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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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

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I was going through the article Progressivism. The external links section of the article has links to a number of websites which are of activist nature. I am sure there are a number of other articles also in wikipedia with the same problem. I was thinking of creating a template which warns users that these websites may be of impartial nature. This template would be a special case of Template:Disputed-section template. The text should be something like

Some of the links in this section may be commercial, activist or impartial biased in nature

Suggestions on alternate wording is also welcome.

I would also like to know whether any template of this nature exists currently?

--DuKot 05:28, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I assume you mean biased rather than impartial (which are antonyms). I had a bit of an edit war on nocturnal emission over a link that contains a lot of inaccurate information. The final decision was to link it but provide a brief disclaimer. I think you should remove any site that is not useful for understanding the topic, but feel free to link relevant biased sites as long as you clearly state the specific bias of each one (ideally by citing an objective source). This isn't policy, but I personally feel that unqualified citation is equivalent to an assertion that "this is a good source".
Of course, I meant biased --DuKot 06:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I do think it's important to describe each link individually though. Just to say some of these links are biased doesn't tell an uninformed reader much of anything useful about the links - they can't tell which are which. Deco 06:02, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
We could have another template for this purpose which states
The following link is commercial, activist or biased in nature --DuKot 06:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I think the word "biased" carries with it POV problems in itself. For instance, is a website that only presents one side of a debate "biased"? What about a website that fails to mention certain alternatives? For instance, what about a link to the details of the moon landing which fails to mention conspiracy theories? I think a template that says this will just become another thing that POV warriors use to cause problems. Perhaps every external link section should have a warning like: "not all external links are written in encyclopedic tone". I think this either needs to be done everywhere or only in the most extreme cases. Otherwise its just another problem. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 07:21, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
The probem with "not every link . . ." is that it provides inadequate information. See below re set of templates.
RickReinckens 09:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

A set of such templates is needed

There should be a set of similar templates, one for commercial, one for activist, etc. That way, the reader could click on the template and go to an explanation of what "commercial" means. Obvioulsly, we don't want people adding a "commercial" template every time they link to IBM, etc. For instance, I would question what "commercial" means. Does it mean there is a charge to access the site or it is a company's website?
RickReinckens 09:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Suggested templates

I suggest the following for the set:

  • Activist
  • Mainly advertising
  • Paid access
  • Strong religious orientation
  • Strong political orientation
  • severely biased (rather than just "biased")
  • vulgar or obscene language
  • mature topic (e.g., scientific descriptions of sexual intercourse)
  • potentially disgusting (visual) (needs a better description, obviously)
  • potentially disgusting (text) (needs a better description, obviously)
RickReinckens 09:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

"Religious orientation" is not the same as "religion", etc. For instance, I have a website with astrophotographs and for each image there is a Bible quote. The site URL deliberately gives no hint that the site has a strong religious orientation. Many people have personal or small-business websites with strong religious orientation even though the site deals with something else.

RickReinckens 09:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

"Potentially disgusting" would be equivalent to the warning many TV news programs give, "Certain viewers may find these images quite upsetting."

I would not use the title "disturbing" because that is too vague. The criterion for such a tag would be something like, "Many persons of average sensibilities would find the material disgusting or highly objectionable and emotionally quite disturbing. Examples include video clips of major surgery, autopsy images, close-up images of major wounds, severe disfigurements, detailed descriptions of a sexual assault or gruesome crime."

RickReinckens 09:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

An idea for Template:Protected

I posted this message on Template_talk:Protected nearly a month ago, and there has been zero comments, so I'm posting it to get some attention.

I propose using a smaller version of this box, which could be placed floating at the right side on the article.

Example:

Ths article is currently
protected from editing
(See why)
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the 43rd and current President of the United States. Prior to his political career, he was a businessman in the oil industry and served as the managing general partner/owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Bush, a member of the Republican Party, was elected 46th Governor of Texas in 1994 and was re-elected in 1998. From there, he moved on to win the nomination of the Republican Party for the 2000 presidential race and ultimately defeated Democratic Vice President Al Gore in a particularly close and controversial [1] general election. In 2004, Bush was elected to a second term, defeating Democratic Senator John Kerry. This term will expire January 20, 2009.

The See why link would direct the user to the article's Discussion page, where he or she would find the full explanation box for the article's protection, as well as helpful links on what to do.

What does anyone think about this? Is it preferably to have a little box in the main article, and then the full box in the Talk page? I mean, do we really need this. Comments? —Cantus…☎ 10:41, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to invite everyone to participate in the Wikipedia:Featured Music Project. The Featured Music Project is an attempt to improve a large number of articles on musicians to make them ready to be a featured article. To sign up, put your name under one (or more) of the eight categories on the status page, such as the discography, format and style or lead section. No more than once a month, you'd be given an article which is getting close to being ready for WP:FAC, and is only deficient in a few categories. You'd do what you can in the section you signed up for (and, of course, anything else you like). If a couple of people specialize in each category, we should be able to take some concrete steps towards improvement on a wide range of articles. In addition, you can sign up as a "shepherd" to take articles that meet all the criteria through a peer review and (hopefully) successful candidacy. If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a note on my talk page, or on the FMP talk page. Tuf-Kat 06:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


Wikiproject Reader - Read Sources / Add references

More than 90% of our articles don't have any references. I'd like to make a new proposal. Wikipedia:Wikiproject Reader. The aim is to help deliver on our promise of verifiability. Right now it's a proposal since I would like to get some feedback, but if you like the idea you can start right away. Mozzerati 15:06, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

You may wish to take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check. --Allen3 talk 18:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I'm actually a member of that project and it's even the "mother" project of my new proposal. However, as mentioned in the new proposal, that works in the opposite direction. WP:FACT starts with an article and looks for sources for specific facts, which improves one article but is very slow and painful; just right for improving FACs. This project starts with sources and looks for articles which would benefit from having them added. This is much faster and easier and is good for improving the overall level of referencing in the whole encyclopedia. Mozzerati 20:50, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
That's interesting - I already did precisely this with a few highly reputable computer science sources, such as Introduction to Algorithms and Sipser. At first some people were suspicious that I was promoting the sources, but in the end it seemed well-received, especially when I specifically cited the relevant sections of the books. Note that often you don't actually have to read the source all the way through - just browse the contents and verify that the sections are relevant. Deco 08:11, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


Certain articles, e.g., Messianic Judaism and Intelligent Design have constant POV problems. (Most involve religion in some way, although that is not relevant.) I am proposing a POV-related template along these lines:

Caution: Despite diligent efforts by various editors and administrators, this article routinely has severe POV problems. The reader is advised to check additional sources for a balanced view.

RickReinckens 23:54, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

How long would this template stay there for? Forever? This template would be denying the fact that an article can have a NPOV. --Eliezer | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 00:52, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I've seen some articles stay that way for months. It can be very hard to NPOV certain things - not necessarilly because having an NPOV on them is hard, but because there are very opinionated editors who can tend to confuse those not knowledgeable on the topic, and make it hard to figure out what is and what isn't NPOV. Michael Ralston 01:05, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
In that case the the current tags belong there while it is that way, even if it is several months. This tag if I am understanding it correctly would be always there if it it's NPOV or not. And if it is only there when it is not NPOV then the current tags suffice. --Eliezer | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 01:20, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Comment: if you actually use such a template, avoid the jargon "POV problems". Readers don't know what "POV" is. Deco 01:51, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

At the moment the order of the "in other languages" on each page is vastly different. We need a standard consistent order of all other languages, in every language wikipedia, which could be as follows:

  • in English alphabetical order of the wiki domain name
  • in Unicode order of the first character in the language name

At the moment as I see it, the order is mainly English alphabetical order of the language name, with non-Latin language names being inserted mainly according to the domain name but not always. This really doesn't make any sense. Any suggestions? 219.77.98.122 10:19, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

There was a poll somewhere a while back that concluded that they should go in alphabetical order of their (Latin) interwiki codes, i.e. the two-letter country abbreviations. -Splashtalk 18:44, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

My Contributions idea

This: •Has probably been suggested before, and •Is probably in the wrong place. Nonetheless, I feel that the contributions page needs a new feature, namely a way to check the status of your edits. I at least expected that the "diff" link would show me the diff from my edit to present. It doesn't, and I can't find any better way to do that than to tediously go through the history looking for my name. Ug. The main reason I Watch a page is to see if a) anyone has changed my change or b) anyone has replied to my comment on a Talk page. There should be much easier ways to do these things.

You can use Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups, which has a "diff my edit" feature, that gives you all the changes since your last edit. --Rob 03:27, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Alright, thanks. I'll look into it. But this doesn't obviate the need for my proposal. Perhaps instead we could have a link above each side of every comparison page which says "compare to current." That would be near enough to what I want, and I think it would be insanely useful. -- Calion | Talk 15:30, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Common.css change

Please respond to this inquiry at MediaWiki talk:Common.css!

Would it be okay to add the following to MediaWiki:Common.css? – 

pre { overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: visible; }

This would keep long lines of code from adding horizontal scrollbars on large pages (for example WP:AN/I on occasion) and would instead add horizontal scrollbars directly to the PRE'd text.

To see this in action for yourself, simply add the line above to your userspace CSS override, then go to User:Locke Cole/Sandbox and scroll down to the "PRE test" section. Please respond at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. —Locke Cole • t • c 06:26, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


Removing "disclaimers" from Template:GFDL

A long time ago (February 2004), someone added "Subject to disclaimers" to {{GFDL}}. Because the GFDL mandates that any disclaimers posted with a copyright notice must be preserved, it has been the considered legal opinion of Wikipedia that this disclaimer notice cannot be removed from any image on which it has been applied. (See for example: Template_talk:GFDL#Subject_to_disclaimers.21.3F).

However, the notice would appear to imply that anyone reusing the image must provide not only a full copy of the GFDL text but also a copy of Wikipedia:General disclaimer and all its subpages. This situation is at best awkward and significantly compounds the amount of material that a print reuser would be required to provide, thus making our GFDL images less free by imposing a greater burden on reusers. Note that neither Commons, nor any other Wikipedia (to my knowledge) has such a disclaimer notice in their copyright template. In particular Commons has been forced to create both Commons:Template:GFDL and Commons:Template:GFDL-en so as to have a special GFDL template that preserves our disclaimer notice, which is just plain dumb and compounds the risk that images migrated to Commons will be incorrectly categorized.

I would like to put an end to the further propogation of this situation.

As such I proposed the following:

  1. Create {{GFDL-no-disclaimer}} without the disclaimer statement, but with Category:GFDL images no disclaimer to distinguish them for sorting purposes.
  2. Immediately change Mediawiki:Licenses to replace {{GFDL}} with {{GFDL-no-disclaimer}} on new uploads.
  3. Create {{GFDL-with-disclaimer}} as a copy of the current GFDL template, but with Category:GFDL images with disclaimer to distinguish them for sorting purposes.
  4. Have a bot replace all uses of the current {{GFDL}} with {{GFDL-with-disclaimer}}. (A long process, I'm sure.)
  5. Once Category:GFDL images has been emptied, move {{GFDL-no-disclaimer}} to {{GFDL}}.
  6. Reset the categories.

Obviously this won't remove the disclaimer text from the bazillion images that already have it, but it should stop that text from propagating any further. In my mind this sort of correction should have happened long ago.

Thoughts?

Dragons flight 18:31, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

  • What does that "disclaimer" line even do, legally? Nothing on the linked page seems to change anything in the copyright arrangement that I can see (and the disclaimer notice is already at the bottom of all of our content pages as it is). Am I missing something obvious here? --Fastfission 22:23, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
    • The bottom of every page says that all text is subject to GFDL and disclaimers, this is about whether images should also be required to carry 5 pages of liability disclaimers whenever anyone wants to reproduce or use them. Aside from the fact that the GFDL mandates that all disclaimers be faithfully preserved, this isn't really about copyright. The disclaimers exist to avoid legal liability should someone foolishly rely upon Wikipedia and reach a negative result. It's not impossible to imagine a situation where an image might warrant disclaimers, but it would see to be such a rare circumstance that it doesn't justify appending legal/medical/etc. disclaimers to every GFDL image we have. As noted above, this is a historical quirk of this Wikipedia and apparently not mirrored by any of the other Wikimedia sites. Dragons flight 23:27, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
      • That seems really silly and honestly quite stupid. Wikipedia's disclaimers are, as I understand it, mostly a legal note about our content not being officially reliable. Our legal status should not come into question if someone else took that content -- which already had a disclaimer -- and then started waiving it around as being legally infallible. Our initial disclaimer should cover our butt the whole way, I imagine (if someone writes that the content is infallible, they can't attribute that sentiment to us in any case). Anyway, I agree that this disclaimers thing seems like a very silly and haphazard thing, though I don't know what the best thing to do about it is. --Fastfission 23:03, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if we are allowed to do that. Wikipedia:Copyrights also explicitly mentions these disclaimers. Looks like it's intentional. Lupo 09:12, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

If this were some carefully considered thing, we wouldn't be the only Wikipedia that merges the disclaimers into our copyright tag. For that matter the disclaimers wouldn't look radically different from one Wikipedia to the next. Dragons flight 14:38, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Maybe. Did you talk to the foundation's lawyers about this? Lupo 08:15, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
The foundation doesn't exactly have lawyers (and certainly didn't in Feb. 04), but it does have a number of Wikipedians with law degrees who volunteer advice. I'll try to track down one of the old timers, but I'm fairly sure I already know the answer. Dragons flight 03:37, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
The authors are the people granting the license, not the Foundation. The Foundation is already well covered by the general disclaimer and US law itself. That disclaimer was added by someone who didn't consider all the nasty implications of what they were doing. The answer form this old-timer who was commenting legally at the time that mistake was made was, as soon as I noticed it, to say that it was a bad idea and should be removed. Jamesday 17:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
I have an alternate suggestion: How about depreciating local uploads of user-created material? commons:Template:GFDL doesn't include any disclaimers, or people can use Creative Commons licenses there. JYolkowski // talk 21:51, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I have gone ahead with the simple part of the plan and created {{GFDL-no-disclaimers}} and Category:GFDL images without disclaimer to use with newly uploaded images. If I am somehow wrong about all this, then these can be easily reverted/redirected (it is infinitely easier to add disclaimers back then to remove them). But then I am quite confident that it makes sense for this Wikipedia, Commons, and all the others to share the same licensing terms.

Now comes the hard part, there are only ~75000 pages to convert from {{GFDL}} to {{GFDL-with-disclaimers}} in order to free up Template:GFDL for the no disclaimers version of the tag. If there are more comments about this, now would be a good time, before the heavy lifting. Dragons flight 03:37, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

That disclaimers bit was a bad mistake - it requires the disclaimers at the time the image was uploaded and also retroactively modified the license granted by the author for all GFDL images using it at the time it was added. Really lousy idea to do that and I'm glad to see you doing cleanup to undo the mess. Please do try to use the no disclaimers version for any images from before the disclaimer mistake was made, to correctly reflect the license the author granted. Jamesday 17:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I think we need to just go ahead and depreciate the use of {{GFDL}} on enwiki in favor of getting people over to the commons. As it stand today there is an apalling amount of copyright violations tagged as {{GFDL}} on enwiki. Any proposal to fix the tagging of GFDL images on enwiki is going to have to deal with the fact that in a large number of cases the tag was added long after the image was uploaded by someone other then the uploader, who probably never even spoke with the uploader. This has happened due to a misguided line of reasoning that goes something like "If the uploader of this untagged image was the copyright holder they agreed to place it under the GFDL based on the text of our upload page, or at least intended to place it in the GFDL because Wikipedia is GFDLed. If the uploader was not the uploader they probably violated copyright law in uploading the image. Since we assume good faith, I must accept the first theory and reject the second. Thus it is okay to slap a GFDL tag on this. Q.E.D.". This has resulted in some pretty outragious violations on enwiki in this category, and any sort of mindless retagging could only make it worse. In other cases the uploader is just wrong, yet no one has called him on it and... sometimes it appears there is just wishful thinking about the identity of the copyright holder. We need a cleanup, but if we're going to do one we might as well move the images over to the commons. Commons suffers from the same kind of nonsense but its far less widespread. --Gmaxwell 05:22, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Article referer

I previously posted this to the help desk, hoping this feature was already available, but it looks like it's not.

