Fuchs mailto:harold@wolfeden.demon.co.uk Sent: Tuesday, 08 March 2005 12:56 To: Erik Zachte Subject: Re: Wikipedia Entries

Erik,

Thank you.

Although my surname is German I don't speak enough for the German Wikipedia to be useful to me

It is a shame that the English Wikipedians didn't adopt a more logical template. Is there someone I could talk (e-mail) to about it?

It seems to me that the English Wikipedia has been considerably devalued because of this.

Regards, Harold PS enjoy your Wikibreak

Original Message -----

From: Erik Zachte To: Harold Fuchs Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2005 11:56 PM Subject: RE: Wikipedia Entries

Hi Harold.

Sorry for late answer. I also think it was a bad choice to use this arrangement for articles about people.

If you were interested in the German Wikipedia I would have a solution: they have a standard template on all people pages, with first name, last name, date and place of birth, etc. It is strictly standardized as it is meant specifically for automatic processing, in fact the template is hidden from view and only visible while editing an article.

Example: Template:Personendaten

This would have been an ideal basis to generate redirects to the proper article with first and last name reversed. These alias records would have to be stored in a separate file and only added to the output when all input was processed and when no article with that name was already available (there are a lot of manually added 'redirects' already in the database)

However in the English database there is no such standard template (not yet, more concepts have been introduced by German Wikipedians and copied elsewhere).

Many articles about people start with year and place of birth in the first sentence. A script could do some fuzzy searching in the first 200 chars and make an educated guess if this is a biographic article, but of course this will be far from perfect, I think a 50-60% score would have to be called be a sucess.

Also if a name needs to be reversed, how to do that properly?

How to discern <first name >space<middle name>space<last name> from <first name>space<last name one>space<last name two> (lots of last names are made up of separate parts)

Anyway, I will take no action on this. I'm very definitely taking a step back from TomeRaider programming, other Wikipedia tasks are waiting and even more important I need a long wikibreak on the earliest occasion.

So maybe wait for the German concept to spread.

Best regards, Erik Zachte

---

Original Message-----

From: Harold Fuchs mailto:harold@wolfeden.demon.co.uk Sent: Wednesday, 02 March 2005 02:56 To: epzachte@chello.nl Subject: Wikipedia Entries

Sir,

I have just downloaded the Wikipedia in Tomeraider format. Fantastic.

I'm puzzled though:

People seem to be entered in <firstName>[space]<lastName> format. So, for example, I would be entered as "Harold Fuchs" and not as "Fuchs, Harold".

This means that you have to know the person's first name to look them up - unless you are willing to wait however many hours it will take to search the database using Tomeraider's "Find" facility.

Often I don't know the person's first name and that is why I am looking them up (!!!).

Can anything be done? Obviously a script of some sort but how many "mistakes" would that make, where for example "Suez Canal" would get changed to "Canal, Suez" which is probably *not* what we want ... (not what I would want anyway).

Any thoughts?

Harold Fuchs London, England PS I think I can still remember how to write perl ...

• Keep in mind that this cannot be done without some understanding of how names work in various languages and cultures. For example, Eduardo Nicolás Cruz Sánchez would be Cruz Sánchez, Eduardo Nicolás , not Sánchez, Eduardo Nicolás Cruz -- Jmabel | Talk 05:22, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)
  • Well I would argue you should Redirect both. If the correct surname split is a common misunderstanding (and for van Gogh and da Vinci it certainly is), the extra redirects would still be useful. However, you probably wouldn't want to Redirect Nicolás Cruz Sánchez, Eduardo, so the basic point that you need a bot that can understand name structure is valid. Similarly you will have trouble with aristocrats (e.g. Beatrix of the Netherlands), but with luck the categories will help you spot the problem cases. -- Solipsist 07:44, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The only way I can see to do this would be to descend through all the subcategories of Category:People, and to make sure there is a link from the categorised name to the actual name. This would miss uncategorised people, and it would also fail on people who were added to a category without a sort order or with an incorrect sort order, but this would be a minority of cases and probably not harmful.-gadfium 06:00, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• How have the Germans managed it?

Names like van Gogh, van den Burgh, de Sade and so on can be covered by rules implemented using a small set of "magic" words like "van", "de" and so on coupled with sensitivity to case so that "Van Morrison" is not confused with somebody whose surname happens to be "van Morrison".

It really seems to me that this is an important issue that should be resolved before the Wikipedia goes much further. A serious release to the "public" would cause the whole project, and the people associated with it, to become laughing stocks.

Harold Fuchs 23 March 2005, 19:00 GMT

• Alternatively,

Wikipedia could make a rule that names like Eduardo Nicolás Cruz Sánchez would come out as "Sánchez, Eduardo Nicolás Cruz", and "Vincent van Gogh" would come out as "Gough, Vincent van". The latter is perfectably acceptable in Dutch so I don't see why us heathen Brits should complain. IMHO, that would be a lot better than what exists today. And the "logic" is simple to explain and to understand.

Harold Fuchs 23 March 2005, 19:05 GMT

Interlingual collaboration

We need a good way for speakers of different language to cooperate in providing information about their native language. There are very few audio files in the pronunciation section of the commons, something that could be fixed by just a few native speakers with microphones, and any article or wikibook on a language could benefit greatly from edits by native speakers. I think something as small as a link for multilingual users in the things to do section(of every language) would help, but I would like to see a section in every wikipedia devoted to educating others about their language, where they can not only give lessons, but suggest music, movies leterature and other media. I'm sure that with all the accusations of cultural imperialism leveled against the united states we could at least get a lot of additions to the English wikipedia. However we go about it, I think that with some more international, interlingual cooperation, a large colaborative community project like wikipedia coould easily be the single best way of learning or learning about onother languages and cultures short of moving to their counties of origin.

Why we should not lock the external links.

I have seen lots of vandalism in external links. Just to promote their website the are linkinkg those pages . Yes we can argue like it is important and relavent data. I think instead of having seperate external links we can direct it to dmoz relavent directory. For example just take nutrition page you can see many website. Really it make any sense. It is my opinion. Actually today i have removed some external links and i got a message also why u r removing the useful website. Some websites are having one page relavent materials and that site is not at all in line with our interest. Please let me know u r opinion.I am not going to delete any links here after.

There are plenty of articles where the external links are genuinely useful. I don't think we need radical changes in the link policy; we just need to keep a close eye on pages that are likely to attract spam. jdb ❋ (talk) 23:25, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree. There is room for a WikiProject to go around and prune the external links from many articles. Its quite difficult to assess the relevance of so many external sites, so it is no easy task. People will complain, but you can point them to Wikipedia is not a link farm (I think there might be a stronger statement of this somewhere). Remember that if the information is useful, you really want it to be inside Wikipedia. External links should just connect to a couple of key, or official sites, not all the extra 'here is another site that talks about xxx' - that's what Google is for. -- Solipsist 08:04, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd be really interested to see what subject matter areas people think have excess links. Not particularly a problem in most areas where I edit, but I suspect it is much more of a problem for articles related to popular culture. Also, any pruning of links should keep in mind: many external links are actually (poorly expressed) indications of references for the article. Anyone planning a major link-pruning enterprise should be thoroughly familiar with Wikipedia:Cite sources. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:16, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

A typical example would be Photography, which constantly attracts external links of dubious merit. But really, just pick any page which is likely to be popular (say at random Dolphin) you'll find a dozen links, half of which point to adequate but not particularly useful pages and most likely a couple of pure spam links. -- Solipsist 21:25, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Spoiler Template

The spoiler template, as it now stands, simply warns readers they may not wish to proceed further. Why not revise it so that a link would be provided for non-spoiler information below the plot summary? (As a newbie, I worry that this might be over my head, so I'm suggesting it for someone else to take on). Lkjhgfdsa 21:39, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How about just moving the spoiler information around... and place the non-spoiler information first? -- AllyUnion (talk) 23:41, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Doesn't always work well; for example, references and external links still belong at the bottom. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:14, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

What I've wanted for a while is a <spoiler> box we could wrap things in and have them show/hide like the table of contents. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:53, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Great idea. I've done a preliminary approach to this at Template:Spoilerbox, but I don't get on very well with the wiki table syntax, etc. Right now, this has the defect that paragraphs within the "content" section will not get the line between them that we normally give paragraphs in Wikipedia's stylesheets. I'm guessing that can be fixed; if not, one could always add some explicit breaks. If someone is interested in playing with this, that would be great, I'd gladly adopt it once it's working right. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:57, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

So far, the experiments downstream of how I approached this have been liabilities. I've restored my earlier version.

The template is marginally usable— it is fine for marking one paragraph, and can mark multiple paragraphs as long as you are willing to use explicit <br><br> markup instead of normal wiki paragraphing (and as long as you don't need bullet points, etc.). I've taken the liberty of editing Bovo-Bukh, an article I wrote most of, to show how it can be used. Further discussion of the technicalities should probably be at Template talk:Spoilerbox. The discussion here should focus on whether use of this template this is desirable. Given its technical limitations, I have mixed feelings myself. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:46, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea of putting spoiler paragraphs inside tags. What would be ideal is if you could then click on a little link and the spoilers would "expand" or "fold out" from being hidden. I dunno if this is doable without extensive javascript, though. - Omegatron 22:12, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

The javascript isn't all that extensive. Code for a very similar case (hiding closed vfd discussions) is at User:Korath/sb; while that appears long and scary, it's really only because it includes four variants. —Korath (Talk) 22:57, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Well some people don't like javascript. I've just noticed the preferences page for WP has some hidden menus and stuff that appears to be HTML. Maybe that is the way to go... - Omegatron 23:43, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

Hiding sections in Preferences is implemented with javascript (tabbedprefs() in "/skins/common/wikibits.js"), not html. —Korath (Talk) 01:41, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

We have a solution, thanks to Korath. It is documented at Template talk:Spoiler top, and illustrated by example at Bovo-Bukh. Template talk:Spoilerbox is now obsolete, because Korath's solution is simply better. I would suggest that this should probably supersede Template:Spoiler as well. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:16, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, but I don't like it. - Omegatron 19:52, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

What don't you like about it? ("I don't like it" doesn't exactly suggest how it could be different). -- Jmabel | Talk 21:05, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry; I was busy. Like I said, I think the content inside the spoiler tags should be hidden somehow. It looks like the only thing Template:Spoiler top does to functionally enhance Template:Spoiler is to put a bottom bound to the spoiler region. ("This is where the spoiler ends".) While a little bit of an improvement, I think it's ugly, so it's not really an improvement. :-) - Omegatron 21:36, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

The precise physical appearance is a detail we can easily adjust. The ability to hide is implicit (by use of stylesheets and javascript); I'd be open to the possibility of having the client-side approach show/hide capability overtly displayed.

Please keep in mind that this was all in response to Lkjhgfdsa's request that we come up with something that makes it clear where one may safely resume reading after a spoiler. I think that's a worthwhile goal; Template:Spoiler doesn't give a clue. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:42, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this is an excellent development. I wouldn't mind the show/hide toggle, but it's not my place to argue seeing as I haven't contributed anything to this project. Omegatron doesn't seem to have either.--Lkjhgfdsa 12:17, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• "The ability to hide is implicit"? I would like it to be hidable with javascript, if it can't be done any other way.
• Yes, putting an end mark on the spoiler is a good improvement.
• It needs to be prettier. border="0" looked better when I tried it. - Omegatron 15:24, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, you added that. Excellent. I also don't like that it is indented. It sets it off from the rest a little more than I would like, as if it's a blockquote or something. Not sure how to improve that. Maybe with just a border line on the top and bottom and a gray background? - Omegatron 15:28, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

printing articles

To whom it may concern:

One thing I would like to see is a printable version of Wikipedia pages. It would make it much easier for students to gather information, etc., because sometimes we encounter problems while transferring articles and their documentation into Word and other such programs. Maybe the feature's present and I can't see it.

Printing pages automatically changes the printed page layout for printing (i.e. no toolbar). Just try it with one page. (should work with firefox and IE, i think) -- Chris 73 Talk 02:35, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

This printing issue seems to be an ongoing one. We discussed this before. I can't remember what the outcome was. I think there should be a "printer friendly" button, myself. --Munchkinguy 03:54, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There's no need for printer friendly versions of pages to be generated because CSS does all this automatically. All you need to do is use the normal print function of your browser and the page that comes out will be formatted nicely with no annoying sidebar options and other such things that are useless on paper. Try printing an article and if it doesn't work properly it might be worth telling us what browser you're using. — Trilobite (Talk) 11:49, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This does not work for embedded external links and tables with those become completely unreadable. Rmhermen 15:09, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Plus lots of people don't know about css. Providing a "print" link, even if a placebo, is still helpful for the less technically-inclined. - Omegatron 22:07, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Easier Transwiki

I recently listed a page for deletion and the clear consensus - er, unanimous decision, was that it was an easy "transwiki". I looked at the pages and found nothing easy about it or its procedure. The link on Votes for Deletion go to the page Wikipedia:Transwiki log while Wikipedia:Transwiki oddly redirects to Wikipedia:Things to be moved to Wiktionary which claims to be mostly deprecated although it is the only transwiki page listed on Template:Page fixing tools. Most of the information on the procedure is listed at [Meta:Transwiki]. Both Wikipedia Transwiki log and Meta:Transwiki suggest a block of boilerplate text to use but neither mention the at least five separate templates in use. Four of the tags are mentioned on Template:Deletiontools (At least they do now that I have fixed it.) and these four use categories to collect the articles. Template:Transwiki doesn't and seems to be mainly forgotten. I haven't found any template for foreign language transwikis. Surely there must be a better way to organize this material. I think a Wikipedia:Transwiki page should be created listing all the templates and the full procedure for actually moving the articles and with a link to Transwiki log. I think that it should be this page which is linked to from Vfd and this page should be linked in each template. We probably need a foreign template with the ability to add a comment on what language encyclopedia the transwiki should go to. While this would not address the inefficient process of actually moving the pages, it would help organize it and perhaps increase its visibility and draw more people to do the heavy work. The fact that Category:Move to Wiktionary has more than a thousand pending transfer argues that a better system needs to be developed but that probably requires a robot or some software changes. Rmhermen 16:21, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

The user who placed the redirect did so leaving an edit summary saying: "may not be the best place to redirect to, but it's not bad" - which is true. Transwiki information generally belongs in the meta wiki, but sorting should be done on Wikipedia. I concur a more streamlined procedure is called for. If you start an article, I'll be glad to help. — Itai (f&t) 18:15, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

request: a tab for questions and answers related to the subject of a page

Dear wikipedians, i wish it was made possible to ask and answer more specific questions about wikipedia page's subject in a special tab that would be called "questions and answers". Something like google answers service, but categorized automatically according to wikipedia page subjects.

