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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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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Page visits statistics

I'm somewhat surprised we don't have that, but seems like it isn't a perennial proposal. This requires small software modifications, but, of course, should be discussed here first.

Could we include a special page which would display statistics on how many times a specific page was visited, or at least include that stats in some way? This might be very helpful for considering AfD and especially RfD, so that one can see how often a specific article or term is accessed. As well it can help with deciding priorities, determining really useless articles, and generally would be a helpful tool. -- CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 00:59, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposed and rejected before. It would prevent the server from displayed cached pages if it had to count every time a page was accessed. —Mets501 (talk) 01:18, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Yup, not a perennial proposal, but please see Wikipedia:Very Frequently Asked Questions#Are page hit counters available?. MediaWiki supports it, but we can't run it here for performance reasons. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:22, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Seems like I asked a really lame question... yes, with caching it makes sense. But still some rough estimate would be useful, though it's harder to implement. It's most interesting not whether a popular page was accessed 100 or 200 million times, but rather whether some obscure redirect was accessed 1 or 100 times. Just a thought, though. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 01:38, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
There are many pages where i would like to know the number of hits. If the server can handle it, I think the feature should be re-enabled. Wikipedia runs as fast as any other site it seems. Tobyk777 03:59, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is in a continual struggle between more page hits and server resources. Anything that can be done to improve the site's responsive is worth actual dollars. Disabling the front-end squid caches because some folks want page hit statistics is extremely unlikely to be to considered to be a reasonable tradeoff. The servers (and there are, at this point, more than 200 servers that constitute "en.wikipedia.org") can't handle it. The servers don't even maintain some common logs for performance reasons. Imagine microsoft.com (or yahoo.com, or google.com, or any of the other top 20, by traffic, websites in the world). Imagine the ability to let anyone, anywhere in the world, update the content (in real time) of any page at this website. Imagine running such a website strictly on donations, in particular without the backing of any corporate entitiy, let alone a corporation that has a $10B+/yr income stream. Welcome to Wikipedia. Please don't whine about page hit statistics not being available. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:58, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
I think that your use of the word wine is daragatory and unecisary. I was merely stating that if the sever could handle it (and by what your saying obviously it can't) it would be a nice feature. Since it can't be done, oh well. Tobyk777 05:11, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
I apologize. I meant no offense, and reading my response I see it comes across fairly, let's say, sharp. You're perfectly correct that I should have used more neutral phrasing. Thanks for the reminder. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:22, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
...If we want to maintain precise statistics. But a very rough estimate could be implemented without notable load; I find this stat more important for rarely visited pages which probably aren't cached anyway. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 08:06, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

WikiVoices

I believe it would be useful to have volunteers make audio recordings of Wikipedia. This makes Wikipedia available to the blind (in a human voice). It also provides recordings that reflect and preserve the wonderful variety of American accents.

I am willing to volunteer and participate in this project.

Sincerely, Alan Cohen (email address removed to prevent eternal spamming) --Deon555talkReview 04:27, 22 August 2006 (UTC) ipolitics2006.blogspot.com

There is already such a project and it is ongoing. You can join up if you wish by simply uploading a recording of an article and link the recording to the article. --OrbitOne [Talk|Babel] 17:07, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia. We have a project working on it, and most featured articles have a spoken version. The list of spoken articles is Wikipedia:Spoken articles. There is also a proposal about video articles (some wikis, like BioCrawler, already have them, so we're far behind). CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 17:22, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Standardization of lists

I'm not quite sure if this is the best section for this, but here goes. I've noticed that the articles containing the countries' lists of municipalities (sorted in this category) do not follow the same patterns, having different titles, content and more. I am attempting to establish some standards for those particular lists, so I've created a discussion here. Anyone interested in debating the standardization proposal please join in. By the way, is there any Wikipedia forum where proposals for creating standards for similar articles can be discussed and implemented? I could not find anything of that kind. --Húsönd 21:54, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

We do have Wikipedia:List guideline, I'm not sure if that covers all you are interested in though, maybe it could be expanded if it doesn't. Martin 22:01, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. I was not aware of the existence of that page. It might prove useful indeed. Regards --Húsönd 22:30, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

There have been a few nominations recently on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates and Wikipedia:Featured list candidates that have falied because they aren't articles or lists. In fact, these pages don't really fall into any clasification of page. One such example is Sample chess game, which falied FAC for not being an article. This page could possily be "featured miscelanay", meanning especialy good pages which don't fall into any of the featured catagories. Other examples of pages that could possibly be featured miscelany are: Timeline of Stargate, September 11, 2001 attacks timeline for the day of the attacks. Does the community like this idea? Tobyk777 17:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Current Scientific Discoveries

Oh boy, I don't know about this, but here goes. There is apparently (unless I've missed it) no article, project or portal on Wikipedia devoted to current or ongoing scientific research findings/breakthroughs. Kind of a big gaping hole IMO. Now, developing such a thing is no small task; it would require informed contributions from people who keep abreast of the wide and deep scientific research world by reading the current literature in the various topical areas. It would however, be a great contribution. Please list yourself below and make any comments about how to go about it if you are at all interested in making this happen. Thanks! Jeeb 18:32, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure this wouldn't work better on Wikinews? On Wikinews, you can write an article about a specific study, rather than a concept or principle. (Articles about specific studies may exist on Wikipedia, but I'm pretty sure they're held to higher standards of long-term notability. NeonMerlin 23:36, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Current science and technology events is linked to at the top of Portal:Current events, and every other current events page. It seems to be updated more often then weekly, on average. I'm sure you'd be welcome to help make it even better.-gadfium 23:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
All are welcome to help with Current science and technology events. Just be mindful of the above comment about WikiNews. My interpretation of Current events is not to provide a kind of wire service, but to show-case other articles on WP that can give you background info on the news item or related subjects. "In the news" is obviously an outward-looking theme, but the content IMO should direct readers to our great (or soon to be great) content. Awolf002 23:57, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
It looks like the Wikinews Science and Technology portal is useful as a brief summary of recent findings. For highly important findings, inclusion into existing Wikipedia articles--in say a "recent developments" section--or creation of new articles dealing with the history of the subject might be warranted, accompanied by a headline in Current science and technology events directing the reader to the more substantial, and more inclusive, related article(s). Jeeb 15:00, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd be interested in proposing a policy recommending to everyone that edits scientifically-oriented articles that references should preferentially include the original sources rather than media reports about discoveries. Although they are certainly easier for the layman to understand, they're often misleading and innaccurate, especially in the case of mass media reporting studies on "hot button" issues (stem cells, common health risks, etc). Instead, I think reminding editors to seek out original sources particularly in these cases might bring readers to sites like PubMed, and the idividual sites of scientific journals which already contain extensive cross-references, track peer comments and responses, and don't misrepresent research. This may lessen the need for a separate Wiki project so to speak, as much of that work is already in place in the relevant places. CastleCraver walk the dog 15:06, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Go ahead and do this, if you want. In the thread of this discussion, where specifically "in the news" items are concerned, it is pretty obvious that those entries should reference the news article, and then link to the in-depth articles on WP that have all those references to the "real article," if possible. Awolf002 16:55, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Firefox/Google Toolbar bug warning template

I notice people are still affected by the Firefox/Google Toolbar bug which leads to unexpected truncations of long articles when editing ([1]). I know there is now a warning message on the top of edit windows when you edit long articles, but maybe it would be good to also have a warning template to be placed on editors' talk pages to inform them when they have fallen prey to the bug. Something like a Template:Google bug:

Hello, thanks for your recent contributions to [[{{{1}}}]]. Unfortunately, some text has been lost from the article through your edit. This is not your fault, but a known bug of your browser setup ([2]). When you work under Windows with Firefox together with the Google Toolbar, then whenever you edit a very long article the text may not be loaded fully in your edit window, and the article will be cut off at the end when you save. Please be careful when you edit long articles and preferably always edit just a section at a time until this bug has been fixed. For now, please wait a moment with further edits to this article until I have restored the lost content. Thank you, and happy editing!

What do you think? Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Except I don't think "whenever you edit a very long article" is good wording, just "when you edit a very long article" will do, since the qualification "may" follows. - Jmabel | Talk 03:20, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Move tab

I'm proposing that the 'move' tab be reworded to 'move/rename' in standard skins. This is to deal with the "How do I rename my page?" queries, new users don't see changes to capitalisation or individual words in a title as a move, and so cut-and-paste and redirect. 'move' should be retained - it is an appropriate description and it's heavily embedded in the documentation; replacing it outright would be too disruptive. An alternative would be to add an additional tab named 'rename' but I don't see any advantage in this. If this gets any sort of support, changing to 'move/rename' is a minimal disruption (except for those who've added a multitude of their own tabs, they can modify their own skins back if they need the real estate). Anyway, it seems like a good idea to me, thought I'd put it up for consideration. Cheers Clappingsimon talk 21:29, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Changing it to "rename" might be okay. But these labels have to be kept short - on an average-width browser, many users already have tabs going off then right side. Let's not make them any wider. Deco 22:11, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

New messege template

Many users, as myself, added the new messege box at the top of their user page to trick other users to belive that they have a new messege and click the link inside the box.

Although the div classes already exist for the box, I am thinking of creating a template for the box.

For instance, this:

<div class="usermessage plainlinks"><div class="plainlinks">You have '''<font color=002BB8>[http://www.google.com new messages]</font> (<font color=002BB8>[http://www.wikipedia.org last change]</font>).'''</div></div>

Will be replaced with this:

{{new_messege|http://www.google.com|http://www.wikipedia.org}}

Both will result in this:

You have new messages (last change).

Do you support/oppose the idea?

Michaelas10 14:20, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you're serious, but this is going to end up as flamebait. There was a thread recently on VP by people who hate all such "trick" boxes and want them to die with great conviction, which is quite the opposite of making them easier to produce. You'd face a TfD if you made that. Deco 15:01, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
There is no rule against it, it's all humour. Besides, it won't change much as the users who want that in their user page will probably add it anyway. -- Michaelas10 15:11, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Please focus, we are here to build an encyclopedia. Joelito (talk) 15:27, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
It has nothing to do with the encyclopedia, it's for the user pages, such as the userboxes and many other templates users use. -- Michaelas10 15:41, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
"It has nothing to do with the encyclopedia" exactly. Martin 15:43, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Add one to the "want trick messages to die a horrible death" list. AnonEMouse (squeak) 15:35, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Add me to the "want trick messages to die a horrible death". Oh, and to "salt the earth" too... -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 15:49, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Please guys, it is not a discussion about if the trick messeges are needed, it is a discussion about a template for them. I don't think it is promoting the use of trick messeges anyhow. -- Michaelas10 15:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
"Many users, as myself, added the new messege box at the top of their user page to trick other users to belive that they have a new messege and click the link inside the box." - And you consider it to be the right thing to do, and want us to help in spreading the practice? Why don't you suggest a template for making quick vandalism, or quick personal attacks?
We've recently discussed whether such unfunny tasteless jokes or their users should be banned. Well, I don't support such measures - a fake box is to be countered by a fake sentence. If you're open to community suggestions, I'd suggest to remove that box and think about something more original and not just disruptive. Like, say, a warning telling that you are suspected to be visitor's sockpuppet. Well, just something more funny. -- CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 16:06, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Maybe I should.. Would you support it? -- Michaelas10 16:23, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Only on Uncyclopedia... And here it would be more funny and less disruptive (and much harder to figure out how to implement). There are many ideas for good jokes, just don't pick the simplest one. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 16:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Colours

Hello, Could you please add your opinion (or voice your support or a opposition) at this page.

It could decide the fate of colours in not only episode infoboxes but, nav boxes, celeb boxes.. (The bars in between episodes guides..) etc. MatthewFenton (talk • contribs) 10:49, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Nobody's arguing there that we shouldn't use color for anything. This is a discussion of a specific implementation of customizable color in a specific infobox. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 10:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

uplode kennelly crest

Will someone please uplode a kennelly crest, the copey rite is to much for me to under stand? JosephK19 06:43, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what do you mean by saying kennelly crest, could you please explain it? Anyway, I converted the Kennelly page to a disambiguation page and it may now be found at Kennelly (disambiguation) -- Michaelas10 14:34, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
There is no such thing as a "Kennelly crest". British and Irish coats/achievements of arms belong to individuals, not to families. And they are copyrighted. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:41, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Folders within watchlists?

I'm pretty new here (and am writing at 2:15am) so this might not be such a great idea but anyway... I was thinking that perhaps we should allow users to create folders within their watchlists so that different projects can be filed separately rather than being all thrown in one messy list. By all this I mean that someone could have one folder with Military History articles in it, another with Music etc etc. I have no idea if this is technically feasible but I just thought it might make the lives of editors who are working on several projects a bit easier because they could just jump into one folder and have all the articles in one place, unlike the current system. I welcome all feedback on this idea, thanks to all in advance! --Hydraton31 01:15, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Now that's not a bad idea... --Golbez 02:24, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I would LOVE that. I wonder who this idea should be pushed up to. Agne 06:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I think it could be solved wihtout changes in the software. First, create as many subpages of your user page as you need different folders (Military history, music...). Add in each folder links to articles you want to watch. And finally click the Related changes link. CG 09:39, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
That solution is beautiful, props CG. I've thought about something like this but didn't see the elegant solution. --Nscheffey(T/C) 20:29, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
The only problem with that solution is that you have to manually maintain the lists. Otherwise it works well. -Will Beback 20:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Also, unlike watchlist, you need to specify both the article page and its talk page to include both. --hydnjo talk 23:31, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd say this is a great idea and I'll probably start using it myself (if I find the time!) and now we just need to publicise this somehow, no idea where to put the tip though... Also, it is less easy (think of the newcomers!) than simply having a 'create folder' button in the watchlist page. Still it's a great idea, thanks CG! --Hydraton31 23:56, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
It's in the help system, at Help:Related changes. Of course, unless you already know it's there it may be difficult to find (although it is already mentioned at Help:Watching pages). -- Rick Block (talk) 02:24, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Lol, I came up with this idea some weeks ago. I didn't know it was already mentioned in help :-) CG 10:11, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Unique Identifier

I propose to create a Unique Identifier (UID) for any Word / Concept of Wikipedia. The UID is unique only for a Language (english, french, etc.) but the same UID identify the same word either in english either in other languages. For example the color word: RED (en) = ROUGE (fr) = ROSSO (it) = UID:1234. This can be usefull to link more efficently concepts and words between different languages. --151.28.245.49 11:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC) Marco Cattaneo

Unfortunately this would require a rather extreme overhaul of the basic construction of Wikipedia's vast database. Not to mention the difficulty it creates with redirects, splitting of topics, and other such changes, for no apparent serious benefit. Fagstein 14:15, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
You might want to check out m:WiktionaryZ for some current development along these lines. I think "unique identifier"="defined meaning" but I could be mistaken--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 02:17, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Also, a word in one language can be overloaded to several words in another language. For instance, the word "sorry" in English has two completely differant translations in Spanish, one for apology ("desculpa me", it is my fault) and one for commiseration ("lo siento", I feel it). Branciforte3241 04:43, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

The m:WiktionaryZ is interesting! Is big the overload of work to do for syncronize all the wictionaries (or wikipedia in all the languages)! Probably we must create a universal dictionary of concepts (with link to language dictionaries) The benefit is a multilanguage dictionary usefull for online translations, but also for "iterative searching applications" on a multilanguage knowlewde base ("parrallel search on multiple languages"), a solution of proposal n.42 "Improving Results by Language", etc.