Suppose I read a Wikipedia article A. I open a link from A to another article B, in a different browser tab (or window), then I close A. Later, after reading other stuff, I go to the other tab and read article B, and I forgot how and why I got there (especially when a redirect and/or pipe is involved). Is there a way to use the http referer field (or some other means) for giving me a link back to the article where I "came from" (A in this case)?

There are actually two ways I can suggest for accomplishing this. One is actually using the "Referer" http header, possibly checking that it's a Wikipedia article. Another one is adding a reference to the current article in the querystring for every link (e.g. the link from Wikipedia to encyclopedia could use a URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia?referer=Wikipedia). I would prefer the first approach.

Either way, I suggest that the link should be placed in the toolbox on the left side on every page.

Aditsu 18:18, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

In the meantime, you can use Special:Whatlinkshere/Article, and scour the list manually. -Splashtalk 22:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Still, nobody expressed an opinion about this proposal. aditsu 07:17, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Frankly, this seems ludicrous to me. Your back button does this just fine, and you thwarted it. This is a ubiquitous client function and few other websites supply explicit backlinks. It might be interesting to get a list of articles you visited recently, but you have History for that... Deco 08:14, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
If you have a browser sufficiently sophisticated to use tabs (i.e., not IE), you can undo closed tabs. It's built in to Opera, and you can get an extension for Firefox (I use Tab Mix Plus). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:17, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
I think you both misunderstood me.
Deco: The back button would help if the browser kept the history for each page opened in a new tab, but it doesn't. When I open a link in a new tab, the back button is disabled. You may say "well, don't open pages in new tabs". That's Microsoft thinking (and even they are changing their mind with IE7). "few other websites supply..." - well that's just another anti-innovation remark. "If nobody is doing this better, why should we?", right?
Simetrical: That was already suggested in the help desk, and it's not really useful. I mean, it helps if that tab was the last one I closed, but generally it's just moderately better than history.
Well, since nobody seems to be interested, I'll try to apply "If you want something done, do it yourself". Wikipedia may be just flexible enough to make this possible. I'll post if I get any results. aditsu 14:56, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Wow, my first attempt was MUCH easier than I expected. I just created a bookmark with the address:
javascript:window.location=document.referrer
and called it "back"; it seems to work well, for any website (so far). I'm not sure I need to integrate this into Wikipedia (I was thinking monobook.js). aditsu 15:32, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Locking the 1,000,000th page

Would it be possible to lock the page of the 1,000,000th page to prevent vandalism? Administrators could do edits and suggestions for improvements could be given on the discussions page? Right now it is being vandalized due to the attention given it. / MoRsΞ 14:36, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Nah, considering how it's grown after being made I think we should leave it open and free as an example of Wikipedia. But that's just me. --Golbez 15:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
For the same reason we don't protect (or even semi-protect) articles featured on the main page, we shouldn't protect the millionth article. Johnleemk | Talk 15:07, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


Arts Contribution of the Week

We should have this, because many of the arts articles on Wikipedia need work. Osbus 23:17, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

its more a wikiproject thing that anything else. there are a few wikiprojects that it could be suggested to like Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts. theyd probably be interested. or better still theres Portal:Art. get them interested there and itll be up and running :) BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 23:22, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

ESBN

I am thinking that someone should get the Wikipedia ESBNs. Would it be possible for some kind of adjustment to be made in the code to support ESBN? Anyway, just your thoughts. Thanks! Computerjoe 19:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I think ESBNs are for fixed versions only (since submission requires upload of the work). If we'd need to get a different ESBN for every modification that happens to an article, it wouldn't be practical and would probably hog the ESBN's number space. Phoenix-forgotten 18:21, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
The alternative would be to contact the runners of ESBn and ask permission for a 'blog' style registration for the Wikipedia. Computerjoe 17:37, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Featured Article interlanguage link style

I noticed that on articles like Lilium, where one of the other language Wikipedias have a Featured Article about the topic, the FA barnstar appears before the link. This puts the link text out of alignment with the other links in the list; would it be desirable to change the CSS so that the barnstar replaces the list bullet, rather than being added on next to it? Phoenix-forgotten 08:51, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

That would be pretty cool. youngamerican (talk) 14:58, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Minimum length on random article?

Just a quick suggestion.. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people like myself, who having a general interest in everything, enjoy passing the time by using the 'random article' menu option and seeing what fascinating snippets wikipedia will throw at you. The problem however is that 80% of the time it just returns small articles with minimal information (stubs?) or disambiguation pages etc. It would be nice if the pool of articles from which the random feature chooses from was restricted to perhaps a 500 character minimum or some other restriction that increases the chance that the article you are presented with contains something of interest. As a side benefit it may reduce the load on your servers slightly as there might be less consecutive requests for random articles if it returns more interesting results.

That's a good idea. I'm not sure why its not done. also, if done, I would like to see a "Preferences" setting, for users to control this. Some editors will wish to see the substubs (to fix them), while the readers wish to avoid them. --Rob 05:44, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I assume the reason it hasn't been done so far is because a very good way to improve WP is to just mash random article until you find one you consider poor quality and/or severely lacking. A preferences setting, though, would go a long way in improving that, I suspect. I'd like to see it as well. Michael Ralston 05:50, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea of a preferences option for the random articles. By default it could be set to a wordcount for newer users/readers that could be turned off by editors. youngamerican (talk) 00:47, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Doing this by word count might be a bit tricky. It would be easier to exclude articles tagged as stubs. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 11:40, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Word count is a specific field in the database, so probably wouldn't be that hard to implement. The question is whether it's worth it. Sam Korn (smoddy) (not a developer) 12:10, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the information. I'm learning something new every day. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 13:06, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Another one would be random article from a given category. violet/riga (t) 12:12, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Good news and Bad news

Good news

The number of articles at Special:Statistics is getting closer and closer to an exciting number that we have less than 13,000 to go before we can reach!

Bad news

Another number also kept track is not far behind, the number of registered users. It is getting big too quickly, many of which want to register so that they can have the right to move pages by vandalism. I think there needs to be some way to allow this to be altered so that it will not include indefinitely blocked users. Georgia guy 19:53, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Right now, you can register 10 usernames a day per IP. Reducing this would probably be a good idea. Raul654 19:57, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Can you try it, Raul654?? Georgia guy 19:58, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Only the devs can do it. It hammers the AOL users though. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 21:12, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I brought this up in #wikipedia, and Mindspillage informed me that we've already gotten a few complaints about this limit. It also hits hard on schools when (for example) an entire class of 30 students register at the same time. Raul654 22:49, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
What is a dev?? Georgia guy 22:37, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
A developer of the software Wikipedia uses. -- Kjkolb 22:40, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone contact the developer of the software?? Georgia guy 22:46, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes. There's a list at m:Developers if you want to pick one or you can post a message on the Technical Village Pump where one might see it or you can try the technical mailing list where it will certainly be seen. You should be aware that they're very busy, however, and may take some time to respond.--Cherry blossom tree 10:58, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Could the IP addresses of blocked and indefinitely banned users be gathered, without the usernames, so that we can tell where the most vandals come from? Once we have the IP addresses, contacting the ISP might be useful when it is a school, company or there is only a few people involved in vandalism (AOL probably can't do much). Also, if there was a spike in blocked or banned users from an IP, the number of accounts that the IP can create in a day could be reduced. Finally, it may allow persistent vandals to be identified. -- Kjkolb 22:40, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Not really, AOL randomly allocates IPs from a big basket, and schools, companies, congress etc have multiple people using the same IP. For great justice. 18:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

One User-name

Is there any chance of, in the future, login with the same user-name in different languages without having to create a new account for each and every language that I want to login to? As it is, if I want to see whether there is an "orange" message, I would have to log into each language account to see whether there was one.DanielDemaret 17:43, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Read Wikipedia preparing for millionth article this week, the last two paragraphs. CG 20:56, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
And also m:Single login.--Cherry blossom tree 11:28, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


Complete summary of censorship laws affecting wikipedia submissions

Ive read in the guidelines, that in addition to wikipedia policy, content is limited by the censorship laws in florida. A summary of these laws could be very helpful to contributors. Crippled Sloth#

Not being a lawyer, I won't attempt to summarize any laws, but the Statutes of Florida are on-line at The 2005 Florida Statutes. I think TITLE XLVI CRIMES, Chapter 836 DEFAMATION; LIBEL; THREATENING LETTERS AND SIMILAR OFFENSES, Chapter 847 OBSCENITY (primarily concerned with child pornography) and Chapter 876 CRIMINAL ANARCHY, TREASON, AND OTHER CRIMES AGAINST PUBLIC ORDER (not a problem if NPOV is maintained) are the most pertinent. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 00:15, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Moreover, I would say that Wikipedia is not in the business of testing the limits of the law, and should always err on the side of caution in interpreting the law. It costs money to defend against civil or criminal charges. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 12:41, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, agreed. However, i believe it would be best if we knew where the limits were - in an official wikipedia article. Thus wikipedia could set an exact policy on how close to go - max info without danger of lawsuit. On the flipside, people could currently unknowingly submit illegal content. A set of guidlines could help prevent lawsuits. Crippled Sloth 13:42, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

1,000,000 articles is coming up fast and IMO it'd be nice to change the logo for this very special occasion. Here is a very rough mockup of an idea I had for the logo:

File:Wiki1m.png

Noclip 02:13, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I like this logo Gerard Foley 17:53, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Very nice! I'd go one stage further and suggest 10,000 and 100,000 variants on it that can be used by other-language WPs when they reach major targets. Grutness...wha? 01:00, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
I like it. As said, could be done for other languages. Sceptre (Talk) 10:59, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
It's an impressive number, to be sure, but I wouldn't celebrate it the wrong way. 1,000,000 what, exactly? --Tsavage 23:38, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
At present account creation rates, it will be our millionth registered user before our millionth article :( Physchim62 (talk) 07:52, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Not to be a wet blanket or anything but that really celebrates quantity as opposed to quality. A modest acknowledgment would be appropriate and would also show us to be above the billions sold crowd. hydnjo talk 19:52, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Mozilla celebrates milestones like this. And not all of those downloads will be unique. ComputerJoe 22:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I remember seeing the portugese wiki doing something similar for 100k not so long ago -- Astrokey44|talk 02:03, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Annotation

Soliciting comments on Meta about m:Annotation. Essentially, once implemented, it will be a tool that will let you view the wikitext of any article and see who wrote what and when (on a word by word basis). There are a few crucial interface issues that need to be resolved, no developing experience necessary! Please comment. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 21:32, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Awww... :-( No one cares about annotation. Maybe I should look for something else to implement. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 03:11, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
I care! I think it would be awesome. It's very time consuming at the moment to locate the editor that first added a certain piece of text. I'm afraid I just don't have much else to say about it except, er, good idea. :-) Deco 04:06, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm so glad someone answered! Yay! So, if you were to use the Annotation tool, you'd have a specific piece of text on the page that you'd want to look up. You (somehow) enter it in, and then the site tells you who did what. A few questions: how exactly would you plan to tell the software exactly what fragments you wanted to check? And also, if the fragment contained more than one author, how would you expect the software to show it to you? — Ambush Commander(Talk) 04:47, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
I made a mockup for you of the way I imagine it:

The text is automatically segmented into portions. The blue portions are those written by a single editor, while the yellow subportions are based on the edits of two editors. Hovering the mouse over a portion shows some info, much like a mixture of history and diffs, detailing changes to that specific portion. "bunnys" looks bolded in the first change, but it's not supposed to be. If I hovered over "But also evil" I would see DcoetzeeBot's edit adding that phrase with that part of his diff (which is not included when I hover over the other part). Just a concept. Deco 07:36, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Forgive me if I seem overly argumentative, but here goes. You may want to reconsider your coloring scheme: as it stands, there's no way to tell apart where one contribution ends and another starts. Furthermore, segmented changes as you display will likely never happen, because the WordLevelDiff we use on Wikipedia is on a word level (as you show in the diffs between the versions). Also, note that pulling diffs is a costly process, and we probably wouldn't be able to (for performance issues), pull 'em all out at once.
Making something like that will require JavaScript, a language that I am not most proficient in. If someone can write code that would display metadata in a little hovering popup box, that would be swell. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 00:17, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, there are small gaps between sections, but alternating colours would make it more obvious. As for being infeasible, well, yes - I like to start with ideal and scale back to feasible. :-) I'll be happy with anything that lets me point at a chunk of text and see all the details of the edits that modified it. Admittedly you do have a Ship of Theseus problem - when does a chunk of text stop becoming one thing and become another new chunk? - but in practice I think most chunks of text start out their lives by being written by a single person and largely remain the same thereafter (if they stick around). Deco 06:17, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Hey, I just follow what the diffing algorithm does. We'll see what happens if we manage to get this working and then tweak the expected behavior. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 03:19, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

It's an exciting idea, Edward; I look forward to seeing how you work out the details. I don't know how you will decide where to start the annotating process -- not all bits of text will have a clear "starting place" in the revision history. But those details are yours to sort out -- you're asking about input and output

Ideally, I'd want to be able to click-and-drag to select text, then hit a button or choose a command from a right-click menu to submit that text to the tool. Given that there's no other click-and-drag function on Wikipedia (yet), the next best thing would be to be able to copy and paste a selection into a text box -- perhaps something down below the "Save Page" buttons and such, or in a pop-up window or new window or tab.

It's hard to visualize the output (which is why you're asking, I'm sure). I see perhaps three options. The first would break the output into color-coded rows based on editor. The second would be the same, sorted by date of edit instead of order of text (eek, sounds confusing). Something like this:

Text: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

Text Editor Date/Time (sort by) Edit summary
The added by User:CatherineMunro June 14, 2003 Brevity is wit.
quick brown added by User:Ambush Commander April 15, 2004 Adjectives are good for the soul.
fox jumped over the added by User:CatherineMunro June 14, 2003 Brevity is wit.
lazy added by User:Ambush Commander April 22, 2004 Forgot an adjective
dog. added by User:CatherineMunro June 14, 2003 Brevity is wit.


The third option would be more like a sequence of diffs, sorted by date. With a large text this could obviously get quite long and complex. (Having spent the time to lay this out, I like this one better.)

Edit Editor Date/Time Edit summary
The fox jumped over the dog. added by User:CatherineMunro June 14, 2003 Brevity is wit.
The quick brown fox jumped over the dog. added by User:Ambush Commander April 15, 2004 Adjectives are good for the soul.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. added by User:Ambush Commander April 22, 2004 Forgot an adjective

I'm sure there are other ways, but that's what I've come up with so far. This doesn't deal with the subtleties of deletions, reversions, spelling corrections and such; it would just show the most recent editor to be responsible for a given word or phrase. Who gets credit/blame for a word if a later editor only adds a missing letter? Would there be any way to tell that there had been a previous editor who inserted that word?

I think it would be a necessity to provide links to the actual revisions or diffs to allow people to explore history more thoroughly, and to explain how the mechanism works so that faulty attributions are harder to make.