I am aware of the discussions tab, but i think it would be beneficial for exchange of knowledge to dedicate another tab solely for questions and answers related to the subject. A discussion tab really does not encourage to ask or answer questions. What the discussion tab seems to do is to cause debate about what kind of content should or shouldn't be in a page. I claim that the questions and answers tab would serve wikipedia users need for knowledge better than the discussion tab.

14th of march 2005, an active wikipedia user

It seems like a good idea on the surface, but it wouldn't work well. If we had "questions" pages for each article, then the only people who would see the questions are those who are already watching a particular article. This is likely to not include many people capable of answering or finding the answer to the question. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:45, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have seen people ask questions on discussion pages, although they are too often hesitant to do so (perhaps a "reserved space" would encourage them at least). However, I emphasize that once a question is answered, if it's useful, this should be incorporated into the article text in article format — the article should remain the primary information source. Deco 05:12, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The way to combat excessive combatitiveness on Talk pages is to engage in less combatitive discussions there. No need for another tab/page; just for more civility and less contention. — Xiong (talk) 14:01, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

MobileWiki

Yes, being an avid fan of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," I realize this idea is a bit contrived and probably not feasible, but I see no reason why I shouldn't suggest it. Wikipedia's great appeal is that it has scores of information on a variety of topics, no? There are many things to be learned here, but we're not always at a computer. So, maybe a MobileWiki project could be started. A Wikipedia server could be dedicated to broadcasting to cellphone browsers, PDAs, and other forms of mobile electronic media so that people could at least read (probably not edit) articles from whereever they are. In an ideal universe there would be a separate device just for this with full color screen, but I realize that is a bit too idyllic.

However, just as the internet based itself on an existing network of telephone lines, Wikipedia could work off of existing cellphone technology and be able to "broadcast" good ol' wiki-fun over large portions of the globe. And I'm sure there is no shortage of good samaritans willing to act as intermediary signal boosters to let the Amazons partake as well.

I don't know, the concept of having a mobile repository of every conceivable piece of information you'd ever need right in the palm of your hands was a really groovy idea when Adams first came up with it, and now that we have the hard part, the actual compendium of information, it's only a minor yet natural step to making this information accessible regardless of location. As has been seen with the Trillian chat program's integration of Wikipedia into its own interface tells me that the wiki software is more than capable of being formatted in a variety of ways other than HTML.

My email address is rokenrol@gmail.com, my user name here is rokenrol. Tell me what you think.

Sure that's great. But we don't really need a dedicated wiki to it. As more and more connected pda's are out there anything in the web shall be accessible from a mobile device. In this subject, wikipedia is uite ready, as it's fluid layout, an full CSS customization allows it to be read in any screen resolution.

But now what woul be really great is if we could have a full integration of gps, wikipedia and wikitravel (which is a lot more "hitchhiker's guide" than wikipedia) so we could get relevant information about where we are.--Alexandre Van de Sande 13:19, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I frequently browse Wikipedia using a wireless connection on my HP ipaq 4700, which has a 480x640 colour screen. It's quite useable in the "single column" mode of Pocket IE. I even edit using that machine sometimes. As wireless connections become more common, I can envisage a time when I have permanent connection to Wikipedia whereever I might be. No special software or servers are required for Wikipedia.-gadfium 00:19, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:TomeRaider_database --Alterego 08:07, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedian category

I just saw the "Category:Wikipedians", could we make something like "Category:Wikipedians interested in ..." or "Category:Wikipedians master in..." or "Category:Wikipedians doctorate in ..." or "Category:Wikipedians expert at ...".Roscoe x 22:25, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Would there be enough people in any of those to make them worthwhile? My view is that general categories suffice now, but I wouldn't try to stop you either. Maurreen 09:05, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, the suggestion is not to make more categories, but to rename this one. Or perhaps I'm wrong. Anyway, I like things as they are. — Xiong (talk) 13:57, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

semi-protection for frequently vandalized pages

I propose a new form of page protection. Some pages are repeatedly, time and time again, vandalized by hit-and-run edits from anonymous IP addresses. Most IP addresses cannot be blocked since they are dynamic, etc. For example, 377 out of the last 500 edits on George W. Bush were vandalism and 90% of those were by IP addresses. That's a whole lot of effort spent by editors that could be spent elsewhere. You might say, fine, everyone watches those pages, so it's no big deal. However, it is a big deal because it seriously impedes any kind of forward progress on these pages, which also tend to be very poor articles (back and forth, negative edits vs. proponent responses).

The proposal is simply to allow semi-protection so that anonymous users would get something not too different from the "protected page" message (perhaps the same message even), but that registered accounts could edit away. Regular protection obviously does not address this problem.

I looked at the last 5000 edits on Wikipedia, about 628 were reversions. Of those, 459 seem to be edits made from an anonymous IP address. Now, which articles might be semi-protected? Some examples of articles that are frequently vandalized:

• George W. Bush
• Negro
• Penis
• Adolf Hitler
• Ku Klux Klan
• African American
• George Bush Disambig --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 06:59, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Daniel Quinlan 03:38, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

I like your suggestion. I would think it should be quite easy to implement too. -- SGBailey 09:20, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)

You got my FULL support. I also recomend: Votes for frequently vandalised articles to determine which article deserves this tag. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 06:59, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If something like this is going to be implemented, why not extend it to the main page? It was my understanding that the main issue there was anonymous vandalism as well. It would certainly be a benefit to In The News and Did You Know. This is sort of the opposite approach of the "super-user" idea that I saw here recently, in that the change is to the pages rather than the status of users. - BanyanTree 16:13, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've thought for a while that this should be done, but it should be extended to include people with less than 50 edits or an account less than one week old - it's very easy to set up an account anyway, and many vandals do so now (anon vandals are less enthusiastic about their work and are usually just playing around). violet/riga (t) 17:26, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This might just be a very effective anti-vandalism measure, especialy if we included Violet's suggestion. However, if a large number of pages were 'semi-protected', this measure might undermine the vaunted openness of Wikipedia. Therefore, I suggest that there should be very strict guidelines for admins if this were to be implemented, and a very clear process of straw-poll voting to lift or lower semi-protected status. Gareth Hughes 17:50, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

We are approaching half a million articles in the English Wikipedia. Protecting a few hundred or even a few thousand articles is not lack of openness; its less than 1%. This seems a no brainer; as it will solve most of the vandalism problem in one stroke. :ChrisG 19:39, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There's always reasonable limits to freedom. If we're having to spend a lot of energy keeping a very small number of articles protected from vandalism, then that's time being taken away from the development of these articles as well as the rest of the Wikipedia. This would seem to be a reasonable trade-off. But I do agree with the idea that we need strict guidelines for implementing this. That said, there are a few obvious articles to start with even before the guidelines are in place. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 23:42, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I like this idea, and would suggest closing these frequently vandalized articles to new registered users, until a certain number of clean, wholesome edits/markups are credited to their contribution log. (25??, 50??) 66.242.44.168 04:34, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Although this might be a good idea, I'd like to play devil's advocate and bring up a few counterarguments:

• Is required registration a sufficient deterrent? How many of the vandals would register and then vandalize the page instead, if they were required to? They don't do so now because they don't need to. Would a tool emerge to automate registration? Would they seek unprotected pages to vandalize instead? There will always be controversial pages we miss. Remember, push and pull.

Sufficient for all vandals? No. For most, probably. I suspect a lot of would-be vandals happen across the site and do their thing. And if it doesn't help, we can always roll it back out as a feature. I think it will definitely help, though.

• Although many are not aware of this, each section of the main page is stored in a template which is unprotected. Anyone can edit these, although there is the annoying technical problem of the main page requiring an explicit cache refresh. I don't really think we want anyone changing the format of the main page without community consent, just the content.

I am ambivalent about extending this to the Main page; that was not part of my proposal.

• While Wikipedians understand the value of limited protection, outsiders often see it as hypocrisy, contradicting our principles, or worse, pushing our own bias by selective article protection. This may deter new editors. Don't forget that in some cases today's vandal ("can I really edit this?") is often tomorrow's dedicated editor.

I think that is pure hyperbole. Most outside people are amazed about our limited level of protection.

• Who would have the power to turn this on and off, and why would we trust them to do so in an unbiased way? What if energy is wasted debating whether this protection should be applied or not, or even warring by changing it back and forth?

Administrators, clearly. I think we could use objective criteria, something like "more than 10% of the edits to the page are reversions to IP address vandalism". Voting isn't even required when backed by such clear statistics (in policy), although I think straw polls would be useful, as (almost) always. Daniel Quinlan 04:31, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

• 10% isn't nearly enough. I doubt that there is a page on a well-known topic related to, say, the French Revolution or any ethnic group that wouldn't make that threshhold. There are many pages where the majority of activity is IP vandalism and the corresponding reversions. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:53, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

I'll concede that perhaps I have too much faith in anonymous editors. Perhaps a higher figure is needed. I think 20% is more than enough, though. Daniel Quinlan 06:08, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

Just some thoughts — don't abandon your ideas, but just think about consequences carefully, especially about push and pull. Deco 10:57, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It would be against SoftSecurity wiki principle. If anons will get a page explaining they have to register to vandalize the page, part of them will register and the vandalism will be harder to spot.

I'd prefer another proposed form of semi-protection - edits to such articles would become visible only after some delay / after beeing patrolled. --Wikimol 23:44, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• There is a big misunderstaning when people want to block edits form anonimous because they thing that would avoid vandals. It's all the other way around. We have users logged in so we can easily flag well-faithed edits. People with evil intentions would simply create a dummy account, and that would simply inflate wikipedia with dummy users. User login is made to detect good edits, and blocking anons will simply turn useless this tool.--Alexandre Van de Sande 00:50, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See m:Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit articles and m:Posting by anonymous users should be limited, but not banned. I feel obliged to point out that these proposals usually don't go anywhere; people start off with "reasonable" limits, then others extend these limits, then others shoot the whole thing down as anti-wiki, then it all lingers until the new wave of people who notice that there's a lot of vandalism going on come with proposals. I'm not saying re-opening the discussion is pointless, mind you. Attitudes may shift, solutions may be re-evaluated. JRM 12:56, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)

Two proposals on this question:

• Proposal #1: There may be a scheme of protection that is not too far off from the current system of nominating and voting good contributers to be admins. Along the lines of what has been proposed, I suggest that we categorize frequently vandalized pages by the degree to which they are subject to vandalism, then require users to overcome minor hurdles before they can edit more frequently vandalized pages.
• Anyone, registered or not, can still edit 99% of pages that fall in the 'least vandalized' category; to get up to the next category;
• To edit 'somewhat frequently vandalized pages', you have to be registered for 24 hours or be registered and done, say, 50 good edits (not including user page stuff and talk pages and the like) or simply be given the privilege by any member in the next higher category
• To edit 'frequently vandalized pages', you have to be registered for a week and have 50 good edits, or just be registered and have, say 250 good edits, or be given the privilege by any three members in the next higher category (yes, I realize people will make sock-puppets to do this, but each sock puppet will have to get into the next higher category first);
• To edit 'most frequently vandalized pages' - those pages for which the majority of current 'edits' are vandalism, you have to be in the previous category and put your name up for approval just like someone seeking admin, but we make it clear the bar is much lower than the admin bar (which stays right where it already is).
• Sounds complicated, I admit, but I think very few vandals will stick through the whole process to get to the pages they most want to hit. Of course, a certain proportion will just turn to easier targets, but if their hearts aren't in it, they won't stick around for long.
• Proposal #2: Actually, this one is a more likely alternative. We could set up a special page, much like the current New pages page, that would show only edits made to frequently vandalised pages by IP addresses and non-admin users who have made fewer than a certain set number of good edits (like 1000) (really, the Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages should have something like this). --BDAbramson 07:07, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

RSS Feed of new Articles

I would love to see an RSS feed of wikipedia's newest articles. Personally, I love to browse the site for any sort of information. If I could add an RSS link to Firefox and see what the newest pages are, I'd love it. I have a feeling many other people enjoy the link. Is this possible, I do not know how to even being making this happen, so I am leaving it to someone else.

thanks --24.30.19.8 03:29, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)Mark Bashuk, Marietta, GA

Do you really want to drink from the fire hose? The English language Wikipedia is currently getting roughly a thousand new articles a day. If you really want to, it already exists here. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:36, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This can't possibly be easy on the bandwidth...