About the multiple translations of a word... It is possible to assign a UID with subclass for example: sorry(1)="desculpa me"=UID:1000.1 sorry(2)="lo siento"=UID:1000.2 It's more difficult to do, I known, but I think that the benefits allow to create a new knowledge layer. 151.28.239.179 12:23, 17 August 2006 (UTC) Marco Cattaneo --Mrcatwiki 12:45, 17 August 2006 (UTC) (now I have a login!)

Intervention Cabal/Council

This would act as a central clearinghouse, where disputes would be referred to the appriopriate resolution method(s). This will not be an official group.

Effects;

1. Faster dispute resolution

That was a comprehensive, well thought-out, and articulately expressed proposal. I thank you for it, and await further works in the future. --Golbez 02:28, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Enforce inclusion of categories

I have made a proposal to change the software to require inclusion of categories in all non-redirect pages in the article, image, template, portal, and category space. Please review the proposal at Wikipedia:Enforce inclusion of categories and discuss on that proposal's talk page. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:27, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

This proposal will make things difficult for newcomers writing their first article, who don't have sufficient knowledge of categories (how to add them, and which categories should be included). Perhaps uncategorized articles should automatically be added into the uncategorized category. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:08, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Polling, polling, polling... on some ideas that came up in the discussion. bd2412 T 22:26, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

New Section On Article Content Policy

I propose a new section, maybe on Village Pump, somthing like the Signpost, but wherever it's relevent, where this section lists word choice for article content. This section, would list, for example: 'Instead of using 'craftsman' or 'craftsmen' in articles, use 'craft worker' or 'craftsperson.'. Another example: 'Do not use the word: 'Indian' to refer to indigenious peoples of the Americas, because 'Indian' most appropriatly refers to a person from or of India.'. This new section would also say help and say that people who come across this section, & people who find errors like listed in said section would correct them. It also has the power to be cited, in discussions, for example: in talk pages, where people blue link, for example 'WP:NPOV' or 'WP:MOS'.100110100 20:38, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Your example is not a good one. What of when the word is appropreate to end in 'man' and not 'person' or 'people', like Lineman (football)? Its otherwise an exercise in attempting to enforce political correctness on wikipedia, which is not always a good thing to be doing. Kevin_b_er 20:41, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
In the section, it would explain how and what to avoid. If the article is India & they were talking about the inhabitants of India, I think I would be appropriate to call them Indians!100110100 20:53, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
"craft worker"? Dear god, if ever there was a horrible reformation of a perfectly good work it's that... Shimgray | talk | 20:43, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
?100110100 20:53, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Such suggestions are more appropriately made at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style or Wikipedia talk:Words to avoid, where their inclusion in the guidelines would then be considered. VP is never citable. Deco 20:45, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but the examples I made, like 'WP:STYLE' or 'WP:WWIN' are citable. HHmmm, well Wikipedia talk:Words to avoid doesn't lets the words to use, or words to use instead. Does Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style do that? Still confused, let me know, 100110100 20:53, 16 August 2006 (UTC).100110100 20:53, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Improving Results by Language

I'm a frequent user of wikipedia, and quite often go back and forward between nl.wikipedia.org (dutch) and en.wikipedia.org. Simply because the english version is more elaborate on certain items. Or because the dutch version just doesn't exist yet. This is no surprise, it's a rather logical result of bigger numbers.

However, all the separate languages aren't implementing each other. If the results would also show "more search results in other languages" for example, it would seriously enhance the information results for each language.

This could be obtained by linking universal words, and making a word list that redirects the other words to their language counterparts. In the end, you might even end up with a global "wordlator", which would be a nice 'side effect'.

Qwika already performs such as search : [3]. JoJan 15:51, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

monospace input

I'd like to propose that the following CSS be added to the appropriate files: 

*/
textarea#wpTextbox1, textarea#wpUploadDescription, input#wpSummary, input#wpDestFile, div.fonttest {
font-size: 10px;
font-family: "Monaco", monospace;
}

This would force the edit text area and the summary field to use monospaced fonts. Browsers like Safari don't use monospace fonts in input fields by default. I've been testing it on my monobook.css. Thoughts? Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 03:56, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can figure the optimum setting for Monaco is "Monaco 12 Plain", but I don't know the CSS declaration for that. I'm still working on other monospace fonts to see what their best settings are. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 04:36, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Take out the size restriction to allow the size to fit whatever text is there. And do we really need the edit summary box to be fixed-width? Fagstein 06:37, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm using a size restriction in Monaco to enforce the use of the bitmap version instead of the vector version. Bitmapped fonts are cleaner and easier to read in editors. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 09:33, 10 August 2006 (UTC)


Moved to subpage sidebar redesign. Hopefully I didn't miss anyone's comments. --gatoatigrado 21:26, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Chronoline: A dynamic and customizable chronological timeline for Wikipedia.

Project name - Chronoline: A dynamic and customizable chronological timeline for Wikipedia.

1. Description

Browsing encyclopedias, I once had a dream. That would be to have a custom chronological timeline displaying only items you have read. That timeline would be YOUR unique timeline. You should be able to incorporate in it only items you know. With this tool, you would see all at once how your favorite composer, scientist, artist, period, political movement, etc... relate to each others. Since it is well known that science, society and arts are strongly tied, such a timeline would constitute a very valuable intellectual tool to explore those linkages.

2. Implementation

How could it be implemented to Wikipedia? By clicking on the timeline, you would of course go back to the original article. Items could be added to the timeline in two ways: - Automatically. All the items consulted by a logged-on user would be added to the timeline. - Manually. The user will have to click on a tab: "add this item to my timeline". The user should be able to use the methods he prefers.

How would be items incorporated to the timeline? There is the problem that each (or almost each) item in Wikipedia would have to have a date (ex: 1789, French revolution), or a time interval (ex: someone's date of birth and death). Given that work done, it will be easy to automatically add an item to the timeline. Furthermore, the category of the item would automatically organize the timeline. For example, by domains (arts, sciences, politic, etc...), persons, etc...

Information overload. There is obviously the risk that the timeline would become unreadable because of too many items on it. There is however two ways to soften this problem. One is to allow no limit to the size of the timeline. So, it would just grow in size, not in confusion. The other is with the possibility to add viewing filters to the timeline.

Technical difficulties. I guess that there are many excellent programmers who already can't wait to tackle those challenges ;)

It is certainly some work, but I hope that I've convinced you that this project has the potential to enrich considerably the encyclopedia experience. As usual, comments, improvements, and discussions are very welcomed.

Clément Vidal.

By "a timeline for Wikipedia", I thought you meant a timeline of Wikipedia development and milestones. I would support that idea, as that would show how Wikipedia has grown, and display the dynamic nature of Wikipedia. In addition, we could see how little ideas from users could develop into established Wikipedia process. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:33, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Although planning projects with timelines and milestone is of course very valuable, that's not at all what I meant! I'm thinking about a historical timeline (see for example that one [4]). But the one I'm suggesting wouldn't be fixed, but customizable by the user. --Clementvidal 15:29, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
We have timelines built in already, though the syntax is not the easiest:

Ediacaran PaleoproterozoicMesoproterozoic

HadeanArcheanProterozoicPhanerozoic

— Omegatron 16:10, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Great! Sorry for not having been able to fully check its existence in wiki syntax. However, I wasn't suggesting just timelines. But automatically customized timelines. The idea would be to have timelines created with the least possible effort from the user (for e.g. what I suggested above ""add this item to my timeline""). A nice functionality would be to be able to scale (zoom in and out). A time scale should also be predefined, so that different timelines would be compatible.
So, do you think this extension would be valuable? Doable? --Clementvidal 00:30, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it would be helpful. Unfortunately, around here, you kind of have to write the extension yourself if you want it done, and then convince other people it should be included in the software. — Omegatron 15:34, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
What Omegatron said. Plus this idea is a fairly fundamental dream application: Dynamic/interactive/informative data-representation methods; Animated Tuftian fugues; Autogenerating concept maps. Even just multiple more layers for google maps (elevation, pollution, historical, etc) would be nice. Dream on, dear sir. Dream on (for now :) --Quiddity·(talk) 09:51, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
To Omegatron. My problem is clearly that I don’t have the knowledge and experience for writing such an extension. However, I think the idea is precise enough to make the project operational. That's why I was seeking for feedback here, hoping to find somebody as motivated as me, and with complementary competences to really implement this idea.
To Quiddity. In its final form, yes, it may look like a dream. However, I really think we have all the technology to make it work. And it's not so fanciful. Here "dynamic" would basically mean that you can add/delete some events to your timeline; "interactive" wouldn't mean more that the timeline items would be linked to articles in Wikipedia; and of course it would be "informative", by the presentation itself. --Clementvidal 10:11, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

And what about this Javascript application [5] ? Now integrating timelines to wikipedia seems to be only a matter of choice ;) --Clementvidal 08:33, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

My problem is clearly that I don’t have the knowledge and experience for writing such an extension.

I know. I don't have the knowledge and experience to write any of the extensions I want, either.  :-\

However, I really think we have all the technology to make it work.

We certainly have the technology, we just need someone to write it and then need to convince others to implement it. I've had a similar proposal for dynamic, easily editable tables since January 2005, but until someone writes it, it won't happen. I have plenty of other ideas, too. — Omegatron 02:54, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Indicating the Probable Accuracy of References

As a solution to the problems of trust associated with online/editable sources I've been working on a way of providing accuracy information passively to readers. This consists of highlighting referenced material with dotted underlines shaded to show source confidence. This provides passive feedback in much the same way that italics show emphasis.

Built (currently) as Firefox plugin / server application it will collate track records & user input to generate a confidence factor. Readers can use this, while scanning a document, to pick out those elements that are more/less likely to be true (note difference from actually stating true/false). In the Wikipedia sense this would differentiate text from quality, trusted, editors & that added as vandalism or misinformation.

Obviously this is something outside the remit of Wikipedia, but I'd be interested to hear what the community thinks of the idea in theory & how it might end up working in practise. Bad & good. Thankyou. --Mafitzpatrick 11:13, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

How will accuracy be determined? This will create more work and backlog. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:10, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Atalaya

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities.

Discussion

Just a small comment. I really like wikipedia and I don't mind donating money to the foundation. But to pay to be able to edit? Even if it just for a name authentication, no way. Plus I like my anonymity. :) Garion96 (talk) 19:59, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
It would be cool if the verification of identities didn't cost money -- I figured a user would have to at least pay the cost of the verification, but maybe companies could offer to do it for free, like Yahoo's donation of hosting. --Ben Houston 20:59, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
My contributions 1700 edits and over 100 photographs (on commons) would not have occured if there was a fee payably to be apart of the communtiy. I am particularly suspicious of non-local organisation who ask for money where I dont have the protection of and recourse via the local legal system. I reside in an open western democracy and do not have the additional worries of potential censorship and political concerns that are prelevant in other societies where the information provided to wikipedia maybe protected but the method of payment isnt, guilt by association would be presumed. The vandals may consume considerible amounts of time and resources but this expense is by far out weighed by loss of alternative POV's and the protection of the freedom for people from other societies to contirbute. Gnangarra 04:48, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
And we can longer expect editors to assume Good faith if we cant act in good faith on first contact. Gnangarra 08:05, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
And, after all, it is "Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia That Anybody Can Edit". Doing that would eliminate half of Wikipedia's slogan. :P Viva La Vie Boheme 15:46, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I've recently heard some good arguments that WP is not anonymous enough - that the status gathered by usernames creates assymetry in discussion. I'm not sure if I agree with this, but in any case there are definitely two sides to this. Deco 20:44, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Current proposals

proposal #1

blah blah yada yada --sig July 20, 2005

yabba dabba doo --othersig July 21, 2005

proposal #2

lorem ipsum semper ubi sub ubi --sig july 25, 2005 |} Having subpages would also make it easier to archive proposals and keep everything neat and organized. Also, I feel that every reasonable proposal should be easy to find, not just the "perennial" ones. As it is now, I might make a proposal that was already made two years ago, but not know it because it wasn't listed on the P.P. page.

One disadvantage is that it would be harder to watchlist the multiple subpages for archived proposals, but this could be worked around with a Recentchangeslinked page. On the other hand, it might be a good thing to have subpages for archived discussion ... if I don't want to see what other people are gabbing about in regard to vandalism, I don't have to.— Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 21:45, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

That would make this page more like a forum. One disadvantage, however, is that it will not inherit the usability of forums, and the wiki markup will be decidedly newcomer-unfriendly. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 12:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
My proposal isn't to put the current proposals on subpages, but to put old proposals onto subpages categorized by subject. The idea is to keep old proposals more accessible, not to make a new subpage for every single proposal that is made. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 20:16, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Calculator

This is supposed to be the sum total of human knowledge, so how about a calculator function in the search window, that would follow something like this format: Calc:3*12.7. I know it would require a dramatic software change, and I know most computers have a calculator function, but any way this could be achieved would be a step closer to universal knowledge. AdamBiswanger1 17:07, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Why, when Google already has a very powerful calculator? No use reinventing the wheel. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 18:52, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Well I suppose that dictionary.com is 100x more reliable than Wiktionary, one can find most of the primary sources on Wikisource on Google. The periodic table is online plenty of places, so why include it on Wikipedia? It is more of an idealized effort to include information on all branches of human knowledge, regardless of what else is on the internet. AdamBiswanger1 19:28, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not meant to be the sum total of human knowledge. It's an encyclopedia, and there is lots of factual information we leave out (phone listings, baseball box scores, etc.) There's no reason for the answer to 134*897 to be in an encyclopedia. Andrew Levine 23:09, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Why the harsh response? Do you see any harm in including a calculator, or do you simply want to conform to the rigid definition of "encyclopedia" for mere principle. There is certainly something wrong with including "phone listings and baseball box scores", and those comparisons are absurd and entirely irrelevant to the argument. Wikipedia is a place where people get answers, and anything in the field of academia should certainly not be excluded. AdamBiswanger1 01:30, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
We need to stay focused. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, "a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge." A calculation tool falls outside this scope. The harm would come from the fact that it'd consume valuable developer and test time when they should be more focused on tools that would make Wikipedia a better encyclopedia. Nobody is going to think to go to an encyclopedia to get an answer to 134*897, because an encyclopedia isn't a logical place to go for that... so why would our developers waste time on this? -/- Warren 04:26, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
What operating system has a web browser and doesn't have a calculator? --John Nagle 04:30, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I think all the benefits of having our own calculator can be achieved by having WP:RD/MATH link to Google's calculator help page. If wiki editing required specialized calculators, we could consider hosting them at the toolserver, but I don't think it does. SeahenNeonMerlin 18:28, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I feel like this is the Nay sayers lounge. IT's not necessary, but it would be easy to do, and I see no reason why not AdamBiswanger1 04:12, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

World map

I was wondering about the plausability of some sort of Wikipedia Atlas, where simply clicking on the country links to the article. I've created a (very rough) proof of concept at User:Smurrayinchester/Map (only Iceland, England, Wales and Scotland have been set up so far). smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 12:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

That does seem to work quite well, though it will break down when the geography gets a bit more unusual. Your version does seem quite a bit better than my own somewhat functional clickable map prototype at Wellington Street. - SimonP 20:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, there will always be geographical areas where control is contested or controversial (Taiwan and Israel being two contemporary examples). But that's unavoidable and we'd just need a policy to deal with it consistently like every other group in the world (particularly the map makers).
It's also important to recognize that a map is a snapshot in time. Add a slidebar at the bottom or some other interface that allows one to change the date and the map change, too, and then you'd have a really cool tool. Add some way to explain why the map changes over time (grey zones for areas in dispute which link to the article describing the dispute?) and you've got a real winner. --ElKevbo 04:21, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Your proof of concept is quite elegant! — Reinyday, 14:49, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
brilliant, but it has to be something anyone can edit, and it must not be the only means to access the same information, per accessability. nonetheless Wikipedia is not paper, and so paperlike indexes shouldn't be the only kind. Good luck making it editable.(revertable shouldn't be too hard though) i kan reed 20:00, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I like this idea, is there anyway to build a wikipedia search into something like Google Earth so that the user can zoom into towns, villages even buildings? (Yorkshiresky 12:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC))

There are templates that can be put into articles that use coordinates to show the location on maps and aerial photos. == Donald Albury(Talk) 21:09, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I created a Portal:Atlas which I will develop into a WikiAtlas. Electionworld (prev. :Wilfried) (talk 07:52, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Auto-delete redirects to deleted pages?