Let me know what you think. — Catherine\talk 07:19, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Before that, I have to think. Both of you presented things that I immediately dismissed as impossible when I started thinking about it, which means I'm in a rut, which means I need to think. Feel free to incorporate your ideas onto m:Annotation. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 02:32, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Catherine, regarding your question about how to track the text bits, it's a legitimate question and took me a bit of thinking to figure out. But it's not really a problem. :-)
Once again, using JavaScript, the click-n-drag idea would become possible. Editors would probably object to that sort of thing on the actual article, so there would likely be (for this implementation), a seperate Annotation screen. It displays the wikitext (nothing more, because there's things that don't get rendered easily) and lets you select a piece. Then, the JavaScript would calculate the slice of the annotation that you would want served back.
Handling the text in a list-like fashion presents essentially one problem: you sacrifice readability of the wikitext. Otherwise, it's a fine way to cram in all the metadata without resorting to JavaScript.
The sequence of diffs, however, defeats the purpose of annotation, because there's no way to look and say "He wrote that".
Regarding your last two questions, they are very important. The WordLevelDiffer regards a single letter addition as a change to an entire word, so it will get assigned to the new person. We could, however, make note that there was previous text before it. It also would be beneficial to show where things got deleted, like showing stylized Ds that simply notify that something was there, but it's gone now.
Faulty annotations are quite possible, esp. in the case of reversions and edit warring. Good help text would be necessary too. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 00:17, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

On the issue of dealing with reverts: how about you add a "reversion to version X" flag to page versions? If someone saved an out-of-date version of a page, the software could check the diff of those two versions, and if it turned out to be zero, the flag would be added. It would also, of course, be added to every admin rollback. This wouldn't be that computationally expensive (you could even drop the diff part, really), and your annotation thingy could just skip any edits that were reverted in figuring out who did what. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:44, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Nothing like that is implemented yet. A better implementation (I think) would be hashing the article text with md5 and then checking for duplicate hashes. However... it wouldn't help (I'll explain why).
It's going to be a sticky problem I'm going to try to deal with. Basically, the developers have told me that the Annotation cannot be generated at run time. So we'll have this annotation CLOB stored in the database of the most recent revision, that way, retrieving the annotation is an O(1) (a constant cost). The annotation then gets updated on edit time. But this means that it can't go back to the old revisions and see "Hmm, is this a revert?"
I think that the annotation will continue to retain the text of edits that were deleted. When someone reverts it back, the Annotation will attempt to apply the diff, and go, "Hey, this is the same stuff as someone before!" and revive that text instead of inputting new text under the reverter's name. It's terribly complicated, I don't fully understand how it will work, and I haven't started coding yet. If anyone can think of a better solution, please. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 02:44, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Hit counter for individual articles

A way to find out the number of views of any individual article would, I think, be interesting and encourage contributions. I don't think it ought to be anything up-front displayed to all users but rather something that an editor could, if he so wanted, could get to on some backend page. I don't know how much stress this would put on the servers. - Centrx 16:34, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

It has been tried, and unfortunately it was too much of a strain on the servers. Wikipedia does a lot of caching of pages, so most page views are handled by the squids with no hit on the main database. Adding a page counter requires writing to the database for each page view. The page counter was abandoned over a year ago; our traffic is vastly higher now. See also Wikipedia:Technical_FAQ#Can_I_add_a_page_hit_counter_to_a_Wikipedia_page.3F.-gadfium 20:02, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


Main page redesign vote

The official vote on the proposed main page redesign, for replacing the current main page, has started and will end at 23:59 UTC, March 18, 2006. -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 02:08, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Censorship?

Hello. I think that maybe there should be some censorship for Wikipedia, or at least some sort of icon saying that there might be some inappropriate language or pictures in a specific section or page, because I know a fair amount of children use Wikipedia. Thanks for reading this.

Red Alien | 19:35, March 2 2006

That's why Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not used to have a section called Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors, to warn parents. Dictionaries no longer remove the 'bad' words, even though children use dictionaries all the time. You'll find very little support for your position among Wikipedians. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 00:35, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, OK, then. Sorry... I'm just new here...

Red Alien 19:40, March 2 2006

Children grow up fast these days...what age group are you speaking about? Because if you are thinking of the 13+ demographic, I'm not sure some inappropriate language/pictures would affect them much. Osbus 01:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

You can also look at Wikipedia:Censorship, even though it's only a proposed Wikipedia policy. Gerard Foley 23:44, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm sort of talking about 8-10 year olds. I do know that a lot of 8-10 year olds use Wikipedia. I know that 13+ year olds aren't really affected by language, but 8-10 year olds may be... Red Alien| 19:35, March 3 2006

hitman

it strikes me as odd that the games in the hitman series do not have separate pages. i may be wrong, but it seems obvious that more information on these games could be conveyed if they only had individual pages. please donate opinions. 86.135.228.177 16:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:49, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Italicization

Is there some sort of way to educate people on when to use italics for movies, books, short stories, and CD titles? I find it really quite irksome when I come to a page and find that things aren't italicized when they should be (it's especially true with CD titles.) Now, obviously this isn't as pressing a matter as formulating a definitive policy on censorship, but I'd still like to see something done about the lack of italicization. Perhaps some sort of bot? Maybe a reference page? I mean, there's obviously always the option of correcting these italicization problems as you come across them, but even then, I don't see any sort of movement to do so. Just a thought (and some bitchin' about a peeve.) --66.229.183.101 07:29, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Surely the manual of style has something on this. Johnleemk | Talk 07:40, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style (italics). As for applying this, just do it where you see it. It's a never-ending job, but that's WP for you... :-) JackyR 16:01, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


Inserting thumbnails without sizes

When inserting thumbnails, sizes should not be used (unless there is a special reason for using them), because otherwise the preferences for them have no effect. The Adept 19:59, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Austin Wikiproject?

Is anyone interested in a Wikiproject devoted to creating and improving articles related to Austin, Texas? I love this city and would love to have a team to collaborate with on articles about it! There are a lot of places, people, events, and businesses in Austin which are notable but not yet represented in Wikipedia, or whose articles are stubs. Thoughts? I have also mentioned this on Category talk: Austin, Texas. Kit O'Connell (Todfox: user / talk / contribs) 23:54, 4 March 2006 (UTC)


Altering the tagline

I'm a little hesitant to point this out, because of the huge mess it has the potential to become, so please try not to create a big clutter over a small issue. Wikipedia's tagline is currently:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Our slogan is "The Free Encyclopedia that anyone can edit", and this is what is listed on the Main Page:

Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

Some have proposed that we change the tagline to match the slogan, to make the source of our articles a little more obvious to newcomers. It's not something to be ashamed of and hide behind links that the casual Google reader won't ever see, etc. Jimbo said:

The idea is to brainstorm something which is neither too long nor too boring nor too timid, but which helps the reader understand that Wikipedia is a work in progress, so that they can evaluate it properly as such. I don't know what the right answer is, exactly. 'that anyone can edit' is my current favorite, but I wonder if we perhaps haven't yet thought of the right answer.

Another similar proposal is:

From Wikipedia, the community-written free encyclopedia

Others say we should leave the tagline as it is, for tradition's sake. There is a straw poll about these three variants on MediaWiki talk:Tagline.

A similar proposal got really huge and didn't accomplish anything, so please make your comments brief and don't add 500 alternative taglines that only vary by one word. — Omegatron 15:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Default list items in Special pages

There is already a preference to show a certain amount of edits in the Recent Changes special page, so why isn't there such a preference for other special pages, like Contributions and What links here? My proposal is basically to make such an option (in preferences) for as many special pages as possible. -- Y Ynhockey || Talk Y 22:02, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind, I think that option already does that. I still propose that it be made more clear though. -- Y Ynhockey || Talk Y 20:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

RfC Simplification

I find RfCs far too complex and formal. I suggest they are made more like RfAs. I propose for user conduct RfCs a new layout. Depending on your opinions and suggestions on the proposal of simplication, I'd be more than happy to design this. Computerjoe 20:36, 6 March 2006 (UTC)


Rank the pages, improve Wikipedia reliability

I believe Google does something like this. One of the biggest complaints about Wikipedia is that because anyone can edit it, articles could be rife with errors. I do not find this to be a problem with large, high-traffic articles such as World War II or something along those lines. The risk of bias is far higher, however, with more obscure articles created by one person with an axe to grind that may sit up there for a while before an accuracy-conscious editor looks it over.

I think a ranking system would deal with this problem and warn people of dubious articles while reassuring them of articles that are well-kept and accurate. My personal system is to look at an article's discussion page. If it has even a moderately long one, it's a pretty safe article. Those with short or no discussion pages I am wary of and on the lookout for errors. I don't know if the ranking system should follow this pattern or if users who visit the page could vote on it. Maybe an article should have a low ranking for sheer lack of votes.

What do you all think? Wouldn't an article-ranking system dramatically improve the trustability of Wikipedia as a whole? I can't imagine that it would be that difficult of an improvement. Aplomado 02:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. Already planned with m:Article validation though. --mav 14:46, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi! Earl of Clancarty

Hi I created an entry for the First Earl of Clancarty today and tried to edit the entry for The Second Earl of Clancarty as I have distant connection with this family so I have become familiar with their details. I hope no one minds, I hope I did okay as I'm new to Wikipedia though I heard about the project before and was recommended by a friend from Thenewscentre.com. as an exciting project. Please let me know if you have any grounds for objections. I hope to create a piece on Cambrio-Normans in due course. Newsgirl 22:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)Newsgirl

as long as you keep a neutral unbiased point of view it should be fine. if noone here edited things they had 'inside information" on thered be a lot less stuff on wikipedia! the only real rule is not to write articles on yourself and thats broken quite a lot anyway!as long as the subject is notable (and earls are) then what youve done is fine. BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 23:20, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi there I have done editting on Joseph Ransohoff, who was my grandfather. There is no conflict of interest as long as you keep your edits NPOV. I have had no issues with my article. It definitely helps if you cite your sources though, just like anywhere on the Wikipedia. Welcome to Wikipedia. Kit O'Connell (Todfox: user / talk / contribs) 23:55, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Reduction of excess spacing (white space) in posting

Hi. I was just wondering, whenever someone clicks the button to add a new section to a talk page, it always puts spaces between the == and == rather than ==and== which is all that Wikipedia requires to read it anyway, It also puts a line after it, but you don't need that either.

Since it's adding characters Wiki doesn't need to read (or really, to navigate the source), have they considered removing that from the function? Tyciol 03:31, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Lots of people like the spaces, I think, as they make the source a bit less dense and easier to read. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:28, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
And, to paraphrase another Wiki saying, white space is cheap. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 12:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
In some cases, I agree. In some others, not. For example, you don't really need them in the title, it's just distracting, it's better when nicely sandwiched between the equals sign pairs. Same with a white space after the title, it separates the title from it and it's hard to tell which title goes with which paragraph. In cases of short responses, it's unneeded. I agree however that with active discussions, spaces between large paragraphs are needed as it otherwise gets confusing, especially when the conversation is happening in multiple chains from similar branches. In linear ones though, since you just add to the bottom it probably isn't.Tyciol 16:40, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Regional Wikipedias

A lot of contention is over whether or not topics that are of great interest to a certain, limited geographical area belong in the general Wikipedia. Perhaps a solution to this would be to, in addition to the main Wikipedia, have regional Wikipedias (perhaps per-state in the US, per-province elsewhere, etc.) that are dedicated to content solely of interest to that region.

And a hierarchy could develop--for instance, each US State Wikipedia could have several per-county Wikipedias under it for topics of interest solely to that county.

This could also resolve a lot of the friction over whether or not to include schools--no one can doubt that a given school is notable WITHIN ITS OWN COMMUNITY. So schools that aren't especially notable for some other reason (famous alumnus, originator of some trend that spread nationwide, etc.) and would possibly get deleted in the main article namespace (although lately they haven't, thankfully--I hold that everything that exists deserves an article) could instead be created within the regional Wikipedia.

There's nothing technically stopping me from doing it now, but I'd like some input nonetheless. Kurt Weber 18:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

My view is in the long term, anything that could go into a regional Wikipedia will go into the Wikipedia, with an Alberta portal, California portal, New York City portal, etc. --Golbez 19:55, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
As an extreme inclusionist, I hold that EVERYTHING that exists belongs in the encyclopedia. However, there are those that disagree with me, and as a result an article on Bob Zasadny (a local activist who is certainly of interest to residents of Gibson County, Indiana but of no interest to anyone else) would almost certainly be deleted if it were put in the main article namespace. Thus, the regional Wikipedias would be a place for articles on topics of interest solely to that region but would not make it in the main namespace. Kurt Weber 20:41, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Call me a temporal inclusionist. In time, all things that are worthy will make it. But hey, if you want to make your own wiki, go for it. Your example is a good one. I doubt it would be hosted by Wikimedia, but you could definitely check with Wikicities. It could be fun. --Golbez 21:25, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
No, no, you're missing the point. The Regional Wikipedias would be sub-parts of Wikipedia itself, existing in their own namespace but as part of the main Wikipedia site (for instance, Indiana:, Mali:, Arkhangel'sk:).
Of course, I could go ahead and just create a page at Indiana:Main page and go from there, but unless the namespace Indiana: is actually created, linking and stuff would be weird--and it'd all be liable to be deleted anyway. Kurt Weber 21:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
You're answering your own question, then. The best you'll get here is an Indiana portal. --Golbez 18:52, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Remove "the free encyclopedia" part of title

I can understand having the tag on the main page, but is it really necessary in the title? You don't see microsoft putting "Microsoft.com, software maker". on every page they have! --Naelphin 23:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Ummm... Seriously? I wish they would expand it to "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." — Omegatron 23:36, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


Clancarty

Hi I editted the 2nd Earl of Clancarty , What happened to it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Newsgirl (talk • contribs)

It would seem to be here: Richard Le Poer Trench, 2nd Earl of Clancarty. You have only editted William Power Keating Trench, 1st Earl of Clancarty though apparently. --W.marsh 21:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

A Scientific peer review

I have made a suggestion at WikiProject Science and wonder what the users of this page think. --Oldak Quill 17:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Obiturary, updated daily.

I would like to make a proposal for a new feature in Wikipedia which as far as I have been able to tell is not available yet.

In the past I have often looked up recently deceased public figures to see if any articles about these people were updated yet. So far I have never found an article to be out of date. This proves to me that Wikipedia is kept current enough for an obituary service to be implemented. One could go to Wikipedia on a daily basis and check out what obituaries are posted. If someone has recently died that is not listed, users could then update the wiki themselves. I believe it would be a great service and could create a lot of repeat traffic as people get into the habit of checking the wiki obits on a daily basis.

Of course the biographies on Wikipedia would have to be set up with some identifiable field that denotes dates of birth and if necessary, death. I have no idea if this sort of mechanism is in place as of now.


Michael Selby (MLSelby) - March 9, 2006

There's a link to "Recent deaths" on the front page... am I missing what you want? --Golbez 19:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


Well what do you know. I was so hung up on the word obituary I didn't even see that. Nevermind, I guess.

--MLSelby 20:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Common templates button for wiki editor

Next to the 12 buttons found above the editor (Bold, Itals, Internal link, etc.), I would like to see a button or dropdown or some similar tool to add common templates. This would allow users to quickly add template messages and the like. Perhaps a dropdown something like the following; clicking on an item would bring up a small window with relevant templates:

  • Template Messages (all)
  • Cleanup
    • General cleanup
    • Wikify, copyediting
    • Verify facts
    • Importance/significance
    • etc.
  • General
    • Current events
    • Disambiguation / Other uses
    • Distinguish between deceptively similar titles
    • Expansion requests
    • etc.
  • etc.

--Jonathan Kovaciny 16:14, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Problem with Upcoming TV show template.

Hey, we have a problem with Template:Future tvshow, the problem arises because thier is no distinction between upcoming tv series, and upcoming tv episodes, this is problematic because the category for said template is currently a mix of upcoming television series and upcoming television episodes. To remedy this I recomend we create Template:Future tvepisode or even Template:Future tvsseries so we can more easily distinguish between the two. Deathawk 14:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello, first of all, let me thank you for your wonderful Wikipedia! I find it very helpful!

I've got an proposal concerning linking between the wikipedia pages - i find very distractful to read a page with lots of emphasized links, eg. in the text on Microcanonical ensemble: "..is the simplest of the *ensembles* of *statistical mechanics*.."

I thought that it would be easy to add an option on the left bar, which would enable using another stylesheet, which would make the links look like an ordinary text. Technicaly this should not be a problem and it would make life easier for readers sometime.

What do you think?