--HMP22 06:38, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Classification

I've started adding classifications to category pages. It is possible already without software upgrades, and I find it helpful navigating around category hierarchies. I've written a page which I hope can be approved as Wikipedia policy. It is at Wikipedia:Classification. To see an example of what it looks like, I've classified many of the Theatre categories . Check out Category:Altos and move up and down the Opera hierarchy. -- Samuel Wantman 12:29, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Implementing this by hand seems to make an unwarranted assumption that the hierarchy of categories will be stable. This particular example is in an area where that is probably true, but in other areas this could be a maintenance nightmare. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:54, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

We can suggest that people wait before classifying any categories in flux. I know I'd wait! -- Samuel Wantman 20:24, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I like the way the Classification's look. Good job! JesseW 01:44, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to link up the Wikipedia:Classification to Wikipedia:Categorization and some other pages. Is it safe to assume that silence assumes consent? (That is the norm for Consensus decision making) If not, what is the next step for approval? -- Samuel Wantman 20:54, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Aquasport history project under boating?

As a member of the online forum www.classicaquasport.com I will be coordinating an effort to reconstruct the history of this well-known manufacturer of recreational power boats. The history is complicated by the fact that the original company, formed in 1967, went bankrupt before being purchased by current owner Genmar, and most historical documentation, both on the company itself and on the individual boat models, was lost. A collaborative, online effort might be the most efficient manner to reconstruct this history. I am seeking guidance as to whether to work within the Wikipedia environment, or to start a separate wiki. Stevedem 19:51, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia could probably benefit from an article on the company and the boats, but as it is not a general knowledge base, a truly exhaustive treatment of them probably would fall outside the scope of wikipedia. Good luck, though. jdb ❋ (talk) 04:33, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I recommend that you start a separate Wiki where you can be as comprehensive as you like; just make sure that your licensing is such that you can freely move articles to Wikipedia as appropriate. Then test the waters on how much of this the Wikipedian community considers appropriate. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:29, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Harry Potter in WP

I think it is quite clear that Pottermania has gripped many users, as is evident from the number of articles on the Harry Potter series. The coverage of this topic is not comprehensive; it is excessive. Counting the articles Category:Harry Potter and its subcategories, and roughly estimating the number that are in more than one category, I would suggest that there are about 250 to 300 articles on the subject, including several on characters who have never actually appeared in the book, but have only been spoken about. Worse yet, many are full of nothing more than speculation (see, for instance, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince).

As, of course, mere complaining would not be welcome, I would like to propose a solution to the problem. I hope, firstly, that the fans of this series who have contributed articles on the subject do not take this as an attack on them. Rather, it is only an attempt to improve article quality and standards. I propose, then, that a majority of these articles be redirected to the broader, main articles. The significant subjects (the books, movies, principal characters, and perhaps other important topics others may care to suggest) would have their own articles; all others would redirect to the appropriate pages, into which the material would be incorporated. We would not have such things as a page for each spell, plant, beast, or magazine that appears in the series. -- Emsworth 20:58, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Seems modest compared with the documentaion of British Rail boggy numbers since 1835.--Jirate 21:04, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)

I think that 'boggy' is a cross between B.R. and H.P... Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 23:51, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

So what? As long as it's accurate. There's plenty of room for it. Maybe some articles should be consolidated, but otherwise I don't think this is a problem. - Omegatron 21:56, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

One certainly does not advocate the deletion of the content. Rather, consolidation is in order. To give an example, there is no need for separate articles for Quidditch and Rules of Quidditch. A List of characters in the Harry Potter series or some other suitably named article should cover a majority of the cases in question. -- Emsworth 23:39, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hear! Hear! When you consider the howls of 'not notable' that greet the creation of an article on someone who has 'only' published a book or two, or affected hundreds or thousands of people by being an inspirational teacher, this sort of nonsense is truly offensive (well, it's the howls of 'not notable' that are offensive, in fact, but there seems to be nothing that can be done about the hordes of editors who are appalled at the idea that someone else might be the subject of an article and not them). The notion of 'accuracy' is also largely empty; how can one be accurate about a character that doesn't even exist in the books? Here (and elsewhere) this needs a firm but fair (and consistent) hand. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 23:51, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Consolidation is an excellent idea. HP fans might take a cue from what's been done with Atlas Shrugged, which also has legions of rabid fans, but (fortunately) has been whittled down to a few large articles, rather than zillions of short ones. (There's also a section-by-section analysis, but on Wikibooks, not WP.) jdb ❋ (talk) 02:35, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No need to consolidate - wp is not paper. The Recycling Troll 10:14, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Consolidation is an excellent idea in many cases such as this. I say this not because we need to conserve pages (I am a follower of Wikipedia is not paper and largely an inclusionist), but because it's good article organization and helps people that are genuinely interested in the topic explore small bits of related info together rather than jumping around. It also avoids repetition of context and assumptions. Subjects requiring more explanation can be briefly explained and linked. A good example is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time characters. Indeed, consolidation might be useful outside the context of fiction articles, such as consolidating a number of stubs on 17th-century mathematicians or former presidents of Rwanda. Deco 11:14, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is a difference, though. Someone with enough knowledge, resources, or time to invesitgate could expand an article on Grégoire Kayibanda, President of Rwanda, 1962 - 1973. Consolidating the presidents into a general Presidents of Rwanda article and redirecting Kayibanda to it could discourage someone from making these edits. Compare this to Godric's Hollow, a bit of Potter ephemera that cannot be expanded beyond fanfiction or speculation, regardless on the amount of time spent on it. Here, a redirect to Placenames in the Harry Potter universe or something like it seems appropriate. Should J. K. Rowling provide more information on it at a later time, then maybe it should get its own article. Cmprince 20:29, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I feel this is a good idea. I have contributed bits and pieces to a few of the main Potter articles, and reckon we don't need dedicated articles for things like Mark Evans or Harry Potter and the Toenail of Icklibõgg. But I also feel that a huge over-consolidation would be wrong as well. There is a huge number of articles about different Pokemon characters, which really should be consolidated too. - Mark 13:54, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty firm on saying that the Harry Potter material belongs in Wikipedia, and offhand 200-300 articles does not sound excessive, as long as they are the right ones and well written. Frankly, I think great coverage of something like Harry Potter is a great way to get a lot of young people interested in Wikipedia.

That said, I have nothing against consolidation. For example, minor characters about whom little can be said, might as well be redirects to substantive articles that cover those characters. I see two clues to what can be consolidated:

1. Short articles with no significant potential for expansion.
2. Articles that heavily duplicate what content they have.

Jmabel | Talk 19:26, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

• True, we don't really need articles on each minor detail For example: I don't think we particularly need an article Harry Potter and the Toenail of Icklibõgg; it could easily be in an article about title rumours. I suggest we merge everything with no significant entries the Harry Potter Lexicon. I don't have a problem with a great number of articles, as long as they describe the major characters, places and issues of the books and films, anything minor like that plant Neville Longbottom had in book 5 should be deleted unless it's proven important later. - Mgm|^(talk) 15:32, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

New idea for WikiMedia: WikiNotes

New idea to complement the idea of Wikiversity/books... WikiNotes - where anyone can post notes filling in the details between the lines of science books (and, in time, other books).

Description by example: most physics major textbooks (take Griffiths or Shankar or Sakurai) have lines of confusing text (that are often obscure in its long-paragraph form - better if rehashed as notes) and equations that seem to come out of nowhere (many steps in-between are omitted - better if all steps were shown).

WikiNotes would be a collection of open-source notes that fill in the confusing parts of textbooks. There should be no copy-right problems with the original textbooks, as WikiNotes would clarify the text, but not plagiarize it.

WikiNotes would be a valuable resource for students attempting to learn on their own. The barrier of not understanding a textbook shall be broken! It would also be a good resource for other students in prep for their courses.

I have been considering setting up a site like this for a long time now. With the advent of Media Wiki, something like this might actually work out (easily, too). Such a site would require ample publicity for enough people to contribute notes - thus, it'll be best to be called WikiNotes.

I can contribute a number of booknotes for WikiNotes once someone sets up the basic MediaWiki for it - or, if I gain permission to do so.

Tell me what you think at WikiNotesBrainstorm.

=(Yosofun 06:42, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC))

Warsaw/Vote

There is a vote proceeding over what name to use for the capital city of Poland during various periods of history. Please go to the Warsaw/Vote page to cast your vote. RickK 23:22, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

Countdown deletion

Countdown deletion, a new proposal for lifting some load off our unscalable deletion process! "The basic idea is that articles that start off as rubbish are put on probation: if nobody comes to improve them in seven days, they're out."

Let's all have a good time squeezing as much out of this proposal as possible. At worst we'll conclude that it's rubbish and we need something else. That would already be something, no? JRM 23:19, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

Rules for Fools

Based on this year's experience, I thought a semi-serious policy for April Fool's Day was in order. I have proposed it at Wikipedia:Rules for Fools, please comment on the talk page.--Eloquence* 02:47, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

Need for New Article

A few days ago I posted the following on the discussion page of the Knights Templar article. I'm repeating it here since I'm not sure if that is the appropriate place.

Temple Society/Tempelgesellschaft

The German and Hebrew editions of Wikipedia have articles on the German society founded by Christoph Hoffmann in 1861 de he. Extra-wiki sites can be found via this clusty search and this Google search (Yahoo only gives 17 results for: "Temple Society" "Christoph Hoffmann"). Could someone {I don't know enough} add a similar article in English {if one already exists I can't find it} with at least links between between it and this article. Michael {is this the accepted procedure for making comments?} Retrieved from "Talk:Knights_Templar"

Knights Templar

A schools template

I know schools are a pretty touchy issue on Wiki at the moment but I don't think this should mean they couldn't be a little more organised. I've made a draft Template:School which borrows heavily from Template:University information. I havn't tried implementing the template anywhere yet. Comments and Suggestions please? LukeSurl 23:22, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually I have just tried it out on my own School.LukeSurl 00:12, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I would note that headteacher sounds very British English and that the enrollment item should allow for a date at which that enrollment was correct. Rmhermen 16:30, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Saying "pricipal" is very American English. Is there any appropriate word which doesn't suggest either? Would an "Information last updated" or "Above Information correct as of" field be appropriate? Please feel free to edit the template.--LukeSurl 18:13, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The non-American, non- British, poliically correct word: School Administrator. --Munchkinguy 19:37, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good, I'll put it in...--LukeSurl 20:06, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Whilst I agree neither principal or headteacher are the best word to use, school administrator suggests clerical staff to me... Drw25 20:08, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How about, simply, Headmaster/Principal? Smoddy (_t^g_e^c) 20:28, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That also sounds good. But "administration" is the way to refer to the Principal and Vice Principals grouped together. So I deduced that "administrator" would be the right term. --Munchkinguy 03:52, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

User:138.251.118.16 has completlely rewritten the template. As a result the template's use on a few articles has been suspended. It looks quite good but it raises two issues.

Firstly, is it best for a school template which is so comprehensive in its scope, or just a table? Personally I have no inclination either way (had a think about this) would prefer a summary table as the template, the aim of the template is to provide an organised set of the 'mundane' facts about the school and then allow the writer flexiblity in what he has to say in the rest of the article. The template as it stands is certainly not flexible as it dictates almost exactly how the article should be structured.

One bone of contention is that this edit is very American in its language (the words "principal" "graders" and "state"), and from what it implies will be the information contained (such as American Indian ethnicity). I'm going to do my best now to internationalise this template. --LukeSurl 18:46, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, this template being an article thing is creepy. This template should be a table, not a crazy fill-in-the-blanks template for an entire school article. --Munchkinguy 16:03, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Keep in mind that many school articles have almost no information that couldn't be moved into this template, and that articles consisting only of a template are candidates for speedy deletion. While I don't think that such articles would actually be speedied, it would be a very compelling argument on vfd, so this probably would have a net negative effect on the "all schools are notable" cause. —Korath (Talk) 20:03, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

As it is now, the template is completely useless, since it dictates the article structure. It should reverted to the previous state. Alfio 10:58, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I sort of reverted the template. Some of the things still listed there are a bit trivial, but I'll leave them there.... for now. --Munchkinguy 19:11, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Protecting vandalized articles with user rights

Here is a different proposition keep people from wasting time with the 3RR. Two technical changes would be needed:

• A "seniority system" where users get powers from having participated in WP (Example: 1=newbies 2=users with some combination of # of edits (e.g.500), time on the project, amount contributed etc. 3=admins)
• A blocking system per page.

Then if a level-2 user sees a level-1 user vandalizing, she/he can be banned from editing the page for 1 day (maybe longer after repeated abuse). Disputes between level-2 users should be solved by level-3 users.

Problems with dynamic IPs would be solvable: for example, allow only edits by logged-in users from that IP block. That way, others can still edit--J heisenberg 13:15, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wanna get a Guinness World Record, Wikipedia?

Wikipedia? This is WikiPediaAid speaking. I say, maybe you should go for a Guinness World Record for say, Encylopedia website with most articles. Just goto their website and go for the record. I don't know if they will accept it or anything, but please try!