I've been looking through the Special:BrokenRedirects page and fixing a few, and I note there are quite a few redirects to pages that have themselves been deleted. If a page is completely empty, just a redirect to a page that has been been deleted, then I think we should be able to automate the deletion of the redirect pages, or at least bot the addition of the speedy deletion template to those redirect pages. Comments? RainbowCrane 21:13, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

If someone vandalistically changes the target to a non-existent page, then automatic deletion wouldn't make sense. Ardric47 07:18, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Protect MANY MANY pages from moves

There are many many articles on this encyclopedia that can't possibly be legitimately moved, and that have a title that is purely set in stone and not subject to change. Examples include Wikipedia, France, United Kingdom, Nintendo 64, and lots more. There just isn't any reason for any of these such pages to be moved. Pages that should be open to moves include current events such as Ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, which might soon find itself a new name as the event develops. Another example of pages that should not be protected from moves are articles of products in development that are subject to name changes, such as Nintendo Revolution and Windows Longhorn. But articles such as North Carolina or Star Wars need not ever be moved. --How dare you? 02:49, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

The bottom line is that pages should only be moveable if there is the possibility that their title may need change. Pagemove vandalism is extremely vile and cannot be reverted by automated bots. --How dare you? 03:01, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but typical pagemove vandals don't particularly care which page they move, as long as it's prominent. There will always be prominent topics of uncertain name (the news section of the main page usually links to one). Deco 03:09, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
Well the point of this matter is that if any article that has a purely fixed title (i.e. Spain) is protected against moves, page move vandals will have a harder time trying to find articles to move to inappropriate names, and for articles that should allow moves (such as the still-in-production Super Smash Bros. Brawl - which could change its name), more resources (or even bots) could be placed on them. --How dare you? 14:32, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
A harder time? There are over a million articles in Wikipedia. They would only need to press the Random article button a few times to find one. The problem with locking pages on a wide scale is that you rigidify Wikipedia so that it can't readily adapt to changes in the world, or evolve in general with improvements in its design. It's very difficult to predict where innovation will take us or which of our assumptions will prove to be false. It's best to keep Wikipedia fluid. --Nexus Seven 03:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Well keep in mind this proposal is only to make a mass-protect of articles from moves, and these articles in no way would be semi or fully protected from editing. Yes, Wikipedia is designed to be changed on a rapid basis, but change for the better cannot be done by moving such articles such as Mongolia. --How dare you? 21:34, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:citing Wikipedia as a source

I think we should have a page to this effect because many users want to cite wikipedia as a source for a research paper, and it's hard due to the wiki-constantly-changing nature of the encyclopedia. I see Encarta and Encyclopædia Britannica have it adn Wikipedia doesnt, to my knowledge. However, it's easier to cite Encarta or Brityannica then Wikipedia, because they are largely static resources. ~ c. tales *talk* 04:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

How do you cite a particular revision? Just in case they click on the link and see a vandalized page. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 05:59, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
You can find links to individual versions on the history page. Fagstein 06:18, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
One of the things about Wikipedia's verifiability policy is that Wikipedia shouldn't be an original source for anything. So instead of sourcing Wikipedia, should people not source the originator of the material? Fagstein 06:18, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. User:Zoe|(talk) 16:47, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

solve British/American problem: use browser's language preferences to return a page in the appropriate style of English

(NB I considered putting this down in the "perpetual proposal" section, but AFAIK, no one has actually proposed what I'm suggesting, other than a parenthetical remark by someone in gasoline vs. petrol to do something to this effect.)

I'm aware that the subject of British vs. American English comes up a lot, and invariably leads to heated arguments, if not flames. This is especially true when dealing with titles for concepts that have a different normal term in the U.S. vs. in UK. Recently there's one of these monstrous debates going on on in Cat flap, since "cat flap" is a UK term that's unrecognized by US speakers, but all proposed replacements (e.g. "pet door") are rejected as US-only. Gasoline/petrol had an especially scorching one (sorry ... :-), but I could also mention aluminum/aluminium, airplane/aeroplane, I'm sure many others.

Why not simply allow Wikipedia to serve different content for a page depending on browser preference? My browser (MSIE v6) passes in a line something like

HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE: en-us

which unambiguously identifies me as an American English speaker, not a British English speaker. A page like "gasoline/petrol" could be set up, essentially, as a page with two titles, "gasoline" and "petrol", and the appropriate title is chosen and returned based on the the reader's language, as revealed through the browser. (If no such info is available, we could make a reasonably good guess most of the time based on the country of the IP address the request comes from.) That is, a British or Australian user following a link labeled either "Gasoline" or "Petrol" would get to the "Petrol" page, and "Gasoline" would appear as a redirect to "Petrol"; for US and Canadian users, the situation would be the opposite.

A similar trick could be used to affect spelling, so you get "color" in the text of an article if you're an American, but "colour" if you're a Brit. However, the most important thing to handle properly is not individual words but article titles, so as to prevent the unending-and-never-will-end-either debates and hostile back-and-forth moves over whether to use this or that term, or pick some neutral but artificial term (e.g. "Fixed-Wing Aircraft" vs. "Airplane" or "Aeroplane"). I have a few concerns about implementing this to handle normal spelling issues in text (the color/colour problem), so it should first be done with titles in mind.

I'm not exactly sure how to implement this, but maybe a tag something like

{{dialect|USType=gasoline|UKType=petrol}}

which expands to either 'gasoline' or 'petrol'. 'USType' and 'UKType' are predefined aggregates of countries. It would also be possible to specify a single country (e.g. en, de according to standard abbrevs) or a list of them, and in case of conflict, those later in the list override those earlier in the list; hence you could do something like

{{dialect|USType=gasoline|ca=gasgasgas|UKType=petrol|AUType=fosters|INType=petrollie|bd=petrullie}}

This last one I'm totally making up, but the idea is that I can specify that the word "gasoline" is used in countries that speak US-style English, but override this specifically for Canada, if I happened to believe that Canadians called gasoline "gasgasgas". Similarly, I can have "petrol" as the (default) value for places speaking UK-style English, but I can override this for Australian-style English (taken here as a subset of UK-style English), and also override it for Indian-style English, another subset of UK English; finally, I can override Indian-style English and specify a particular value just for Bangladesh, which falls with the "INtype" group.

The {{dialect|...}} tag would have to appear inside of the article's title, somehow or other; some software support would be needed to handle this.

Also, you could use the same tags, this time placed inside the text. e.g. if you wanted the article itself to say "petrol" whenever its title is "petrol" and "gasoline" whenever its title is "gasoline", you could create a {{dialect|...}} structure as above, then give short aliases to the whole structure -- at least two of them, one called {{petrol}} and the other {{gasoline}}, of course :) To make the text work properly, all you'd really have to do is go through and replace all occurrences of petrol and gasoline with the appropriate {{...}} enclosed versions.

You could use the {{dialect|...}} tags handle longer pieces of text -- e.g. you might want the intro sentence to look slightly different for gasoline vs. petrol, in ways that are more than just the ordinary petrol vs. gasoline usage.

An alternative that you might want to consider is to have some sort of "global substitution" declaration in the article, saying e.g. "the word "gasoline" should automatically be treated as {{gasoline}} wherever it occurs, hence it may appear to the user as `petrol'. Then you'd need some other way of countering this, declaring that for a particular use of "gasoline" (e.g. I'm discussing the use of the different terms in different situations, or noting their etymology; I'm talking about a song called "Gasoline"; etc.), I mean what I say, and changing it to "petrol" is not acceptable. However, this way of doing things violates the principle of least surprise, since someone far away from this dispute might get confused to find out a word was getting changed inappropriately to some other word in ways he didn't understand; so I'd be strongly against this unless someone can really articulate a compelling reason to do it this way and a way to deal properly with the "gotchas".

Benwing 10:42, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

It's feasible if implemented as complete server-side automatic substitution with exceptions tagged in the beginning. Per-word templates are excessively bulky and make editing notably longer. However, this will place some load on servers and introduce some ambuguity. Generally, Am/Br forking will look ridiculous in eyes of any outsider.
P.S. And I guess it will settle only when we finally admit the fact that we anyway use Wikiese... (kidding, though at a closer look that article is mostly correct). CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 12:02, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I disagree totally that it is feasible. It would have to be implemented on MediaWiki and it would need to have to adapt to every type of english that exists (see List of dialects of the English language for the complexity of the problem). It would create a surcharge of UL/DL on the server side too. Lincher 23:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I am no expert, but I think more versions means that caching would be less effective and would increase the load on our servers. Also, what dev would waste their time solving a non-issue? There are very few cases where the difference between American and British English is crucial and in those articles (Soccer v. Football) the distinction is made clear. BrokenSegue 23:32, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

The use of tags to make wikitext unmanageable and provide the anglo-xenophobes with a transparent translation of cat flap is definitely on the list of perpetual proposals. I'm sure using the browser request header has been mentioned too. Fully automatic translation would be unacceptable because organizations, companies, commercial brands, military units, and a hundred other things oughtn't have their English sanitized. Bonne chance. —Michael Z. 2006-08-08 23:55 Z

The point was mostly to address the issue of title wars. Given the amount of effort expended over these, I'd assume that the programming effort would be small in comparison. If it's really a non-issue, then why the incredible, endless, stupid fighting over pages such as "alumin(i)um", "gasoline" (currently locked down), etc.? I agree however that trying to make default substitutions of *article text* is a bad idea. Benwing 06:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

We create an encyclopedia, after all, not an experiment in political correctness. All titles have redirects from other dialects. I doubt there's a significant number of readers who can understand only one dialect of English; and, today, in age of total globalization of information, I even doubt there's a lot of people among our readers who aren't well familiar with both major dialects. The problem exists mostly in the minds of editors. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 07:57, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Neutrality Project

I'm currently working on creating (exactly, recreating) the Wikipedia Neutrality Project, or WNP. Its purpose would be to deal with articles containing significant bias, and in general ensure sufficient neutrality for all articles.

I also plan to make WNP the primary group to help editors resolve disagreements about whether POV-related templates are in place on specific articles. I believe this is really needed, since there's no procedure for this, and many editors hesitate to make such changes alone, or, worse, jump into edit wars about this. (We have dispute resolution methods, but they are focused on more serious issues).

To be specific, I suggest following types of action:

  • Review. Any editor can post a request to get quick feedback from our members and help in correction. We'll also check pages in Category:Articles which may be biased.
  • Watch. Articles with frequently appearing significant bias will be added on a collective watchlist to be checked by our members time to time.
  • POV cleanup. We will check for POV templates which might be not needed on specific articles, or help with a third opinion if they are disputed.
  • Dispute resolution. We will provide quick suggestions for resolution of NPOV disputes in cases where there is no personal conflict, but just contradicting views on better approach to NPOV.
  • Correction. When we find an article with significant POV issues, we'll collaboratively repair it, neutralizing biased statements, replacing speculations with reliable information, checking for adequate representation of views, and ensuring article no longer has a general bias.

If you are interested and want to join the WNP, just visit the project page.

All of this is for now not decided: something might be added, removed or changed. Please comment if there are any objections to our proposed tasks, or any suggestions.

CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 03:43, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The way you have phrased this makes it sound like you want WNP to own POV-related templates. If that is so, you will meet considerable opposition. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 11:13, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
No, of course, I mean no ownership or any extra rights. We'll just provide a quick third opinion to resolve disagreements, and, if debate goes on, join the discussion. Actually, anyone can do it, WNP would just be a place to ask.
However, if there still are objections, I'd like to know. CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 16:52, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Then why do you say, I also plan to make WNP the primary group for deciding whether POV-related templates are in place on specific articles? No, that isn't nearly Ownership. Oh, wait, yes, it is. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, now I understand it sounds too bold. I'll rephrase it, then. Is now anything wrong in the proposals? CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 12:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

(P.S. 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict is becoming hot. Any assistance in making this page more neutral would be appreciated. CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 22:07, 25 July 2006 (UTC))


We have slightly reviewed the objectives. To make it more clear and integrate better with current processes, the main focus of the Neutrality Project is now POV check. The Neutrality Project is a place to discuss articles tagget for POV check and find assistance. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 22:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be helpful for people to compute simple formulae, and view dynamic graphs on the browsers using JavaScript / Java technology. Shouldn't we atleast allow Javascript in Science related pages for purpose of computation? --பராசக்தி 16:49, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Synchronising conversations on talk pages

The current system users use to contact each other on their talk pages has a problem.

When another user leaves me a message on my talk page, I may choose to respond on his/her talk page, or on my talk page. If I choose to respond on his/her talk page, and we keep leaving messages on each others' talk pages, the conversation becomes fragmented and difficult for others to read. However, if I reply on my talk page (which I usually do), the user who sent me the message is unlikely to read my reply.

I propose there be a system of synchronising conversations on talk pages to make conversations on talk pages easier to follow both for the participants and for onlookers. However, problems may occur when too many people get involved in a particular conversation.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:59, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

What I usually do is to reply on the other user's talk page, but copying the comments from my talk page. This duplicates the whole conversation (except for the last comment) on both pages, and keeps the "new messages" notice working. --cesarb 16:36, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
There is the m:LiquidThreads project underway, it has some new features that may solve your problem.--Commander Keane 08:05, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Automated cleanup on CAT:ORFU

I'm forking this proposal from WP:B/RFA#CAT:ORFU bot, where it's been suggested that it's not merely a bot-related discussion.

Subject
CAT:ORFU, i.e. orphaned fair use images.
Policy
WP:CSD#I5 - Images and other media that are not under a free license or in the public domain that are not used in any article and that have been tagged with a template that places them in a dated subcategory of Category:Orphaned fairuse images for more than seven days.
Problem
Unhealthy backlog (seems two weeks at the moment) on CAT:ORFU.
Proposed solution
Use a bot (I can write one) to automate the deletion process (yes, the bot would require sysop rights).

In a nutshell, the bot would only delete an image if the following statements were both true:

  • The image is not used (neither in article nor in user space)
  • It has been tagged as unused for more than a week.

This is basically what CSD I5 says, so I'm merely proposing an effective enforcement of an existing policy. Raised concerns included that OrphanBot is too eager to tag the images and that something actually useful could be lost in the process. My answer is:

  • A week is more than enough for the uploader to spot an image being in danger and do something about it (if he really cares)...
  • ...especially since OrphanBot will spam him anyway.
  • Even if something worthy is lost, image undeletion is now possible, so nothing is deleted permanently.

