MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages/Archive 1

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Rollback

{{editprotected}} It's really a bad idea to use the watchlist notice for such a disputed and half-baked process. -- Ned Scott 05:09, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Not done. Please behave. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me? We have a rather large and growing number of respected admins who are outraged by this, and you have the nerve to suggest that I am misbehaving by saying there shouldn't be a watchlist notice about this? -- Ned Scott 06:06, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I was referring to your behavior in general, but the comment applies here as well. If a member of one of these hordes of enraged admins cares to remove the notice, they're free to. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:16, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Early on I blanked the page, and that's about the only unreasonable thing I've done, so I take offense to the suggestion that my "general behavior" has been inappropriate. Next time I see Doc glasgow, Carcharoth, GlassCobra, Sean William, Hex, FayssalF, or AuburnPilot (for starters), I'll ask them to remove the notice. Heaven forbid I make a reasonable request to someone uninvolved. -- Ned Scott 06:27, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

Per NedScott's wishes, please change the wording of this message to "Users can now acquire rollback through a disputed and half-baked process." – Gurch 06:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I actually thought it was much more neutral to simply remove the notice, but if you think that wording works.. -- Ned Scott 06:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think the process is more overdone than half-baked, myself. It has literally been argued to death – Gurch 06:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Argued to death, but not baked. -- Ned Scott 06:38, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

"If you want to slow things down or stop things, you should remove the message from users' watchlists, that says "Users can now acquire rollback on an individual basis." Even if there were full consensus on the implementation of this feature, it would have been better to allow requests to trickle at first rather than notifying every editor of the new feature's availability and having a flood.--Srleffler (talk) 06:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)" [1]

That guy brings up a good point, eh? -- Ned Scott 06:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't we stop advertising WP:RFR here until there's no dispute over it anymore? --Conti|✉ 15:17, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

I was hoping this whole thing would just be worked out (one way or the other) over the next week or two, and so comment here wouldn't be needed. But apparently, Jimbo has spoken, and sent this to ArbCom for them to decide. He specifically said "I recommend that people basically do nothing at all here, i.e. please don't go awarding this ability to lots of people in an effort to create "facts on the ground" about how it is used." To avoid stirring things up more than absolutely necessary, maybe the watchlist message should be removed until ArbCom decides. Not saying it must/should be, but wanted to point it out. Feel free to ignore. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 01:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree, and have therefore removed the notice. --Conti|✉ 01:38, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Unrelated

On an unrelated note, just out of curiosity, why do we use a second template for the notice instead of MediaWiki:Watchlist-details? -- Ned Scott 06:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps so the "dismiss" button only dismisses this bit and not the whole message? I could be wrong, I'm not exactly sure how this works – Gurch 06:46, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

It only dismisses the part under the div ID. I was actually playing with it in my sandbox a little while ago :) (yes, you too can make your very own dismissible message!) -- Ned Scott 06:52, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, indeed you can. Now if only I could think of some useful way of using that feature – Gurch 07:04, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

It was recently split off of the MediaWiki message so that it could be used in multiple MediaWiki messages without duplicating the dismiss code. Specifically, on MediaWiki:Recentchangestext and MediaWiki:Watchlist-details. One dismiss button can then be used to hide the message in multiple places. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, ok, that does make sense. -- Ned Scott 04:47, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Ipblockexempt

Since this effects a lot of editors / would be editors

{{editprotected}}

Can you phrase and link to

Wikipedia talk:Blocking exemption policy? Thanks, M-ercury at 23:40, January 14, 2008 Edit the template to say:

There is currently a discussion on whether to allow editors to edit via Tor or other proxy, overriding the IP block on a per user basis. The proposal is at Wikipedia:Blocking exemption policy and the discussion is located at Wikipedia talk:Blocking exemption policy

That page doesn't look ready. Nakon 23:41, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Might be ready now. Second look at editprotected? M-ercury at 04:00, January 15, 2008

Not done. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:03, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Why? John Reaves 13:42, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

This proposal really needs more feedback before I can call it consensus and open a bug. M-ercury at 13:43, January 15, 2008

Isn't WP:CENT enough for this? Kusma (talk) 13:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Cent did not generate the volume of audience in the /Tor nodes discussion that this IP exempt would require. M-ercury at 13:54, January 15, 2008