Petr Danecek

Hi Petr, I noticed you posted this under an IP address. If you get an account, one of the miscellaneous preferences is to remove underlining from links. This doesn't affect the different color of the text, but it's much easier on the eyes if you spend any amount of time on Wikipedia. I imagine that one could modify a user monobook to remove the color as well, but that would make navigation of the wiki unnecessarily difficult in my opinion. Cheers, BanyanTree 20:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Recently viewed and Favourites

Can a menu item be added that showed the 20 articles that the user has last viewed. It could be part of the top menu bar (with my talk, my watch list...)? And a favourites menu to store the articles that I frequent. Both these menus would work using the logged on user. - Ganeshk (talk) 23:11, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

We don't keep information on article hits anymore, and I doubt very much we ever logged which users viewed which articles - that would be a massive invasion of privacy. However, your browser may be able to provide you with a history of pages you've visited recently. For example, Ctrl-H in Firefox shows me the history pane, which lists all the pages I've visted today and for each day of the last week.-gadfium 03:02, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Cultural divide

We are an international digital community and we must do something to minimize the effect of cultural divide which I feel affects our abilities to interact and communicate. This inability may be gradually sabotaging the Project in various ways. Thanks. --Bhadani 15:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Criteria for WP:BIO to be like WP:CORP

I have suggested adding WP:CORP-like criteria to WP:BIO, which considers being "...the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent..." a sign of notability. Similiar wording is in WP:WEB, and more recently in WP:MUSIC. Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#WP:CORP-like wording. --Rob 14:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Translating articles

The way it is right now, the english version of Wikipedia has loads and loads more articles than any other, I see this as a problem. Wouldnt it be a good idea if there was a link that said "translate an article for [insert language] wikipedia" or something of the like? What I mean is that if the [insert language] wiki is missing an article on say Alabama or something or other, that text could be translated from another language.

And it wouldnt just benefit the small wiki's, I bet there are articles on romanian phenomena, people, places etc etc that arent on the english one

It would mean that the smaller wiki's would get articles that are more complete and it would, of course increase the number of articles. I know that at least in Sweden, there are a lot of people who are quite prominent in english who would be happy to perform such services for the community

Just a suggestion //bara_bg

PS This could also be a way of rectifying the problem with an english article being 5 000 signs long, and the french one 500 DS

See Wikipedia:Translators available, and links from that page (especially the sidebar) for people who are doing just that. Thanks for the suggestion! — Catherine\talk 21:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
What I mean is actually a button on every article that says "translate to your language" or something like that--bg 13:13, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
What, like babelfish? Because if the article is available in another language wikipedia, then there is already a link in the sidebar. Babelfish is a very bad idea, it would lead to All your base type translations and misinformation. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 16:11, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Criticism

It seems to me that Wikipedia policies or guidelines should include a discussion of how criticisms of topics fits into the Wikipedia articles about those topics. For exmaple Igor Stravinsky contain's a "Criticism" section while the criticisms of Country music where removed from that article and, presumably, some articles have criticism in each appropriate section (hypothetically, criticisms of Stravinsky's rhythmic prodedures could go in the "Rhythmic procedures" section of his article). Anyone else feel this need? Anythoughts on a guideline? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hyacinth (talk • contribs)

I agree - Criticism sections in most cases should be like trivia sections; if it isn't imporatant enough to be mentioned in the main article sections then it is not appropriate to create a specific place for it. --Neo 13:10, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
I assume that you agree that there should be some guideline about criticism. I actually created the criticism section of the Stravinsky article, but I would be fine with its incorporation into other sections (or an article like Reception of the music of Igor Stravinsky or Opinions of Igor Stravinsky's music).
I do actually think that every article should include criticism of its subject, with the exception such as numbers (one would probably need criticise the entire system of numbers, and that would belong on the article about that system, not necessarilly and certain not in entirety on the articles about every part of that system). Hyacinth 18:37, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Words to avoid#Article structures which can imply a view. Hyacinth 12:13, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Watch sections

I was just thinking, that when i make edits to a section of a large (and especially frequently edited) article, I add that article to my watchlist, but all i really care about watching is that one section that i edited. I propose that there should be some way to watch just a section of an article, rather than the whole thing, in the same way that you can choose to edit just a section and not the whole thing. For example, after posting this, i will only want to watch this section, to see if someone replies, i don't really care about the rest of the page. If such a thing already exists, and i just havent found it, please let me know. --Someones life 17:54, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

1 Vote for Yes

I vote yes on Someone's Life's proposal...if there isn't a feature like that already available on Wikipedia.

-- JJ

ok, so... how do i get someone to pay attention to this and do something? --Someones life 18:17, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Since the smallest discrete unit of material in the database is an article, it is easy to check whether or not articles have changed. Checking that sections have changed would require processing and tracking information on each section, and/or changing the database structure. I do not beleive implementing what you are asking for is a practical near term goal. Dragons flight 18:39, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
damn. --Someones life 06:01, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Though it sounds like it is impossable via the database, I'm sure one of the coders could make something up, like an addition to Autowikibrowser or a new tool. I think this concept would be very helpful in large articles. Of course, I can't write something like that. :) --Rayc 16:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Funding the Wikipedia through selling DVDs

What about selling the Wikipedia written on CDs or DVDs so that everyone who wants, could have his/her own Wikipedia without the need to surf at wikipedia.org {especially now it would be quite needed, because the servers of Wikipedia are overcrowded and it takes several seconds-minutes to upload a page}. Also by selling such DVDs, CDs {with encouragement to copy them and establish on your own servers} could be some money raised. Or even better, such CDs or DVDs would be given to the supporters of Wikipedia or could be sold for symbolic price to the supporters. Of course there is an issue how to make such a CD/DVD, in which languages, which articles should be taken into and which not, how many CDs/DVDs would be needed for 1 000 000 articles {with photos, sound files, etc}.

But on the other hand, I haven't heard about Wikipedia CDs/DVDs so I think it would need some kind of research to get to know if it is commercially realizable {maybe, I alone am in need of such CDs/DVDs :) }.

The German Wikipedia has one already. --cesarb 21:55, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Why would anyone buy an instantly-out-of-date CD or DVD (which is bound to have bits of frozen vandalism in it). Would you even look at it, or just put it on your shelf? T-shirts or mugs would make more sense. Text ads would make even more sense... nobody boycotts an otherwise indispensible resource just because of a few unobtrusive text ads (how many of you have stopped using Google?). -- Curps 22:25, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't be bothered by Adsense. Why? Because my Firefox extensions block it automatically. And people could still choose to view the ads (by using a browser which doesn't have an adblocking capability, or by turning it off) and support the project in that way if they didn't wish to support it by donating their time.Cynical 21:53, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
IIRC, the German DVD was combed before hand to make it publisizeable, removing all vandalism and such, and also limiting the size of it by removing stub articles etc. And what to use with it? Well, there probably are quite a lot of coauthors that actually would want one on the shelf. Also, imagine offline browsing? Not even in Europe everybody has broadband internet connections. Now think about the third world and consider the possibilities - especially considering that one of Wikipedia's goals, according to Jimbo at least, is
"Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language."
In today's world, doing that distribution online is not possible. DVDs wouldn't really cut it either (limited computer availability), but at least it's a bit better. TERdON 01:15, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Yeah the German DVD sold pretty well, but it was done by a private company that only donated some portion of the proceeds. Basically to do it for English it would take a group to organize the vetting, a lot of time to do that, and somebody that had the ability to produce and sell it. The other problem of course is the space it would take up. According to Carnildo's post on the reference desk just the text from current revisions of the English Wikipedia is 8Gb and images add another 76GB or so. So a text-only version could fit on one dual layer or two single layer DVDs, but adding images would spread it to about 9 dual layer discs. So it's a good idea, just someone has to spearhead it and make it happen. - Taxman Talk 20:35, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Fine then. Put text ads on Wikipedia, which given our Alexa numbers should raise, oh, a million dollars a month. But make it clear upfront that half of the windfall will be spent for third-world charitable purposes. Spend some of the rest on servers and also hire several more developers, so badly needed bug fixes and enhancements can happen a lot quicker. Everybody's happy.

I'm not sure I buy into the third-world story though. For most places in the third world, your CD or DVD will just be a frisbee, due to lack of computers or a reliable electrical power grid. And the places that have the latter two will almost certainly have telecom connectivity for Internet too. In fact, in many places telecom infrastructure is being created before any computing or electrical grid infrastructure: in Africa, cell phones are booming (they get recharged from car batteries). -- Curps 05:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree that CD and DVD editions for English Wikipedia are a good idea. I would also remind Curps that plenty of Wikipedia users are staunchly against ads. I and many other contributors would immediately fork. Superm401 - Talk 04:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC) (adding back in comment removed without explanation by User:Thsgrn Superm401 - Talk 22:17, 18 February 2006 (UTC))
You can't run a top 25 website on a shoestring. The current MediaWiki software is inadequate in many ways and the pace of bugfixing and upgrades is far too slow. Objections to text ads can be easily met: just let anyone who can edit semi-protected articles turn off text ads in their preferences page. -- Curps 08:17, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
I disagree. We already are running it on a "shoestring" (if that's what you call hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations). The MediaWiki software is adequate; otherwise, you wouldn't be seeing this post and we wouldn't have 900,000 articles. I think you mean it's not satisfactory, and I disagree with even that. The reason I object to Wikipedia serving text ads is not because I don't want to see them. I already block all google ads and can block even a completely plain text ad using greasemonkey. However, I refuse to provide free content to a site that is showing ads to anyone. Superm401 - Talk 23:29, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
I've got news for you: you already are. You do understand the nature of the GFDL? Reference.com is about 130 on Alexa, they mirror our content and put banner ads on it. Same for all the other mirrors out there, especially the ones that work the art of high Google ranking. -- Curps 02:24, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
This developer is of the opinion that current fundraising methods are more than sufficient to meet the needs of hosting all of the projects the Foundation is hosting without compromising the ethical position of the projects with ads, which already caused a major fork of the hosting and then content of the Spanish language project. Of course, if a different foundation wanted to do things like sell DVDs to raise money to do things like donate computers with Wikipedia on them to the poor, that would also be a good thing and an act I'd be happy to support. Likely fundraising this year is in the million dollars range and that's more than ample. If you want to produce such a DVD, please do feel free to do so - it's your right under the license all of us authors are granting. You're entirely welcome to donate all the funds from that activity to the Foundation or anyone else. Jamesday 17:27, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
On the "access for Africa" theme, while what Curps says is true about wireless telecoms overtaking electrical grid infrastructure, for broadband you actually need cable (at least to the neighbourhood). That's a bottleneck for the millions in towns who have electricity (at least part of the time). Even where there are telecoms cables, increasing capacity to meaningfully accommodate non-voice uses is a long way off. Check out Freedom Toaster for good description of challenges and solutions. JackyR 16:45, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

What about an 'ad mirror'? Loads of sites mirror with ads. Why not create a separate foundation whose purpose is to run an ad funded mirror (under the GFDL this is fine) and donating profits to WP? No one would fork, because it wouldn't be Wikipedia doing it. People who hate on it could hate on it. Who cares, it would be legal. And ... 3. Profit! For great justice. 18:38, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I was just thinking maybe it would be less attractive to actually put ads on Wikimedia pages, but what if Wikimedia sold web hosting--I mean Wiki is hot right now, everyone wants to have their own Wiki site, people would pay for this kind of stuff. Or, you could give it out for free and put ads on people's individual wiki sites. Either way, you'd make tons of money. Sure, you'd need more servers just for the personal wiki pages, but if you could get it to generate enough money to pay for itself and then some, it'd be great. I mean, I'd be willing to pay for my own wiki site, and I definitely wouldn't mind being given one for free, even if it did have ads on it. --Gandalf 04:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Stale IP talk pages

We have CSD:U2 which states to delete stale IP talk pages so they don't confuse potential new users, upon a bot request I had set my bot to add stale (older than 180 days) talk pages in a category for speedy deletion. I let the bot run for an hour and we had some 500 pages, they came faster than admins could delete. I then had a request here at Talk: criteria for speedy deletions which the consensus was to blank the pages to keep the history and to not delete them. After reaching this consensus, the bot ran for a few days until I recieved a message from DropDeadGorgias who asked for where the consensus for the bots operation was, reading it she requested that I stop the bot which I have done.

The question arrises, what do to with the stale IP talk pages. I basically see 3 options a) Keep them as is and do not remove anything (with the disadvantage that this could confuse new users) b) Delete the old pages c) Blank them keeping various templates (including sharedip and it's subst'ed version) and possibly adding a message saying why page was blanked.

Comments? -- Tawker 11:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Arguments/People commenting For

I just saw User:Tawkerbot add a Talk:IP that I watch to Category:IP talk pages for speedy deletion. It refers to WP:CSD#U2 on this page:

Recycling IP pages. User talk pages of non-logged in users where the message is no longer relevant. This is to avoid confusing new users who happen to edit with that same IP address.
  1. Adding the category sends them a "new messages" box, doesn't it? If this is to avoid confusion, then any list of to-be-deleted pages should be managed externally, not through category edits to the talk pages.
  2. Is deleting the pages going to be at all necessary in the first place? I think the history of an IP may present useful information. After all, the edits of those IPs are preserved in the edit history. The related warning messages should be too, even if years old.

Shouldn't irrelevant old messages simply be removed by blanking the page (thus essentially archiving it)?

Femto 12:58, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

In reference to your second point, I've always thought that CSD criteria U2 was odd for the same reason, i.e. old IP talk pages should simply be blanked. That fulfils the stated purpose of avoiding confusion for new users of that IP address, whilst also keeping the history of the page if needed. Petros471 13:44, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Femto's propositions and resolution seem perfect. Any objections?? --Gurubrahma 13:50, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I have no objections to blanking, it probally is easier on the admins too (those 2500 pages are less than 1% of the bots run) -- Tawker 19:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
After giving this some thought, page blanking would be much preferred over speedy deletion of a talk page. Some of our best vandal fighters are anonymous editors, and if we delete these pages outright, they and other non-administrators will have no way of to telling if there is any relevant history associated with a recurring vandal. Best regards, Hall Monitor 19:46, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree; blanking makes a lot more sense. android79 19:49, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Likewise here, blanking is better, and asked a few other admins as well, there's no need of deletign the talk page (and thus hiding its history). I'm removing U2 since consensus seems to be that blanking is better. -- ( drini's page ☎ ) 20:06, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Yep. Mainly because I think it's impossible to determine when an IP talk page message has become "irrelevant"; I've often seen IPs repeat the exact same kind of vandalism after gaps of several months or more. Postdlf 20:44, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Also, tawkerbot has been adding this to user pages with useful templates on them such as User talk:213.84.230.131, which has an informational sharedip template. --DDG 22:41, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Why were we deleting in the first place? Blanking makes so much more sense. In fact, we could probably add a header that says something like "This IP Talk page has been/is periodically recycled by blanking. To see older comments, please view the (link to history page)history(/link)." We'd need some good constraints on what constitutes a talk page that needs to be recycled though, to avoid unscrupulous vandals blanking their talk pages to hide previous warnings. Werdna648T/C\@ 08:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Votes for

Arguments/People commenting against

I'm not sure where to post this comment, so here it is :-) : I disagree with the blanking of old IP talk pages; besides other reasons, it does send the "new messages" banner to the users. We've already gotten several complaints about the "new messages" banner when a message is removed or substituted. Anyways, just my 2 cents; I don't think that the bot should continue doing this. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 17:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, as an addendum to my copied message: there's quite a few disadvantages about blanking old talk pages, and little advantage. First, unless there's a new message, most users will never see their own talk page. They do no harm, taking up little or no server space, and serve as a useful tool for vandal fighters if the IP starts vandalising again. However, if the pages are blanked, they do trigger the "new messages" banner; we've had several people complain and inquire about this already when people have either blanked or substituted templates on IP talk pages. In addition, blanking also hinders vandalism fighting efforts if the IP does vandalise again; it is highly unlikely that a RC patroller will check the page history of the talk page. Finally, by blanking, the bot also removes useful templates, such as shared IPs, etc. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 17:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
As a reply on the useful templates, the bot has a "keep list" of templates such as sharedip that it won't remove -- Tawker 17:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Votes Against

Wikiquote: proposed feature for "proverb of the day" subscription by email

I noticed Wikiquote has quite a lenghty list of proverbs from various cultures and languages. I wonder if there is a feature for "Proverb of the day" where subscribers can receive "proverb of the day" emails from Wikiquote's database of proverbs. If not, it would be a nifty feature.