I'd like to stress here that far use content is generally considered bad (and free replacements should be used when possible). Moreover, the growing backlog on CAT:ORFU tells me that Wikipedia is slowly turning into an image hosting service and we're slowly losing control of it. Misza13 T C 20:07, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Aside from the adminbot arguements, it has a dangerous act. It can be falsified to get an image speedy deleted. I'm not going to go into it too deeply, but.. Perhaps a script or program for the admins to go through and view each image, its tags, the date & time it was edited to include the orfud tag(not neccessarily the time on the tag!), and if it on any pages. The admin can then click to have the image deleted. Basically I think it should be a manually assisted bot. But I can forsee it being a userscript too. There's already some various scripts to assist admins in doing mundane tasks. This could be another one. (The other long-term speedy image cats are a problem too, why just ORFUD?) Kevin_b_er 06:17, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Integration between processes (FA-GA, PR-RFF)

There are several cases of two or more Wikipedia processes with similar aims or functions at different levels. For example, Featured Articles and Good Articles both aim to recognize quality in articles, although FA works on a higher level than GA. Similarly, Peer Review and Requests for feedback are processes for getting feedback on articles, although PR works on a higher level than RFF. RFF is an initiative I started several months ago, for newcomers to get feedback on any articles they write, so they can use the feedback to improve their editing/writing skills.

I think we should work towards greater co-ordination and integration between the processes.

Here are some suggestions for integration between Featured Articles and Good Articles:

  • The Featured Article and Good Article lists should link to each other. The two nomination lists should link to each other as well.
  • The chances of a Featured Article nomination succeeding are low, because of the extremely high standards of Featured Articles. Therefore, when a Featured Article nomination looks likely to fail, we could suggest to the nominator that s/he nominate the article for Good Article instead. Delisted Featured Articles could also be considered for nomination to Good Article status.
  • There should be a program which aims to improve Good Articles into Featured Articles. "Shoot for the moon, and if you miss, you will hit the stars, and can aim for the moon later."

With this integration, both processes will be more successful in their aim of recognizing quality articles, and improving the quality of articles.

As mentioned previously, Requests for feedback is an initiative I started several months ago. It aims to help newcomers get feedback on new articles they write (or major edits they make to existing articles). A newcomer's first article may reveal that the editor is good with images and NPOV, but poor at referencing. The feedback that the newcomer receives is intended to help them become a better contributor and further improve the article. When I wrote Google Groups and Homerun, I posted a helpme on my talk page, asking how to seek feedback on my articles. I was pointed to Peer Review, but finding my articles not meeting Peer Review quality, I decided to create RFF.

RFF currently has not attracted a substantial following, and I intend to make it an integral process of Wikipedia, for helping newcomers, rather than "just another initiative". Co-ordination and integration with the established Peer Review process would make sense, and benefit it greatly. If RFF is a success, Wikipedia would benefit greatly, as this process helps newcomers improve.

My suggestions for integrating PR and RFF are similar to those for integrating FA and GA: Provide links to each other; and if an article sent to PR would be more suitable for RFF, direct the nominator there.

I am pretty sure there are more cases of Wikipedia processes with similar aims that work at different levels, and I hope to see better co-ordination and integration between them.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 12:00, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Maurreen 06:34, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Well said. I think these two projects should be more integrated with each other. Gnangarra 13:58, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
That's an excellent idea! Could we somehow work the Peer Review process into the GA project as well?--CTSWyneken(talk) 16:27, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I think there has been opposition to this general idea in the past. So maybe those of us who agree should start slowly adding various links, not to the FA pages for the time being at least, and see how that goes. I added a link to RFF from Template:PR-instructions. Maurreen 17:45, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I am somewhat concerned that the GA system doesn't quite have the volume of articles and stability to be very useful as far as being more integrated, we're still changing rules and stuff :/. Homestarmy 21:35, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
An excellent idea! I know we've talked about a template linking up the main pages on these projects and WP:1.0 (particularly the assessment stuff), we just never got around to doing it. Walkerma 06:50, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
This and this are the earlier informal discussion I mentioned. Hope these ideas help. Walkerma 19:28, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
It looks like there is consensus for my proposal of greater integration, with several concerns raised. However, let's not be, as Singaporeans say, "all talk no action". And remember, by integration, I don't just mean links to each other, though they are very useful. For example, failed Featured Article candidates and delisted Good Articles should be considered for nomination to Good Articles. It may be useful to draw up a more detailed proposal, with more ideas for integrating the processes, and adding the {{proposed}} tag to the proposal page. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 12:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
How about Wikipedia:Wikiproject Article reviews and evaluation to bring all of these groups together Gnangarra 07:21, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
There should be a program which aims to improve Good Articles into Featured Articles. "Shoot for the moon, and if you miss, you will hit the stars, and can aim for the moon later.
This is already being done by many WikiProjects. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 08:48, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but many articles are not covered by wikiprojects.
Here's a tangent, as long as we're at it. A valid complaint against WP is that a reader can't tell how a reliable a given article is at a given moment. Wherever we have our disclaimers and introductions and such, we could also tell new people about FAs, FLs, and GAs. Rick Block recently improved the GA tag so that now it can link to the approved version of the article. FAs and FLs already had historical information in the tag. Maurreen 07:14, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. Many articles do not have WikiProjects. And what about the failed Featured Article candidates and delisted Featured Articles? Should they be considered for Good Article nominations? I support Maurreen's idea. This will help readers identify our high-quality articles. When they see that the Wikipedia community can produce great articles, they may be tempted to join. New Wikipedians can learn a lot about Wikipedia policy by reading good/featured articles. Good Articles is also newcomer-friendly in another way. When a newcomer writes a new article, and posts it on RFF, if it is good, I will encourage the newcomer to work on making it a "good article". Asking a newcomer to improve the article into a featured article would be setting unreasonably high standards, while Good Article is a reasonable goal, and once it is reached, we can then think about improving the article to featured status. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:48, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Please stop we have to stop patting ourselves in the back. We must stop trying to tie GA into FA, consensus will not be reached. The process is broken and must be fixed. We need to realize that all these divergent review/assessment projects dilute reviewers. We need a centralized area to conduct reviews and assessments. All review/assessments pages (PR, RFF, GA, WP 1.0, WikiProject reviews) must be closed/abandoned. I know a lot of work has been put into them but sadly it hasn't worked properly. We need one review/assessment page where centralized discussions take place. Only by pooling our efforts can we hope to assess and review the large number of Wikipedia articles. Joelito (talk) 05:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Toolbar for Wikipedia

It'd be great if someone could come up with something like the google toolbar, which the users could install on their systems and use. Could either design a toolbar from scratch or simpliy leverage the existing google toolbar and modify it for this purposes.

There already is one for FireFox. http://wikipedia.mozdev.org/ --W.marsh 02:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Filters on Comparison... articles

I was wondering if, in articles like Comparison of e-mail clients, we could use javascript to filter out certain types of things, like if you wanted to compare only Free programs... — Omegatron 13:44, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

All Talk templates should be same colour

Most Talk templates are the same colour, but there are a select few that do not follow the rule. Can we simply make it policy that they're all the same colour? ....(Complain)(Let us to it pell-mell) 07:51, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Template standardisation. --Quiddity·(talk) 09:56, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

{{logo}} category sorting improvement

Under the current sorting, the logo template can put an image into any category at all. I would like to recommend that the code be changed to the following: [[Category:{{{1|}}} logos|<noinclude> </noinclude>{{PAGENAME}}]]. The code will produce the following:

Thus it will force the word "logos" into the resulting category, forcing it to only be sorted into a logo category. See the template {{gamecover}} for an example of this technique in use.

I proposed this at Template talk:Logo, but it went nowhere fast. The only thing I really need help with is before the change is made a bot go through Category:Logos and it's subcategories and adjust the tags (by removing the word "logos" from the parameter). After that the tag may be adjusted and within a day or so everything will fall back into place. The other option is for the bot to visit every transcluded page and apply the fix, this can be done either before or after the proposed change. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 07:28, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Red Talk Pages

Shouldn't there be a Subject/headline box when where like making the 1st contribution on the talk page.100110100 10:01, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

You're right, I never thought about that before, but there should be. That's a bugzilla issue I think, though. (see http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/) —Mets501 (talk) 01:54, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Not necessarily. It would prevent people from adding templates before the first comment. Fagstein 06:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Why would it? Can't you just leave the header blank, or does that jack up the formatting? -- nae'blis 02:26, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Massive adding of {{uncat}} tag to older articles

There is a discussion here on using a bot to add the {{uncat}} tag to all articles without categories. Please comment there your objections or approval. Garion96 (talk) 12:49, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

History Tabs

There should be a article history tab, & a Talk history tab.100110100 07:48, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

There is, they're just on the two different pages. -- nae'blis 02:07, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Yeah. You very rarely need the talk history when you're on the article page, and if you do, just load two screens. —Mets501 (talk) 02:19, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

userboxes & catagories

I propose a page where all the userboxes are listed on 1 page, with the corresponding code we could use to copy & paste on to our edit user page, all the userboxes that we include will show a blue link in the white box at the bottom, for example,

Categories: Wikipedians by alma mater: University of Alberta | Wikipedians in Canada | Wikipedians with World Citizenship | Wikipedians of Earth | Tiger sign Wikipedians | Wikipedian zodiac skeptics | Sagittarius Wikipedians

@and being listed, so/having a userbox@ will blue link you to the corresponding category page, & the category page is a subcategory and subpage of another category and page, etc.... Thanks.100110100 10:40, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Male Domination?

During my time on English Wikipedia, I’ve come to realize just how male dominated it is (I myself am male). Seriously, how many Wikipedians are female? If these legendary creatures do exist, they would be classified as “rare and endangered”. But perhaps they are more common than I think, as it is difficult to tell and we tend to assume the user is male. But I digress; Female Wikipedians are few and far between. Unfortunately - we need Female Wikipedians, to continue effectively as an encyclopedia, as they can offer insights that males cannot. Male/female insights and interest differ radically. Compare:

The truth lies within the Article quality. How can we overcome this?

If I am wrong, and every second editor is female – correct me. I also apologize for stereotyping and generalizing. I am also unsure of how Wikipedia’s Homosexual community rates in this.

User:Dfrg.msc User talk:Dfrg.msc 07:08, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

There are not so few female editors, maybe about between 15 and 25 percent. It's caused by inherent computer-based nature and technical knowledge required being above average, and, compared to other sites and networks, Wikipedia actually is more balanced. It's hard to estimate the real percentage, because most females don't mention it on their user pages and use gender-nautral names (like mostly everyone here).
However, there also is a positive feedback - the more coverage Wikipedia has on a certain topic, the more people are inclined to join us and improve it. The topics you compare aren't actually good examples, except the second, because soccer and HL2 are more famous among everyone, and F-35 is just more encyclopedic topic. However, a systemic bias exists, and you can be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias.
Concerning potential homosexual community, we have none (at least in open), and shouldn't have any, as well as we don't have heterosexual and BSMD, or communist, capitalist and anarchist, or islamic, catolic, protestant, orthodox and atheist communities, because Wikipedia is not a social networking website, and not a place for any political, sexual, religious and similar separation. All communities in Wikipedia are directly related to the encyclopedia itself, and we don't even keep AIW and ADW here, only Wikiprojects, which are dedicated to articles rather than personalities.
CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 09:18, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I dunno, women are welcome to be prolific editors or occasional contributers or whatever, just as are guys. And there are certainly plenty of women on the internets nowadays. Are there any specific complaints, things in the current system that discourage women from editting? We could try to address those. I don't understand what the proposal is exactly.
I imagine if you look at occasional contributers, people who make a few edits a month to topics they're interested in, you'd see the split is probably closer to 50/50. But once you look at people who've made over 5,000... 20,000... 50,000 edits... it becomes increasingly and then exclusively a sausagefest. That really might be something we can't change. --W.marsh 12:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Yep, there are lots of men here, but there are a lot of prominent women too: User:Angela, User:Anthere, User:SlimVirgin, User:Phaedriel, User:Zoe, User:Bishonen, User:BorgQueen, User:Jengod, and many more.... — Catherine\talk 19:14, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I didn't say there weren't any women, I was just speaking in terms of the ultra-prolific Wikipedians... it's hard to argue with WP:1000 which, although outdated, is still basically accurate and shows 2 females out of the top 30 contributers, 4 out of the top 50, and 6 out of the top 100 (and at a glance, just 7 total out of the top 200). Females are outnumbered over 15 to 1 at the highest levels of Wikipedia activity... that's something to consider. --W.marsh 19:46, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Agreed; hard to guess at what the real reasons might be. — Catherine\talk 20:24, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
The super-high editcount is not that important - it mostly relies on automated edits, community participation (voting), and, surely, "geekiness", because generally people don't spend all their spare time at Wikipedia. The bulk of editors is between 100 and 5000 edits. However, that's not the matter, in fact.
The thing that might discourage many females is occasionally harsh attitude. There's a lot of nice people, and in most article talk pages one is usually met with civility, but one old editor "showing the noob his place" overweights a hundred of people with good attitude. Also, if one gets to AfD, he gets an extremely unpleasant experience, after which a lot of people just leave. I've seen a case when people posted just "d nn cruft" and "delete per nom", the original creator tried to ask what do they mean and what is wrong (since there are a lot of similar articles, his just got noticed), and no one answered for a long time, people just went on with "delete nn". He isn't very active now, but, if a couple of editors wouldn't approach him, he would surely decide WP is not worth that and leave. In general, women are more likely to leave than men after personal attacks, collective ignoring attitude or other unpleasant matters, so this might be one of the reasons. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 20:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Of course, this theory itself is implicitly based on the sexist postulate that men are more combative and less sympathetic or forgiving than women. I'm guessing that the true reason has something to do with biases in sex roles and educational systems that lead to women having less computer experience overall. But this will probably change in the next 5-10 years. Deco 20:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, I don't promote the sexism, and I'm against it; it's just that society still retains enough sexism integrated into the educational system to make women somewhat less combative and more sensitive. BTW, that's what the thread started with. This isn't a political forum, after all, and this discussion will soon be deleted anyway. And it's based on observations, the fact that men are generally more thick-skinned and more likely to respond to attacks and stay just for principle. Again, I don't promote anything, just mention one of the reasons why we have more men than women. And it is what can (in theory) be changed. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 21:46, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Why is suggesting that men and women may actually be different in certain respects automatically sexist? --Daduzi talk 05:56, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Dictators

I saw that we avoid using that word even in cases that it's clearly true (POV concern I guess). Why?

I think in cases like Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-il, Francisco Franco, Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Benito Mussolini, Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, Idi Amin, Napoleon Bonaparte and etc.

See List of dictators. --Haham hanuka 16:57, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Your guess is correct. The primary issue is satisfying the qualities of verifiability and neutrality that should exist in all articles. As the term "dictator" has some negative connotations it is extremely difficult to obtain unbiased independent sources to provide the needed verification that the term is accurate. This is because people are biased and loaded terms such as "dictator", "tyrant", or "demagogue" are frequently disputed. In general, it is better to document the facts and let the facts speak for themselves. --Allen3 talk 17:25, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Encyclopaedia Britannica calls them dictators. I really cannot see what the POV with that. --Haham hanuka 17:58, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
When the world is viewed from the perspective of Britannia the usage is appropriate. For better or worse, Wikipedia uses a more global perspective that does not allow for the same liberties to be taken. --Allen3 talk 18:22, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that Britannica is written from a Briths view, as far as I know this encyclopedia is very neutral. --Haham hanuka 20:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Britannica and other conventional encyclopedias do not have a strict NPOV policy like Wikipedia, because they are not edited on a wiki by people from all over the world with extremely diverse personal politics and perspectives. One could certainly have a very good encyclopedia that's not strictly neutral, but our policy here is really a function of our technology.--Pharos 20:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I am sure that nearly every verifiable secondary source in existence on Hitler calls him a dictator, so it seems to be contrary to NPOV not to use the term in his case at least. To refuse to call Hitler a dictator because it has a negative connotation is... well, words fail me! Tyrenius 04:27, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Spell Correction

When I type a topic into wikipedia their is nothing that ask me "did you mean blank?" Then I have to put it in Google to see the proper spelling and put it back into Wikipedia.