Why not just toss {{cent}} into the watchlist, outside the dismiss box? Any objections? —Random832 16:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I object. The whole point of the watch list is to look at articles that we're interested in, not what other people think we should be looking at. – Tivedshambo (talk) 16:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The watchlist notice is not to be abused. It reaches a very wide audience very effectively, and as such, only genuinely important things should go in it. That is, no {{cent}}, please. As for this particular discussion, it seems as though a lot of the people who are currently being blocked or would be affected by the change would probably be IP addresses, or so it seems to me. And obviously, IPs don't have watchlists. Either way, if one thing was learned from the great rollback debacle it was that inviting the entire community for technical discussions is usually not the best idea. Also, it's unclear what a watchlist notice would even say. Are you looking for more discussion? A vote? A poll? And have the CheckUsers been consulted as well as the other necessary people before we waste everyone's time with a proposal that could (and from what I can tell will) never happen. Having this particular user group is a perennial proposal that has been rejected multiple times before. Even with an overwhelming show of community support, the sysadmins are under no obligation to oblige, and frankly, a new user group and more bureaucracy doesn't seem to be what's needed here, so who can blame them? Not done (again). --MZMcBride (talk) 18:43, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is asking for a poll. This proposal has support, however, it has not enough visibility. I've published it otherwise, however, I believe this to be of importance to the community. I think a small blurb would be appropriate for a few days. I have re enabled the edit protected again. It is my hope that with this rationale it will be accepted, however, if declined, I won't touch it again. Best regards, Mercury at 20:50, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

RFC on television episodes

There's an rfc on television episodes at Wikipedia_talk:Television_episodes#RFC:_Notability_of_individual_television_episodes and it would be great if we could get the participation of as many editors as possible to build the widest consensus possible and hopefully successfully settle the issue one way or the other for the time being. This is an issue which has escalated up to arbcom and back, and is dividing sections of the community. Is it possible someone technologically savvy enough could add a link to this template? Hiding T 09:54, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this issue merits a notice on the watchlist, too, though apparently User:Phil Sandifer is against the move. He reverted the addition, thus I asked him to comment here. - PeaceNT (talk) 15:12, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

This just sets too massive a precedent - the watchlist notice, historically, has been used for a very narrow set of things - feature announcements, arbcom and Foundation elections, etc. Stuff that impacts every editor. This marks a shift to using it for stuff that might be of interest to a lot of editors - a major difference, and one that opens the door to a flood of watchlist notices whenever somebody has a policy issue they want to get attention for. With no clear line that seems drawable after "will impact every editor," that's just too wide open a barn door. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:16, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

You have yet to give a reason why all editors should be denied the right to know about this important RFC. There's no guideline concerning this, so you shouldn't just revert. Previous episodes discussions, RFCs and an arbcom (which I think bore no fruit) haven't attracted enough attention, not because the issue itself is unimportant, but rather that the community are not aware of the related events. This has been going on for more than half a year, and a simple notice here would solve many problems. Why, exactly, are you against it? (and do not use the precedent argument, later events, if controversial, could be discussed here, too.) Regards, - PeaceNT (talk) 15:28, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Do stop with the hyperbole - nobody is being denied the right to know. I am pointing out that you cannot change the way we use a sitewide notice without consensus and discussion. Wikipedia has policy that extends beyond written guideline pages - and tradition is a big part of that. Tradition has excluded notices like this. And the argument is not a slippery slope argument. By tradition, we have a particular requirement for watchlist notices. This does not meet that requirement. If we allow this, we move that requirement. There are reasons that we have not used the sitenotice for other widely but not all-inclusively interesting issues. Among them are that the watchlist notice exists as a particularly loud form of notification. Short of the actual sitenotice, it is our most widespread and thus most important communication medium. Should it become overcrowded it becomes useless. So we put very few things out on it. This is not like anything we have put out on it before. Thus the onus is on you to explain why either our past threshold has been too conservative or why this actually does meet that threshold. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:36, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

To give you an idea of the comparatively narrow scope of this RFC, right now Wikipedia has 2,182,086 articles. There are, in a week, 19 prime time hours of television programming, currently distributed over five networks. If we assume that each network produces 22 new hours of programming a year for each of those shows (i.e. that every show they run gets a full season pickup), that they have done so since 1955 (when television was widely introduced in the US, which they obviously haven't as several of them haven't existed that long) and that we have an article on every one of those episodes (which we don't) we are talking about less than 5% of the articles on Wikipedia. And, as I said, in practice that number is going to be wildly lower. There is no standard by which this is an issue of broad concern to Wikipedia. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:43, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