This is a question that must be asked on Wikiquote. Wikipedia has no jurisdiction there. --Golbez 04:21, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Wikiquote's quote-of-the-day is included in the daily article emails. Raul654 19:29, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

New keyboard shortcut

I was wondering if it would be a good idea to create a keyboard shortcut for the admin [Rollback] button, like there is one for random page (alt-x) for example. This would help out on edits like these where you have to scroll to find the rollback button. There are even trickier instances like this where you spend about one minute trying to find the actual button! What does everyone else think? — FireFox • T • 20:06, 5 March 2006

That would be useful, yeah. --Golbez 20:14, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. (ESkog)(Talk) 20:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, this would be useful.--Shanel 20:24, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Comment: this might be useful for PC users, but remember there are quite a few mac-using admins, too. making it something that can be used by both types of computer would be an advantage Grutness...wha? 00:32, 6 March 2006 (UTC) (who doesn't have an "alt" key)
The shortcuts are automatically handled, so Alt gets translated to Ctrl and so forth. æle ✆ 02:10, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
If they were automatic, I would get random articles when I type ctrl-X, but that doesn't work. So I doubt it would work for an automatic rollback button either. Grutness...wha? 03:12, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

How do you pronounce that?

I don't think I should have to read the entire IPA article to figure out how something is pronounced. Even skimming it, I have no idea what that means. Opinions on having approximate translations for proper names without having to record an OGG audio file? For example, to find out the pronounciation of Kauai, I had to google it to find out it's like Hawaii with a K. Ka-WHY-ee. Imperfect, but sufficient for someone just wanting to know how it sounds. TransUtopian 05:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

This is supposed to be the function of the IPA chart for English article, a simple pronunciation chart like you would find in any dictionary or reference work. From what I've been seeing this chart seems to be too hard to find / isn't linked well enough, so it would be nice if people could work on linking to it in a more prominent way where necessary. I really don't like "ad-hoc" pronunciations like "Ka-WHY-ee" because their interpretation can vary from reader to reader and between speakers of different dialects of English, and they just plain look unprofessional.
Also, your "imperfect" pronunciation is downright wrong. As I understand Hawai'ian spelling, Hawai'i would be pronounced "ha-why-ee" but Kaua'i would be pronounced "cow-ah-ee". DopefishJustin 06:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
And, just to emphasize the inaccuracy here... I pronounce "why" in a way that doesn't fit into "Hawai'i". For me, "Hawai'i" is pronounced "ha-WYE-ee". FreplySpang (talk) 16:44, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Several people have brought this up, only to run into what I would call intransigence from IPA supporters. My suggestion is to use both the IPA, for those who want a super-exact pronunciation and are familiar with or have the time to learn the IPA, and the "ad-hoc" English approximation for those who are just looking for a quick reference. Unfortunately, WP:MOS discourages anything other than just IPA. -- Mwalcoff 06:11, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
As has been pointed out above, ad-hoc English approximations often work only for speakers of the same dialect of English. We could have edit wars over the correct ad-hoc approximation. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 12:18, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I think this could be handled on a case-by-case basis. I don't think there's any confusion in saying that Campbell, Ohio is pronounced the same way as "camel" (which it is). -- Mwalcoff 08:50, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I've put the chart link in Template:IPA notice and made the template actually work again, so feel free to stick that anywhere potentially unclear IPA appears. Adding ad-hoc pronunciation in addition to IPA is also fine in my opinion, as long as unambiguous IPA is there too. DopefishJustin 22:16, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Are there any speech synthesis engines for IPA we could use? Seems like it's more structured than written English, so it would produce pretty unambiguous results. — Omegatron 05:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


Minor interface change in spelling

I propose that the line "Printable Version" is changed to "Printerfriendly version" or something simlar. "Printable" assumes that the normal page is theoretically impossible to print. →AzaToth 01:46, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

For those who don't know about the MediaWiki namespace, the page we'd change is MediaWiki:Printableversion, which could be changed right now by an admin if we wanted to. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 02:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
This link isn't even necessary, as the print stylesheet allows perfectly lovely printing (minus menus and other offline-nonsensical bits) straight from the page (try File/Page Preview on your browser to see), but it was added to the toolbox after newbies kept asking "where's the printer-friendly button?". Sigh. — Catherine\talk 02:18, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


tagging images when they're good (copyright-wise)

We got a whole bunch of tags for bad images (like no license, with permission, no source, etc...). But we don't have a way of telling somebody who's uploaded something that it's ok legally. I propose that admins who are knowledgeable about copyright policy, have a system for marking images to say that they've been reviewed, and they're ok. This gives somebody valuable feedback on uploading. We could then recommend newbies not upload lots of images, until after their first uploads have been marked as "approved" (or whatever term we use). This also prevents duplicate work. It's obviously not possible to tag all images in Wikipedia as approved, but we could at least do it for new uploads, or images that for whatever reason, are subjected to review by admins (we have to check all images anyway). This is particularly needed for fairuse. As it seems you can always be told you're wrong, but you'll never be told you're right, in your understanding/interpretation of what's fairuse (of course an "approve" for fairuse means approved for a specific use, not any use). This could be implemented by putting a tag on the images, or it could be made by producing a huge list(s) of ok images (the advantage of a list, is that it can be protected, so only admins could update it). --Rob 21:45, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

There is a fair-use-reviewed tag, somewhere, I believe... Shimgray | talk | 22:39, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Requests for continuing adminship (WP:RFCA)

Right now, I feel there is a gap in the WP admin procedures - a user must go through a process and show a high level of support (75-80% minimum) to become an admin, but once they are, unless they perform so egrigiously badly that they end up before the ArbCom, they are effectively forever safe from desysopping.

What I propose is a Requests for continuing adminship (WP:RFCA hereafter) page whereby admin terms would be fixed to one year, but with no limit on the number of consecutive terms they might serve. In every respect other than dealing with existing admins seeking reconfirmation (mostly to avoid swamping RFA), it would be identical to RFA, however, with particular view to maintaining the high threshold of support needed to become an admin (although, clearly, the scrutiny would be on the actual use/abuse of, or failure to use admin powers). The initial batch of RFCA would, of course, have to be staggered, with the earliest admins seeking reconfimation first and the newest last. A bot could be used, if desired, to remind the admistrators in question when their terms were coming to an end.

**EVERY** admin, without exception (another important point), would be required to seek reconfirmation yearly (a few enlightened admins have desysopped themselves to seek reconfirmation @ WP:RFA in the past - this would extend it to all admins as a feature), and any admin who was absent or otherwise refused to go through WP:RFCA would have their adminship automatically end after one year - although, of course, they would be free to go through the otherwise-identical process @ WP:RFA at a later date if they wished to become an admin once more.

Thoughts? - SoM 19:21, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

This is an old idea. Please see the comments from the previous 100 times it was proposed. Long story short - it is not realistic to do 800+ re-adminships per year on top of regular adminships - it would add another 15 nominations per week. Raul654 19:28, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
And at present, WP:RFA has thirteen noms on it. And I proposed a different page specifically to avoid swamping RFA.
Plus, I doubt, even if there are 800 admins, there would be 800 renoms. - SoM 19:34, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Secondly, adminsihp is not supposed to be a popularity contest, and this does turn it into that.Raul654 19:28, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
So, what is RFA then? Since I proposed using explicitly the same process, that means RFA should be removed, surely, since it makes becoming an admin a "popularity contest".- SoM 19:34, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Thirdly, often times the best admins are the unpopular ones, and this would only exacerbate that. Raul654 19:28, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Unavoidable perhaps, but again, surely applies to RFA as it stands - and any such admin would surely attract much support from their fellows to cancel the trolls. You seem to be arguing for serious RFA reform at least as much as opposing this, if not more so. - SoM 19:34, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
There is a fallacy in the argument that the best are the most unpopular and as such they may not survive reelection a second time. It would mean the comunity is stupid as it wouldn't know what is best for it. On the whole thing, in principle I like the idea. But yes, I see problems with implementation. Yes, way too many. Perhaps reduce it to those with over two years and have a lottery deal with this; I mean, not review all every year, but a certain number every month. Over time some may not be reelected and this could reduce the number. The good ones will always be reelected and the not so good will be flushed out. This will insure some sort of quality control. Again, though I like the concept, I see problems implementing it. --Anagnorisis 19:53, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
You will notice that in any community, enforcers are universally hated by the people who actually break the rules. Good enforcers are hated more. Kim Bruning 20:00, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

No. This has been proposed 100 times, I have done experiments with this on RFA, probably pissing off some bureaucrats in the process, I have discussed this with stewards cross project who explained that some wikis actually have this procedure and good admins really DO get voted out earlier while incompetent or inactive admins are kept. Long story short, This Does Not Work (tm). Kim Bruning 20:00, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. And the reason that good admins get voted out is because they actually do the work, and people who disagree with them, have been blocked/warned by them, etc. get pissed and bloc vote them out of position. Ral315 (talk) 20:33, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
So society is doomed because it is stupid as the good enforcers are always disliked? If they are disliked by the majority it would be difficult to think the majority thinks they are good. But still society wants good enforcers. So how is society to do? Sorry but I disagree with the idea that good enforcers are disliked by the majority. They may be disliked by the few who disrupt things and ended in the receiving end. But the good majority likes good enforcers. I will give you an example that refutes your point that good enforcers are disliked by the community: Singapore. The Singaporean government is a tough enforcer of the local laws -where a woman can go to jail for one year (later reduced to 8 months for slapping a policeman (accidentally) who was trying to separate her from the husband she was trying to slap- yes, you cannot get away with hitting a policeman no matter what). Besides, if society does not like good enforcers, it would find a way to sort them out before electing them. One question Raul, do you think you are disliked? I mean, according to your argument you must not be be a good admin because, as far as I know, most people here like you. Sorry, but your argument is flawed. You could point out many other reasons why this is not a workable idea, but saying that the reason it would not work is because the good admins are disliked makes no sense at all, besides it is a bit condescending toward the comunity at large.
Now, what we are not doing is defining well is the label of 'good' ones and 'bad'. First, who decided who were the good ones and who were the bad ones? What was the criteria? Why a good one was voted out? Could it be that he was technically 'good' but emotionally bad? Could it be that bad ones do not get voted out because the community never see them in action (if you do not do anything it is difficult to be noted). Could it be that the admins make their own community and have a view of themselves different than those the majority has of them? Do they tend to help each other and reinforce views that isolate them. Do they support each other no matter what and have a different tolerance towards what is done depending of who does it? Maybe good ones get voted out for things that go beyond what they actually do; maybe it is how they do it. I do not have a solution, but saying that nothing can be done and give it is wrong. Anagnorisis 20:57, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Although there will be many supporters of a "good" admin, and comparitively few opposers (those who have been blocked or warned by the admin, etc) the threshold for RfA is about 85%, last time I checked. A far smaller group of "bad" users could easily throw the vote. So would the threshold change for confirmation votes? Would a no consensus result mean that the admin is kept, or is desysopped? It doesn't seem like these issues have been addressed. --bainer (talk) 00:01, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

In this proposal, it would mean desysopping. Of course, this proposal is already dead, so it's a moot point really. Christopher Parham (talk) 08:57, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

On nl.wikipedia, a steward recently got deadminned by an "absolute majority" of around 20-30% :-P (nl.wikipedia does have actual voting, unlike (officially) en.wikipedia ) . Kim Bruning 12:57, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Requests for de-adminship

I think another perennial proposal would be a better option - having a Requests for de-adminship would allow bad admins (who aren't necessarily blantatly violating policy to the extent that would get them to Arbcom, but are still bad nonetheless) to be removed, without having the 800+ reapplications problem that Raul654 mentioned. In other words, an admin would automatically get their adminship renewed every year unless a certain number of people objected (I know voting is evil, but having a specific number is necessary for this first step). If such an objection was lodged, then (and only then) the admin would have to go through RFA (which would guard against malicious nominations, since a good admin would get overwhelming support from the community). Cynical 10:55, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

If you mean that there would have to be a consensus to keep, then I don't think this is a good idea. Given that consensus-forming never involves more than a very small fraction of active editors, it is too easy for a determined and vocal sub-group with an agenda to push to block consensus. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 12:11, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
I neither oppose or support Cynical's proposal. However, it seems obvious that the proposal is not that a consensus is needed to keep. On the contrary, only the few admins with a number of objections that is above some threshold will have to go to a vote for re-adminship. Perhaps, the proposal is that in these few cases a simple majority is enough for re-adminship. -Étincelle (formerly Lumiere) 12:43, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

This discussion might better take place on the Wikipedia:Admin accountability poll talk page? - brenneman{T}{L} 12:53, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics

In the past two months I have seen a large number of WP:AFD debates on whether or not professors are notable. There is a proposed policy on criteria for including academics that, unfortunately, has received very little attention lately. I have been working on this recently, and I'd like to work on building a consensus and collecting comments from the community so that this guideline can eventually become an official guideline. So, I am posting here to appeal to the community: if you are interested in this issue, come, check out the guidelines, enter the discussions, et cetera. The guidelines are at Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics, with attached talk page. Also check out Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics/Precedents for an (incomplete) gathering of academic-related deletion debates. I'd also appreciate if someone could fill me in on how to go about making this guideline official once it's ready. Thanks! (feel free to contribute here if you want, but it would be more useful to contribute at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics.) Mangojuice 19:50, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Option to have watchlist automatically monitor user's subpages

First, apologies in advance if this suggestion is a chestnut. I took a quick look through the perennial list, but didn't spot it. Apologies also in advance if the below is possible and I've missed the how-to.

I'd like to be able to set Wikipedia's watchlist function to monitor my user subpages without my having to add every subpage to my watchlist. In other words, I'd like to be able add something like User:David Kernow/* to my watchlist. Is this (easily) possible?  Does the idea strike a chord or the like with anyone else?

Best wishes, David Kernow 15:28, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Have now found the above proposed (more or less) as an enhancement at bugzilla.wikipedia.org. David Kernow 18:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

RSS Feed do i ask here about a proposal for a main page RSS Feed?

is there one already? dunno if this is the place to post is but is there a good reason why there isn't an RSS feed of the main page? seems like it'd be a simple thing to do? does anyone read this? why isn't wikipedia super hooked up with rss feeds?

See Wikipedia:Syndication for externally hosted scraped feeds for the Featured Article and Picture of the Day. - BanyanTree 20:34, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Is there any way to get my watchlist as an RSS feed/Live Bookmark? --Michalis Famelis 20:59, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
According to m:Syndication feeds#Watchlist feeds, it has been requested but nobody has figured out how to make it work. See the extensive discussions linked to from that section for more. Cheers, BanyanTree 21:57, 14 March 2006 (UTC)


Vandalism logger

I'd like to propose the development of a vandalism logger. I imagine this would take the form of a tick box, which an editor can check off if they understand their correction as correcting vandalism. The idea is that we could have statistical archive that logs and ranks which sites are most vandalized. We could then also achieve some concept of how controversial an article is, or how trustworthy the article is. Sholto Maud 04:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

User:Tony Sidaway made a tool to do roughly this. See [2] or m:User:Tony_Sidaway/vandalism.--Cherry blossom tree 11:25, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Ok. Thankyou. :) There seems to be an interesting discussion going on about Scientific Peer Review which might also help deal with the issue in another way. Sholto Maud 11:35, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Would it be possible to change the 'sign in/create account' link to say 'sign in / create account (why?)' It would make it easier for curious anons to become aware of the advantages to creating an account, apart from being told or trying to create a new page. The more editors we can put a 'face' to, the better, right? --Sam Blanning (formerly Malthusian) ( T | C | A ) 10:02, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

When you click the "create an account" link, there's already a link to the Why create an account? page. However, this text, located in the MediaWiki: namespace, can be modified by administrators. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 15:50, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
It could be argued that most of the people who see that particular link are already about to create a username :-). If the relevant text is in the MediaWiki space do you mean this should be suggested somewhere else? --Sam Blanning (formerly Malthusian) ( T | C | A ) 16:04, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I must have misinterpreted your comment - are you proposing adding a link to the title of the login page, not on the create a new account page? This is probably the best place to propose such changes, because few people have the MediaWiki: pages on their watchlist. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 16:11, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I mean in the top right corner of every page, logged-in users see links to their userpage, talk, watchlist etc. and anonymous users see 'Sign in/create account'. I think it would be good if there was a link to WP:WHY there in the manner I suggested earlier. --Sam Blanning (formerly Malthusian) ( T | C | A ) 16:14, 17 March 2006 (UTC)


MLA Citation

I think somewhere in the wiki-network, there should be a citation guide, explaining the citations for the different styles, and different media. I realize this would be a lot of work, but I think it's useful. I don't know if we're up to it. Clarkefreak ∞ 00:38, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Like Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia? Or MLA style manual? Or the Special:Cite page, reached via the "Cite this article" link in the toolbox (e.g. Special:Cite&page=MLA_style)? — Catherine\talk 02:30, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
No, I wasn't thinking of just a method of citation for wikipedia articles. I was thinking of an entire guide to citing in the MLA format, beyond the simple stuff given in the MLA style manual article, getting into the nitty gritty, and also explaining other methods of citation. Clarkefreak ∞ 15:57, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I think this would be welcome at Wikibooks:, but it's not really an encyclopedic topic and hence shouldn't be here. Superm401 - Talk 01:13, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
For God's sake if we have a single citation rule let it be an outright ban on MLA style. It is pretty much the only citation style which does not have an automated LaTeX/BiBTeX package, because it is not a consistent standard. You can't do MLA with an algorithm when you know every piece of information you need. It's arbitrary. You need a human to sit there and reference the MLA manual and figure out which format they LIKE. There are actually templates in Wikipedia for automatically formatting citations. They don't do MLA either. I think it's Harvard style. —Daelin @ 2006–03–23 06:34Z

against any deletion / erasing policy

I'm stunned on how far we can forget the primary goals when we get immersed into a good project. I've done this several times myself, caught myself going too far into a way because it sounds and look right, but I'm just forgetting what I was supposed to do in that project at first.