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Better search feature. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Watching

When we watch a the article page, it's watch tab talk page says watch & vice versa. So it has to be fixed......thanks100110100 01:42, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't see that. What browser are you using? -- Donald Albury(Talk) 02:42, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I've seen that occasionally in Mozilla (the tab doesn't catch up as quickly as the watchlist is updated). It might be a caching/firewall issue? -- nae'blis 03:23, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Could be. I've never noticed it with Firefox. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 10:44, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm useing IE.100110100 10:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Addition of two-column references to MediaWiki:Common.css

I would like to propose the addition of 

.references-2column {
  font-size: 90%;
  -moz-column-count:2;
  column-count:2;
}

to MediaWiki:Common.css. A lot of pages currently use <div class="references-small" style="-moz-column-count:2; column-count:2;"><references/></div> to turn the references section into a two-column list; this would allow for more semantic markup (using simply <div class="references-2column"><references/></div>), make it easier to change the style in the future if needed, and make it possible for people who do not like the two-column layout to hide it via their user CSS. Does anyone see any problem with it? --cesarb 23:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

That's a good idea for this particular case, but we need a better solution in general. We have 3 or 4 different methods of creating multiple columns. There's advanced CSS like this, which would be the best solution if it were supported by more than one browser, there's the {{col-begin}} templates that break things up into a table, I suggested {{columns}} as an alternative to col-begin, which uses DIVs so that the page degrades gracefully, instead of ugly tables for layout, etc. — Omegatron 14:42, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Eliminate mentions of Wikipedia

Has anyone noticed how much Wikipedia is mentioned in its own articles? Just looking at the history of an article such as The Colbert Report reveals the extent of this problem. Colbert has mentioned Wikipedia on three occasions, only one of which would even deserve the slightest mention, and after each occurence the debate over inclusion provokes everyone who follows the article closely into a near-edit war. C. M. Harris 23:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Yup. That's why we have Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. We have a tendency to overemphasize the notability of Wikipedia itself in the world because it's important to us. Deco 23:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

"Ten best resources" -- voting, tabulation, list?

Hello,

I am wondering whether there is (or could be?) a voting or tabulation function in Wikipedia? I am interested in developing a matrix of resources in theory, research, and evaluation of peacebuilding – and have an article in progress. I'd be happy to post it to your site. But I am particularly interested in developing a series of brief lists (10 best references on … x, y, z) and am wondering whether there is a way to save the entire nominated bibliography – adding new entries – but displaying only the top 10 receiving the most votes.


Is the possible? Has anyone done it? If so, what were the results? How many different ways might this go wrong?


Your thoughts? Experience?


Sharon Stout

Sorry, but I'm not sure this is what we're about. You might consider Wikia. I don't think it has voting either, but the purpose is more open. Maurreen 04:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello, Maureen,

Thanks for the suggestion. I will look at wikia site. But perhaps I need to better explain. The purpose is not voting per se. The point is to develop a consensus list of the 'best' resources in a number of areas related to war and peacebuilding, to make it easier for the general popluation (and experts) to be more widely informed. I'm writing a survey article -- which people can edit -- which I'm happy to submit for wikipedia. The resources accompany it --and a voting/tabulation feature which promotes the best of most frequently cited -- but deletes none -- would be very valuable. A bit like this forum for proposals, no?

Sharon

Hello, Sharon.
As a rule of thumb, any material on WP is vulnerable to being deleted, by being bold or through consensus.
An article on any subject here should, but doesn't always, contain some number of references, external links and the like. Those are determined by the editors working on the article.
Does that help? Maurreen 15:32, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

RSS feeds for frontpage items

I propose RSS feeds for frontpage items, such as Featured Article of the Day, In the News, Featured Picture, etc. I think this would be useful for a number of reasons, such as bringing users back to Wikipedia on days where they might not visit or simply expanding the features that Wikipedia offers. RSS is already in use by Recent Changes and a few other special pages as far as I know, and I know there might be a few hurdles that have to be overcome to get the feed to work, but I think it would be useful. I think something like this may eventually lead to RSS feeds for every page on Wikipedia being automatically generated from every edit, but that's a whole other issue.

After doing a little research I see that there are some externally hosted feeds (Wikipedia:Syndication), but these obviously aren't obvious to the typical user I'm guessing. Are there technical reasons this can't be done from Wikipedia itself? Thanks. Hansamurai 20:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

New collaboration

Would someone participate in a collaboration which aims at promoting lists to featured status. CG 17:13, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe you could nominate them at WP:AID. Maurreen 04:22, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Random article filter out stubs/disambiguation pages

WP has a lot of stubs and disambiguation pages and Random article leads frequently to them. I propose changing the random article link to return only non-stub, non-disambiguation articles. I believe the random article link should return interesting articles that sample the wide breadth of content on WP and that stubs and disambiguation pages detract from what is returned. To get an idea of how many results are not full articles, I used random article 30 times and tallied the results: 19 articles, 9 stubs, and 2 disambiguation pages. What does everyone else think about this? Cintrom 16:43, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Oddly, this doesn't appear to be on the perennial proposals list, because it's suggested frequently -- I think because people want to protect Wikipedia from having its "dirty laundry" so easily seen. When you come in through the Main page or a portal page, Wikipedia looks pretty professional, but when you start clicking random page, you always risk coming across something bad: stub, cleanup, copyvio, vandalism, what have you. (Personally, I don't think disambiguation pages are so bad -- I find them a really interesting cross-section of Wikipedia articles, and knowledge in general -- and the folks who hang out at Manual of Style: Disambiguation pages are working on making them more presentable.)
I don't think we're likely to change "Random article", though. It comes down to the fact that people use it for different reasons. A lot of editors (including me) use it specifically to find articles that need help. There's an occasional suggestion that we add some choices in "Preferences" to filter the results, but since Preferences only work for logged-in users, who are a fraction of our readers, that would be asking a lot of coding from our volunteer developers for very little benefit.
Ultimately, I don't think it's such a terrible thing to have people find our messier bits -- either it educates someone that was trusting us too blindly, or it encourages someone who was just a reader to become an editor. Of course we should be (and are) working constantly to clean up the mess, but it's never going to be finished -- the number of articles is growing too fast (we've racked up a quarter-million articles in the last four months). It's like trying to mow a lawn when the edges of lawn are growing wider at an exponential rate. Even though more and more of the "core topics" are becoming more and more complete, accurate, and well-written, we shouldn't be trying to pretend that Wikipedia as a whole is more "finished" than it actually is. — Catherine\talk 18:10, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, this is a perennial proposal, and was more seriously considered in the days when Rambot articles had taken over a third of the encyclopedia. One problem is that there's no really nice automatic way to distinguish good articles from bad ones. Length, tags, number of edits, are all heuristic and potentially misleading metrics. Better to stick with something simple and consistent. Deco 01:09, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
People object to this, because their philosophy is that if you get a stub when doing a random page search, you might be motivated to add more to the article so it's no longer a stub. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:35, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

New Format for Talk Pages

The formatting used for Talk:Jimbo Wales, is, in my opinion, excellent, allowing talkheaders, Archives, and TOCs to all be placed in a compact area. I have implemented it on several pages, but there have been an objection, which directed me here. I am proposing that this formatting be used on every talk page, as it is compact, useful, and unobstructive. ....(Complain)(Let us to it pell-mell) 08:37, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

For Example: see Talk:Jimbo Wales ....(Complain)(Let us to it pell-mell) 08:37, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't really like that; I think it's too much wasted screen space. —Mets501 (talk) 08:45, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I am the original objector, after I saw this I oppose widescale use of the format on discussion pages for a number of reasons: a) it's un-necessary; b) it doesn't really contribute anything (lot of effort with little gain); and, c) it's intimidating because, 1. it has that in-your-face/all-at-once/cluttered æsthetic, and 2, it is inconsistent and thus unexpected and potentially off-putting.--cj | talk 09:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Not at all a good idea, in my opinion. If the sections headings are at all lengthy—and they often are—the artificially narrow TOC becomes utterly unreadable. The "Archives" header looks quite bizarre on pages with no archives, too. Kirill Lokshin 00:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
But on a page with Archives, it's very neat. ....(Complain)(Let us to it pell-mell) 09:04, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

How to edit a page - non-existent links

In Wikipedia:How to edit a page, there is a section that shows a red link of an article that dosen't exist yet to show a newcomer what it would look like. The Weather of London was often used, however, it was created and deleted and created and deleted over and over. However, one could put a requested article there and could allow those newcomers to create them. When they are created, someome could constantly put another nonexistent article. This would allow articles requested for a long time to be created. Green caterpillar 02:07, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

This seems like a reasonable idea to me. BTW, if you watch the current non-existent page, if anyone ever creates it you'll see it on your watchlist. Be bold! -- Rick Block (talk) 13:52, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

::So does that mean I can do it? Green caterpillar 14:38, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Support. The article the new user creates will be something Wikipedia wants. If many users watch the article, once it's created, they can work together to fix problems and make the article a good article. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:26, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Mediawiki:Searchnoresults

Mediawiki:Searchnoresults is the default message announcing that your search has failed because nothing in Wikipedia matched.

I would like to suggest that we could add a section to this for "Search elsewhere" with links to searches on other resources such as Wiktionary, Commons, and Google. So what do people thing? Dragons flight 02:03, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I would definitely like a link to Wiktionary, as long as it is unobtrusive. Linking to other sister projects I'm not sure about, and I would not like to link to a commercial search, but if you did I think you should include a couple (perhaps Google and Yahoo).--Commander Keane 09:37, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Article of the day

Hello

My proposal is to have a newsletter or wiki of the day (so to speak) so that people may get one random wiki contents everyday. So as Dictionary.com has "Word of the day"

Please email me about your thoughts on this

<email removed>

Thank you

David

Actually, we already have the Featured Article of the day, which is announced on the main page. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 20:01, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
You can get the featured article of the day, and some other daily content, by signing up for our Daily Article List (see the "By email" link below the featured article on the main page.) — Catherine\talk 20:44, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Is anyone in the process of creating a search bar in your browser (like the google and yahoo search bars) for wikipedia? That way, users can search wikipedia without logging into the site first.

Mozilla allows you to set up Quick Searches - in fact, I think it has a default one from "wp". Just type "wp <search words> to automatically search with the on-site engine. I have mine customized at home to search using the word "wiki", but the same technique applies. Look under Manage Bookmarks, under Quick Searches, for examples. -- nae'blis 18:50, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
You may also be interested in the Wikipedia Toolbar for Firefox. It doesn't have a search feature, but I don't think it needs one because search should really be handled by a single place in the browser. No need to have 10 toolbars each with their own search box. If you're still using Internet Explorer, you should probably switch to Firefox or Opera. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 20:05, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
A Wikipedia-Google search plugin exists for Firefox. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 08:43, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Hmm...does something similar exist for Opera 8.5/9? --08:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Get the Firefox search engine addon for Wikipedia (and other sites). Here's instructions on customizing Opera's search engine; for option 5 use the search string "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s", or "http://www.google.com/search?q=site:en.wikipedia.org+%s" if you want to use Google to search Wikipedia (often gets better results than our internal search). Hope that helps! — Catherine\talk 20:41, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Tabs

When were on talk page & editing, & then we click on watch, we should go back to the talk page, but not the article. Same goes with when we're editing the article, & when were editing the talk page.

100110100 03:38, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions to help new admins

Wikipedia has a policy of not biting newcomers, and this extends to not biting new admins. I will be developing a more extensive proposal regarding editor development, and that, coupled with the three failed RFAs of my Wikifriend, User:Terence Ong, prompted me to make the following three suggestions to help combat biting of new admins:

1. Introduce a new level of adminship, called "basic adminship" or "trial adminship", which grants some of the basic admin tools, but not the more dangerous ones. The overall number of admins will increase, making it easier to fight vandalism. "Basic admins" will be given time to adapt to their basic powers before being given the full admin tools, and the way they use their basic powers can be used as feedback for them before they are entrusted with the full admin tools.

2. New editors can test wiki markup and contributions in the Sandbox. New admins may wish to test their new powers and become familiar with them, without affecting the encyclopedia or its users. Therefore, create an "admin sandbox" for new admins to test their powers of blocking, deleting pages, etc. For example, create some dummy users which new admins can try to block and unblock.

3. New admins, after promotion, should be allowed to be paired up with more experienced admins, who will mentor the new admins. This is similar to a mentorship system, which could be applied to new users as well (that will be part of my editor development proposal). The new admins can ask their mentors for help regarding usage of the tools, and advice on how to handle specific situations. When the new admins make mistakes, their mentors will offer corrections. This will help the new admins develop and improve.

I would like to hear what you think of my suggestions. Hopefully you will like my idea, and that it will help new admins if it is implemented. Good luck to all new admins, and all Wikipedians!

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:17, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea. Though, it would help if you got more specific. Which tools are considered the "dangerous tools"? Perhaps there could be 3 admin levels. Basic (like the one you described). Then, you could be promoted to full admin (like the ones currently in action). Then, bureaucrats. And, if one desires, a user could stay a basic admin instead of moving up to a full. That way, we could have more administrators on the force without giving too much power to everyone. Viva La Vie Boheme 00:44, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with admin tools (I thought adminship was required to archive a talk page!), so I won't know which tools are considered "more dangerous". If you think my idea is good, admins can then decide which tools are "more dangerous" and which are "basic". I forgot about bureaucrats - so that's 3 levels of adminship. I once suggested multiple adminship levels, but my idea was not liked due to concerns of creating an elitist power structure in Wikipedia. I think my new suggestion will not create an elitist power structure in Wikipedia, though. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:30, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
About admin sandbox: wouldn't it be easier to set up a sandbox wiki (on some free host), if there isn't yet one, and give there admin rights by any request? This way everyone can test this to full extent. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 13:35, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Esperanza/Programs/Admin coaching already does something sort of similar. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:34, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Good. But that admin coaching seems to be for users who wish to be admins, but aren't admins yet. My proposed admin coaching will be for newly promoted admins. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:30, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

P.S. What do you think of my idea for an admin sandbox? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:30, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

The admin sandbox would only be useful in respect to blocking users, as anyone can create pages and do tests with them in their userspace. I'm not sure it would be that useful for blocking users because all that needs to happen for a new admin to test it out is find an obvious, certain vandal and then try out a block. No harm can come from a mistake because if they mess up the time limit, they can see in the log that the time limit is wrong and can change it in the same way. As for administrator tools, there really are no "dangerous" ones; every administrator action is reversible. If the new admin makes a mistake, they can get someone else to help them fix it. This point may just need some fleshing out.
The mentoring idea is good. One of the problems with some new admins, I think, is that they are experienced in certain areas and not others, e.g. they have a lot of experience with vandal-fighting, but they aren't greatly familiar with deletion policies. I would say that mentoring does go on informally, but because an administrator already knows people, they have people they can contact on User talk pages or through other means of contacting people. If an administrator isn't familiar with a certain aspect of deletion policy in this example, they can go to the relevant policy page and read it; if they still have questions they contact other admins they know, or they ask on the discussion page of that policy. While there isn't is a system to have every new admin have a shadow, there is still much intersection. If someone gets blocked wrongly, they will complain. If someone's article gets deleted, they will complain. But there is no formal system to evaluate a new admin's actions and see where there are weaknesses that need guidance. —Centrx→talk • 09:27, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
You may also be interested in Wikipedia:Admin accountability poll, though this is a very long poll. —Centrx→talk • 21:26, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Why do we need more instruction creep and more levels of bureaucracy? User:Zoe|(talk) 22:36, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