"...you cannot change the way we use a sitewide notice without consensus and discussion." Hmm, I thought a user started this thread for a day and no one replied? Sorry for taking it as given that silence implied agreement, but still, you're using a slippery slope. Nothing indicates that the watchlist-notice will become overused after this; inappropriate notices in the future will certainly gather enough opposition to be shut down, (but it seems to me you're the only one objecting this addition). I seriously doubt there're too many matters that have effectively resulted in several ANI subpages and two arbcom cases, like this one. There's no need to be bureaucratic and bring up cold statistics, IAR may be invoked here, consensus is desperately needed and we only need a notice here to draw any attention we could get to this RFC. Also, it's not only the number/percentage of the articles but also the interests of the readers (for example) that should be taken into consideration (if you prefer stats, you may take a quick look at the list of pages most viewed on Wikipedia [2] - a number of 'TV series' and 'list of episodes' articles are in the top 100, thus I'm quite not convinced that this issue is not of "broad concern to Wikipedia") Anyway, please show me a place where the "requirements" you mentioned are given in black and white, and I'll desist. - PeaceNT (talk) 16:23, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy does not work in black and whites. The issue is that this flies in the face of what has been done in the past, and does so without good reason. Phil Sandifer (talk) 16:25, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh right, so we're having a de facto policy that is stated no where but users are expected to understand, that's good to know.- PeaceNT (talk) 16:35, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Yep. It's not like you're being punished for not knowing the tradition surrounding the Watchlist notice. Phil Sandifer (talk) 18:06, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

(Deindent) Regardless of what's been said already, I think a watchlist notice would be beneficial. Put it up for 3-5 days = better consensus = solve escalating dispute. I don't think that's a "good reason" to use the notice, I think that's a great reason. Seraphim ^Whipp 02:01, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Seraphim's comment above. A link to the RfC in watchlist is a wise proposal. @pple complain 14:41, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes it truly isn't best to try to get everyone involved, especially people who have no idea what's been going on with the RfC and will simply show up for a hit-and-run comment because they feel they have to. Also, there are constantly RfC's and AfDs and MfDs and RfAs, etc., is there any reason this one is more notable or would require getting the entire community involved? Or at least getting the entire community aware of it? --MZMcBride (talk) 15:56, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

It's a problem that has been going on for nearly a year (?) now and stable consensus still can't be reached. I agree with the hit-and-run analysis though and that would be a problem. Seraphim ^Whipp 16:02, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

This is not an attempt to get everyone involved, most editors wouldn't participate in the RfC anyway if they are not interested. The point here is to make a public announcement that may reach as many users as possible, so we may eliminate the concern that there are editors who care about this issue but unaware of the on-going debate. It's step to get closer to an acceptable consensus. Also, this is not a regular RfC, MfD, RfA; as Seraphim Whipp pointed out, a-year-long dispute is not very common. - PeaceNT (talk) 16:30, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Year long disputes are actually pretty common. But still - target the relvant WikiProjects, look for editors actively editing television articles, etc. 95% of the project has nothing to do with this, and it's a poor idea to spam them with a watchlist notice. Phil Sandifer (talk) 16:52, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed in its entirety. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

This question is being discussed on the administrator's noticeboard.[3] Rather than fragmenting the conversation, let's move it there, since AN is a much more visible page than this one. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:47, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Overlinking

Quote:

Help is requested to identify bugs in the upcoming MediaWiki preprocessor before it goes live. Please visit m:Migration to the new preprocessor for details.

Umm ... overlinking? Even though I already knew about the issue, I had to waste some time checking the extra links to see if there's some new info. Why don't we make it one line, and put all extra links and explanations in the beginning of m:Migration to the new preprocessor? ∴ AlexSm 22:59, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Not everyone speaks a lot of English, and bugs could be terribly confusing. If you have a suggestion for a shorter alternative, please feel free to post one below, bearing in mind that people are going to need some sort of idea why there's a watchlist notice in the first place. And, by the way, I'm not sure the Manual of Style applies to the watchlist notice. : - P Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

For example,

"Help is requested to identify bugs in the upcoming migration to the new preprocessor.

Manual of style was linked as an example of common sense. In any case, mw:Manual:Parser.php page is not helpful here ∴ AlexSm 01:46, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Done. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:11, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

More than one dismiss

Would it be possible, in theory, to have something like the dismiss button on more than one item? For example, two messages, and each one with their own dismiss button. -- Ned Scott 10:54, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I think so, but it would require someone to write the code and update Common.js. I've suggested it before, but so far, no one's actually written / implemented it. As for the current dismiss button, it actually is set to expire after a week of being hidden, I believe. That expiry could probably be extended. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:33, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia takes the world 2008

{{editprotected}} Could anyone add a notice that says:

"Wikipedia takes the world 2008 will take place from June 6 to June 8. Please sign up and take photos that are needed for articles without them."