I feel like all wikimedia foundation projects are going that way today, specially when considering how difficult it might be to realize that deleting an article is just totally against any of the primary goals. And it happens for obvious reasons: there's no space for every single little thing.

Is that true?

The way wikipedia is done comes to avoid ambiguity in a very logical and simple way: there's a limit of characters, so all that's needed to do to keep it within the limits is calculating how much hardware space is needed to a certain number of total characters for any article. That will bring the theoretically infinite number to a real amount that we can deal with.

The vote for deletion attacks me so deeply in what I believe it's better for this community that I get even disturbed, so I might say things I don't want to, but the idea is just proposing to change the way articles get deleted. There are several things that could be done.

Please, refer to my user page to read the rest. I'm not sure where to put this suggestion (although I believe now the rright place is the Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)), and I'm getting tired of rewriting it. I just hope the right people can read and comment on. Thanks.

--Cacumer 01:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, you don't seeme to understand what Wikipedia's primary goals are, which is understandable given your limited experience (especially in the Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk namespaces). For a better idea: Please see Wikipedia:Five pillars. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information.. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.

Addressing your specific suggestions:

  1. Garbage collection. This is what Wikipedia:Votes for deletion, Wikipedia:Proposed deletion, and even Category:Candidates for speedy deletion are. The stacks might be smaller than you envision, but a larger stack would just make monitoring deletions more overwhelming. You are correct that storage space is not an issue. Wikipedia has enough storage for well into the future. However, it is necessary to manage all this content, not just store it.
  2. Backups. There are several ways to do backups. For a single page, the simplest means is just to copy the wikisource to a text file. Alternatively, you can use Special:Export. Wikipedia also regularly creates dumps of the entire database, which could function as backups for the entire site (and by extension any article within).
  3. Financial. I'm not sure what you mean by saying Wikipedia hasn't kept up. We've certainly had technical difficulties, but we've never had to impose restrictions as a result. As for Google, we are already far larger than them and they rely heavily on us. I disagree with you saying that "we are mostly afraid of trying anything new." Obviously, as a wiki we embrace change. Major enyclopedia-wide changes we've introduced lately (or are in the process of introducing) include: Ban on anon article creation, semi-protection, proposed deletion, CSD criteria, stable versions, rating system, Special:Cite/Meta:Cite.php... As for Wikimark, there are serious flaws with your proposal. You are not the first to suggest text ads for subscribers who opt in; that idea has some support. However, your idea goes beyond that and poses some serious problems, mainly in incentives. If the ad system works anything like Google AdWords, different advertisers pay different amounts. Presumably, proportional commissions would then be paid to editors. This will result in editors trying to edit pages that relate to the highest-paying ads. Thus, our neutral point of view will be compromised. Also, since we are apparently running our own ad system, we have a hidden incentive to keep advertisers placated, to ensure they don't stop paying for ads. This will also result in a sympathetic point of view. The payment system will have widespread waste and fraud. People will register multiple accounts so they receive the money at all stages of the chain. These form convincing reasons for me to oppose your proposal. Superm401 - Talk 05:20, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, did someone just say that Wikipedia is larger than Google? You have to be kidding. In what sense exactly do you mean "larger"? Dmharvey 02:51, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I meant the size of the content provided directly by both sites. I'm not counting offsite links for either one. I agree that the comparison is illogical; I was responding to Cacumer's assertion (on User:Caue.cm.rego/suggestion) that "Hell, [Wikipedia] could be as big as google today if it had a better way to gather financial resources." The statement is already confusing the way I interpreted it. If you interpret it as comparing Google's index count (8 billion+) to Wikipedia's size (about 3 million articles), the statement becomes ridiculous. Superm401 - Talk 03:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for request for comment (articles)

I had this idea that instead of hiding article requests for comment, where they do seem a little out of the way, we bring them into the village pump. I'd like to propose Wikipedia:Village pump (articles), where people would post details regarding the dispute. I say this merely because when I've used RFC on articles it hasn't generated much interest, but when I've posted details to the pump I've seen good interest. Steve block talk 20:34, 16 March 2006 (UTC)


Serious overhaul template

Could I suggest that, for articles such as render layers, which are scary for newbies, there is simply a template {{overhaul}} to replace all the others? NB - I don't know if the expression overhaul is used in US English, it basically means practically redoing, or checking it in great detail.--Keycard (talk) 17:28, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

{{cleanup-rewrite}} (the bottom template) is designed for such a purpose. Superm401 - Talk 04:22, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

WP:SAND

I think WP:SAND should redirect to Wikipedia:Sandbox, not to some obscure BJAODN page. Agree/disagree? Stephen Turner (Talk) 10:55, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Please be bold, BJAODN is a BAD acronym with enough SHORTcuts. Omniplex  17:42, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Done, but can someone add it to the list of shortcuts at Wikipedia:Sandbox? I can't find that box to edit it. Thanks. Stephen Turner (Talk) 11:09, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Done. —-- That Guy, From That Show! (talk) 2006-03-16 12:56Z
Thanks.Stephen Turner (Talk) 13:14, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Currently all the lists of country-related topics at Category:Lists of country-related topics are incredibly disorganized, unkempt, and I would imagine largely unused. As CalJW put it on the talk page back in August last year, "they predate the category system, which was introduced in May 2004. Arguably they should be deleted now, as they do not get much attention." Couldn't every single on of the articles in this category be turned into a category itself, making the whole thing a lot more dynamic? Staxringold 03:30, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Not without going through AfD, and many people, myself included, would object, as categories and lists serve different functions. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Photography advocacy

I was wondering whether there already exists a project that aims to attract professional photographers who can advertise their work by giving a small proportion of it away under an attribution license. And a picture bounty list to complement this? - Samsara (talk • contribs) 20:24, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

They would not be allowed to advertise their work on Wikipedia. Is that what you are asking? User:Zoe|(talk) 17:13, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
No. I asked whether a project existed that encouraged professional photographers to contribute part of their work under an attribution license, which does constitute an advertisement if you think about it.
Images with Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike may be used on Wikipedia subject to the licence terms.
Source: Wikipedia:Images.
Samsara (talk • contribs) 17:17, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Images under Attribution licenses are welcome at Commons:, as far as I know. Superm401 - Talk 05:28, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for potentially offensive images

I think I have a way to (at least partially) satisfy both the people who are offended at images like the Muhammad cartoons and those who are consider removal of such images to be a violation of WP:NOT.

My idea is to tell users that if they think an image may be offensive to some people, or if they are offended by an image, they should relocate it below the fold -- that is, down far enough into an article so it would not show up immediately upon navigating to the page. The editor would then add a template like the following:

Note: This article contains an image of {{{potentially offensive image}}}. If you wish to read the article without seeing the image, please click here.

Clicking "here" would generate the same page without the image in question. We would need a change to the program that would allow for pages that are identical except for the inclusion or lack thereof of one image.

This would be a significant improvement from the current solution, which requires users to edit their monobook.css file (something most people don't know they have.)

Mwalcoff 04:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that'd be helpful. -Will Beback 06:05, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
This is a perennial proposal - see also Wikipedia talk:Content labeling proposal for some of the pros and cons that have been raised in the past. If you really want to get into it, look at Wikipedia:Toby and its talk page too. FreplySpang (talk) 14:41, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I participated in that discussion on the "no" side. I am against anything that seeks to make any judgement about whether something is "decent" or appropriate for young people. I don't think my proposal tries to make the same sort of value judgements. -- Mwalcoff 23:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

This is what was done with Bahaullah, but it was rejected on the Muhammed cartoons controversy, as the cartoons themselves were the subject of the article, whereas the image of Bahaullah was not the subject of the article. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:24, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Ehim, Yes, it makes perfect sense, but the thing about the very good and helpful proposed template-note is that -particularly in such occasions- it will practically just keep everyone satisfied regardless of how much logic or rationality there is in it on the abstract level. Nothing is really sensored by adding it, especially if adding it would follow a serious and indicating debate and not just everything. In the Muhammed Cartoons, as a good example, the Note would be very obviously directed toward a very specific group of visitors of the article: Believing and practicing Muslems. True, they don't make any sense, it is wrong to object on publishing the cartoons themselves since, as you say, they ARE the subject of the article even if the article itself does not even include any demonstrative text. But still, it might be just good to be practical as not to totally upset so great a number of people, upon which Wikipedia itself is partly dependent and certainly does not want to "loose". We will just add a note, that's all. We loose nothing, neither our, Europeian and Reniassancian, Humanism and Enlightenment, nor the Cartoons themselves, being published, nor all those people with whom we want to strengthen our Wikipedian activity, as long as they contribute by the rules regardless of whether they are rational or not. Adding this note is not a violation to those rules of Wikipedia. It is merely a statement to those who really want it and seek it, that also THEY have a space. Because seriously, as you make up a rational argument about Bahaullah and the Cartoons, I'm afraid that rationalism itself does not fit as to solve this and such problems in here; it is foreign to the discussion already. Because if the so many protesters are ONLY believers, they must be "compelled" to protest, there isn't really a choice for them in here. Mine is still such a rational argument but, at least, I am not asking THEM to acknowledge it; I am asking YOU to do so. Mwalcoff has proposed indeed a very elegant practical solution to the problem, in all creativity, one that goes beyond the "take it or leave it" attitude. Wikipedia itself seems to spring out from such creativity. After all, it seems that without the continued donations for the project, it might wholly cease to exist itself. Everything and nothing seems to be "rational" about capitalism, therefore, but what can we do? mustn't we just try to solve things out for ourselves and for others? Mustn't we try to be creative so as to keep going on? Wikipedia, its continues development, depends entirely on the equally continues contributions of as more and more people as possible. ___ Most appreciatively, --Maysara 21:54, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Similarly, I've been pondering what to do about Brazilfantoo (talk · contribs) (and various IPs I suspect to be the same user), who has been uploading rafts of pictures of nude celebrities under fair use claims (explicit example: Image:Warrengmagazine5.jpg). I'm pretty firmly in the anti-censorship camp and don't have a problem with the autofellatio pictures and such in the appropriate articles, but I just consider most of these additions to the celebrity articles to be in poor taste. Obviously the "fair use" claims can be challenged for each individual picture, but I hate to look like a "censor" for being the one to pursue it. Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with the situation overall? — Catherine\talk 19:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I've nominated your example for IFD and warned the user to read Wikipedia:Fair use before uploading more images. If they continue to upload images that aren't plausible fair use despite being warned, an eventual block is possible. Also, check user can be run to help verify your theory that the IPs are socks. Superm401 - Talk 03:38, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Put potentially offensive or upsetting pictures on a subpage linked to the article?  Regards, David Kernow 01:03, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Although advertisement is not allowed on Wikipedia, I propose that there is a special area where advertising is allowed. That way, people can advertise on Wikipedia, a popular website, for free. It should be linked to from the Village Pump, and maybe even the Main Page.

FLaRN2005 04:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

And what does Wikipedia gain from this? --Golbez 05:27, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Maybe advertisement would decrease elsewhere. But probably not. r3m0t talk 11:32, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Why should advertisers get free adspace in Wikipedia? It would just be unencyclapedic and silly, not to mention that this would severely hurt our credibilty. Deathawk 19:09, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Create a "wikiad" site on wikicities. Don't charge anything for it, and then ads can be ported their, or deleated and a link could be placed on the page to direct recreates to the wikiad site. Would that work?--Rayc 16:10, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Who in hell would go look at a site only with ads? --mets501 22:40, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
We should definitely not create articles that solely link to advertising, on wikiad or elsewhere. This whole idea is based on the flawed idea that advertisers ought to benefit financially from Wikipedia's popularity, which is the work of volunteer editors. Superm401 - Talk 04:24, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Advertisements would make the use of "fair use" content legally questionable. Also note that the ad content would have to be licensed under the GFDL, or Wikipedia loses its license to use most of its own content. --Nagle 19:47, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Proprietary ads can be included under the "mere aggregation" concept. This is how we include non-GFDL images, and how mirrors include ads along with our content. Superm401 - Talk 01:06, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
A separate section on the donations page to list commercial donations (date, name, amount) just as we do for individual contributions but in a separate list shouldn't be a problem. Commercial enterprises can do that now except that they become merged with the rest of us but, a "special" donations section well now... --hydnjo talk 04:46, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't really think this is necessary. Those lists are buried, so it would be ineffective advertising anyway. Superm401 - Talk 01:06, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
My point exactly, no advertising. We do however accept donations and have a "special" page to recognize commercial contributions. hydnjo talk 02:39, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Such an area would endanger Wikipedia's image. Plus, it would waist bandwidth if it were even used. Several good points have also been mentioned above. Thus, not a good idea. ~Linuxerist L / T 07:45, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Allow newbies to move their own pages

New users can't move articles, but they can create them. Often on Special:Newpages you'll see new users accidentally create their first article with a mistaken title, and they're frustrated that they can't then move it to the correct title.

I propose an exception allowing new users to move the pages they create. Melchoir 04:59, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. Would require a non-trivial change to the code though. --mav 19:42, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
That's a shame. I don't know how the current temporary ban on moving is implemented; I couldn't even find any documentation that it exists. Is this a MediaWiki issue to be raised at Bugzilla, then? Melchoir 21:07, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Ban on moving is, IIRC, same rule as ban-on-new-pages - it's either done by waiting a set period of time, so they can move pages after a few days, or until the account is no longer in the newest x% of accounts, so they can move pages after another load of accounts have been created. I have a vague memory it used to be the latter and, when we also blocked new page creation, became the former. Perhaps three days? Shimgray | talk | 21:21, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


Proposed change to MediaWiki:Common.css

I'm not an administrator and cannot change the common.css file, but I would like to propose a change. Including the line 

span.texhtml { font-family: sans-serif; }

Will cause LaTeX code rendered as HTML to be the same size as code that was written in HTML in the first place. It will make mathematics articles easier to read. What do you think? --mets501 22:34, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Anybody objects to that? If not, I plan to implement the change say in half a day. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:03, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand. — Omegatron 06:23, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand what you don't understand. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
You're changing the math tag generated HTML (like this: ) into a sans-serif font instead of the serif font generated intentionally by the math renderer? Why?
What does this have to do with "the same size as code that was written in HTML in the first place"? — Omegatron 22:12, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Exactly what problem are we trying to solve here? Ingoolemo talk 22:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, let me clarify. Previously, with the old rendering (before the change which just happened), if a mathematical formula was written in LaTeX, but rendered as HTML because of the user's preferences, it was smaller (or a different font which looked smaller) than formulas that were written in HTML in the first place. Implementing this change allows all formulas rendered as HTML to appear the same size to the user no matter if they were written in LaTeX or HTML. Hope this clarifies. --mets501 22:36, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

The math formatting is rendered in serif fonts on purpose. If you don't like it, talk to the developers. Or just put the command in User:Mets501/monobook.css. — Omegatron 00:35, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I did put it in my stylesheet to test it and indeed it worked perfectly, so then I proposed it here. --mets501 02:34, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

So why is math text rendered to look different than html text? On many browsers not only they have different font, but also different size. It does not make sense to me. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the way math is rendered, but this sounds like a workaround for a purpose-built behaviour. The correct action is to determine if there's a good reason for this behaviour, and not, then fix it at the root in the LaTeX rendering engine, rather than overriding it in the style sheet. —Michael Z. 2006-03-15 02:01 Z

I'd have no problem with someone going and looking through the LaTeX rendering engine if they so choose to do so. However, right now this "workaround" is "working" perfectly. If there are any problems at all I'm sure we could restore the common.css page and then look into this deeper. In my opinion, LaTeX which rendered as HTML used to be rendered in a different size and a different font just by accident. --mets501 02:34, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
My guess is that if there was a reason at all, it was designed that way to match the PNG images more closely. Dmharvey 13:03, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Omegatron and I have been discussing this, and we both think it would be a good idea to have browser specific fonts when rendering HTML from LaTeX code. This is because on different browsers the differences between LaTeX rendered as HTML and the rest of the article is drastically different. For example, on Firefox, the current settings look fine. However, on IE the serif fonts which the LaTeX is rendered in look much different and smaller than the rest of the text. What does everyone think? --Mets501talk 15:21, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Elections and Referenda

Barely in the start-up phase yet; I've posted a few early suggestions on the talk page. Anyone who's interested is welcome to join and help! =] Cheers, —Nightstallion (?) 10:36, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


Cleanup process: Cleanup sorting proposal

I wish to bring to general attention the problem of the exploding backlog at Wikipedia:Cleanup. Cleanup is broken, and Wikipedia:Cleanup process is too slow. The backlog of articles piling up on [[Category:Cleanup by month]] is threatening the quality of Wikipedia as a whole. To solve this problem, it is proposed that cleanup articles be sent to relevant WikiProjects by a process similar to WikiProject Stub sorting.