"Filmography/Bibliography needed"

Is there some sort of template that states that a filmography and/or bibliography are needed in an article and in turn adds the article's name to a list for editors to work through? If not, could someone (with more template-creating knowledge than me) create one? 66.229.160.94 00:31, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Opinion essay: Overuse of Anonymity at Wikipedia and a Proposal

I just wrote an opinion essay based on a thought that has been bouncing around my head in the last few months. I probably posted it in the wrong place, but for now you can find it on Jimbo Wales' talk page here:

The Overuse of Anonymity at Wikipedia and a Proposal

Comments are appreicated. I figure, given the number of people at Wikipedia, that this suggestion been made previously but I haven't seen any discussion of it. --Ben Houston 19:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

David and article naming for first names

I've kicked off a potentially significant page move request at Talk:David#Requested_move. This is basically a test case, so would benefit from wider attention. At root it is about whether articles at simple first names should be about the name itself or about one particularly well known individual. At the moment different first name articles are handled quite inconsistently. Additional views would be welcome. -- Solipsist 21:26, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I know the following suggest is contrary to the essence of wikipedia but I thought I should put it in the air

Maybe one or two advertisements should be included in wikipedia articles, in order to raise money to hire peple to moniter changes and revert vandalized pages

We have enough unpaid volunteers to do that, why would spending the large amount on hiring a few more have any impact? --Golbez 20:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

2006 California Heatwave - Current event worthy of an article

Just Google it and you'll see it would make a great article. We could probably even include it "In the News" on the main page. I posted it in Article Requests under "Weather". Post your questions/comments below. Thanks! Blackjack48 01:16, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Be bold, the best thing is to create the article and then discuss its notability if necessary. Anyone interested is welcome to do so (although I won't, because I don't live in California and haven't been following the news there). NeonMerlin 01:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Talk page headers

How about writing it into the wikipedia codebase that all talk pages (once created) are forced to have the templates {{talkheader}} and {{todo}} imbedded at the top? I believe this will reduce lengthly discussions, alowing them to get to the point, as well as reducing flame wars, and showing that it is useful to sign posts. A lot of problems could hereon be (at least partially) solved in one. Idealy, if there is a way to only force the templates to be displayed at talk pages that have already been started by a human editor, that should absolutly be done (so as to not give false indication that a discussion has started). Is this possible? - Jack (talk) 20:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about {{todo}}, but I'll support automatically adding {{talkheader}}. —Mets501 (talk) 21:24, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
{{talkheader}} is evil and must be purged. A message above a talk page window when editing, maybe, but currently I hate the thing. violet/riga (t) 22:13, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
The problem with {{talkheader}} appearing on every page is that it is useful once or twice for new editors, and then wastes screen space forever after. New editors should be advised of good editing practices in a welcome template, and be reminded – if necessary – through a polite note on their talk pages if they forget.
It's not that difficult to fix the work of the occasional newbie who mucks up a section break or forgets to sign a comment, and I'm not sure we want to put up with editors who require a reminder to be civil and abstain from personal attacks on every talk page. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:37, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think the talkheader template is all that useful, for the reasons that 10OAT just mentioned. Acculturation can't be forced, and it can be overdone. If the message is on every talk page, it becomes effectively invisible, and yet takes up screen real estate nonetheless. Adding it on an as-needed basis to talk pages that seem to attract newbies who have problems with formatting/understanding our conventions seems like a much better solution. -- nae'blis (talk) 00:47, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
No need. There are pages, mostly on popular topics, where new and unregistered users are frequent, and they need guidance. However, most technical or scientific subjects tend to have only experienced editors, who don't need such help. To-do template supposes there is some to-do list; if there isn't it would just waste space. So current system works fine.
The only thing I think would be useful is change to the software so that request to sign your comment would be shown only when editing talk pages, but in a more visible place, for instance just before "save page". An option in preferences to check whether four tildes were added, like edit summary check, would also be useful, though slightly harder to implement. CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 16:03, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Video articles

I propose that we start producing complete video versions of some of our well-developed stable articles. There would be lots of benefits to having video versions:

  • In a video, you can show more illustrations than are practical on a conventional Web page. This means the position after every move in a chess game, and every step in solving a math problem. Even if a video article is just a slideshow of photos and drawings with the spoken article superimposed, more photos can be included.
  • Some diagrams are best animated, and a thumbnail-size animated GIF may not be enough. You may need full colour, higher resolution, and/or more frames. For an example, see Water cycle.
  • Clips of a TV program, film, video game, concert, stage performance or real-life event become more practical, rather than just still screenshots or audio clips.
  • In the classroom, a video is more engaging than a printed-out article, and can be more economical for large classes (especially if colour is involved).
  • There are places in rural North America, and possibly in the developing world as well, where there is wide access to television but limited access to computers. Thus, a video article could be distributed further via public broadcasting than an article on the Web could.

It would probably be best to produce two versions of each video: one created without concern for file size, and one designed for low-bandwidth connections. I am making a similar proposal on Wikibooks. NeonMerlin 18:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

You are aware of .gif animations right? The Tower of Hanoi article has a solution to the well known puzzle within it, in a gif format (see Image:Tower of Hanoi 4.gif, which is indeed a featured pic). Proper videos take up a lot of space and server power, and I am to believe wikipedia resources do not grow on trees, as I have been told many-a-time - Jack (talk) 21:07, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I am aware of these animations, and I would certainly include the aforelinked GIF in the Tower of Hanoi video article. However, these GIFs wouldn't replace their respective articles. A complete video article would describe the fastest-solution algorithms thoroughly, describe the puzzle's history and applications, etc.
As for hogging resources, I doubt the video collection would grow faster than Wikimedia's server capacity, because AFAIK videos take a fair while to produce, and we wouldn't have enough skilled animators and video editors to do more than a handful of articles at once. If you're still concerned, I'd suggest doing a pilot project with one article. NeonMerlin 01:43, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
The use of video would make editing the information difficult as not everybody has sufficient bandwith or the necessary software, also written english is easier to get a transaltion of for people that aren't always proficient in English. Additionally there are a lot of articles which utilised images and that the reproduction of the images without the necessary credits or copyright statements, be they fair use or CC-by-2.5 or some other format needs to be addressed. Gnangarra 01:03, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Your concern about maintainability is valid; however, that's also true for spoken articles, and we still host spoken articles. I'm sure there's a decent open-source video-editing program available for those who need it. As for copyright notices, I would expect each video to have closing credits, including copyright information (with clips identified in their copyright notices by thumbnail, if necessary). Some copyright information in the opening might also be a good idea. NeonMerlin 01:53, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
A very good proposal which I completely support. For many articles public domain documentary video could be used. And possibly at some point we could go further, to create required video. I don't perceive server load as a big deal: servers mostly get overloaded with requests, not traffic, and a CD-quality video file wouldn't be very large. And, after all, server power and Internet bandwidth constantly increase, and popularity growth (video articles would contribute) brings more people and resources to Wikipedia. So hosting is the easy part.
The harder part is creation of the articles themselves. For the beginning, we might start with getting PD video in Commons and linking to it in the articles. Later, actual articles can be created, at first just shortened and modified spoken article with documentary video in background and subtitles - it isn't very hard. Later... well, the Demoscene shows that freeware video creation is quite possible. If people get interested, we can have good quality video articles with 3d-rendered sequences and effects. And if we make the option, at least some people will get interested. --CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:34, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Date articles' linking

I think that year articles (e.g., 2006) and date articles (e.g., January 1) should include a comment like this:

For more events that occurred in this year, see a list of articles that mention this year.

Year articles (but not date articles) should also include, above or below the lists of births and deaths, a note like this:

For more births in this year, see Category:2006 births.

What think you all?—msh210℠ 00:50, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia self-references are generally frowned upon. The links are already there for people to use, they don't need to be explicitly pointed out in the article. Remeber that Wikipedia article content is used extensively outside of Wikipedia, where such references may not make sense. Kaldari 06:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
The size of whatlinkshere renders it useless for years. violet/riga (t) 22:14, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Cross-namespace redirects

I believe I have a solution to the dispute concerning cross-namespace redirects. Please review it/leave comments at Wikipedia:Cross-namespace redirects. Thanks. --Zoz (t) 18:43, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I completely support this proposal. The only issue I have is that readers are potential editors, and we should try to get them involved and contributing. Otherwise, the idea of eliminating pseudo-namespaces is excellent. As a new contributor, I had to manually adjust the filter to include the Wikipedia and User namespaces in my search. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:25, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Software notability proposal

The Wikipedia:Notability (software) proposal has remained in a stable state for the last few months. I'd like to call some attention to it now so that other editors can have a look at it, and see if it can be tightened up and improved before getting it established as an official notability criteria guideline. It'd be nice to get this one out of the way. :-) -/- Warren 01:18, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Trivia sections

I think that we should eliminate all trivia sections in articles. Most of the time (see The Colbert Report for examples of this) the Trivia section of an article is simply a repository for unencyclopedic factoids that aren't important enough to go into a different section or their own section. C. M. Harris 14:00, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. But since we already have a rule that content should be encyclopedic, there's no need for a new policy. HenryFlower 14:09, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Now, we just need consensus that trivia is not encyclopedic. Personally, I believe that trivia is covered by Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, but that section does not mention trivia by name, and many editors will argue to keep the trivia, preventing consensus to remove it on most pages. I think it's better for now to require proper references, which will push the rumors and urban legends out of the trivia sections. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 17:05, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to see "Wikipedia Popular Culture" as a separate system, like Wookipedia but bigger. Then transwiki almost all popular music, TV, game, sports, and movie content over there. The main Wikipedia would retain only historically significant items, at the Academy Award for Best Picture/Best Actor level. The Popular Culture Wikipedia would have lower standards, allowing all the fancruft that fans love to put in, plus all those garage band articles we have to constantly fight to keep out of the main Wikipedia. This would keep the fans happy while substantially reducing the cleanup effort needed on the main Wikipedia. --John Nagle 18:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
So, how many wikis should we split Wikipedia into? Imagine WP would consist mostly of historians. In this case, it would contain detailed data about every battle, every old city, every reform, every invention. The history events would be covered in series of articles and in such detail that the reader would think he was there himself. And there would be information about single divisions in specific battles, and about life of every historycally important person. And, yes, there would be deletionists running around and "deleting nn cruft", keeping unimportant historic details out of Wikipedia.
But that's actually not just "what could be".
As Wikipedia grows, most famous subjects get covered, and it comes to articles on less notable subjects or details. Yes, we could delete them and split. But... just what's the point? Does Wikipedia aim to be just "something like Britannica, but free"? If so, we're just wasting time. And we're lying that we aim to be Sum of human knowledge, if really we just try to be a summary of what everyone already knows. Remember, we're not publishing on paper, and there is no limit to size, because the more subjects we cover, the more popular we are, and the more power we have. So, what's the point of restricting coverage?
CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 18:06, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


I totally agree with the no trivia in article idea ... I always though it was coverd by the WP:NOT too but they keep fighting to have their trivia section in articles. In the GA project we have come to the consensus that there will be no trivia section in articles and the FA will probably ask that as well in a near future as it is unencyclopedic and being, almost all the time, list items it is tough to read that section as there is no prose and sometimes no logic between one item and the other. Lincher 18:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I've advocated a new project called WikiTrivia. Like it or not, many people vastly prefer getting and contributing information in a fast, 1-3 sentence bulletted format rather than "boring" prose. Insert gripe about the MTV generation. At any rate, people like Trivia-style information and we shouldn't totally discount that... a project just for trivia would probably be quite popular, and we could send it the endless trivia people add to WP articles. I'm mostly serious about this, in case anyone's wondering... --W.marsh 19:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes yes. This is a perennial proposal. There's a draft proposed guideline at Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections. Deco 19:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
The current system is not working. There is far too much trivia in articles. It does not help to add every meaningless reference made to whatever in a pop song; lists of such things are undigested research notes, not a valid part of a finished article. Calsicol 00:17, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps true, but many aspects of articles-in-progress could be characterized as "undigested research notes". I think it's helpful to have them there as an interim solution, until they can be properly integrated (or discarded, as necessary). Deco 13:26, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
If trivia is factual and kept to a reasonably small size within an article, I think it adds a certain "coolness quotient" to an article. I am one of those who argues that we need to be on the guard against having an encyclopedia that is so dry that it scares away all but the most academic of individuals. Of course, I would also argue that it's best to integrate trivia into the regular content of the article, if possible, as well. We should note that not all that we call "trivia" is trivial, but rather more like "an interesting aside" that adds some verve to the subject matter. Asides are information too, and in my view, exciting/stimulating the reader is just as important as informing them. I believe that readers hold onto knowledge longer if they are excited/stimulated about it. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 05:25, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I can't say about all of wikipedia, but I can definitely say we will not be promoting any featured article with trivia sections, and having a trivia section is grounds for defeaturing an article (although in almost every case they are simply folded in as prose or deleted). Raul654 05:27, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Service awards