GREAT IDEA - surely we can demonstrate some sort of broken record - or propose one. The folks at Guinees handle questions by email - but the reply takes 3 weeks. What should we propose to them? Lotsofissues 05:26, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We're hands down the world's largest encyclopedia. Nickptar 12:40, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There are those in the world (most?) who claim we are not an encyclopedia. --Sean κ. ⇔ 13:20, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Then largest... um... what's a good generic term for a wiki? "Collaborative writing project"? "Publicly-created knowledge source"? Nickptar 14:06, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Propose many things in one email. r3m0t ^talk 15:01, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

If you mean by "encyclopedia" an expert-written and peer-reviewed reference work, Nupedia was small. Yes, Wikipedia is large, but so what? You are comparing an apple and many oranges. If your definition of encyclopedia includes ancient and lost ones, China's Yongle Encyclopedia and Gujin tushu jicheng could had been even larger. However these two "encyclopedias" were compilations of published books and manuscripts. But Wikipedia also absorbed much of its contents from CIA World Fact Books, U.S. cities information, 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica and many other public domain materials. -- Toytoy 15:17, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

• If you are submitting a claim for a Guinness world record, you have to document a significant number of similar endeavors that yours surpasses. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:22, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

List of claims we are making

• Wikipedia is the world's largest encyclopedia
  • If we don't fit the exact criteria of encyclopædia (which I think we do), then the phrase "reference work" should do, imho. Thryduulf 23:41, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Wikipedia is the world's largest collaborative project
  • Is this actually true? (see comments below) Thryduulf 23:41, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What else? Lotsofissues 21:37, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• largest editorial team?
• largest wiki (no doubt about this)
• largest number of contributors to an online project?
• encalopaedia/reference work with editions in the most number of languages
• largest encylopaedia/reference work/collaborative project/internet site in xx langauge (for some of the smaller languages this might be true. Indeed without checking, I am wondering if the Klingon and Interlingue Wikipedias (for example) are the only encylopaedias in their respective languages). Thryduulf 12:57, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If we get in the GBoWR for being the largest Klingon encyclopedia, that will make my day. —Sean κ. ⇔ 14:47, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's getting to be like a vanity claim. It's like I am the first living thing on earth to eat a Whopper on this McDonald's table at 11 AM. -- Toytoy 16:45, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

Largest collaborative project?

Are we the "largest collaborative project"? I'd say we're the largest collaborative (online) reference work, but largest collaborative project is a very braod claim. Depending how you define a collaborative project, things like the largest of either of the coaltions in WW1 or WW2 could hold the record for "a group of people working together towards the same goal". I'm sure there have been other large unpaid collaborations in the past. I don't know numbers but things that come immediately to mind as possible candidates are

• The fall of the Berlin wall
• The Great Wall and Egyptian Pyramids. Can these (and others involving slavery) qualify as a "large unpaid collaboration"? (remark by Igny)
• Live Aid
• Linux
• resistance movement in Occupied France/other occupied country.
• Human Genome Project
• CDDB/FreeDB
• SourceForge

Thryduulf 23:49, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

User specialist subjects

How about a feature whereby users can state subjects they consider themselves to have specialist knowledge on? This would be to make it easier to match up users to pages needing attention, stubs and substubs.

There already is one. I believe you can find it at Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by fields of interest A-E. Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 17:57, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Excuse me, I didn't realise, feel free to delete this article.

No problem, I didn't mean to sound brusque or harried there... Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 18:41, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Don't worry you didn't. --Ebz 22:04, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You may also consider the (newly-created) Cleanup Taskforce, a group of volunteers to whom you can submit articles that need work, based on their areas of expertise. The group is still starting up. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:34, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Option to disable all inline images

(I think I saw that this has been proposed and rejected before, but what the hey...)

Whereas:

• Some people, for various reasons, don't want to see images of sex or violence. (For instance, I often browse Wikipedia at school, and I don't want everyone in the classroom to see me looking at a big Autofellatio.jpg vandalism.)
  • These same people might not mind seeing text describing the same thing, becase (a) people across the room can't see what you're reading (easily) and (b) images have a greater impact on people - they're more disturbing to the viewer, and much more likely to piss off other people in the room, than text would be.
• Proposals have been made to flag images as "sexual" or "violent" or otherwise objectionable, but the topic is so fraught with politics and emotion that any such system will be inherently POV and lead to massive edit wars, and thus has been rightly turned down.
• Turning off images globally is incredibly inconvenient if you browse other sites at the same time. Even in browsers that let you disable images from just wikipedia.org (and I don't think MSIE is one of these), it still presents a number of inconveniences:
  • You can't see the nice images in your skin.
  • You can't see LaTeX-rendered math, which isn't likely to be obscene.
  • You can't see the tool buttons on the edit form. Etc.
  • If you do want to see an image in an article, you have to unblock images. In Firefox, this is just a right-click operation, but I think it's harder in IE and other browsers.

Therefore, I suggest having an option in Preferences that would allow users to disable showing any inline images in pages. (I mean things included from the Image: namespace, not LaTeX equations, skin images, tool buttons, etc.) The description and a link to the Image: namespace would be shown, and if they wanted to see the image they could click on the link.

• It's still inconvenient and impedes viewing, but far superior to blocking all images, either from all sites or from wikipedia.org.
• Yes, images could still be uploaded over and vandalized. There's a solution to that, too: have an option that would:
  • When the link in the article to the Image: namespace is clicked on, go to a page with a thumbnail (max 100px in either dimension, scaled down a minimum of 3x) image.
  • The user would then look at the thumbnail. It's easy to tell whether or not it's objectionable this way, but a thumbnail is less likely to be disturbing to the viewer and to other people in the area.
  • If the user then clicks on the thumbnail, they see the full-size image.
• Having this option off by default is fine, in case anyone sees having it on by default as censorship.
• This could also help with the (so far hypothetical, I hope) problem of filtering software blocking all of Wikipedia because it might contain naughty pictures.

Comments?

Nickptar 20:54, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea, how about the following improvement. Have the thumbnail inline in the article, inside a div (box) the same size as the larger image. Clicking on the thumbnail goes to the full image. That way the layout of the page won't change, and you can still vaguely see the image. --Sean κ. ⇔ 19:14, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, also a good idea, but you'd have to shrink the image to almost complete unrecognizability to avoid the "Other People In the Room" problem. Nickptar 20:34, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The small image is a good idea, but another option would be for mobile (GPRS/GSM) browsing when an option to not display images over a certain filesize (say 20kb) without specifically requesting it would be useful. Thryduulf 20:08, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Maybe there could be user-configurable thresholds for showing inline images (show none, show smaller than X), and configurable actions (don't show, shrink to X, blur/ultra-compress). Wouldn't want to confuse people with too many choices, though. Nickptar 20:34, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's not hard to draw an obscene picture that's smaller than 4K in size (by using only two colors and GIF compression). --Sean κ. ⇔ 22:24, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Good point. Hence turning off images totally. Even shrinking and blurring wouldn't be much help with Autofellatio.jpg. Nickptar 02:08, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm all in favor of anything that helps the viewer take responsibility for what he views. — Xiong熊talk 07:01, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Today's lunar phase

Image:Lunar-Phase-Diagram.png

The calculation of a day's lunar phase is not very difficult. Can the wiki server generate the image of the moon each day? I guess it is a nice idea to see today's moon in the article moon.

You need a good picture of the moon such as Image:Moon merged small.jpg, and generate 29 moon images. Save the images. And have the system copy the corresponding image to [[Image:Today's moon.jpg]] each day according to UTC.

It is also a good idea to generate the coordinates of planets and stars of a user-defined place but lunar phase is the easiest job. -- Toytoy 10:56, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

OK, that's cool.... But why would we want to do it? Are we going to start listing the phase of the moon for every day in history? I really think auto-moon phases are a neat thing to do, but I'm not sure how much relevance it has to Wikipedia. Seems more appropriate for an astronomy site or a weather site. - Pioneer-12 03:28, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Maybe wikinews along with the weather map? Mgm|^(talk) 11:37, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

I'll be great to display today's lunar phase in the article for moon. I'll also be great to display the current temperature and weather in each major city's article. The former is not that difficult and fun. You may want to list the lunar phase information in the article of a historical battle such as the D-Day. Or maybe for Jack the Ripper ... . -- Toytoy 12:49, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

The moon phase affects night light, tides, religious ceremonies, and werewolves. OK, a moon phase detector would be good for researchers to have. What other useful information can be auto-generated that would apply to more then one article? (Day of the week....hmmm.... eclipses....) Maybe this could be expanded into a "Wiki autofacts". It's not quite Wikipedia, but it would be a useful tool for Wikipedia to have access to. - Pioneer-12 23:22, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Why not make a working orrery to display in the page by that name? Mmm, and maybe a dancing Jacko? — Xiong熊talk 06:59, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Simple box markup

I would like to see some markup added to the Wiki language for marking up simple tables.

This is not a proposal for a whole new table syntax, which I don't think we need. Rather, I feel that a simplified table markup would be useful for making the simple boxes that are ubiquitous on WP. To see what I mean, take a look at the Taxobox over at Plant, or the infobox over at Portland, Oregon. The proposal is simply:

 [*Heading*]
 :Row1 Item1, Row1 Item2
 :Row2 Item1, Row2 Item2
 :Row3 Item1, Row3 Item2 :Row4 Item1, Row4 Item2
 [*Second Heading | background=red*] : Row1 Item1, Row1 Item2
 ...etc...

Where the commas and colons are delimiters. The parsing is pretty simple, and there would be some restrictions, like no nested tables, no use of colspan or rowspan, and no commas or colons within a cell.

I'd like to point out a simplified table markup could help shift the focus from formatting to logical structure. That is, we should be able to think of a table as a list of lists, not a collection of cells. If I mark something up, I shouldn't think about the way the table is laid out, just as long as it preserves the logic. As an example, I could see the markup,

 [*Plants*]
 :Picture, [[Image:A plant.jpg]]
 [*Scientific classification*]
 :Domain, Eukaryota
 :Kingdom, Plantae

Could be laid out as,

Plants
Picture	(some image)
Scientific classification
Domain	Eukaryota
Kingdom	Plantae

But by simply passing a parameter, the editor could flip the orientation,

Plants	Picture	Scientific classification	Domain	Kingdom
	(some image)		Eukaryota	Plantae

Or,

Plants	Scientific classification
Picture	Domain	Kingdom
(some image)	Eukaryota	Plantae

Or, we could skip the table all together and have it output as,

Plants Picture: (some image).

Scientific classification Domain: Eukaryota. Kingdom: Plantae.

All of these convey the same information. Then the editor wouldn't have to think about layout, just logical structure. Well that's enough WikiPhilosophy for one night ;) --69.203.121.20 15:10, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC) (standing in for Sean Kelly.)

Pipe syntax is pretty simple. Let's not introduce another syntax to navigate. — Xiong熊talk 06:51, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Template competition

A competition is announced for the standardisation of talk page templates: see Wikipedia:Template standardisation – submit your entries before voting commences at the end of 24 April 2005. violet/riga (t) 19:51, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Liberalism in Arabic?

I was surprised to see that this page has not been translated into Arabic. Are there many pages about democracy in Arabic? This sounds like a good project for some high school kids in Iraq.

cheers. Rob

You can request this article on the Arabic Wikipedia at ar:ويكيبيديا:مواضيع مقترحة. Angela. 01:19, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Color

Not certain where the best place to propose this, I'll post it here: I've been noticing that our various articles on colo(u)rs are not necessarily consistent with each other, particularly when it comes to color spaces and RGB/CMYK values. I therefore propose to create WikiProject Color as a framework for standardising our presentation of such information. Does anyone object? Am I duplicating effort? --Phil | Talk 17:21, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

• I like the idea, and I don't think you're duplicating effort. Don't forget to read the list of colors before you start, though. :) Mgm|^(talk) 19:34, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
  • Sounds like a good idea. Coincidentally, yesterday I proposed {{col-stub}} at WP:WSS for the many stray colour article stubs (col to get around the color/colour problem). Grutness|^hello? 00:09, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Created. Now I need lots of help so it doesn't implode under its own weight. --Phil | Talk 09:45, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Count me in. — Xiong熊talk 06:40, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Technical wiki for hardware/drivers and perhaps software

The idea:

To make a wiki space dedicated to the documentation of hardware and thechnology.

History and rambling:

A few hours of scouering the internet with only a serial number as a starting point prompted the idea. I had this card for my pc and needed a driver for it and thought it would be easy to just look it up like in the old days when all the inhabitants of the web were tech-minded people and if you werent you had no means of logging on.

Now I eventually found the driver on a page dealing with issues like this and apparently the company making this card had gone bankrupt / stoped supporting the card / been bought or liquidated or taken over or whatever. But a user of the card had posted the driver on his personal website. Now some would say: "Why not just go to this site when you need something like driver / hardware info?" and I would say : "Well there are loads of those sites and most in thread form with old data and most of the time just questions with no answers! But the Wiki system is mutch better for this since the articles accumulate info instead of just piling up text like threads and with the wiki we would have connected us with the critical mass of people needed to make this work."

Anyway I think it would be awesome and useful even if the drivers themselves werent hosted it would be a good starting point.

Best regard to all yall.

Ágúst Rafnsson.