Please read the evidence, along with full details of a proposed remedy, at Wikipedia:Cleanup process/Cleanup sorting proposal, and comment or suggest other options. Alba 05:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I love your proposal. I was trying to come up with something like it, but decided it would fall on its face because it would require too much new infrastructure... but I didn't know we had WP:PNA to piggyback on. Other Wikipedians: Go look at the cleanup sorting proposal. It's something we sorely need. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 05:44, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Coordinates In Header

Hey all! I'm proposing that we insert CSS code that would allow one to add the coordinate link of any location to the header of the article. This is already common place in the German Wikipedia, as shown here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City. I'm told that the code would be pretty easy to impliment. There are numerous benefits to this tool and I think the German wiki has benefited. Please reply to this if you are in support...and if you're not, please give a reason :) BTW, the template for this (Template:CoorHeader) was simply transferred from the German wiki to English, so the coding might change. Sean WI 03:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I support the proposal to incorporate this nifty feature into the English Wikipedia (a simple CSS addition that would enable the template to function). I don't know what stage of development this is in, but it appears to be working quite nicely at the German site, so I don't see why we shouldn't implement it here. —David Levy 03:24, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I've just fixed {{CoorHeader}} so that it shows the coordinates and link above the horizontal rule for every reader, as at the de.wikipedia. [my outline of the problems removed as they're not problems] I like the de.wikipedia coordinates style and I support this change. — Saxifrage ✎ 04:10, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

{{CoorHeader}} is getting polished and is pretty much ready for use. It doesn't require any changes to the site-wide CSS code. However, I think people will react badly if they start seeing people unilaterally deciding that there's a new standard, especially since it's so visible in the affected articles. So, the proposal is now that this template becomes standard (as it is at de.wikipedia). The question is, can this proposal get enough support to make that happen? — Saxifrage ✎ 08:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

This has been on the list at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates#Coordinates at the top of the article for nearly a year. We just don't seem to have anybody capable of changing the CSS. I'd even submitted a bug/enhancement request, but no joy. {{CoorHeader}} is a fine example of another way, although the name and style are unlikely to be the final solution.
--William Allen Simpson 14:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals

Just set this up as a project of similar scope to the stub sorting project. Participants welcome. The first task is probably to trawl through the portal space and see what's in there, see Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Portals for more details. Steve block talk 11:18, 22 March 2006 (UTC)


Portal creation guidelines

Please note there is a proposal for portal creation guidelines at Wikipedia:Portal/Proposals. Comments and discussion welcome on the talk page. Steve block talk 19:36, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Category:Articles that need to be wikified

I have made a proposal on Category talk:Articles that need to be wikified that the category should be split into seperate month categories like Category:Cleanup by month. I don't think anyone watches that page so I thought I'd mention it here. thanks. Martin 10:44, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Reply Template

I propose a template {{Reply|User|Header}}:

<div style="background:white; text-align: center; border: 1px solid #aaa; width:60px"> [[User_talk:{{{1}}}#{{{2}}}|Reply]] </div>

to be used on talk pages to indicate where a message should be replied (see Wikipedia:Talk_pages) --Fasten talk|med 20:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Using <span>...</span> would be more appropriate but suppresses the link. --Fasten talk/med 15:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Reply --Fasten 14:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


Template (and campaign) for expertise

The main complaint against Wikipedia is lack of expertise (see Time article on Wikipedia and Larry Sanger).

To improve this, I suggest that there be a campaign or at least a readily available template which can easily be posted in talk pages which reminds people of the basic NPOV policy: write in proportion to the representation of the experts in the field. Then it should contain the steps to proceed: (a) identify the experts, (b) analyze and rank their expertise (there is also a list of this how to find out the expertise in the NPOV tutorial), (c) proceed in citing more the topmost experts, then the others.

It's a very simple template but with a lot of advantages: this will enormously help end many NPOV disputes. People usually forget these elementary rules. A template is an excellent reminder so people do not waste energy fighting but can work with more harmony using the First Things First habit. And most important of all, Wikipedia will really be of the highest quality, because people are focused on getting the works of the people of the highest expertise. Ran9876 06:34, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be better to create a Wikipedia namespace page devoted to expertise and get it promoted to a guideline, if not a sub-policy of WP:NPOV. Then, on talk pages, people can cite it to each other. I do think returning to policies and guidelines helps end NPOV disputes, but a template sounds clumsy. Melchoir 12:55, 24 March 2006 (UTC)


Optional Adwords on Wikipedia

I propose having two versions of the wikipedia page. Include a link in the main page that forwards the user to a version of the whole site with relevant adwords along the top or the side or something. Allow users to bookmark this site so they can use that version of the site all the time if they want to.

This way, people have a choice, ads or no ads. Wikpedia would be funded and everybody would be happy. Danny Beardsley 03:31, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

A valid proposal, since people here clearly have no qualms about others making money off their edits (or did they not notice all of the for-profit mirrors?). However, Wikipedia itself was supposed to remain adless, but this kind of "wrapper" by choice could fix that issue. --Golbez 03:54, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
This has been suggested before and some people, myself included, began to write a proposal regarding google adwords at User:NeilTarrant/PageAds. --Neo 13:31, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, then everybody who is interested in this idea, please have a look at the proposal and help complete it. Danny Beardsley 18:00, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I would say that adwords is theoretically possible, but it's practically impossible. I'll explain why: Adwords are words that are marked and linked to advertisements because they have a contextual value. Because how wikipedia is built, all words that have a contextual value, is already linked to another article, if the adwords take over those links, you wsill be somewhat unable to go to another article. If the original links are left, then the adwords is useless. →AzaToth 19:16, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
    I don't think that's what's being suggested here, I think they're suggesting Google Ads. Note "along the top or the side or something". Google calls these "adwords", but they aren't automatic inline links like some sites have (and I hate those). --Golbez 19:21, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Why on earth would anyone choose to look at adverts? Markyour words 19:42, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
If they thought the minor annoyance was in a good cause, like providing a small amount of financial support to Wikimedia. FreplySpang (talk) 20:02, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Exactly. It's possible this could bring in significant revenue. If it were available, I would enable it as an additional source of contributions. I've already sent a donation and there's a limit to how much I can send. I would assume other users that want to donate but can't afford the cash would also use it. The only legitimate reason I've heard not to have them is to avoid influence where google requires changes or censorship. It seems we could avoid that upfront. There has been no other response to my query about what objections there are to well done ads in some form. - Taxman Talk 16:18, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

The thing is why would an adword company want to fund a site with a no ad version? I mean after awhile I suspect they would start to relize what's going on. Deathawk 16:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Why would they care? They only pay for times the ad is actually viewed and the click throughs. It may not bring in a ton of revenue, but who knows or cares. As long as it is optional, some revenue is still a benefit. - Taxman Talk 16:47, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
It sounds as if you are suggesting an opt-out solution, where people who visit Wikipedia by default get pages with ads, but they can click on a link so that the ads go away (presumably only for the duration of that one browsing session, so that next time they visit Wikipedia, they get ads again, and must actively opt out again. Why not use an opt-in solution instead? That way, users can actively chose to view the with-ads version so that while they browse they continually micro-donate to the foundation. Of course, for this to work, payment really has to be per-view and not per click-through. Also, the ads cannot be embedded in the text, but should be at the top of the page and at the bottom, in a style somewhat similar to Google ad boxes. Thirdly for this to work well, we (Wikipedia) may need to include an "ad" ourselves, on the ad-free page, where we ask people to click on he "show ads" link. Doing that is advertizing, but then again so is asking for donations.
I forgot to sign the above. Sorry... --Peter Knutsen 03:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Oppose There are all sorts of "thin edge of the wedge" type of reasons, but in a practical sense, I think ads, and particularly AdWords-style text ads, undermine the encyclopedia using experience. The very fact of contextual, keyword-determined ads is a distraction to readers. They are designed to draw you from the chosen subject matter, to advertiser sites. It sets up an unwanted choice: do you click a wikilink to a related topic, or an ad to a related advertiser site? Some people don't even critically distinguish between AdWords and other links, they're just more possible links off a page. Selling reader attention and interest is not IMO harmonious with the larger goals of a free and open repository of knowledge. --Tsavage 21:35, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Idea for new citation style

I really don't like that the citations for an article are scattered about throughout the article's source code. The new footnoting system has a lot of shortcomings:

  1. They interrupt the article text a lot more than other styles. Instead of just having a fact followed by a little tag that leads to the footnote, the entire footnote is included inline, making the article text difficult to navigate in heavily-referenced articles (which we should be striving for, after all!)
  2. Editing the format of a reference requires finding where it is first cited in the article, instead of just editing the References section, where it appears visually. This is confusing (especially to newcomers) and inconvenient.
  3. Section editing is useless if you want to change references. You can't just edit the References section because that's not where the references actually are. You can't just edit the section that contains the reference since that's not where the rendered references are (so they won't show up in the preview). You have to edit and preview the entire article to see the change.
  4. Since they aren't centralized, it's hard to know if a reference exists already, leading to duplicates which then have to be merged manually.
  5. Additional references that aren't created with the extension, but added to the References section (as per WP:CITE) do not continue the numbered list.
  6. If a named reference is used in an article, and another reference to the same document is placed before that one, it doesn't work. You have to find the instance of the reference that contains the actual citation text, move it so that it's the first instance, then add a named tag to where it used to be. The text inside the first occurrence of the reference determines the displayed text and other instances are ignored. This is a huge pain.

I think the software should be changed so that the context of each reference is centralized in the actual References section, and the context of each particular fact is near that fact ("this fact is from page 34 of reference 2", etc.)

An additional idea is that when the references are generated, the "fact references" are a sublist of each list reference element:

References

  1. ↑ Bar, Foo (1587). Research into the inclusion of references in online encyclopedias.
    1. ↑ page 56
  2. R.L. Bar (April 30, 2005). Talking to your children about HTML addiction. URL accessed on July 6, 2005.
    1. ↑ pages 34–37
    2. ↑ Section 7.1: Table of baz

I've written it up (with a more detailed example) here: m:Talk:Cite/Cite.php#A different idea. Please comment. The chief objection so far is that the subreference styling wouldn't be consistent with the Chicago Manual of Style. — Omegatron 18:08, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

My objections to the chicago manual of style objection: 1. wikipedia is not paper. 2. appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, and a sucky one at that. who cares if it's not in a book? is that the point? the question really should be "is it helpful to the reader?" Kevin Baastalk 20:13, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

(partially copied from my comments on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style) No, the chief objection is that it's inflexible, difficult for the reader, and non-standard. The proposal has a number of flaws:
  1. It prevents combining footnotes, forcing multiple note numbers at a single point.
  2. It prevents the order of the notes in the article from matching the order of the notes in the notes section.
  3. It produces a combined notes/references section in a style that is used nowhere else, which is confusing for the reader.
  4. It makes changes to the article text that are beyond the control of the editors apparently making them.
  5. It makes little allowance for discursive notes, which now wind up in a "References" section for no apparent reason.
  6. It will break existing articles that use the cite.php extension.
It's only advantage, meanwhile, is that it forces the bulk of the citation information to the bottom of the article. This is not usually a problem if the footnotes are done properly in the first place; there is no substantial difference between <ref>Doe, ''My Book'', 57.</ref> and <ref name="Doe">p. 57.</ref>. So why exactly is it necessary to force an inflexible, non-standard style on everyone? Kirill Lokshin 20:15, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, regarding

  1. actually, it allows you to combine(group) footnotes under the source, instead of having the source listed again in each footnote. Or, if you want, you can simply choose to leave out the page number or what have you.
  2. this is true. the importance of notes maching in order vs. the increase in simplicity and categorization is a point to be argued.
  3. i don't see what is neccessarily objectionable about it not being used elsewhere at the time. when wikipedia started, it did not exist elsewhere. do you have some kind of aversion to novelty? I think that, contrary to being more confusing to readers, it is a simpler, clearer presentation of information. I imagine that this was the entire point to designing it.
  4. as does the wiki software, when it renders a page. the question is whether or not the editor wants this to happen. If it makes their life easier, and doesn't keep them from doing what they want to do, what's the problem?
  5. hmmm, i think in this respect it is not fundamentally different than the way it is done now. This is how references are supposed to work.
  6. how will it break such articles? As a programmer, I don't see how it modifies any of the cite.php code, or has any ramifactions thereof. it's a different tag structure. If it introducing a parsing conflict, the cite.php parser can easily be made more strict to accomadate, before implementing this alternative mechanism, or cite.php can be modified to handle both formats, or parse the old ones into the new one. Kevin Baastalk 22:07, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Forcing the bulk of citation information to the bottom of the article is not new. There are many pages that already use a slightly different manner of referencing. Since this is not new, it cannot be called an advantage. well if the footnotes are done "properly" in the first place, then how is this even an issue? However, most of the references are not done "properly" in the first place, because as the mechanism works now, it's an obstacle(distraction) to writting prose, which is fairly volatile in the first place. And to be clear, noone is forcing anything. One is simply suggesting to offer a tool that people can use if they want to, and not use if they don't. Tools are by their nature inflexible. That is what makes them usefull. (for instance, a clock tells time because the duration of its seconds are inflexible.) That it is not "standard"? It could very well become standard, depending on how often it is used. But what is neccessarily objectionable about this? With practical matters, we are concerned with practical considerations, not abstract notions. Kevin Baastalk 22:16, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

A few misunderstandings:
  1. Actually, I meant the citation of a single point from multiple sources. For example, while we can presently combine a set of footnotes like this1, 7, 12, 24 (which cites four sources) into a single footnote, this would no longer be possible under the new system, since each footnote would be associated with a particular source.
  2. Fair enough, but keep in mind that out-of-order footnotes are very difficult to deal with if the article is printed.
  3. By that token, should we abandon regular rules of grammar? ;-) Being a new method isn't bad in itself, but I don't think we should purposely be trying to break away from commonly-used style guidelines for formal English writing, at least not without a very convincing reason.
  4. But, except for a very few cases (subst:ing templates and the like), no further changes to the underlying wiki-code are made after an editor hits "Save page". Under this proposal, the content footnotes inserted into the article text would somehow be moved to the "References" section, in ways that may not be controllable or predictable in all cases.
  5. Yes, but currently we can create separate "Notes" and "References" sections, which would be impossible under this new system.
  6. See point 4.
Please note that most of my concerns would be removed if the functionality for raw footnotes—using unnamed ref tags, for example—were retained for the benefit of those who can adequately use it; but this proposal apparently involves breaking that existing functionality in order to force everyone to use this new system. Kirill Lokshin 22:20, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
  1. hmm.. I'm still not sure what you mean.
  2. maybe the "printable version" could render the footnotes in order, and the online version could categorize?
  3. we're trying to see if we can make something that has a convincing enough reason.
  4. I would say that it's pretty controllable and predictable. As a safety, if someone uses incorrect syntax, the citation parser could ignore it, or stop processing the page.
  5. We could have two systems. This is what we will have if we simply don't remove the current system.
  6. point 4.