STORMTRACKER 94 ^{Go Irish!} 09:32, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

 Not done flash a link to a page with only one participant and three real edits into the face of every logged-in user? Forgive me if I suggest that you might be aiming a little high for an initial advertising run :D. Seriously, the village pump would be a better place to recruit. Happy‑melon 21:43, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Board Election

{{editprotected}}

In the past this message has been used to advertised Board Elections, and it's that time of year again.

Suggested message:

The Wikimedia Foundation is now accepting candidates for the 2008 Board of Directors election.

Dragons flight (talk) 04:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Done. Though I switched "Board of Directors" to "Board of Trustees," because I figured it was just a typo. Let me know if that was actually intended. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:10, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, and yeah that was just a mistake. Dragons flight (talk) 05:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Display/remove option for "Bot stub" notice

Resolved

 – Problem solved. El_C 16:49, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Can we get this implemented as per the above (bd vote) msg? I couldn't quite figure out what to do. Thanks. El_C 16:44, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Merging works for me. El_C 16:49, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Multiple watchlist messages

Is there any demand for having multiple dismiss buttons on the watchlist notice? This would require changes at MediaWiki:Common.js/watchlist.js, but can be done if there is a need. --- RockMFR 22:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Has been requested in multiple locations (including a VPT "How do I un-dismiss one of the messages"), support would be good to have, shuld have read here before trying to implement. If memory serves me, we used to have this functionality. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:50, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Such as back here. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, it's never been possible on en.wiki to have multiple dismiss buttons. The diff directly above looks as though you were fixing a copy-paste error. At some point, I added code written by Splarka that allows "invalidating" the old cookie and forcing a new one, similar to what is done with the Sitenotice. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Without wanting to experiment live, if there are two cookie_id's in here, will dismiss dismiss both numbers, or just the lower one today? — xaosflux ^Talk 11:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Please, it would be appreciated if we could dismiss individual messages. I raised a thread at VPT asking how to undismiss the watchlist messages, as I had tried to dismiss one message, but lost the foundation election message at the same time. When there are more than one message, editors may not wish to dismiss them all - only those they have already responded to, or find irrelevant. Others they may wish to keep, as a reminder to mull something over before acting upon. DuncanHill (talk) 21:23, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Code updated at testwiki:MediaWiki:Common.js/watchlist.js and being tested there. See formatting at testwiki:MediaWiki:Watchlist-details. You can also test it there without logging on, on test.wiki the code is temporarily active on all page loads, not just on the watchlist. Note that the outer div defined by ID is deprecated but will be useful to keep for 30 days as the wikimedia javascript maxage allows browser caches to keep old javascript that long.

Also per "but lost the foundation election message", you can always just go to MediaWiki:Watchlist-details or Template:Watchlist-notice on en.wp to see the messages. --Splarka (rant) 23:12, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Implemented. Bypass local cache to see the new dismiss buttons. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:16, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, works great! — xaosflux ^Talk 02:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Excellent - thank you and well done. DuncanHill (talk) 11:52, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Namespace?

Now that this notice is no longer transcluded to RecentChanges as well as the watchlist, is there any need to keep it as a separate template? It would probably be safer to merge it back into Mediawiki:Watchlist-details (can't be unprotected, more natural location, possibly a tiny performance boost, etc etc). Happy‑melon 16:35, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's not that it was intentional, per se, to not allow the notice to work anywhere else, but the code was moved to /watchlist.js, which is only imported now on Special:Watchlist. It isn't that future messages wouldn't be appropriate to display on RecentChanges or elsewhere, just that they wouldn't have the ability to be dis-missable there anymore. My biggest concern with moving this back to MediaWiki: is the page history of the template and this talk page. A lot of discussion has taken place about what is / isn't appropriate, etc., which really shouldn't be lost. And, this template has a far more recognizable and easy to remember name. Yes, it could redirect, and yes, we could do a history merge or something, but meh, if it ain't broke, don't fix it is really my philosophy here. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:27, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't mean it in a bad way when I say that I find that hard to belive. You've always struck me as precisely the person to fix things that aren't broken, but could still be improved or tidied. 95% of the time, I think that "broken" is most definitely not a requirement for maintenance :D. I'd say perhaps a history merge of Template:Watchlist-notice and MediaWiki:Watchlist-details, and redirect this talk page (or move it to an archive subpage of Mediawiki talk:Watchlist-details). I don't really think there's much to call between the ease of rememberance of the names, and naturally a redirect would be left here so people would end up in the right place regardless... Happy‑melon 21:18, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I meant that as in, if you want to do it, I don't care, but I can't be bothered. ; - ) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:20, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Okey dokey! Hmn... maybe I'll do it tomorrow :D.... Happy‑melon 21:25, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Div IDs