If you want to propose this as a Wikimedia project, please see meta:Proposals for new projects. However, a documentation wiki already exists at Wikicities:c:Documentation. Angela. 01:14, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Translation center

I am one of Wikipedians interested, for various reason, in articles that need translation. However, the current system for handling that is, IMO, pretty bad. The worst part is that we have a ton of different places for that. Consider:
Category:Wikipedia translation that contains:
Category:Pages needing translation and Category:Translation requests. I know that these two categories are separate, the first being for non-English articles posted on English Wikipedia, and the second being for requests from other Wikipedias. However, it still makes it harder to follow. Next, we have Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, which is, apparently, the most often checked place by translators, but then again, there are many articles in Category:Pages needing translation that are not on this page.
Next, lists of translators. Wikipedia:Translators available and Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Translators are really in need of merging, being two places with the same intention and different contents. My preference lies with a layout such as in Wikipedia:Translators available, so you can browse by language.
My proposal is to have one big page for everything translation related, and not like Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination. Something more along the lines of Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress I guess. The translation center should have a section with a list of translators and a section with translation requests, both from other language Wikis and for non-English articles here. If it turns out to be long, might be split into two pages, but for heaven's sake, with good linking between those.
Next, I am strongly against having different categories for articles that need translation and I suggest just one - again, just one place for translators to check. There, a Wikipedian proficient in several languages, can click on the category and, by browsing titles, see what he might be able to translate.
The translation center page would allow people to easier post requests or not-English articles, and an added bonus is that they can browse the list of translators by language and leave a message on some translator's Talk page to request assistance.
I believe that boilerplates such as {{RoughTranslation|language}}, {{translationlang|de}} or {{translation}} will do well enough for marking different pages anyway. But the translation center would then be a unified place with ease of use.
Feel free to comment and/or flame me. Solver 13:06, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, it's probably a good idea to browse by language. I'd say merge the two into Wikipedia:Translators available and redirectWikipedia:Wikipedians/Translators there. The fact there's a lot of articles in the category that aren't on the Wikipedia namespace page is probably because people tag articles without listing them. I'd prefer if we kept translations from and into English seperate. If any cats duplicate eachother I suggest you take it to CFD and ask for a consensus whether or not they need merging. Mgm|^(talk) 19:32, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

  I am the main person who keeps Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English going. I'm also very active in Wikipedia:Translation into English (WP:TIE). (And I also probably field more translation requests than any other one person.) These pages serve two different purposes. Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English is like WP:VFD (only with a higher rate of "rescue"); WP:TIE is a place for making requests, which do not have the urgency created by some anonymous author's pasting of (possibly copyvio'd, possibly libelous) foreign-language material into Wikipedia. Perhaps one or the other name should change to make the distinction clearer, but they absolutely should not be merged.

  As for the various places people sign up as translators: I'm all for merging redundant pages, but we should not confuse pages aimed at that particular task with more general lists of translators, or mere statements of linguistic capability that do not imply a willingness to handle translation requests. Most of the people signed up on Wikipedia:Translators available actually do some translation work (although I'm sure there are a few dead accounts still hanging out there).

  I find Category:Translation requests useless and wish it would go away. When I suggested this a while back, it seemed to be somebody's little darling, I forget whose.

  Category:Pages needing translation is used in Template:notenglish. If you use that template, you are supposed to make an entry on Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. Inevitably, some people don't, just like people add other templates and don't follow through. I don't relish the task of sweeping periodically through the category and cleaning up after them by making entries on Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, but I do it about every week or two; occasionally someone else does, also. Note that the category alone is in no way a substitute for the page, which is a place for discussion much like WP:VFD.

  Most of these pages are reasonably large, large enough to be a problem for slow connections.

  Wikipedia:Translators available was actually spun out of WP:TIE. I didn't initially like the idea, but it seemed to result in a really major increase in translators signing up, so I think we should keep them separate.

  I'm open to quite a few suggestions, but, to put this bluntly: if someone else wants to take over the legwork that keeps this going, fine, set it up however you want. However, if you merge Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English with WP:TIE, I am absolutely unwilling to help administer the resulting clusterfuck. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:40, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

  One of the reasons I originally posted that is exactly WP:TIE. I was unaware the page existed at all until three days ago, despite the fact that I was checking Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English on a daily or bi-daily basis. What makes you think that merging that with WP:TIE will result in a mess? Look at how the Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English gets rather few entries. The problem with many separate pages is they are hard to see nd potentially translators can miss them.

  Anyhow, can we agree that Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Translators and Wikipedia:Translators available need to be merged? Solver 16:51, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Search engine suggestion

If something like this is implemented, perhaps we'll never see the message "search is disabled for performance reasons" again.

1. That registered logged in users be able to set a default search engine preference for the search button, either "internal search" "Google" "Yahoo" or the "choice box" (the one that currently comes up when search is disabled") with "choice box" being the default preference for new users. An added bonus would be for "internal search" to be one of the "choice box" options.

2. That anonymous (not logged in) users only have access to Google or Yahoo. They would get a "choice box" without "internal search" as an option.

3. Some variation of the above.

Ron Ritzman 16:44, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Should be the other way around. We exist to serve the public. Anon users should get first crack at the search engine. If editors want to use it, we should kick in more Cash Money. — Xiong熊talk 06:38, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Proposed articles

I think wikipedia should have a section for proposed articles. Users unsure if an article they wanted to create would be put on vfd right away, and didn't want to find out by making it. People could vote on wether an article was notable enough for wikipedia. Howabout1 16:37, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I think that's a good idea. It's a lot less stressful to find out something will get deleted before you invested time in writing about it. Mgm|^(talk) 20:31, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
  • I like it in theory... but I think most of the people who are creating those articles aren't reading *any* of the policy pages before they make them, and then there's the issue of editor eyes watching the "proposed articles" page: probably not many. I suspect many people would be rather impatient wanting to start their article. For those who did wish to ask such questions I'd probably suggest a visit to the Wikipedia:Help Desk, which is watched by many and open to all sorts of newbie questions. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 05:16, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's not how it works around here. Even if you did it, it would not give you a free pass -- your article might end up on VfD anyway. You have to take your chances with the rest of us in the box full of monkeys, typewriters, and cattle prods. — Xiong熊talk 06:09, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Status/development box for articles

The FA and PR boxes, along with all the other possible talk page tags, look quite ugly when they are put together. There is no real consistancy, with different styles and sizes in use. I've made an example status/development box at User talk:Violetriga/statusdevelopment which makes it look, in my opinion, much better. It can also cope with, for example, multiple FAC nominations. Would it cause problems though, making it too difficult for the inexperienced to add tags? Comments, as ever, are more than welcome. violet/riga (t) 11:37, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think the new tags are very nice-looking. — Xiong熊talk 06:06, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Ability to upload multiple images

It is very difficult to create articles like Ranks and Insignia of NATO as umploading such images one by one is a seriously painfull process. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 01:10, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Very true! I've no idea how we could change that, though. --Munchkinguy 21:56, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Lots of aplications allow you to sellect multiple files. Like the existing upload page but allows me to select multiple files. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 00:15, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Tell me about it! (*cough* Cyrillic alphabet *cough* Early Cyrillic alphabet) Tabbed web browsing helps a lot. I command click on "Upload file" a bunch of times, then fly across the tabs and work on all the upload pages at once. —Michael Z. 2005-04-9 22:24 Z

So will this be adressed? --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 03:30, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that in many cases, a desire to upload more than a few images at one time may point to a set of images that may never be used individually. In such case, you want to create one giant image that contains all the little ones, or perhaps a few such, with an entire row. I do not believe there will ever be a distinct article on podplukovniks.

By the way, that NATO insignia page is huge. I have two 20" monitors now, and the page spans about 1-1/4 of them (nearly 1600 pixels wide). — Xiong熊talk 06:05, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Spell Check

I'm surprised that this hasn't been discussed before (or maybe I'm just ignorant), but wouldn't it be a good idea to have a spell check button (along with the bold button, underline button, signature button) at the top of the screen when editing articles. Hotmail has something similar in its email composer. Yes, I know there would probably be some issue with reigonal dialects of English, but that could be overcome in several ways. Thr spellign of Wikiepedia cood becom mush bettre, nda thr prefesinalsim of thr artikels woood increse! --Munchkinguy 00:50, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Support --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 01:02, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Support, great idea. Howabout1 01:05, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Sounds like a good idea (as long as it accepts both US and UK spellings!) Grutness|^hello? 09:14, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comment: Unfortuately I think any Wikipedia-based spell-checker would be a huge CPU hog and therefore would cause a performance hit. There is another solution, however. I'm using the Mozilla Firefox internet web browser along with the SpellBound extension. It comes with an American English word list, but a British English word list can easily be downloaded (as well as Canadian English, Australian English, several other versions of English, and multiple versions of other languages such as Spanish). The SpellBound extension works very well, except that it is slow if the article or talk page you are editing has become quite large. BlankVerse ∅ 16:24, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Safari and several other Mac web browsers already use the system's inline spell checker, which supports four kinds of English, ten other languages, and many more with the CocoAspell extension. If someone takes the time to develop a Wikipedia extension, I want to be able to turn it off completely. —Michael Z. 2005-04-9 16:42 Z

• As pointed out above, that's a browser issue and shouldn't take Wikimedia time. Arbor 18:54, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There supposedly already is a spell checker but it has been turned off because it hogs the servers. See Wikipedia:Typo. I've been using Firefox and the Spellbound extension to do spell checking. See User:Omegatron#Spell checker - Omegatron 19:52, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

One more reason to abandon MS Internet Explorer. All the hip Wiki kids are doing it! For more info about alternatives and add-ons, see Wikipedia:Browser notes. —Michael Z. 2005-04-9 22:14 Z

I do use Firefox... when I can, but I'm rarley at my computer and most other computers use Internet Explorer. Perhaps there should be a prominent link somewhere in the website that points out where this extention is. --Munchkinguy 18:27, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is much wiser to edit in an external, say, word processor and spell check there. This reduces wikistress in the event of edit conflicts and server balls-ups. — Xiong熊talk 05:54, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

LinkedIn Group

I would like to create a group for Wikipedia editors and staff in LinkedIn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn). For those of you who are not familiar with the service, it allows you to create a network of contacts and maintain them on-line. You obviously have immediate contact information for anyone on your contact list, but can request contact with any one of your contact's contacts, up to 4 degrees of separation. You can then search through your network of contacts and use them to search for jobs, hire someone, make a professional contact, and more. The service is free.

LinkedIn users create profiles, a type of on-line resume, and I felt that listing membership in Wikipedia would be prestigious.

I sent an e-mail to LinkedIn and received the following requirements to start the group:

LinkedIn’s current group functionality is absolutely free.

Five simple steps to setting up your group:

1. You (and/or your organization) decide to create a group on LinkedIn, and then contact us
2. You sign up quickly and easily via our online group service agreement on the web
3. Once we receive notification that you have accepted the terms of the agreement, we will set up your group
4. You send us your group's logo and a few pieces of additional information such as an administrative contact name. You will need to create a list of members that are pre-approved to join your group to ensure that people signing up are actual validated members of your group
5. We are ready to launch!

I am not quite sure who to list as the technical contact. Any thoughts? Are there enough LinkedIn users here to warrant this?

—  this was posted by User:Theskaven diffs

This message looks like spam. -- Toytoy 23:33, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

• LinkedIn is a real service, and it's a good one. Wikipeida would basically be authorizing the use of the logo to identify LinkedIn members who are also Wikipedians; this would all occur on LinkedIn.com and would be an entirely voluntary grouping for LinkedIn members. Point four would be a problem re the list of members. I'm a LinkedIn member. — Davenbelle 00:51, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

• • I just signed up for it...for future use I guess. A wikipedia group'd be nice. Considering I'm only 13, I don't have too much of a use for it though — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 03:41, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• • • Yes - I was afraid it might be taken as spam when I posted this. I have no affiliation with the product, I assure you, but thought it might be useful for those of us Wiki members who are already on the network.

I joined, and we'll see how it goes -- call me one of the lab rats. If I'm not shriveled and blue on the cage floor in a couple months, then you can decide what to do with this. I'll try to remember to post some sort of comment on my user page; or Talk to me later. — Xiong熊talk 05:47, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Audio Article

Basically: Project on creating audio-articles from wikipedias articles

There are many good articles like the recent article of the day Military history of the Soviet Union which we could transform into audio format. It would be great for (pur)blind people etc. and nice for those who like to listen to audio books (while jogging or what ever :). Of course it is harder to update the audiofiles as against text obviously, but if we use good articles, that is to say selected articles that aren't NPOV etc., this shouldn't be a big deal.

This is the basic idea, I don't think I will be doing more than just getting it out (since I do not speak English natively, but perhaps I will do this in my language) but I'd like to see this happen. --Friðrik Bragi Dýrfjörð 12:33, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone know how good Wikipedia is with text to speech programs? Does our use of templates cause problems? :ChrisG 19:06, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Templates are long out of the picture by the time we render the article for a reader. -- Jmabel | Talk

It's a fantastic idea, but it would obviously require a static version to work from (e.g. the proposed 1.0 printed editon - see Wikipedia:Paper edition for some relevant links). Otherwise it would be impossible to record a new version for every edit. I know that the German wikipedia is ahead of us on such static editions, but I don't know if they've done any audio versions of articles - I'll see if I can find out. SteveW | Talk 18:59, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The German wiki seems to be out of action for the moment - I'll try again later. For the moment, I've made a note of this idea at Wikipedia talk:Pushing to 1.0#Audio articles to see if we can find out what people working on that think about it. SteveW | Talk

I like the idea of having Wikipedia articles available in audio format, but I don't think it's worth the effort to try to record audio versions of articles, especially with the ever mutable nature of articles on Wikipedia. I think it would be better to (1) ensure that articles work well with text-to-speech programs, and (2) link to or collaborate with a good text to speech program. They're encyclopedia articles, not adventure stories, so having having a computer program instead of an actor read them isn't going to make a huge difference. (On the other hand... if they were read by Patrick Stewart or John Rhys-Davies, I would love to hear that.)