I don't see any reason why this cannot be retained. Kevin Baastalk 22:32, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

  1. For example, suppose we cite "The sky is blue" from three different books: The sky is blue.<ref>Jones, 32.</ref><ref>Smith, 29.</ref><ref>Doe, 238.</ref>. This produces three superscript numbers at the end of the sentence, which isn't very neat. In the existing system, we can combine the notes (The sky is blue.<ref>Jones, 32; Smith, 29; Doe, 238.</ref>), but this wouldn't work under the new system, since the note would then need to be triple-filed under each of the three sources.
  2. Not sure how you would do that without breaking the blocked-together references apart. We can either have numerical-order footnotes or alphabetical-order sources in the "References" section, but we can't really interleave the two.
And yes, retaining the existing system would be the best way to go here, in my opinion; anybody who wanted to use this new format would be welcome to, and anyone who preferred doing footnotes by hand could still do so. Kirill Lokshin 22:40, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
  1. Ah, okay. I think it makes sense, from a architectural point of view, to have three superscripts, going to different sources, in the case of citations with multiple sources. But i also see how it make senses to reverse this.
  2. You would do this by breaking the blocked together references apart. The page would render the sources differently, renumbering them, etc. Kevin Baastalk 22:55, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

There remains an issue of consistency. It would be nice if users could choose how they want references/notes to be rendered, in their user prefences, like is done for date and time. (this would only work w/new format references) Kevin Baastalk 22:55, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you could break apart the blocked references; but it would require being able to parse both the full reference information and whatever text was in the actual footnote (which may or may not be a simple page reference) and then somehow combine them into a footnote that the reader can understand. While this would be a nice trick, I think it's a bit beyond the current scope of cite.php ;-) Kirill Lokshin 23:00, 25 March 2006 (UTC)


It can be a preference to view WP using either the US or UK spelling.

I know this might require excessive work on WP, but it can be set as a preference to view WP either in US or UK spelling to suit the preferences of some. It can, as always, be set in the Preferences menu, just like the dates. This can remove the need to revert edits of those who change the spelling of an article which is, say, written in USA or countries that use the US system or all about the United States. Do you agree? --Bruin rrss23 (talk) 02:42, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

It might be implemented using a special template similar to that used for Japanese writing (the name of which I don't remember offhand), or perhaps some kind of CSS statement? But it would definitely require an enormous amount of work, which makes me say that it wouldn't be worth the effort. Ingoolemo talk 02:49, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
No. There is no Académie française, English is not on life support, it is fri.--84.9.193.182 03:12, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
It's been proposed several times, with special templates or whatever, and would be way too much work for absolutely no benefit. — Omegatron 18:09, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Add Featured Article and Good Articles in Navigation Box

Proposal: add random featured article and good article in Navigation Box.

Why?

  • they are better than any random article. If the latter articles have their own special link for anybody, why not these?
  • they represent the best of Wikipedia: best foot forward
  • the two can coexist
  • it can attract more readers
I really like the idea of adding a link to WP:FA to the nav bar. I agree that it seems like a great way to put our best foot forward. However, the criteria for "good" articles are still rather new and fuzzy, so I'd suggest not doing that just yet. But highlighting the very best of our work, in the form of featured articles, seems very reasonable. Dragons flight 06:54, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I like it, too. Do it. ;) —Nightstallion (?) Seen this already? 12:22, 24 March 2006 (UTC)+
This may be a stupid question, but which navigation box are you talking about? --Mmounties (Talk) 12:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
The question isn't stupid at all, I was clueless at first, too; the "random article" part clued me in. What (s)he refers to is the box below the Wikipedia logo (or your equivalent, if you use an alternative skin) on the left, labeled "navigation"; the proposition as I understand it is to introduce a link "random featured article" between "random article" and "help". —Nightstallion (?) Seen this already? 13:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Ok. Now I get it. Yep, that sounds like a good idea. --Mmounties (Talk) 15:03, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Some possible options along these lines can be seen at the featured content portal. That page displays an 'article of the day' and 'picture of the day' (both 'featured') from a random date (which changes every sixty seconds). --CBDunkerson 00:18, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and added a link to Wikipedia:Featured articles to the Navigation bar (Mediawiki:Sidebar). If we want to use WP:FC (which I had never seen before just now) or some other more complicated option, we can of course change it. Dragons flight 00:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Happy to have contributed something to Wikipedia!
If I may just ask people to reconsider putting the Good Articles there as well.
Why?
  • It is consistent with the best foot forward principle. Readers usually have only a few areas of interest (geography, technology, art...). And if they do not find the list of FAs in their area of interest enough for their taste, they might find them in the Good Articles section. And in the end they may even help improve the article towards Featured Article Status. Thus we are in fact helping Wikipedia to keep on improving its quality. (I just above saw the need to stress quality over quantity) Ran9876 03:50, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
  • If the Random article link is there, the same question I asked above can still be asked, why not the Good Articles? I think the fact that dozens of zealous Wikipedians have not objected to the Good Article status of an article is I think solid basis. And if in fact it is not so good an article, attracting readers to them through the nav bar brings us back to the kaizen advantage I mentioned above. People usually have specific talents and interests. We will be drawing them in to put in what they know.
Just acting as gadfly...Thanks. Ran9876 03:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Cross-referencing "non-existant" articles with the foreign-language Wikipedias

Dear Editors and Administrators,

Often there is an article on a topic in one language but not in another, but Wikipedia does not tell its readers this. e.g., while reading History of Serbia there was a red link to Vlastimir, which means that you do not have an article on it. After some searching, however, I found that you actually have two articles on it, one in German at de:Vlastimir. But in most cases you do not know how to look for an article in another language, because it is usually spelt differently.

My suggestion is this: that for such topics where an article does exist in a different language from the one they are using, that you make this clear, so that when a reader clicks on the red link (or does a search) and is directed to the "Article not found" page, that you add a note on that page saying "however, the article you request IS available in the following languages," and you give a list of the links to those. Because after all, most people using the internet do speak a foreign language.

I hope my suggestion has been of use to you. Thank you for your attention.

Yours,

--Nic (a great fan of Wikipedia) 82.198.250.5 18:20, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Considering other language articles are often named/spelled differently, this could be more difficult than you might think. One thing that may perhaps be possible though is to advise users to try the other language article that relates to the one with the red link and see whether the equivalent link in there leads somewhere. --Mmounties (Talk) 04:19, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
The other way to do it is to Google for the article, but include "Wikipedia" in the search terms. Google is also more generous re caps and alt spellings. JackyR 23:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
What is very nice is what the Italian Wikipedia does for non-existing pages. Look at the nonexisting Italian page it:Freedom for an example: it links to searches in the English, German, French, Swedish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish Wikipedias. Maybe something like this would be good on this wiki as well. Kusma (討論) 19:58, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

One could translate the article that is being looked for, search for the translation on other wikis. It would be nice if by a red link, there would be superscripts to other language articles, like thisfr ge And possibly, in combination with #Port to other languages via google translator or similiar utility, those articles could be run through a translator). Kevin Baastalk 20:33, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

"Criticisms"

I find that most of these are used to post baseless negative opinions about something. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yngwie_malmsteen#Criticism is largely just a bash towards him. I have seen this in many other entries as well, but this is what seems to be the most blatant example of this. Is this allowed, and if so, why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Arch0wl (talk • contribs)

It should be allowed as long it is presented in a NPOV way (that is no assertion of truth is made). Counter-criticisms should be included where they exist.Loom91 08:55, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
The important thing is to actually attribute criticism to something beyond "Many critics", "some observers", etc. That kind of weasel wording is just junk. WP:V dictates that claims be cited to a reliable source anyway. Often you'll find that people can't really attribute criticism to being from anyone but themselves anyway, so problem solved. Genuine, published criticism does have a place in articles, even as we may not agree with the criticism personally. In the case you've cited, there are indeed a bunch of problems. The first paragraph looks okay, the second is unsourced, and the third is drawing novel interpretations of a primary source, which isn't okay. --W.marsh 19:26, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Specifically, you may be interested in Wikipedia:Criticism.

In addition to Wikipedia:Verifiability see also Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Wikipedia:Words to avoid#Article structures which can imply a view may also address the issue. Hyacinth 09:23, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

It is well known that the en.wikipedia is at this time the best one. Most of articles in other wikipedias are worse written then in English version. Having a link to English wikipedia helps non-English wikipedia users in several cases:

  1. to find quickly the more informative and better written article,
  2. to motivate non English wikipedians to translate well written English articles to other languages
  3. to prevent creating few articles on the same subject, specially when one English term has many possible translations – it is very common in computer science for example.

As there exist articles without links to any of other wikipedias (specially to the English one) it would be nice to have a tool for quick finding such articles, moreover it would be convenient to have a list for a requested category. Then each expert would be able to add lasting translations according to its field of interest.

I believe such a tool would improve a work on non-English wikipedias. Do you agree? Please let me know if such stuff exists. kuszi 01:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC).

You might be interested in this marvelous tool... Shimgray | talk | 01:14, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

"Most of articles in other wikipedias are worse written then in English version." A comment like that is very POV and wouldn't be allowed in an article. How can you then say that? Most? No, you have to say what % and say the source. Or else I could just as well say that en.wikipedia is huge, but % of quality articles for each 10,000 articles is higher in the smaller wikipedias. Just a different opinion. No way now to give more weight to your comment over mine now (in the absence of real data). --Anagnorisis 02:22, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. People also translate from other languages to en, not just from en. But ignoring this "en is the best" attitude, some kind of translation assistance SW/add-ons would indeed be very useful, especially in multilingual projects such as meta and commons, for keeping project namespace/help pages up to date. I don't know of any tools at the moment but I was mulling about it before sleeping last night... pfctdayelise (translate?) 03:30, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I started a thread below, before reading this, that I think is an extension of this one: #Port to other languages via google translator or similiar utility. Kevin Baastalk 20:34, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Would remove the need to manually click there prior to entering text. Another user suggested that this was discussed before but remained as it is so that users 'would not need to have use of a mouse'. Having the cursor default to the search box doesn't discriminate does it?! Bswee 23:46, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure something like this was mentioned elsewhere, but automatically focusing the search box would break my ability to scroll with the arrow keys in Firefox and Safari. Melchoir 00:21, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Agree with Melchoir. There is significant opposition to this proposal. I know I would find it incredibly annoying to have to click on the article each time I went to a new page just to be able to scroll it. — Knowledge Seeker দ 21:10, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't see any need for the cursor to automatically be in the search box every time a new page loads (although if it does, I almost always use the scroll wheel on my mouse, so it won't bother me). However, it would be quite useful if the cursor is "born" in the search box whenever the English Wikipedia main page loads. In 99% of cases when people go to that page, they go there because they want to enter a search term, rather than because they want to click their way through a hyperlink path to some destination.--Peter Knutsen 01:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
It would not be too bad on the main page only, but I really don't like it when websites do this, unless it is extremely likely that someone is going to do a search, like Google's main page. I have to click my mouse on the page everytime it reloads or I click on a link. Then I keep doing it out of habit when I go to a new website that does not do it. -- Kjkolb 02:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Notes and References

The new References tags are amazing, a godsend even. Is it possible to have a separate tag for footnotes, though? I've seen some articles use the <ref> tags for notes, but then that means that either you can't have references, or notes and references are jumbled together. By making footnoting automatic, it would make some things - like footnoting a huge table (*cough*) - much easier to handle. Any thoughts? Since we already have <references>, adding <footnotes> (with the corresponding tag being <note>, a la <ref>) shouldn't be too difficult. In fact, I think this is an awesome enough idea to beg for it. Please! ;) I mean, really, what's needed? Copy and paste some code, change ref to note, and voila. Instant HTML tags. Well, not quite, since it should probably do a superscript number without brackets? I dunno, do something to make it look different from footnotes, which are presently superscripted [1], [2], etc. thoughts? Apologies for rambling, it IS 4am and I meant to be in bed 3 hours ago. --Golbez 09:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Eh, someone could probably hack m:Cite/Cite.php to do it without too much trouble... Alphax τεχ 09:16, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't see the problem with using <ref> for notes. They are jumbled, but references and notes tend to overlap anyway. The links and numbering make it impossible for the reader to get lost. Superm401 - Talk 22:38, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I dunno, I can think of a few cases where you'd want footnotes and references to be separate. In a book, they're rarely combined. --Golbez 22:42, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Consider the case of footnoting a table, when the footnotes should appear below the table and not at the end of the article. — Saxifrage ✎ 08:56, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I've already suggested that the footnote numbers have the brackets removed. The original purpose was to make them more clickable, I believe, but this can be done just as easily with CSS.
I have suggested some other big changes, too. See #Idea_for_new_citation_style below, and m:Talk:Cite/Cite.php#A different idea for the full proposal. — Omegatron 18:16, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

reverse to the old look

On March 26th a Wikipedia appears with a new look: links are underlined, bullets are different, images are placed on different places. Also the navigation/search/toolbox bar is different. Of these - the different format of bullets/image location is making MANY articles to look WORSE than before. Not to mention that blue+underline is giving a much more "overcrowded" look to the links than the original wikipedia-blue-only. Let's revert to the regular style? Alinor 20:22, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I use Firefox mainly, and nothing has changed. However, on IE, I did notice that the bullets are much more indented in the sidebar and the images are rendering in the wrong spots. I mentioned it on the #WIKIPEDIA IRC and an admin is looking into it now. --Mets501talk 20:40, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I use Firefox as well and nothing has changed. Your copies of IE didn't just get updated, did they? — Saxifrage ✎ 21:41, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
No, I just loaded a new page on IE and it was all different. --Mets501talk 22:25, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
IE has NEVER rendered pages properly (they still don't support CSS properly a decade after it became a web standard), so minor imperfections in the rendering are to be expected. Cynical 22:29, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Check your skin and other settings under Preferences. It's possible that somehow your preferences have been reset.-gadfium 00:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


Edit summary

Have anyone have had a thought why you cant enter an edit summary when your are using section=new on submit? →AzaToth 20:00, 26 March 2006 (UTC)


New namespace Style:

I've just been glancing through the Manual of Style, and found that it's got at least 100 pages altogether. These, I feel, should be kept separate from the Wikipedia: namespace, since they're really different. Any opinions?--Keycard (talk) 08:24, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, there are over a million article namespace pages and we keep them all together. The project namespace ("Wikipedia:") includes policy proposals, essays, procedures and processes, cabals, parties, tribunals, and a whole bunch of stuff that should be in help namespace (but that's been pre-empted). Don't know if we need to break out a new namespace for 100 pages.
Namespaces are not organized by function so much as by relationship to the reader. Articles are of primary interest; it's our reason for being. We expect readers to go there for information. Project pages support the editing community in many different ways but in no way do we suggest that the general readership should expect factual information there. Image, template, and category namespaces are more functional in purpose but that's not for human benefit so much as for the MediaWiki machine. Talk namespaces -- one for each primary namespace -- are yet another step removed from the reader; these pages are where we talk about what we're doing on the "other" side. And user pages are specifically understood to be exempt from most guidelines governing even talk pages; they shouldn't really be mirrored or made public (although they are, so mind!)
In theory I agree with you and would take it much further. How about a different namespace for books? for films? for biographies? for geo-anything? Could we not have one namespace for standard-help (mirrored from Meta) and another for local-help? One for policy proposals and one for policy-dammit? Templates-for-article-content and templates-project-maintenance? (This would resolve the UBX issue finally; there would be a UBX template namespace and done with it.)
But in the end, it's probably not worth the bother. Developers will only ever do so much work and some new namespaces will require patching the machine; better to keep them working on more vital problems. There's already plenty of contention over the few namespaces we have ("You can't put that there!"). Many wikis do just fine with all of their pages in one file and sometimes I wonder if we oughtn't do the same. On second thought, status quo. John Reid 12:27, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
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