Many editors may not be getting the new RCP message, as they may have this message hidden via the link to hide the arbcom message. I think this is a on a time delay to reshow, can we force this to revision to being shown to all when we add new text here? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:59, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I made the script as a proof-of-concept in the hopes Ruud Koot would see it before it went live, and suitably polish it up and create some nice instructions for it. Someone got impatient ^_^. Should be being used correctly now. --Splarka (rant) 08:12, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Veropedia advertising

Why is Veropedia able to advertise for contributors in our watchlists? I have nothing against the project, and may contribute sometime. But why is a contest designed to create articles for Veropedia advertising inside our watchlists? Lurker (said · done) 15:31, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

On second thoughts, it'd be best to answer this question at the village pump as I think it is a policy issue. Lurker (said · done) 15:47, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I just want to bring this back here. I've been to the other discussions Lurker has linked to, and it is obvious to me that the mere existence of this contest is obviously controversial. While I don't hold that view, after all, it doesn't concern me at all what Danny chooses to do with his money, using the Wikimedia Foundation's assets (its servers, its bandwidth, and its unique access to its userbase) to advertise this private contest is a big deal. If this was Joe Random holding a "improve some articles" contest, he'd never get a free add to every Wikipedia user every time they checked their watchlist. If this was IBM having a contest to improve articles on their products, they'd never get access to this banner. Just because the sponsor of the contest happens to be a former WMF employee and has sysop access to this project doesn't give him the right to spam every user with his private activities. It's wrong, and I will work to ensure it stops now. Gentgeen 10:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

So just because a contest to improve articles isn't officially sanctioned by the WMF (have they sanctioned anything to date?) people shouldn't hear about it? The comparison to IBM is just silly, the contest isn't to improve the Veropedia article and write a Danny Wool article, its to improve the Wikipedia encyclopedia's coverage of core encyclopedic articles. Much of the criticism of Wikipedia is that we have extremelely detailed articles about video game characters, but coverage of important things is extremely lacking. Reproductive system was, until a few weeks ago, 3 sentences long. The watchlist notice and the main contest page made no mention of Veropedia. Does it say to contribute to Veropedia? No. And if you did some research, you would know that articles on Veropedia are static - any change made needs to be made on Wikipedia. An improvement to Veropedia is an improvement to Wikipedia. The opposition to improving articles for such silly idealistic reasons just makes me sick. Mr.Z-man 18:42, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry you're feeling ill. Perhaps you should seek a physician's services. However, there are very practical issues involved here. This contest is being held to improve Veropedia so that it can better compete in the encyclopedia market. Veropedia is a for-profit corporation, a juristic person owned by one or more individuals. Article VI, Section 1 of the bylaws of the Wikimedia Foundation states that, "no part of the net income or assets of this Foundation shall ever inure to the benefit of any Trustee, officer or members thereof or to the benefit of any private individual." I contend that the bandwidth and unique access to the users of this project that this add was misappropriating are both assets of the Wikimedia Foundation. The placement of this add, using the Foundation's assets, to promote a contest intended to result in the financial benefit to a corporation and its owners violates the Foundation's bylaws, and should never have happened in the first place. Gentgeen 10:13, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

So people should not encourage others to improve the encyloippedia. We should just wait for the Foundation to sponsor something, like they'll ever do that. Mr.Z-man 23:12, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

#ifexist limit

See [4]. It's been suggested that a notice about this should be added to the watchlist, so that people know what to do when it breaks pages; do other people think that this is a good idea? --ais523 12:12, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

No, but it should be sure to have an active page with a good header on WP:VPT. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:15, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Someone suggested it should go in the Sitenotice, so I said here would be a much better, more practical place. The best, actual solution is to fix the issue this week before the limit is changed. Tim Starling has a page that lists the number of #ifexist calls when the page is parsed. The log is here. It had to be rotated as it didn't have a remove duplicates function. The old log is here (WARNING: 8 MB of text; 57575 lines). --MZMcBride 04:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