For people who want to listen to articles like audiobooks, there already exists online software which can convert text into a wav file! Check it out, it's really quite impressive: http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html - Pioneer-12 02:46, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

SAMPA/IPA

Will anyone support me in advocating dropping SAMPA and IPA in articles - even my World Books on the shelf have plain English "pro-nuhn-see-ay-shuns" of things and people's names. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for the average person not an encyclopedia for linguists. PMA 13:41, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I agree wholeheartedly. Wikipedia is not a dictionary and as such scientific definitions of the pronunciations are unnecessary. For example, the article Sydney contains the following: The city's name is pronounced "SID-nee", IPA: /ˈsɪdni/. — Why is the first pronunciation not sufficient? - Mark 14:22, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I disagree and want to keep IPA. Indicating pronunciations in a way invented on the spot each time, will not give a reliable cue to the sound. A fixed system of denoting sounds should be followed, which is well standardised and described, and that the reader can access. The International phonetic alphabet or IPA is such a system, able to describe not only English words, but also foreign ones, such as is needed for names of people, places, customes and events in most countries. However, there is no need to use SAMPA anymore, which is a modification of IPA using only symbols available on typewriter keyboards. With the advent of modern computer and display technologies, this limitation is no longer relevant. −Woodstone 15:14, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)
  • I disagree - World Book Encyclopedia among others _do not_ have IPA - they use plain English pronunciations - as i said above Wikipedia _is not an encyclopedia for linguists_. Adam Carr and Jtdirl have said as much in the last year and they are more than qualified to know. PMA 15:25, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I strongly oppose dropping IPA. Ad-hoc pronunciation guides are only useful to North American or UK native speakers, and even then they're full of ambiguities. Pronunciation is most often needed for foreign words, and ad-hoc guides are completely useless for words that have sounds not found in the English language.

• "pro-nuhn-see-ay-shuns": "pro" as in "professional" or as in "process"? (or do those sound the same to you? They don't to me, a native Canadian English speaker.) Does "nuhn" sound like "noon"; how does the h change it from "nun"? Does "ay" sound like "eye", or rhyme with "hey"?
• "SID-nee": why would a reader assume that "nee" is pronounced like "knee", and not "née", or with a double e as in "preeminent"?

To make these actually work, you'd have to make a reference page with a pronunciation guide, which is defeating the purpose (might as well start learning IPA). And even then they would continue to be useless for non-English sounds. —Michael Z. 2005-03-20 16:09 Z

how about phasing out IPA which the average reader cannot make head or tail of in favour of pronunciation sound files? Is that acceptable to you then? PMA 16:54, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sound files can be a good supplement to IPA for readers who can play them. They can help learn IPA. But they're not a substitute for IPA, and I'd still disagree with removing it. Why are you so set on removing IPA, when others find them helpful? —Michael Z. 2005-03-20 20:59 Z

Besides, not everything can be exemplified by sound examples. Hearing the click in !Xóõ on a sound recording won't give you a clue about how the sound is produced. Having the IPA transcription enables the reader to figure that out. It's not about being an encyclopedia for linguists or not — it's simply about being consistent and unambiguous, and most of all, of being equipped for non-English pronounciations. — mark ✎ 01:29, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I disagree strongly with phasing out IPA. Wikipedia is plagued by terrible ad hoc pronunciation guides. They make me cringe. I favour IPA first and foremost (SAMPA is obsolete these days, as Woodstone says) followed by an approximation provided it's been thought through properly. Sound files are ideal of course. IPA is an incredibly useful tool which allows you to describe the pronunciation of just about any word in any language. You can't explain how to pronounce Llangollen or !Xóõ using the "pro-nuhn-see-ay-shuns" method. Wikipedia has enough about IPA to allow readers to look up the chart and follow the links to see what the symbols mean. Personally I had only a very rudimentary grasp of the IPA a few months ago, but it didn't take me long to use Wikipedia plus a few of the external links in our phonetics articles to be able to understand it. Now I can read it with no problems at all, and it's ad hoc attempts that cause me problems because they're so ambiguous. You don't need to be a linguist to read IPA. I'm certainly not one. — Trilobite (Talk) 20:21, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Please keep pronunciations in IPA. Ad-hoc attempts to describe pronunciation only help people who speak the same dialect as the person who wrote the description. And they are useless in describing sounds that don't occur in English. (It makes sense to link to the IPA article, though.) Gdr 20:43, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)
• I strongly disagree with the idea of abandoning IPA; what Michael Z, Trilobite and Gdr said. We could do without SAMPA however, as it's only a modification of IPA which is obsolete now that we have better Unicode support. — mark ✎ 01:14, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Disagree, deferring to others' comments above. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 04:53, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• We are partially repeating discussions. See Wikipedia:Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, American) and especially its talk page. JRM 01:25, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)

Also, for reference: Wikipedia:Pronunciation. —Michael Z. 2005-03-21 01:44 Z

• As someone who isn't very good at pronuncing english words, I disagree with using pseudo-english pronunciations. Something like IPA is much more useful for people for whom english is not a first language. --cesarb 21:46, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Disagree; keep. -- Must retain IPA! — Xiong (talk) 14:19, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

• Disagree - Please keep IPA, in addition to the "ad-hoc" versions. It provides a standardized pronounciation guide for any region in the world. Definitely link each and every IPA pronounciation to an IPA reference chart, though. Audio files are a good improvement, and hopefully the IPA references have audio files. - Omegatron 22:21, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep IPA, but provide pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns for words that are pronounceable in some variety of English. There's no reason we can't do both. grendel|khan 19:19, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)

• Keep IPA. Wikipedia might not be for linguists but it is certainly used by people whose main language is not English. What may be obvious pronunciation to a native English speaker may be completely non-obvious to somebody for whom English is not the first or even second language. The first example in this page illustrates the point nicely. The respondent says that "SID-nee" is sufficient. To a French person "nee" might well be taken as being pronounced "nay" as in "Mary Smith nee Robinson" meaning that her maiden (birth) name is Robinson. IPA gets around this. By all means keep pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns. Why is there an argument about providing more information? Is there a "less is the new more" movement?

• Keep IPA. As a further example of the ambiguity of pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns, consider George Bernard Shaw's example of why we (native English speakers) need a phonetic alphabet: how do you pronounce GHOTI in English? Answer: it's pronounced FISH. That's GH as in cough, O as in women and TI as in station. Amusing, yes. But a very strong argument.

• I disagree strongly - I am not English native, and even if I have to admit the sometime I also have some problems with IPA (e.g. two word are show as identically pronuonced but are not and similar) and other problems that are relate to the fact that I have not a good English probounce, I can not understand at all the pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns. In the example of pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns, how can I know that the e is pronunce i like in see and not e like center? Ok this is bad exapmle since see is pronunce like the world see, but how could you tell me about ay? I consider this method of showing the pronunciation useful only to people very common to English pronunciation and you should admit that en.wikipedia is not only for English-native people.

I wold point out than no one has the duty to write the SAMBA or the IPA pronunciation, as nobody has the duty of doing anything here in Wiki. Maybe the question should be better stated as if can pronunciation as pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns be allowed AnyFile 12:12, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Another keep for IPA. For foreign words, obviously, and even for English as a native speaker sometimes pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns leave me befuddled. IPA, sound files, and ad-hocs can all coexist. So then our example would be (SID-nee; IPA: /ˈsɪdni/ (listen)), which I don't think is an overwhelming amount of information. I'd say do away with ad-hocs, but from personal experience talking to people who don't want to bother to look up the IPA symbols even whilst learning a foreign language, I have to say they are useful in their limited way. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 03:45, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• If we would have sound files (or even an automatic renderer) the example above could be shortened (SID-nee, /ˈsɪdni/). The /.../ indicate already that it's the IPA style phonemic transcription, clicking on it would play the file. −Woodstone 07:20, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

• Keep IPA. It's a unconditional keep. -- Toytoy 03:11, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep IPA, for all the reasons stated. It's simple, elegant, and it works across all English dialects. --Coolcaesar 09:30, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Keep IPA (for those who really want to know) and AD-hoc pro-NUN-see-AY-shuns (for the lazy people), and have audio for really interestingly-pronounced words. It's not too much information. Nickptar 12:48, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

using Geo Meta data, where it counts

I wondered what people thought about including Geo META data on wikipedia pages ? The geourl.org project maintains a database of pages which are About a given location, and several other services like AlltheGoodness and mappr are starting to use Geo Meta data in interesting ways.

My proposal: allow two optional attributes 'latitude' and 'longitude' on articles, and have this information embedded in the page in meta data e.g.

a page about Sydney Opera House would have attributes:

latitude = -33.8587 longitude = 151.2096

which would produce meta data like:

<meta name="geo.position" content="-33.8587;151.2096" />

which can then be used by search engines etc. to understand more about the content and by others to provide additional services. --neilp 02:43, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

It's not quite there yet, but see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Geographical coordinates and WikiProject Geographical coordinates. —Michael Z. 2005-04-12 03:20 Z

Anyone know whether this data will flow through into the pages' meta tags?--neilp 08:33, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

Ranking

Discussion Moved to: WikiProject Rankings

This project is for the idea of having a ranking system in Wikipedia. Please discuss in talk and make suggestions here (if any)

Referenced Data - e.g. Ranking of Countries Population

I was reviewing several countries and their populations. All of the countries I looked at (smaller ones) referenced the List of Countries by Population. Yeaah! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population However, when I compared the population rankings, I received inconcistancies. For example, Vatican City is ranked as 192nd, yet Greenland is ranked as 210th, and American Samoa is ranked as 203rd.

I have only recently been aware of Wikipedia, so I am the Village Idiot around here. I seeking any particular method of resolution, but I was desiring consistency in the statistics. Is it possible for places which are dependent upon data, to populate its information automatically from a reference - like a table? If this could be done, then when that table is updated all of the dependent articles are automatically updated.

That was a specific instance. If I found this issue on my initial uses of Wikipedia, I can only assume that many other types of statistical data will be using either 1) different sources, or 2) using the same source but in inconsistant manners. If this can be addressed in any manner that would be great. (And I did not automatically update the articles as I was unsure which method should be used for ranking.)

My honest suggestion: DO NOT TRUST WIKIPEDIA. Wikipedia is usually a good starter. However, always find yourself another source (Britannica, Encarta, U.N. ...) if you have any doubt. Even if you don't smell anything fishy, consult another printed material if possible. Go to a library. Numbers are especially not very trustworthy. -- Toytoy 16:55, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Many Wikipedia statistics come without enough explaination. By population, Vatican City is the 192nd SOVEREIGN STATE. Greenland and American Samoa are the 210th and 203rd on the list of sovereign states, geological areas and other political entities (such as Hong Kong S.A.R., Isle of Man, Palestinian Territories and Republic of China). -- Toytoy 17:30, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Ive seen people change numbers baselsesly and my revert of it reverted and declared POV. Certain things should be better regulated. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 23:31, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Toytoy, thank you for the advice about double checking the material in Wikipedia if I need reliable information. I will take that to heart. In regards to the ranking, I did understand that some articles were using sovereign states, and some articles were using geological/political areas. Even if we accept TWO separate rankings, American Samoa is listed immediately before Greenland. So that is not consistant either. From what I understand, I will accept the statistical information as possibly being inconsistant, with no likelihood of a policy to correct the issue (at least in the near future). Thank you all for your help. -- AltNrg4U 06:51, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

listing watched articles

A page where you can list a group of articles you watch for both vandalism and generally unproductive edits. Thus, I might watch all the main articles on European countries (e.g. Belarus, Finland, Germany) and someone else might watch all the history-ofs for European countries (e.g. History of Belarus, History of Finland, History of Germany). Or everyone on List of people by name: Roc-Ror to "Roe" and someone else from "Roe" to somewhere else... I'm not proposing any kind of special rights for those who add themselves to the list. It's just meant as a method of reducing redundancy. My watchlist is always very cluttered with time-consuming articles I have little investment in, and there's some stuff I don't want to remove since I think one else is watching it. I often don't check external links that are added to see if they're spam, but I wouldn't mind doing so on a selected subset of articles if I knew others were doing the same. Would anybody else be interested in this? Tuf-Kat 07:55, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

I was under the impression that people can create sub-pages for themselves within reasonable limits, or stuff their own user pages with things. That's the best I can do. -- Kizor 09:52, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just create a page (or pages) for this purpose in your user space, and use "Related changes". I believe a lot of people do this already. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:39, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Universal Account?

(Newbie here)

Why do I have to be a different user in each language version? What if I speak (and contribute to) several languages?

I cannot see messages directed to me unless I log in (and check) into each different language I'm active in! That's annoying!

Please, I propose an universal account!