Not really a proposal, just a series of barnstars for service -- time and number of edits. Like most barnstars, this is generally discussed on the barnstar page: Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals#Editor service awards. But this is a just a heads up to get more comment, if anyone finds the idea odious or otherwise, before moving these into template space. (A post for a significantly different version of this was made here on July 11.) Herostratus 06:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Editcountitis is evil. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
This heavily promotes editcountitis, which we seem to be struggling enough with on RFA's. A user's worth should not be measured by their editcounts - someone may have made 199 mainspace edits but those edits could have all been making featured articles from scratch, for all we know, and promoting people to make many smaller edits promotes quantity over quality. Also, I don't believe such a project should be converted to the template namespace. If anything, I believe it should remain userfied as it has nothing to do with the main article space. Cowman109Talk 20:42, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Arrgh, the whole editcountitis thing. Sure we want downplay edit counts to a certain extent but let's not go overboard. A high edit count is not bad. We don't want to actively discourage editors from increasing their edit count, for crying out loud. Yet the whole "editcountitis is bad" meme seems almost to veer into that territory. A user's edit count is information. Does it tell us something about that editor? Yes it does. Does it tell us everything about that editor? No of course not. It's a piece of information. People can make of it what they will.
I mean, I count my edits, and every time I pass a milestone I feel good. I guess I'm supposed to feel guilty about that or something, but I don't. It is part of my motivation - not a huge part, but not totally insignificant either. I don't make edits just to increase my edit count, but if some people do then I don't see a huge harm in that. After all minor edits are useful too. Anyway I don't think too many people are going to be like Well I'm gonna make a ton of quick edits to make Tutnum. It's just a barnstar after all.
Will this encourage some people to work harder? It would me, a little bit. I don't see how it would discourage anybody. I'm just a regular Joe and I like status-conferring baubles. People do, you know. That's just human.
Also, knowing at a glance that I'm dealing with a 10,000 edit editor or a three-year editor is useful information. And finally, if you don't like service awards then don't use them. Herostratus 08:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I support this idea. As for editcountitis, remember that the "X years service" is here to take care of it. Real disruptive users get blocked in such a long time. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 11:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
A very interesting proposal. Surely it will be much easier to understand what type are you dealing with, and deal with him as he deserves. To make it even easier to weight people's arguments, we can also auto-add a small picture with stars to signatures. Of course, for commissioned administrators it should be different.
Also, if it becomes accepted, we can save time and improve design by learning from people who have much more experience with this sort of thing, and we also should keep consistency with widespread similar systems. This will also simplify the RfAs.
The only minor difference would be that they don't award ranks for how many times you have pulled the trigger.
Wikipedia Petty Officer CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 13:50, 23 July 2006 (UTC).
It's an interesting idea, but as several people said above, it would promote editcountitis. If you would remove the edit count requirements and simply leave the "months of activity" requirement for each one, and possibly a couple of other prerequisites (e.g. months on a WikiProject, months on the Welcoming Committee, etc.), then that would be perfect to me. C. M. Harris 12:31, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
But then, we'll end up with seniorityitis, as is present in labor unions. :) Seriously, though, I think this editcountitis thing is way overblown as a concern, and I have no problem with it being one point of data used as part of this award process. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 13:56, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, we already have userboxes one can place on his page, to inform others that he has, say, over 3000 edits, and everyone can write when he joined. If he wants. Many users actually prefer to be more modest. There's no need for a special award, and editcountitis isn't a good thing. There are editors who just write articles in a text editor, check them and insert in Wikipedia, and one edit of such editor is worth tens of average edits. There are users who hang out at AfD, throwing around "delete per nom" without even reading the article, and I value of such edits is below zero.
Another concern is that value of editor isn't measured by his edit count. There is a number of editors who are experts in some subjects, and they usually only work on these subjects. They tend to have a low edit count (<1000), but are very valuable to Wikipedia. The principle of equality we use today is the most effective available, and any deviations from it, be it ranking by age in WP, edit count, length of signature or whatever other unimportant detail, can make WP more "closed", drawing away new users. Actually, awards for time or editcount would only encourage people who are already encouraged enough, while somewhat discouraging others, since they would "rank" less. CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 18:06, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
On the flip side, recognition for one's work is part of what we would find in a community. We're not just robots here creating a Wikipedia; we're human beings. The idea that we're all equal sounds all right in terms of our rights here, but in terms of what we all contribute, that is obviously untrue. Some contribute more than others, and they should be lauded. I am not an advocate of using any particular kind of measurement by itself; instead, a combination of multiple measurements with a good dose of community sentiment would normally ensure we end up picking the right people for such an award. An award winner is not "more than equal" than others; they are simply recognized for their extraordinary contribution--and others may aspire to that same position in response. To backhandedly suggest that every last one of us is contributing to the Wikipedia out of 100% selflessness is just not reality. People who do a lot of good work should be noted for it. That's a Good Thing. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 02:12, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. And I entirely support awards for featured articles, awards for a lot of help on some topic, and so on. It's just about the fact that neither age nor edit count show actual value of contributions. There's nothing extraordinary in making a few thousands edits, if they consist of votes, category mass-correction, bot-assisted edits, reverts. People who really need to be recognized are ones who made major and good edits, not just many. Actually, if there was some way to count amount of contributed text, it would be not perfect, but at least acceptable criteria; but just edit count is extremely inaccurate. So, let's award people for accomplishments, and not just number of edits and time since registration. CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 15:28, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking about an award for writing and/or promoting an FA for quite a some time, but I was unable to come up with a satisfactory design... -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 15:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
The problem with this proposal is that it promotes 'mindless' editting, using the AWB and such. Just because someone doesn't have a gazillion edits doesn't mean they aren't appreciated. Anyone can receive a barnstar, no matter how long you have been here. This promotes a 'rank' system where people who make tens of thousands of semi-automated edits receive awards, while the article writers do not. Now I am not suggesting that spell checking and other automated edits are bad, just that an award that promotes one line of editing will discourage editors from pursuing the other, equally necessary paths. To a newbie the thought of making 50000 edits just to be be able to perceive him/herself as an equal is very discouraging. Prodego talk 02:26, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is actually reading my position before responding, so I will move onto other topics. Cheers! —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 02:33, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

How many editors have been around for 5 years? And how many have made over 10,000 edits? Or are you deliberately making the awards extremely hard to get? Editcountitis is a slight concern. However, a larger concern is a bias in favour of people who make a large amount of minor edits, such as spelling corrections or vandalism reverts. The cards will be stacked against editors who focus on quality and make major edits, such as writing articles. One important goal in giving awards is not just to recognize quality, but to encourage the editor to "keep it up". Although I always take pride in my work, and that is what keeps me going, I would rather have recognition from the community. I would rather the barnstars system have a makeover. I do agree with the good intentions of the proposal, though, but this is not the best method. I am planning to draw up a proposal regarding editor development, which I agree Wikipedia is slightly weak in. One important thing to note, however, is that such awards should be only a social construct, and should not give a recipent a tangible advantage when editing Wikipedia. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:12, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, good points. But its just barnstars. I don't think it would be a big deal and certainly no tangible advantage should accrue. As to hard to get, yes, but also, thinking down the road, in a couple-few years we will have a lot more editors at the higher levels.
Another thing about this, it's the only award that, because it is mechanical, is entirely free of politics, and doesn't depend on somebody noticing your work. Agreed that there ought to be a better way... but I can't think of any better way that doesn't involve some sort of personal judgement, which kind of defeats it. Besides it'd take people time to do the judging.
However, one user pointed out that there are already userboxes for edit counts. So maybe the whole thing is redundant. But these are cooler looking.
And the point that our most expert experts often have low edit counts is a good point too. But then, think of this way: you can get a purple heart for losing your legs, or for getting a small cut (and NOT get a purple heart even if you do something really heroic, if you're not hurt). It's just one barnstar, among many, for one particular set of accomplishments.
Is clicking "save page" an accomplishment? Not more than getting Purple Heart. And we aren't in army here, and mostly don't aim to decorate ourselves with salad... and, well, in fact Purple Heart is more like a compensation.
I perceive barnstars exactly as something that is not mechanical and is just random stuff one user takes out of nowhere and gives to another. "Service awards" would change this. Barnstars don't even need any judgment or politics, and I never judge a user by barnstar count as well as other counts. I'm against this as a common practice, since even barnstars aren't as common as editcounting. Nothing against an option for anyone willing to pick it up, though. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:13, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Herostratus 21:07, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Taking all the discussions (here and elsewhere) together, I'm seeing a roughly 50-50 split. So here's what I'm going to do now (which of course any editor can change), which seems a reasonable compromise:

  • I won't delete the service awards, but I also won't make templates of the individual awards, list them on the barnstar template, or add any mention of them anywhere on the barnstar pages.
  • I will move the page from my userspace to Wikipedia space, let them remain in the Category:Wikipedia awards (another editor has placed them there), and personally give out a few here and there.
  • If another editor wants to put up the page as a "Proposed guideline" to get either a decisive rejection or acceptance, that would perhaps be reasonable in my opinion. True, they are just barnstars, which don't usually go up a proposed guidelines, but since its a whole system of stars maybe it would be OK. Herostratus 21:07, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I probably finally understood why I feel so uncomfortable about this proposal... Are you sure all editors would like to get these awards? I certainly wouldn't, because for non-topeditcount editors it is more like statement of low rank. We've fot userboxes for everyone willing, and I find it to be much better than to degrade barnstars. It's fine if you leave them for anyone to take - after all, barnstars don't mean a thing - and I think userspace would be somewhat more preferable. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:13, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, sure, lots of editors would not like to get these awards... Some people refuse all barnstars... enh, it can't be a statement of low rank... because barnstars don't mean anything, as you say. I mean if you look at it that way every barnstar awarded is an insult to every other editor, who didn't get the barnstar... anyway, I think there was enough support (more over at the barnstars page, also the talk page) that it ought to at least go into Wikipedia space where it can be properly edited and user or whatever. One or two users already found and used them and I don't want people to have to go poking around in a userspace if they want them... doesn't matter, I guess. Herostratus 04:26, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Mobile/PDA version of wikipedia?

I love using wikipedia, but my biggest peeve is needing a computer to use it at. I have a palm pilot and a cellphone but viewing and searching topics on wiki is a huge hassle. The screen does not resize correctly, and many other problems arrise.

I have seen PDA/mobile versions of many news sites, including google's homepage.

Is it possible to convert pages of wiki to something like a mobile version? (small width, small page size, less photos, and perhaps some special code?)

What has been shared about this is at Wikipedia:Browser notes#PDA & cell phone browsers (and the page it references, Wikipedia:Wikipedia on PDAs). If you find anything else useful, please share your findings on these pages! -- Rick Block (talk) 04:37, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Irrelevant talk

The lines distinguishing unrelated points and related ones are unclear. In the space of 5 - 6 hours, some guy(s) deleted 3 of my comments on the talk page of this article, saying it is irrelevant. I can't be bothered to search through all the edits of that page during that period of time to revert my edits, but I hope something can be done to distinguish this line further. Like that, anyone, including anons, can just delete someone else's comment on the basis that it is irrelevant. --Terrancommander 04:18, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not even considered acceptable to remove your own comments from an article's talkpage, much less someone else's. The only exception to this (that I'm aware of) would be blatant vandalism. --Doc Tropics Message in a bottle 22:03, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Um, in this case, I raised a discussion about the strength of the participants. Its relevant, isn't it? --Terrancommander 04:13, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
It took me a while, but I found it. Yes, your comments were relevant and if they were deleted it was not good form. It's possible that they were simply archived, I didn't dig that deep, but I see you got to it before I did :) --Doc Tropics Message in a bottle 05:04, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Pornography warning

NOTE: Don't be scared off just because I have the word "pornography" in the name; I don't mean to describe anything like that.

I was wondering if we could get a pornography warning just like we have a spoiler warning: {{spoiler}}.

I looked at Wikipedia:Pornography; appearantly Wikipedia's reaction to pornography was to keep it, but only so long as it's encyclopedia-like. Well, Wikipedia also has spoilers, but we're allowed to warn people who don't want to see them. Can we warn people who don't want to see any pornography also?
If no one disagrees, I wouldn't mind making this warning myself. --Jonathan talk 22:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
This has been discussed AT LENGTH and the answer is no, absolutely not. Raul654 22:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
No, it justs a terrible idea. If an image is just random out of context porn, it should be here per inclusion standards anyway. Pornagraphic related topics are part of the encyclopedia if notable, since it is not censored. Nude/sex-related images will be included wherever they add informative value, as again, this encyclopedia is not censored and strives to be "the sum of all human knowledge".Voice-of-All 23:19, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Ideally, we'd eliminate all spolier warnings. - Nunh-huh 23:20, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I somtimes find those "plot details follow" warnings kind of silly. If you don't want it spoiled, either don't read the article, or maybe just glance through the intro.Voice-of-All 23:29, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
It would be nice if there were a "safe for work" mode. WP may not be censored, but most of our workplaces are. --W.marsh 00:00, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

We have warnings for outside links that contain porn, as we should. But I don't think this is a good idea, per above. As Nunh-huh notes, it would be much better if all spoiler warnings were excised (and the content replaced by relevant content that didn't spoil unnecessarily). zafiroblue05 | Talk 00:02, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I think I'll copy and paste in an answer I gave last week to a suggestion that Wikipedia pages with offensive content should bear a warning label.
We don't censor Wikipedia, but we try to adhere to a 'Principle of Least Astonishment'. That is, material that under some circumstances might be considered offensive or inappropriate for minors should only appear in articles and locations where one might reasonably expect to find such content.
In other words, if someone goes looking for the article fuck, one should not be surprised that the article contains profanity. Similarly, a reader that goes to the article list of sex positions might reasonably expect to encounter descriptions and diagrams of sex acts. On the other hand, one wouldn't expect to find pictures of sex acts in our article on Minnesota, and such images would be removed.
The disclaimer that you propose is, unfortunately, much too general to be useful. It might best be applied to all of Wikipedia — in fact, it's part of our Content disclaimer. Trying to decide whether or not content should bear a specific additional warning is an invitation to endless argument:
You can see the problem. If someone is going to look at a particular article, we try to ensure that the images and text are appropriate to that article; that's the best we can do. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
In other words, it's impossible to decide what ought to bear a warning, and individuals who go looking for an article about the penis ought not be surprised to find a picture of one there.
Note also that such a system would be impossible to maintain without major changes to the Wikipedia software—how do you evaluate whether an image is pornographic, add the label, and make sure that the image and label aren't changed? Individuals attempting to rely on such a censorship mechanism would encounter periodic failures (technical, social, vandalism- or newbie-related) and be exposed to objectionable content anyway (resulting in angry parents screaming at us). Vandals would start labelling harmless images as pornography or graphic sex, just to black out the pictures in articles. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:13, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:16, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh and that too :). We give minimal considerations for shock value, such as not bothering to remove images of cloud pictures that are not necessary but removing shock images that are pointless, or moving high stigma pages down on the page somewhat or making a link to them if the article is to small for the first method. Thats about all we should do, as anything else, as TenOfAllTrades has shown, would spiral into impracticallity.Voice-of-All 00:42, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I follow your logic about how if you go looking for obscenity you'd find it. I'm not going to try to make a pornography warning. Thanks for discussing this! --Jonathan talk 01:59, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

An award to the most unique, most organized, and overall best userpages in Wikipedia! Viva La Vie Boheme 17:53, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Esperanza/Programs#User_Page_Award :) Cowman109Talk 18:38, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Comment : Doesn't this divert the point of the encyclopedia to something like blogging where we give as much credit to Userpages as articles (It shouldn't be the case on an encyclopedia). Lincher 18:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Hear, hear. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
And there is already a userpage barnstar. Herostratus 05:22, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

General User Survey

I am trying to revitalize meta:General User Survey. In essence this would be a Wikimedia-wide polls of users, giving us much needed statistics about the editors (us :)). The sooner this is done, the better for all of us. Any assistance appreciated.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

That would probably be beneficial to a few things currently being discussed on the Wikipedia. What sort of assistance do you need? I suppose we need foundation permission? How do we get that? Steve block Talk 15:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
That sounds like a great idea! How do we go about doing it? —Mets501 (talk) 17:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have been using your “Wikipedia-the free encyclopedia” over the internet quite frequently.

I must say that it is one of the perfect places to get complete information on an article.

To further improve the wikipedia, I would suggest that you upgrade and develop your software so as to include “A view and listen to the correct pronunciation of all the words” in the encyclopedia+. This can easily be done by clicking the “Sound icon along with the phonetic spelling next to each individual word.”

Hope you approve of my suggestion as it will be a benefit to many.

Awaiting an early reply.

Yours sincerely,

Minoo.

There are already such links for some hard to pronounce words, but like any other aspect of Wikipedia improving coverage in this respect simply relies on people volunteering to do it on a case by case basis. It should also be noted that in English the "correct" pronunciation of even basic words is often a controversial matter. Calsicol 00:14, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Historical information

Wikipedia:Historical information (WP:HIST) is a proposed guideline which is still very much a work in progress. I ask people to contribute to it and/or its talk page.—msh210℠ 06:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Swap Tab

This is a great idea I have. Instead of swapping pages the old way, what if there's a swap tab that takes you to a page where you swap it with an existing article? This would eliminate A to C B to A C to B delete C snd would be easier to non-administrative users. This optoin would only be available to registered users, like me and anyone else with a login. It could also be reverted. Would it be possible? Pronoun 10:11, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, but rarely useful. Deco 01:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
It would be more practical to include it into move tab, suggesting swap if target exists. CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 22:45, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
This sounds like a good idea. I've happened upon this scenario a few times, and it would have been considerably less time-consuming to have a swap feature like this. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 05:00, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps spelling suggestions for the search engine?