If it's here or Sitenotice, then here would be the place, but for a VERY LIMITED time (maybe a week) and it should simply be a short link to a Wikipedia: or Help: page detailing the issue. And unless our help channels get overloaded, do it withOUT increasing the counter. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

size warning

Can anyone help me code a warning for users whose watchlist size is approaching the technical issues discussed at Help:Watching_pages#Size_limitation? I tried, but it broke due to the comma in the argument. —Random832 17:53, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, you could use #iferror: to catch the number if it is over 1,000 (as it detects the #ifexpr error on finding the comma). For example:

• {{#iferror:{{#ifexpr:999 < 999}}|Warning, you have over 1000 items in your watchlist!|}} produces:
• {{#iferror:{{#ifexpr:1,000 < 999}}|Warning, you have over 1000 items in your watchlist!|}} produces: Warning, you have over 1000 items in your watchlist!

But probably the number should be unformatted and the default message changed to use {{formatnum:}}. Bugzilla time! --Splarka (rant) 09:04, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

global sysops message

The current message, "There is an ongoing vote on the Meta wiki regarding the creation of Global sysops. Interested users are invited to comment here" struck me as being rather incomplete, in that it didn't indicate that it was filtered by Wikipedia:Global rights usage, so left the reader thinking that we needed to hide our womanfolk because those sneaky Meta users were on the attack. </bad humor> Long story short, I added mention of Wikipedia:Global rights usage and was reverted by a user whose user space advertises Do your part, oppose Global sysops!!!. I might be forgiven for starting to think that this notice is intended to kill the proposal, rather than inform people of it. Am I being paranoid? - BanyanTree 08:36, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

It's a bit of tricky situation. As the one who originally wrote the message, I tried to be as neutral as possible in my wording, given that I opposed the proposal at Meta. There is currently a new policy that bans certain behavior when using global rights, however, the contention is largely based on there not being an current technical means to stop global rights. So while it's technically true that the rights would be "limited locally," it also is technically untrue. When I saw that you had added the clause to the notice, I didn't revert, but I also wasn't upset that Prodego did. Perhaps some different wording would be the best solution? --MZMcBride (talk) 20:59, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I supported, based largely on being appalled at the amount of cleanup (relative to the constructive edits) required for one tiny wiki I had an interest in that was waiting for a stable community to coalesce. This required a steward to temporary sysop a Meta user every month or so to clear out all the random test pages (almost always in English, German or Czech, for some reason) and spam. The best solution would be for voters to actually understand the situation on small wikis before voting. Since this notice appears to have been successful in funneling ignorant users into the poll (not so subtlely linked in bold), the proposal is dead. I don't see a need to continue this discussion. - BanyanTree 01:11, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Note that I didn't actually write anything, I just reverted. And I don't oppose the idea of having a group that is sysop on all small wikis, I agree it would be extremely beneficial for anti-vandalism, image cleanup, etc. However, I think that the proposed implementation, which has a number of problems, would actually cause more problems than the proposal offers advantages. Firstly, that it does not (technically) limit the rights of these users to small wikis would encourage the "hat collectors" who run around trying to make themselves look more important. Secondly, I think that the proposed criteria are overly officious, we should be able to choose the active people who would use the right properly, not require people complete a checklist, which would only further encourage those who simply want to say they are a global sysop to 'check off' the list to get it. This would emphasize the criteria, not the actual RfX. Thirdly, the proposal too narrowly defines what these users should be doing, limiting them entirely to anti-vandalism. There are several other areas these users could help. Should the policy stay as is, users would simply ignore it, based on the general consensus other minor changes are not problematic. This means that either anyone could get a global sysop immediately removed simply by pointing one of these helpful changes out, or it will be much more difficult to desysop these users than advertised. Prodego ^talk 02:10, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

The message was removed with the logic that it wouldn't apply to en.wikipedia, but that's not actually true. A great amount of support is being pushed for a system that would allow en.wiki admins to be admins on smaller wikis, but not vice versa. Not only that, but I think it's important that we have some larger meta-related discussion notices like this every so often. The notice on en.wikipedia has fueled much of the existing discussion. -- Ned Scott 05:28, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that enwiki admin = admin everywhere would be a good idea Ned. Prodego ^talk 06:19, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome to that opinion, but the fact is that we're involved. Even if you don't like the idea, that would actually be even more reason to include the notice. -- Ned Scott 06:31, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