Thanks --Tom-b 23:05, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• It's been proposed often. The main problem is name conflicts between existing accounts on different wikis. If you don't want to check too many places for messages, you can redirect (or "soft redirect") all but one of your user talk pages to the one in the wiki you work in most. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:38, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

• See bugzilla:57 r3m0t ^talk 23:47, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Even more than the convenience factor, in my opinion a more important reason for universal accounts is user impersonation. There have been several instances of a disgruntled user from en going to another-language Wikipedia, registering under the name of the user who reverted or blocked him, and doing a bunch of vandalism. — Knowledge Seeker দ 00:25, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it'd take too much work to be feasable. Personally, I redirect (see m:User:Ilyanep) or put a line of info down ([ru:User:Ilyanep] and [es:User:Ilyanep]), and it works for me (especially because 97.5% of my contribs are to en, so it doesn't do me much inconvenience. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:39, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Here's the discussion page for the various proposals: m:Single login I personally think Omegatron's proposal is the best. - Omegatron 01:04, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

I do like your proposal...almost like a Wikipedia passport — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 23:00, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Unfortunately, it'd take too much work to be feasable." Please! I can't stand the "oh, it's too hard" attitude. It's a bit tricky to design, but once made, it isn't that complex a thing to implement. Designing a secure login system from scratch is much harder then extending a one-site login system to multiple sites. What makes it difficult is transitioning from the current system. The simple truth is, multiple logins should never have happened in the first place. It's shameful that bloated microsoft with its passports can beat the pants off of open source. - Pioneer-12 03:18, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

'Multiple levels' of spoiler warnings

I've found the binary nature of the current spoiler system irritating. A good example is the Orz (Star Control) article - those who have completed the game know quite a bit of the fictional race described within, but their actual nature remains a mystery. Over the years interviews with the designers and the like have given an amount of insight into them, but these tidbits can be almost as much of a spoiler to an old Star Control player as they'd be to someone not familiar with the game.

What I'd like to do is to use two different spoiler warnings. The standard one for those who haven't played the game, and another for those who have but have not specifically researched the Orz. I have no plans of making this an official policy, but would likely use it one or two times in the future if the situation warrants it (erring on the side of not if there's doubt.) What say you? -- Kizor 20:03, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Oh feel free to implement such a thing on relevant articles, but I think it's probably better not to make a template and tailor the text to the article you're using it on. Mgm|^(talk) 20:33, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
  • Naturally, such things would be one-offs far too much for a common template. Thanks. -- Kizor 22:49, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Alternatively you could split the article up so you can place an individual spoiler warning on each. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 17:31, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Interlingual Wikipedia Links/ Wiki Index management

I have just started using Wikipedia, and I have noticed a case where, In the English interface, I searched for "Tucholsky" and got back a null result; Then, using the German interface, I searched for "Tucholsky" and got back an extensive multimedia page about Kurt Tucholsky.

I would think it useful for the Wiki software always to let the user know that information is available in other languages even if it is not available in the currently selected interface. A list of all Wiki entries matching the keyword should be presented where practical.

Admittedly, implementing this proposal has some difficulties. At least for proper nouns it could be done and would be very useful.

In any case, interlingual Wiki linking will become more important in the future when competent machine translation becomes available.

Forgive me if I've misunderstood your comments, but we do have a short article on Kurt Tucholsky, and on the left of the page you'll notice a box titled "in other languages", which does link to the German version. If you find an English article that's lacking in information its often worth checking the interwiki links, if there are any, to see if any of the other language Wikipedias have more information. — Trilobite (Talk) 17:51, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've put in a request for the German article to be translated into English, so hopefully we will have more information on him in English soon. — Trilobite (Talk) 17:58, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Additionally, you might not have gotten the result you wanted because you clicked "Go". This button will cause Wikipedia to search for an article by that exact title. German Wikipedia probably had a Redirect pointing from that name. If you want to make sure you find everything in English wikipedia when doing a search, you may want to try the "Search" button or WikiWax instead. Mgm|^(talk) 08:36, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Trilobite has put in a redirect so Tucholsky will take you to the Kurt Tucholsky article. I'm working on the translation now and I'll get it done as soon as possible.

If anyone finds anything interesting on a foreign language that isn't on the English Wikipedia, please see Wikipedia:Translation into English to find out how to request a translation. Equally, if you speak a foreign language, why not help translate these articles? (For German into English especially there's quite a backlog.) SteveW | Talk 11:02, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You can also find useful readin Wikipedia:Embassy and the links herein AnyFile 14:42, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

condense "My contributions"

Currently for each edit on wikipedia creates a new line under my contrabutions. If I had the option to categorise it in such a way:

• Articles (### Total number of edits)
  • Article1 (### edits)
  • Article2 (### edits)
• Article Discussion (### Total number of edits)
  • Article discussion1 (### edits)
• User page (### edits)
• User talk page (### edits)

This would save a lot of bandwidth as less data is sent. I can still expand the category I want by clicking a + --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 01:07, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• That's what the pull-down menu at the top is for. Also, edit counts would undo the bandwidth saving you'd be doing as those counts cost a lot of it. Mgm|^(talk) 08:30, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

• • To clarify: It would certainly save bandwidth, but this would require that a pageload looks through all contributions (not just the latest 50) in greater detail and do a lot of counting and totalling. This would put load on the servers, which is more expensive than bandwidth i.e. it would slow the page (and site) down more overall. r3m0t ^talk 22:15, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Customizing my wiki look

Probably a simple question: I have my own media wiki and pretend to make a total css makeover, so as not to look like other wikimedias.

I don´t find in th css style the box wich contains the wikipedia logo. Where can I find the logo itself to change it, and where can i find the layer that contains it, so I can change its position on the page?

I found many images on the monobook skin. One of them was the "headbg.jpg". Is that this grayscale book we see faintly at the wikipedias background? where is it hosted? where are the other icons (external link, lock, user logged etc) hosted (their adress)?

Thanks.--Alexandre Van de Sande 15:02, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The book thingy is located in the monobook skin directory along with most of the other images. The logo is located at Image:Wiki.png. If you'd like some ideas on how to do some weird stuff, take a look at User:Cyrius/monobook.css. I've got a screenshot on my user page of what it does. Note that it's for my personal use, so I make no guarantees about browser compatibility. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:07, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Survival

6 Apr 05 1154 local

a) article: Surviving is insufficient. Survival includes psychology thereof; survival patterns; fires (types, schematics, purposes); equipment (tins, pouches, kits and the differences between them) for a variety of terrains and climates; knives (desirable aspects of survival knives); orienteering; map-and-compass; shelters (man-made and artificial); ground SAR; small craft safety and cold water training; cold weather techniques, et cetera.

b) I'm not a technical writer. I am a survival instructor and have a number of other SIs available to contact; I'm willing to provide a knowledge pool.

c) realize Wikipedia is generally not a "how-to"; no worries.

d) seek permission from community at large to i) create disambiguation page for Survival (Bob Marley album) and survival (art of staying alive) ii) commence pouring raw material into latter

e) seek cooperative effort in keeping with Wikipedia ideal in construction of ii) above

Corporal Chris Maxwell --Esseye 10:02, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think Outdoor survival would be a better title, as that's what you're proposing to write (not surviving breast cancer or car crashes or coalmine collapses). I agree entirely that Surviving is fairly useless; a check of its history indicates that someone started by writing "surviving shark attacks", and I guess that person was told their content would be better off at wikibooks. Wikipedia does need an article about outdoor survival, and I think wikibooks would benefit too from a "guide to outdoor survival". The line between the two is sometimes subtle, but sometimes not. The wikibook (hosted at wikibooks) would go into details of specific techniques to whatever degree you felt necessary. The wikipedia article, by contrast, would very briefly summarise techniques, but would contain information about history of survival studies, native people's survival skills, modern schools of survival thought, etc., that wouldn't be in your manual. Don't worry that you're not a technical writer - most wikipedians aren't, and yet we all get by anyhow. As a plan of attack, I'd probably propose pouring into into the wikibook first would be best, written from an entirely general how-to approach. From that it should be possible to filter and summarise stuff into a great wikipedia article. I don't know much about the subject, but I think I've got a fairly good feel for what the wikipedia article would look like, so I'd be happy to help with it. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 13:59, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In fact, I see people have already gotten started on an outdoor survival wikibook - it's at wikibooks:Outdoor Survival. There's not much content there, so I'm sure they'd appreciate your help. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 14:13, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• And as soon as both articles are written, I've got no problem with a disambiguation for the Bob Marley album and outdoor survival. It looks like you've taken your time to check Wikipedia procedures and everything, so I'm confident you won't make much mistakes. Just give it a go. I'm sure people will jump in and help out as soon as you start. Mgm|^(talk) 20:47, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Well, "survival" as the word is employed by professionals is agreed to mean "the art of staying alive" - but of course not everybody is a survival professional so I guess "outdoors" would be a Good Thing to mention. "Hmm...surviving your cat, post-surgery..." --Esseye 07:11, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC) talk

Britanica Online Does this

Britanica generates MLA and APA citations for the page the user is viewing. A bottom "generate citations" link for each page would require minimal work. The reasons for doing this: 1. Britanica Online has a feature we don't! 2. Increase appearance of acknowledged cites to wikipedia in thousands of undergrad papers everyyear. Lotsofissues 22:21, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Mathworld does a similar thing (it actually has the citation at the bottom of the page, ready to cut'n'paste). One complication is that, at present, it's difficult to cite the "current" revision of an article reliably (if someone changes the article, the citation will change to be that version, not the one you read while writing your paper). The forthcoming version of mediawiki fixes this (giving every version, including the current one, a stable permalink). With that done, your suggestion would be practical. I'll suggest it in the bugtracking system. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 09:46, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, this might be possible already, using the system-wide templates in mediawiki (although it may require some extra variables). I'll see if I can implement it. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 13:38, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sounds great. Lotsofissues 22:21, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

On considering things futher, some additional support in mediawiki will be necessary. 1.5 adds a variable which gives the id of this version, but we'd need to add variables for the date and time of this version also, as most of the citation standards require that. I'm preparing a RFE for this now; I don't think it will be much effort to implement. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 13:07, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It would make sense to put this in the toolbox, next to "What links here" and "Related changes". —Michael Z. 2005-04-6 20:46 Z

Medical Wiki

I just want to throw this idea around. I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a medical wiki (think WebMD wiki style.) I am a pharmacy technican, and such a wiki would be useful for me. Any thoughts? --STDestiny 03:49, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

I'm thinkin' 3 page long disclaimer...how about you?

I'm sure it would have the standard "for reasearch only, please consult a medical professional for advice." disclaimer that WebMD has. It would be more for the layperson to research something they've been diagnosed with. --STDestiny 17:25, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea, but I think you can add it into wikipedia. What you suggest can be easily achived with the creation of a new category that unites all relevant medical data. :) --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 01:01, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

— Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 04:00, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am going to see my dentist right now. ... Before he sees this DentalWiki website. :) -- Toytoy 06:37, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Redirects made easier

There has to be a feature to encourage the generation of redirects. For example, when you start an article called Thomas Edison, you will want to generate a redirect for Thomas Alva Edison as well. Currently, you have to do it manually. This is boring.

How about that we place 3 or more additional fields under the edit window. In addition to "Edit summary", you enter suggested redirects. If each new article comes with several placeholder redirects, the possibility of duplication would minimize. I guess it's not a very difficult job for programmers.

Redirects are especially useful when you create biological articles. If you create an article for dog, you can create a redirect for Canis lupus familiaris. To many less known animals or plants, the binominal or trinominal name redirect can be very helpful. So far many such article lack these redirects.

If a redirect is taken. You may want to check if anyone had written an article on that subject before you. Or you may want to create a disamb page instead. -- Toytoy 00:17, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

I like that idea...it could be improved a little bit, but it's a good start! — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 01:56, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Having a fixed number of such synonym fields is inflexible (too few and people will only make a few, too many and it will take up valuable screen real estate. Instead, one could have a single long "Synonyms:" field, which lists all the redirects that point to an article, delimited by | characters. So the Edison one might read "Thomas A Edison|Thomas A. Edison|Thomas Edison|Tomas Edison|Tom Edison|T.A. Edison". Better, when you subsequently edit Thomas Alva Edison, this list is repopulated. This is nice, but has some issues:

• Does deleting an entry from the synonym list cause the redirect to be deleted? If so, is this a task only admins can do?
• Computing the synonym list on each entry is likely to be another database query (on "what links here") and a join with the is-redirect field, so there's a nontrivial performance cost.
• It's a great way for vandals to quickly generate abusive redirects.

Still, worth thinking about. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 10:00, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, that said, there's talk on the mediawiki-l list of adding metadata support (granted, talk at a fairly handwavey stage). Really synonyms and redirects are metadata, and I wonder if its worthwhile implementing something before proper metadata support comes. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 10:04, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The untimely death of Robert De Niro

Last week Wikipedia killed the great actor, Robert De Niro [5]. Today Michael Eisner appears to have died too. First, is Eisner dead? Secondly, should Recent deaths require citations (as Current events does) before listings can be made? The upside is that it prevents hoax listings (and I'd contend that hoaxes at Recent deaths are particularly harmful). The downside is instruction creep and the problem that lesser-known people may not have death cites available quickly. Please comment at Talk:Recent_deaths#Proposal:_listings_require_citations. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 00:52, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The flip side of this, of course, is that we would never (for example) have scooped Fox News on the death of Johnnie Cochran. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:02, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Will Jerry Falwell be the next one murdered by us? If Mark Twain is alive today, he must be very pleased to say: "The rumors of my death shall have been wikified." Shall we start a WikiRumor project? Let's start a crazy massacre! Ha! -- Toytoy 02:45, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

I disagree that Wikipedia should have any "scoops" at all. We are an encyclopedia, not a news service—Wikinews is. So yes, I say require citations. The worst that could happen is that we no longer scoop deaths unless Wikinews gets there before the others. A small price to pay for factual accuracy. I'm pretty sure I'm currently in the minority on this, though, and may continue to be for some time. JRM 08:24, 2005 Mar 30 (UTC)

You should at least know that it's a minority of two; this kind of error is just disasterous, while the 'scoop' factor is almost irrelevant. Filiocht | Talk 08:37, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

• I don't think citations for recent deaths are particularly needed. Most Wikipedia editors have to get their info from a regular source which is available to anyone with a simple Google search. 131.211.210.15 07:52, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  If it's so simple, it should be trivial to give a citation. I think we can require editors to put in slightly more effort in exchange for a verifiable fact. JRM 11:52, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)

Yes a note in the discussion page should be glad: it is that change should be discuss in the discussion page, isn't it?. Also if I page is uptade becouse of the death of the person subject of the article I will expect to see al link in the extern link to a news about this important event of his/her life. AnyFile 12:28, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Inter Wiki search

I would find it useful if when searching, one could be in the wikipedia, but in the search bar be able to type a command in that would search on the wiktionary or in wikispeicies. Thus, when you were in an article, and wanted the defenition of a word from the wiktionary you could search for with without having to go to the wiktionary main page and search from there. An example that I saw was on google, where you can type in Define:wikipedia and it will show the defenitions for wikipedia that it found. A change of this would be that you type in Define:wikipedia and it will show the wiktionary definition for it. Also, Species: Book: News: Quote: etc... Alphanoid 01:26, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A nice idea. I'd prefer it if the bit before the colon was the same prefix that is used in interwiki links (mayeb this would let you search on the french wikipedia too with fr:. -- My own personal hobby horse here is that I'd like to be able to Go or Search on keywords to a new window to keep the window I'm currently viewing. -- SGBailey 15:44, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)

When possible (when a whole page is avaible, as in the page of the result, that is not in the shurtcut dialogue in the bar) a more evident way of selecting it should be provided by radio button or select tools. Of course writing like b:Shakespeare directly in the input box is very nice. AnyFile 12:18, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Watchlist last checked at...