I think that Wikipedia users would benefit greatly from a "Did you mean" feature added to searches. Most search engines (e.g. google, yahoo, etc.) have a feature that suggests a different spelling to the search terms in case you mispelled a word. It is quite annoying to search something on Wikipedia and have no spelling suggestions. In one such case, I actually had to revert to searching for my desired topic on Google just to get the correct spelling. To cite an example of what I am trying to say, lets say you would like to search for "xylem" (a biological term) and spell is zylem, it is highly unlikely that the user would guess to substitute the "z" for an "x" when the word is clearly pronounced "zylem". Perhaps this addition has already been discussed and denied or in the works; I have no idea, I do know that this would be greatly appreciated though. Any thoughts or comments please let me know. Thanks. Patbaseball2221 01:30, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Whose version of English gets precedent? If somebody types in colr, do we suggest color or colour? User:Zoe|(talk) 02:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Whichever the choice, it would be more user friendly than the current implementation. Many users I know use Google for almost every search on Wikipedia. It is almost invariably faster to google "apollo project wikipedia" than to try and find the same article via the "search" box in the project. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 02:51, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
From Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Better search feature, please see bugzilla:974. Until such time as this exists in Wikipedia's search engine (and I would not recommend holding your breath until then), you can use google (or most any other search engine) restricting its results to the wikipedia site. For example, adding "site:wikipedia.org" to a google search does this. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:05, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


Is it really that hard to add that feature??? Patbaseball2221 01:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

The challenge in better searching is not supplying suggestions, but supplying useful, relevant suggestions. Simply substituting X for Z, as in your example, would turn up frequently spurious results. Deco 01:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
It's difficult enough that it's not trivial, and searching is a distinctly secondary feature of the software. These two things combined mean it does not occupy a high position in the prioritized list of requested changes to the software. Most of the software development is done by volunteers. The Wikimedia Foundation currently has only two developers on its payroll, see meta:Wikimedia staff. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Block templates

{{block}} includes instructions for what to do if you are blocked; most of the other block templates do not. It also includes text addressed solely to admins, which is arguably unnecessary (should be in the text of the Unblock page instead). I propose that we standardise on a form of words for all block templates to point to a single Help subpage on what to do if you find yourself blocked, listing the unblock-l list, emailing the blocking admin, {{unblock}} and how to use it; also we should amend the templates to automagically include the name of the blocking admin and for preference a {{{duration}}} argument. Just zis Guy you know? 16:23, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Well the blocked user gets most of that stuff in the block message when they try to edit. (MediaWiki:Blockedtext), so I would suggest adding that lot to block templates is pretty redundant. --pgk(talk) 21:59, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Also the people who seem to get the most legitimate use of the unblock systems are the cases of collateral damage, where they won't have a block template on their own talk page. --pgk(talk) 22:17, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I still think there's merit in giving them this information before they are stymied in trying to edit (and incidentally make the block warnings more consistent at the same time). Just zis Guy you know? 20:00, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Protecting users from vandals by highlighting in red the most recent additions/changes to an article.

I was reading about how the creators of the movie Elephants Dream relied on Wikipedia to help create subtitles. They needed the Catalan word for Catalan. They wound up using an offensive word that a vandal had placed on the Catalan language page.

It occurs to me that users of Wikipedia might be helped by highlighting in red that text that has been recently altered (say within 2 days). This would alert them to suspect or unstable content.

Such as scheme also has the additional benefit of bringing users' attention to new parts of articles that relate to currently developing events without forcing them to skim the entire article looking for changes. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.88.76.22 (talk • contribs) .

Well highlighting in red might have some theoretical usefulness for purposes of editing, but it would be a terrible thing in terms of keeping encyclopedia articles looking like encyclopedia articles, and for purposes of being able to be read by members of the general public without something glaring interrupting the flow of reading. It would be a form of imposed textual self-reference.
Your suggestion is really to fix a problem which doesn't exist because we already have such an ability, albeit with one easy additonal step, but in a far more systemized way than just showing changes for the last two days. We and you don't need to skim the entire article looking for changes. Go to any article and click on the history tab on top. This field allows you to compare text in any two versions of an article in lo and behold, changes are in red! This also functions with a Watchlist, which allows us to monitor all pages we have "watched" for changes. You can only access this feature if you sign up for an account.--Fuhghettaboutit 16:25, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
The point is that unstable/recent information should not look like it's (yet) part of an encyclopedia article. It should cause an interruption in flow so that users don't get burned like the subtitler did for Elephants Dream. Besides, if a page is stable for two days, nothing would be highlighted. The article will look like a reliable page from an encyclopedia.
Dynamic, changing, unstable, vadalized articles don't deserve to look "pure". They need to express to the casual reader that the reader needs to be on the alert. That should be Wikipedia's way of helping to protect its credibility.
The point is to help the average user that comes to Wikipedia looking for reliable information. Very few average users even bother looking through the history of changes. They look at what is on the main article page and believe that to be the best of what Wikipedia has to offer on the subject. And they don't want to sign-up for an account just so they can follow a developing story. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.88.73.35 (talk • contribs) .
Well, they probably should look at the history tab. I believe Jimbo has said himself that people should not cite Wikipedia for hard facts. People should know better and use Wikipedia as a reference, and then double check such information (which is why citations are so important). Cowman109Talk 16:57, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Your comments remind me of those of auto-makers before seat belts and soft dashboards. They believed that drivers should simply drive more safely. They had to change the way they make their cars, though, and auto fatalities per auto have greatly declined over the years.
At the moment, Wikipedia is like early automakers and our sub-titler from Elephant Dreams is an early victim. Oh, sure, he should have checked multiple sources for the translation of a single word, but he didn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.88.73.35 (talk • contribs)
You can help you know. Sign up for an account and put some pages on your watchlist. Then, check them for vandalism. Also, please sign your posts with four tildes (~). Best, JChap (Talk) 01:36, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I think highlighting might not be such a bad idea; it is easier than calling up the history and diffing (although Wikipedia:Popups do make history and diffing more convenient). I'd suggest, though, making it optional. Put in a link that says "highlight recent unpatrolled edits." (If there were no new unpatrolled edits, this link would be hidden. Edits by admins would be assumed to be self-patrolled.) This could be implemented using CSS and JavaScript: new edits would have a special CSS class, but one that doesn't have any CSS properties unless the user wants it to. Also make it a user preference, where it would be on by default.
Only, instead of something that looks confusingly similar to a red link (like this one), why not use a mild highlight with a border, so that it can also apply to tables, images, block elements, and already coloured text?
One could extend it further. If a category or interlanguage link has recently been added, highlight it. Maybe consider a different highlight for links to pages with new unpatrolled changes.
I think a jumble of highlighting would be overwhelming to the casual user. And I'm afraid attaching a class for age information to each chunk of text in the rendered page might be expensive for the servers.
However, if it's technically possible, I'd certainly find it useful as a proofreader/vandalfighter. Maybe it's something you could choose in Preferences, or add with a javascript plug-in (like navigation popups). Or perhaps we could add a link/button/toolbox item on the article, allowing the user to "highlight recent changes to this article" (so that it's not just restricted to logged in users). An interesting idea! — Catherine\talk 15:26, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
An alternative proposal that I've brought up before is to have Wikipedia show visitors the most recent version of the page that survived at least X hours without being editted, where X is some value that is greater than the amount of time it takes to identify and revert most vandalism. This would ensure that most vandalism never reaches the pages shown to people who are just visiting. Dragons flight 18:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
But if the visitor were inspired to try adding something to the article, they would have to find the most recent version to do so. This could be a big inhibiter in recruiting new editors. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 20:21, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think there's any sort of consensus on how long it takes for an article to to achieve 'stability' from vandalism (the most-vandalism-is-reverted-in-five-minutes is bollocks, in my view). In addition, you'd exclude valid (sourced) information that was added in the last X hours. -- nae'blis (talk) 19:20, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
On the one hand, I think most vandalism is reverted in ten or fifteen minutes. On the other hand, I've seen vandalism (the bad-faith-revert type) go unreverted for 82 days. I'd say it's a left-skewed probability curve, but one with a very long tail. NeonMerlin 04:10, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Organized cleanup effort

I recently looked at Wikipedia:Cleanup and said to myself, "Wow, that's a lot of articles." After a bit of glancing about, I found that on average there's about 4 or 5 articles listed for cleanup in any given day. I then looked at Category:Cleanup from June 2005, and realized how unintimidating that list looked compared to the huge list of two thousand plus (I don't even want to guess how large it is). I searched around a bit to see if there was an organized wikiproject to deal with cleanup, and found Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce, though it appears to be long dead/dying and I don't particularlly like the way it's set up myself. Basically, I have in mind a wikiproject that would act similar to WP:AID, only there would be one article from the category of pages in need of cleanup a day(starting from June 2005 and moving towards more recent months). This would mean that, should it get dedicated people, there is a specific goal of at least 7 articles getting cleaned up a week, meaning the backlog would slowly deteriorate. This would take some effort to get started, such as getting people who are interested in glancing at the page every once in a while to see if the current article in need of cleanup has not been looked at. How does that sound? I am more than willing to start such an effort myself. Cowman109Talk 23:47, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Anything that would get people doing more maintenence work and dealing with our extensive backlogs is a good thing, so I'd support anyone who can do that. You might try revitalizing the existing cleanup taskforce/project though, one centralized effort works best, I think... better able to get and maintain the critical mass of volunteers needing to keep a project going. As for your one a day approach, I hate to say it but an article is tagged for cleanup every few minutes, so you'd need to clean up quite a few every day just to compensate for the new stuff being added to the queue. --W.marsh 00:22, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh, right. I was foolishly going by the list at Wikipedia:Cleanup. You're right that the extent of the cleanup additions is much larger, so the goals could start out small (ie one a day) and once it grows, could focus perhaps on more at a time. The only problem I see with changing the cleanup taskforce is that it's a completely different method (and looking at it further, it appears to have a complex system of assigning certain pages to members that is completely different from my proposed method. I don't think cleanup should necessarily be restricted to certain categories, and believe that anyone could theoretically go into any article needing cleanup and improve it in some way. If I created a project like this, I fear it would be an alternate process (similar to how we have 3 current different forms of going through a mediation process:WP:MEDCAB, WP:MEDCOM,WP:GUERRILLA). Cowman109Talk 00:36, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
You might be interested in the maintenance collaboration. Maurreen 05:06, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Here's another idea, which is beyond my technical ability, might be pie in the sky. We could have a button for "random cleanup" or "random article needing special attention" that could link to articles tagged to note serious problems. Maurreen 05:10, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

change the power structure of wikipedia

I move to simplify the de-sysopping process and to establish clear and easy criteria for the Rf adminship. Unlike stated in all statements of how wikipedia should work, there is a group of editors who are a sort of an "inner group" on wikipedia, and these are the admins. They do not always follow the policies, they interpret them as they like and use their privileges in content disputes, especially if there is no admin on the other side (because in that case there will be no wheel warring). In my opinion, any editor who reaches 1000 mainspace edits and has no history of vandalism or uncivility should be given the administrator status, without long and stupid discussions if he/she really "needs the mop". Arguments like "I dont see where he could use the admin quack" are only used by people who are exceptionally zealous and proud of what good they have done on wikipedia. Look for what they did in real world and you will find that they are 15, have problems at school because they spend all the time RC patrolling, RfA discussing, AfD nominating, prodding etc. But they believe that wikipedia is the real good of today's world. Admin privileges should be easy for everyone to reach and equally easy to lose, should one prove, that he is not capable of having some responsibility. Azmoc 15:04, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. I think that it may too easy to reach adminship. Admins are entrusted with certain tools that can be misused. Mere edit counts do not establish that someone can be trusted with those tools. I could rack up 1,000 more edits in Main space in a couple of weeks if I wanted to, but that would mean nothing about my understanding of Wikipedia. Understanding of Wikipedia and judgment are important considerations in choosing an admin, edit count is not. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 15:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
It takes a lot more than a specific quantity of edits and the ability to avoid calling someone a jerkface to justify entrusting a user with the ability to prevent others from editing, be it by blocking users or protecting pages. Too many people would be inclined to use these tools as bludgeons in content disputes with new / anonymous users. -/- Warren 15:39, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Yet again the case of a supposedly brand-new user, who has yet to make any edits to article space, trying to tell us how to run Wikipedia. Yawn. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Yet again a supposedly silly comment from someone who thinks he/she is running wikipedia. Yawn. It is possible to be editing without an username for a long time, then create one. I said, adminship should be easy to gain and easy to lose, your arrogant ad personam argument now violates the NPA in case I am experienced and BITE in case I am not, and in my opinion, you should lose your admin privileges now and re-gain them when you learn how to behave. Azmoc 08:12, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
You are exactly the type of person who would use his privileges in a content/conduct dispute. I find your stated belief that you are running wikipedia more than the other (yet inexperienced) users unbelievable. Azmoc 08:16, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Azmoc, are we supposed to believe that you have come here with suggestion after less than a week on the project and almost no mainspace contributions? Special:Contributions/Azmoc refers. Have you previously edited under another account? It would help to see your full edit history. Also, please remain civil. Just zis Guy you know? 12:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
The cabal rejects this proposal. That is all. Just zis Guy you know? 12:45, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
JzG, who I am, or under which IP I have edited before is no bussiness of yours. I will ignore your elitist ad personam argumenting, you should however note, that any ad personam argument is considered uncivil. I could also place a warning template on your talkpage. Your comment above doesn't concern the content of my proposal, just me. Stop that please. Azmoc 12:50, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Did you even read WP:TINC? There is no cabal. There never was. Just zis Guy you know? 08:00, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
While the identity of a person should not and does not affect the validity of arguments given by them, there is another side to Ad Hominem that is valid. Being busy Wikipedians, we don't have time to read/comment on every proposal that flies our way (the size of this proposal page is a tribute to this). Senior Wikipedians have what is called a BS-detector, which helps them quickly go through proposals like these and find the ones worth thinking and discussing about. A common indicator is a low-level of contributions. If a person with 50 edits and a person with 5000 edits have a proposal, whose would I read first, think about and comment on? Seniority gets preferential treatment in terms of consideration.
This is extremely important, and writing up a proposal, getting the necessary consensus on it, and putting it into action is an extremely labor-intensive process. If we tested every proposal that came by... we'd have no time for editing Wikipedia!
Nevertheless, occasionally, a "newbie" comes up with a good idea. If it doesn't seem immediately good to senior contributors, he will have to fight for it. Dalbury and Warren have come up with a good responses to your proposal, yet you have not addressed any of his concerns. Please do so. :-)
By the way, Zoe, please don't bite the newbies. — Edward Z. Yang(Talk) 15:55, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't bite newbies. I do, however, bite sockpuppets. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:13, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Assume good faith then. Are abrasive comments really that hard to avoid? -- bcasterline • talk 20:33, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, when they are in response to people with vested interests in stirring up trouble and not in creating an encyclopedia. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:40, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
  • The desysopping process is quite simple. If you cause serious disruption to Wikipedia, you will end up desysopped. Most admins are perfectly reasonable, and thus willing to discuss any decisions people would wish to clarify in an appropriate forum, and would welcome input from their peers. I see no value in having clearly defined standards at RFA, Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, being an admin requires more and less than simply ticking boxes on a checklist. It requires the trust of your peers. Steve block Talk 22:07, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Sombody emailed me about this discussion here, because of the sockpuppet suspicions against Azmoc, and because he was unsure if it was me (obvious similarities in username). So, for the record: it's not me! If I wanted a sockpuppet, I'd pick a less obvious name... Azate 03:47, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

No, I think he's Ackoz (talk • contribs • [type=move&user=Ackoz page moves] • block user • [type=block&page=User:Ackoz block log]), who stopped editing just before Azmoc started and was active on some of the same content, and who appears to have fallen foul of at least one admin (per block log). Sounds like garden-variety rouge admin abuse with a dash of sockpuppetry thrown in, nothing new. Just zis Guy you know? 07:59, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
mmmm potatoes. --The Prophet Wizard of the Crayon Cake 00:16, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
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