RFA Review

I've added a watchlist message for the RFA Review, now ongoing. This was discussed at WT:RFA and elsewhere, and - since the other messages have cleared - adding this message now does not clutter the watchlist (as it would have when becoming the 4th notice on the list). I am reasonably certain I got the formatting right, but could someone double check my edit? Thanks, UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 14:39, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

You missed to increase the cookie-ID numbers, that is you reused the same numbers as the previous message used. That means that users that did click [dismiss] on the previous message did not see your message. I fixed that by increasing the ID numbers so all users will now see your message, until they click [dismiss] again. Each new message should have a higher number like that.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:02, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

My bad - I thought the example message I edited had a number set and ready. Thanks for the catch. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 02:41, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Talk page message box standardisation

Since this will affect pretty much all talk pages and we suggest some changes of the old standard styles I added a notice saying: "We are now re-standardising the styles for talk page message boxes. Have a look and a say at {{tmbox}} and its talk page."

I appreciate any comments and/or improvements on the wording of the notice, especially since I am not a native English speaker.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:18, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Isn't {{Cent}} enough for this announcement? I think we're overusing the watchlist messages a bit recently. Kusma (talk) 06:54, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Well {{cent}} is only displayed on a handful of pages that only some editors visit, and {{tmbox}} will be used on literally a million talk pages or so. We did announce tmbox in several places for some weeks, among others on two of the village pumps, still only about five users came and commented.

When we deployed the {{ambox}} and had announced it "everywhere" for weeks except the watchlist notice then people complained a lot that we had not announced it enough. And when we deployed the {{imbox}} people also complained that we had not announced it enough, in spite that we even had announced it in a watchlist notice. So changes like this that affects that many pages should probably be properly announced. And hey, the watchlist notices do have dismiss buttons.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:15, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

special enforcement measures

I think this needs to be re-added. It's a major issue in the community, and I notice that talk page activity there died right around the same time the notice here was taken out. It's something that needs more than just a few days of attention. -- Ned Scott 06:35, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Rotating notices

How possible would it be for a system where we have multiple notices, but lets say only one or two are shown at a time? It would certainly help with the lesser issues that could use some more attention, but preventing over-use, since each notice would only be shown either for a period of time, or per page refresh (or whatever). Just to throw the idea out there. -- Ned Scott 06:37, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Generating one or two of them randomly from a set is probably possible with JS, but if you rotated them regularly, you'd probably have to do without dismiss-ability. So people would have to either hide them completely or see them all the time. And people have been strongly against turning the watchlist notice into a CENT-type place... --MZMcBride (talk) 06:46, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Another idea, which wouldn't really apply here since it wouldn't use this page, would be for an opt-in approach via a user script that would do the rotating notices.. I think I like this idea.. -- Ned Scott 07:13, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea of using this page to provide notice of important discussions, but I find myself wishing it was done in a more systematic way. Currently, it seems that admins who know how to find the page occasionally will update it when something interests them. Really, it should be reserved for important discussions that need broad community input. I'm not really sure {{Tmbox}} crosses the threshold. Not to diminish the work being done there, but it's a discussion about cosmetics on a non-encyclopedia page. I'd think WP:CENT is perfectly adequate for {{Tmbox}}, where as an RFC about WP:GNG which could, at least in theory, effect thousands of pages, would be much more appropriate use of this notice. I think a system, even a fairly informal one, could be of great benefit. --JayHenry (talk) 19:05, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Technically: I can make the different watchlist notices turn up randomly on each page refresh only using template code. No need for javascript for that, although javascript could probably do it better. Each visible notice would still have its own dismiss button. Although using only template code would mean if a user had dismissed a notice it would still have a slot in the rotation thus on some page refreshes there would be no notice even if the user had not dismissed them all. (I can also make the rotation show say two notices at a time instead of just one at a time.)

Stylistic: I think we should keep the number of concurrent watchlist notices low, say tops three but normally only one or two at a time. Thus I think we don't need rotation. For instance, some weeks ago we had three notices at the same time, thus I simply waited some week with the {{tmbox}} notice until there were only one notice. Of course, if there are four or more important events at the same time that needs attention, then we should have them all up at the same time.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:11, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know... I continue to find this obtrusive and all out of sorts with what's actually important. This {{tmbox}} thing has been advertised on my watchlist for at least a week now, and I'd go so far as to say that every single item that's been listed on WP:CENT is clearly more important. I really have an objection to using the watchlist notice for lengthy advertisements of what might be termed pet projects. --JayHenry (talk) 23:54, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

JayHenry: There is a dismiss button next to each watchlist announcement, use it. Today the {{tmbox}} announcement has been up for a week so as planned now I am going to remove it. Since it seems to be practice to have the announcements up for one week, and thanks to the announcement we now have enough editors discussing the new talk page message box standard. And note that the new talk page message box standard (which is what tmbox is about) will affect literally about 1,000,000 talk pages. How is that not important enough?