I'm sure I'm not alone in having loads of items on my watchlist. First time I check it every day, I have to stop and think "which of these are new ones from when I logged off?" Would there be some easy way of adding a "last check at 00:00, day-month-year" at the top of the watchlist page, so that it's possible to know what has and hasn't been looked at? Grutness...wha? 02:51, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd like that as well. At the moment, that information gets stored in my memory, which leaks.-gadfium 04:06, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

That'd be a great idea. I'd love to have this. — Knowledge Seeker দ 17:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Or another button that automatically just does the diff from when you last checked it.

(diff; since last; hist)

What I always end up doing is going to the hist and then viewing since the last version I edited. Not very efficient. I bet there are behaviors like this that everyone does, that bog down the servers a lot more than they need to be. - Omegatron 21:49, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

It would be very useful. I can usually remember what portion of my watchlist is new from when I last checked it, but not always. A diff from when you last viewed the article is a good idea. Similar to Omegatron I go to the history quite a bit, but I usually go from the last edit summary/contributor I remember - which is pretty much as inefficient. Thryduulf 22:48, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation cleanup

I've noticed something about disambiguation pages. Statistically speaking, they're the messiest and worst-written pages we have. They're disorganized, real slapdash jobs, full of content that belongs in articles but winds up in disambigs anyway. I just went to Category:Disambiguation and sifted through half a dozen or more pseudorandomly chosen pages. A couple of them were passable, a few were bad, and some were very bad. I was about to list the category on Cleanup in desperation, but then I decided that that was probably foolish. I think there should be a WikiProject:Disambig cleanup or something to that effect. It would work a little like the erstwhile Wiki Syntax or Spelling, except instead of having bots to generate lists of articles that need fixing, we'd just have the category listing. And the work involved in fixing each page would be nontrivial. --Smack (talk) 04:54, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

There is a discussion at present about the style and formating of disambiguation pages. I think it is at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Style. Thryduulf 08:02, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Save and keep editing?

At the moment, when doing a long edit on an article, you have two choices: just keep typing and hope that you won't get a crash or an edit conflict, or save then re-open the editing function from the saved page. As anyone who's done much word-processing knows, the best thing to do so as not to lose your train of thought or lose what you've just typed, is save frequently and quickly, and carry on going straight away. At the moment, that is a fairly long-winded process. Has any thought ever been given to adding a third button under the edit box "Save and continue editing", so that the text is saved but you aren't returned to the "read-only" article page? Grutness|^hello? 10:07, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I think it is difficult to add such a feature. So far I almost always add more sections. If someone else also edits, at least it reduces the likelihood of edit conflicts. Many article have too few sections and subsections. By the way, please do not use images in signatures. The server loading is already over the top. Wikipedia is not very responsive these days. -- Toytoy 11:29, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Just do a regular save and return to the URL that called the save (by JavaScript, or by passing a parameter). You could also pass the cursor position to keep everything as is using JavaScript. Or better still, have the button pop-up a window that does the saving, then closes itself. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 12:08, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

and how is that supposed to be dealt with database-wise? It would still need to be recorded in the history. Mgm|^(talk) 11:34, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Whats wrong with just recording it as usual, except that it'll be a bunch of saves? Gkhan 12:59, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

High server load. Just live with getting the occassional edit conflict. r3m0t ^talk 20:24, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Server load would only be an issue with VERY frequent saving. If done without the pop-up, it would essentially act as a macro for clicking save, then editing again as soon as the save had happened. And if the pop-up solution was used, it should be possible to use JavaScript to update whatever variable on the edit page that tracks the most recent edit.

To prevent edit conflicts with other users, {{inuse}} should be used, as suggested below. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 21:08, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps using {{inuse}} could be useful. 4.250.168.217 12:02, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

• Another option is to copy the wiki text out of the editing window into a desktop editor, do your big edits offline, and then paste it all back in at once. That way you don't lose the text in case of crash. FreplySpang (talk) 12:57, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
  • In use doesn't always discourage people from editing, and working in a word processing package offline is worse, becaseu if anyone has made any changes while you've been working, you'll automatically wipe them when you repaste your work. Which either means anything new will be lost or you will find your work being reverted. Grutness...wha? 02:59, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

A New Class of User

What do people think about the idea of creating a sort of sub administrator? A new class of users, who have amassed a couple hundred edits or so (or however many people think a trustworthy user/one with a strong knowledge of Wikipedia, should have).

They would be granted the roll back button as well as a couple other basic tools and/or priveleges. This would make it much easier for a typical user like myself to stop vandalism. Perhaps even another, higher sort of user with the ability to delete newly created aricles that are vandalism.

Admission to this class would be either a quick vote, or an appointment by higher authorities. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, Thanks! Collins.mc 21:17, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what would really be gained here. Arguably admins/sysops/whatever name you want to use presently don't have all that much extra anyway. I was reverting sans button before I was an admin and the extra time taken is minimal. Deleting newly created vandalism articles is something I and other admins will already do as part of the speedy delete process where it is clearcut that that is the correct thing to do. This 'sub-admin' couldn't really be "by appointment" as rarely with other admins already know the person and, in the end, it is only with time and a track record that people become an admin at all so I can't see how this could adequately work in demonstrating the level of trust implicit in the extra priviledges. --Vamp:Willow 21:33, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Super-user and Wikipedia:User access levels. Everything you're talking about is there. JRM · Talk 21:37, 2005 May 7 (UTC)

Alright, thanks for the input. I didn't think that I would be the first to come up with this and was wondering what was stopping it. I now see the logistical issues. Collins.mc 02:43, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Portal: Namespace

Please comment on Wikipedia:Portalspace. – ABCD 17:29, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Local Copy

Is it feasible for the english wikipedia to be made available as a download for offline access ?

This would allow me & others to enjoy this fountain of knowledge anytime/anywhere (till the always connected era comes !). I could even pay for it a bit !!! Yaammm :-)

Even better would be to include a "sync" facility so the local copy could be kept uptodate.

See Wikipedia:Database download. JRM · Talk 15:18, 2005 May 6 (UTC)

Edit Alerts Based on Content

Imagine the improved response time and pressure of maintaining RC omniscience lifted if every edit that fits the following criteria appeared in highlighted red in RC.

• Vandal frequent words such as "gay", "penis", "cock", "fuck", etc. appear in an eit
• Article blanked
• Exclamation mark appears more than 3 times in succession
• Large article loses 95% of its content
• Preset frequently vandalized entries

Would this demand too much of the server?

Hey! GREAT proposal. --Subramanian 13:38, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Also, what about adding IPs to a user watchlist?

Lotsofissues 10:19, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

This sounds like a really good proposal. I'd also note if an article increased in size by a substantial amount (e.g. I came accross a short stub that had been replaced by a huge number of copies of the phrase "pelican shit"). This would also catch the accidental page doubling that appears to be happening atm. Don't forget to add "pelican shit" and "Wikipedia is communism" to the list of vandal's favoured words.

Being able to see when a certian user has added to thier contributions would be a very useful addition to watchlists imho. As would being able to watch for additions to categories. Thryduulf 15:38, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

File:Nokids.png

Definition please. -- I know what bullshit is; horseshit, chickenshit, monkeyshit, pigshit, batshit, babyshit, birdshit, and Micro$hit. Does the vandal mean penguinshit? — Xiong熊talk* 00:34, 2005 May 7 (UTC)

I like this idea generally. Since we do indeed know the common methods for vandalism, simple pattern matching can indeed help us correct the problems faster. We would just need some kind of process for maintaining the list of things to watch for, and we'd need to ensure that the pattern matching never becomes "over-sensitive." — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 22:05, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

The thing that immediately springs to mind for determining the pattern matching criteria would be a list editable by admins only (to prevent vandalism and bloat) but with a world-writable talk page to allow suggestions for addition/removal, e.g. a few months ago I doubt anyone would have predicted needing "pelican shit" on such a list, and maybe in another couple of moths we'll find we need something as obscure as "octopi 1 wikipedia 0". I think that a minimum criteria for being on the list would be that 2 or 3 established users who frequent recent changes to agree that it would be of benefit. After no matches for a few months it may be apropriate to remove some entries to keep the list trim. Again I don't forsee removal without the agreement of a minimum of two or three established users who frequent recent changes. Based on the MediaWiki:Bad image list I assume that this would be technically possible. The page size detection would need another method though. Thryduulf 23:04, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

To tighten the expansion of further criteria I would aim for adding only widespread patterns onto the list. There will be a public forum discussing additons, subtractions and adjustments. Well articulated proposals will be gathered together for a monthly vote. Lotsofissues 23:36, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

It does not need to be so complicated. If enough reports come in to the admins that "gay" is generating too many false positives, they change it to a case-sensitive "GAY" or remove it. Similarly that "octopi 1 wikipedia 0" is generating too many false negatives. r3m0t ^talk 00:15, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

By the way, Thyrduulf, "octopi" is a false declension. :) r3m0t ^talk 00:15, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

This seems like it would be a very useful feature. It may need to be restrained somewhat — for example, users can legitimately "vandalize" their own user pages — but should not be restrained to the point of treating admins, normal users, and anonymous users differently. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 00:12, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm no expert in performance, but the check that a user is trusted (i.e. admin)/that the user is editing their own user page is probably not worth the bother of programming it. r3m0t ^talk 00:15, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

Octopodes or no octopodes, the concept is brilliant, if it can be made to work and filter propoerly. Grutness|^hello? 01:32, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Who decides what to additions to the software will be worked on? I want to push this. Lotsofissues 00:52, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

There is a bugzilla thing where requests are made - http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/. Post there what you want and link to the discussion here. Also if you could place a link to the bug number you generate here that would allow others to easily comment if necessary. Thryduulf 01:13, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

But it's for bugs? Lotsofissues 08:28, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

No, it's also for feature requests. Also, add a link from m:Anti-vandalism ideas to the bugzilla page. r3m0t ^talk 09:09, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks I've added the proposal Lotsofissues 16:51, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

See also the similar [bug 958], filed at bugzilla many months ago. — Catherine\^talk 18:34, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Great proposal. Much agreed. --Wolf530 18:50, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Great idea, would be good with other idea of puting some sort of mark next to names of known vandals on RC. Howabout1 19:57, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

That's mentioned only a few sections down on this very page. r3m0t ^talk 20:21, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it should filter; it should just list. The spam filter, for instance, creates significant problems with false results, preventing people from saving their edits if they have some obscure match in it.

I made the same proposal at m:Talk:Anti-vandalism_ideas#Blacklisted_word_anon_edit_summary_page. (Visibility of ideas seems to be one of our biggest problems...)

Also this ties into Automatic edit summary generation - Omegatron 21:59, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

The Environment

Although I find Wikipedia terrific, I notice that there is very little about the environment. I am in the process of creating an online 'keywords and concepts' source on environmental studies for my academic departmental community. Is there a way to work together so that what we produce enters your wonderful open source domain - whilst being accessible separately in our own free portal dedicated to environmental studies? In other words, is it possible to create a system wherein editorial changes can be made in either portal, subject to the conventions and rules of the Wikipedia, of course? Thank you for taking the time to read this.

RAVI RAJAN, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064

1.831.459.4158 :: srrajan@ucsc.edu

In the usual WikiWay at the very least, something like this is possible. I don't think it would be very Wiki to produce an article parallelling your website, but information could 'naturally' be shared between the sources in the usual WikiWay. . . if there is not an article about a subject covered in your external site, create one!

also, it would be plenty Wiki to make plenty of links between these related articles, and the related teirs of your external site. of course, if you don't want to produce all those articles yourself, the easiest and most Wiki way to solicit some aid would be to create a stub with a link to your site and under the talk/discussion tab, you could inform a reader that your site contains more data and it would be nice to expand the wiki article.

if the wiki article becomes more comprihensive then your site (not at all unlikely) then you could certainly update your external site with the Wiki produced info.

MethodicEvolution 00:00, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

As long as we keep in mind that Wikipedia has a policy of "no original research." Of course, new encyclopedic material is very welcome here. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 18:14, May 2, 2005 (UTC)