And yes, several of the things currently announced at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion seems to be important. Feel free to add announcements for them here at MediaWiki:Watchlist-details, but I recommend that you spread it out over time so there are at most three announcements here at a time. (This is of course my personal view and not any official rule.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:22, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I do use the dismiss button. Maybe this is a browser preference setting, but the box returns every time I open Wikipedia. I can't edit MediaWiki:Watchlist-details, and I'm not trying to raise a huge fuss or anything. I just think this could be a more valuable way to disseminate information, and it's not really hitting it's potential at the moment. --JayHenry (talk) 17:40, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

JayHenry: Yes, it sounds like you have your web browser set to delete all cookies each time you close it. (That is normally a good thing, among other things it means web advertising companies etc. can not see that you are the same user next time you visit some site.) But I recommend you set your browser to allow Wikipedia cookies to stay. That means you can click the "remember me" setting next time you log in and then you only need to log in about once a month. Very convenient. (But only do this if your computer is in your home so others don't have access to it.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:05, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

RFA Review

{{editprotected}} RFA review is not something that should be on watchlist notice. Please remove it, so we don't get burned out by what appears to be a essay project. Thank you, NonvocalScream (talk) 17:59, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

 Not done It was discussed at WT:RFA and elsewhere; consensus was that it should be here. Thanks, PeterSymonds (talk) 18:46, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Can you link to the discussion, I'm not seeing it in the archives, I'm sure its there, but I can not find it. Regards, NonvocalScream (talk) 19:22, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 134#WP:RREV - Questions are up. Each message is individually dismissable. Meh. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:07, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't really see much discussion as was cited in the editprotected decline, my concern is that this is going to cause the watchlist notice to be more easily disregarded. NonvocalScream (talk) 20:11, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, responses since Friday (when I added the notice) were almost triple the responses from the week prior, so I believe the notice has been quite effective in making the RFA Review as broad as possible. That said, I have no problem with pulling the notice down on Thursday, which would be its 6th day live, if there are further objections. This is far shorter than any of the three prior notices, especially the board elections items. We also very deliberately waited until the previous messages were cleared, despite the Questions going live on the 13th, specifically to keep from overloading the watchlist. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 17:04, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that the RFA review notice very much belongs here as a watchlist notice. How we choose admins is a pretty important matter that concerns all editors.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:25, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The RFA review notice have now been up for 8 days. I think it is time to remove it. Any one against that?

JayHenry or anyone who feels up to it: You might want to add two of the announcements from the Wikipedia:Centralized discussion now that we get free space in the watchlist notice.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:38, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, should the notice be updated? It's near ending as the submissions have to be before 00:00, July 1 2008 (UTC). Rudget (logs) 11:11, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I've added the deadline. It's a little wordy, but - as it comes down in 2 days anyway, I don't know that it's an issue. Thanks, UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 20:29, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

TFA discussion add?

There are several proposals out for changing the way articles are picked for the main page at Wikipedia_talk:Today's_featured_article/requests#Facilitating_TFA_suggestions. Seems to me this should be a watchlist message so that we can really see what wikipedians want out of something as important as the Main Page Featured article. Can we add this? Wrad (talk) 19:48, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... that's a pretty difficult discussion to follow. It's hectic and a little unfocused and I'm not really sure it would benefit from an influx of views. Any chance of a more focused RFC on the topic? --JayHenry (talk) 20:17, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. Nobody seems to care anyway, so never mind. Wrad (talk) 20:21, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

What is this page?

When I look at this page I see "You have $1 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages)." That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. What is this page supposed to display? 207.34.229.126 (talk) 18:58, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Users who have registered and have a username can maintain a watchlist of articles they are interested in. This page is the text that appears at the top of that watchlist; in most cases, it's just a count of the articles they are watching. However, occasionally a message or announcement is posted above that heading, and that's what this page is generally used for. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 19:09, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

(e/c)It is part of the pages that make Wikipedia work and so isn't meant to make much sense on its own. For logged-in users it is shown at the top of their Watchlist. The software replaces the "1$" with the number of pages that the user is currently watching. Watchlist notices which are used to highlight important notices such as policy changes or elections can also be shown in this banner. Woody (talk) 19:11, 2 July 2008 (UTC)