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debug mode for tables

A debug mode for tables would be very convenient. Could one maybe create a class="debug" with exagerated cellpadding or whatever? It would also need to make all borders visible even if they had been set to not show. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lemmiwinks2 (talk • contribs) 19:13, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Split-apart of MUSTARD

Proposal to split apart Wikipedia:Manual of Style (MUSTARD) and merge it into the other Music Guidlines. See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (MUSTARD)#Page Split --Jubilee♫clipman 20:28, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

You can put non-free images in articles (where they are very visable) but NOT in talk pages (where their non-free impact is low). That in itself is wierd. Furthermore, the proccess for uploading images is arcane and unfriendly to the new user, requiring special basiv knowlegde of how copyright works in America (which I don't care about, as I don't live in America). My proposal calls for sweeping reforms to how we manage images and is to be done by in-house experts on the subject who must always keep the "dumb-end-user" in mind when reforming policy to make it VERY STREAMLINED AND MAKE SENSE!! (I don't mean understandable, I mean common sense!!).
Mod MMG (User Page) Reply on my talkpage. Do NOT click this link 08:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


Trans-wiki collaboration

First of all this may be more of a global Wikimedia issue, but I feel having a discussion here first would be more interesting and useful. Also, this post is, in a way, a means of getting some frustration off my chest. (Hopefully I won't bore you too much in the process)

I have an Wikipedia account since 2004, and have been an utterly satisfied user of the encyclopaedia for a long while now. Occasionally I do some edits, mostly fixing patent mistakes and reverting vandalism I happen to come across, but I never became a prolific editor. A couple weeks ago, however, I began to study programming following a particularly well written Wikibook, and I felt totally at ease with the Wikibook model (probably just because my brain is best suited to tasks more modular and self-contained than building the incredibly complex web of cross-linking articles Wikipedia is. But I digress) and began doing some serious copyediting of the book right away. I felt that I finally found my home in the Wikimedia projects, and so decided to look around to learn more about how Wikibooks worked.

My worries began when, on reading the RfD page of Wikibooks, I took issue with a particular book on physics, and decided, after checking some policies and deciding it was reasonable to do so, make an RfD against that book. You can read all the gory details on the RfD entry itself if you wish, but the issue which really concerns me is totally independent on whether that RfD will be accepted or not by the community. The problem is that at several points during the process it looked very appropriate to ask other Wikibookians with some knowledge of physics for their opinions, as it is done in a RfC around here. Unfortunately, it appears impossible to locate a single regularly active editor of any of the better Wikibooks on physics, or find a place where asking for comments on the RfD would be useful. In fact, many of the RfD discussions at Wikibooks, particularly those on "specialist" subjects like physics, get no input other than from the proponent and the (currently 12) admins (and, occasionally, from the main contributor of the book to which the RfD refers to).

A pertinent question at this point would be what Wikipedia has to do with my complaints. The answer is very simple. Wikipedia has millions of registered users, an useful RfC system, some functional Wikiprojects and lots of public recognition. Wikibooks has none of these things. The point I'm trying to make is that Wikipedia could use some, even a little bit, of its leverage and brain power to support its sibling projects. Maybe something like having smallish (10-20 people) rotating boards of contributors in the main areas of knowledge (natural sciences, humanities, computing...) dedicated to providing comments in discussions and working at improving books at Wikibooks (the members of the boards could well be permanent, but for practical reasons I guess a rotating cast of volunteers would work better). It wouldn't cost much to Wikipedia, but would help the smaller projects a lot. The way things are now, I am afraid most of the existing Wikibooks are condemned to remaining eternally as stubs, and I feel the Wikipedia community could do something about that situation.

Note that I didn't post this either at Meta or at Wikibooks, as I feel it would be more productive starting this discussion at Wikipedia. Hoping to read your opinions, whatever they are. And thanks for putting up with my lamentations. --Duplode (talk) 23:03, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I doubt boards would get off the ground. But the basic idea of cross-pollination has merit. Maurreen (talk) 01:03, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Encouraging cross-pollination seems worthwhile. Two ideas: find suitable wikiprojects on specific topics to try and link with; and create a Wikipedia Noticeboard specifically for transwiki coordination/collaboration. (There may already be something on Meta but that gets so much less traffic.) There's also Wikipedia:WikiProject Transwiki, which might perhaps be expanded. Rd232 talk 01:54, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to see some Wikiprojects making an effort at cross-wiki collaboration. Wikiprojects are built to organize groups of people interested in working on a particular topic, and it would be great if some Wikiprojects were to take some off-Wikipedia content and consider improvement of it to be part of their mission. Wikibooks needs groups with knowledge of a particular topic, Wikinews could use people organizing news relevant to a field, there could be groups knowledgeable about a specific subject adding words relevant to that subject to Wiktionary. --Yair rand (talk) 01:57, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Good to see positive responses... engaging Wikiprojects in the cross-pollination makes a lot more sense than my suggested implementation, as it uses an already existing infrastructure. Speaking of infrastructure, it is worthy to note the unified Wikimedia accounts we now have will prove incredibly useful for making it easier for collaborators. By the way, if this idea gets enough support to take off, how do you think it should be kickstarted - that is, finding the first few Wikiprojects willing to try out the system? By a global "call to arms" to recruit interested projects, or by several "private" talks with individual projects to spread the idea? --Duplode (talk) 23:22, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm in favor of trying talks with individual projects, there could be problems with a global "call to arms". (Just thinking aloud now, I can think of a bunch of Wikiprojects that it would be amazing if they could collaborate with sister projects. Wikiproject Video Games or one of its sub-projects working on Wikinews, some of the descendent WikiProjects of WP:COMP working on Wikibooks, WP:MED helping on Wiktionary...) Maybe the Wikiprojects could develop local "branches" on sister projects, and everyone could work together. --Yair rand (talk) 21:21, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
Collaboration on content across projects is a good idea. Anything that can spread some of en.wikipedia's momentum to other projects is good. I'm less convinced about trying to collaborate on processes. When it comes to the behind the scenes stuff, even the smaller projects prefer to maintain their sovereignty. It could end up looking like a takeover - "We don't think your processes are running efficiently enough, so we're bringing in our own people to do it right." Mr.Z-man 15:52, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
"Collaboration on content across projects is a good idea. ... I'm less convinced about trying to collaborate on processes." I understand your point about not butting WP into other projects - but how do you distinguish between the two (content/process), and still have something that enhances collaboration, especially given the problem that en.wp has the most contributors? The best I can come up with is trying to create some equivalent "wikiproject" on the other project, and creating links between the two, maybe with some kind of regular communication. Would it be impossible to get a bot to help synchronise projects (not the entire wikiproject, probably, but a noticeboard subpage say)? That could help quite a bit. Rd232 talk 14:50, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
Its not that hard to separate them. If all you're doing is collaborating on content directly via projects, that's fine. But if you're trying to overhaul their deletion process or RFC process or even just flood them with wikipedia users to make them go faster or if you're going over there to set up some new bureaucracy, then it becomes a problem. Mr.Z-man 16:10, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
These concerns are legitimate, but I feel the usefulness of having a larger pool of contributors make it worthy to find ways to deal with any new convivence issues that might arise. Of course, the wikipedians "recruited" via Wikiprojects to work in, say, Wikibooks would make their collaborations as regular members of Wikibooks, and would have to follow Wikibooks policies and respect the community they are getting into. It would be no different to what should happen if, for instance, I convinced some friends at college to make an improvement drive on Wikibooks about some subject we're knowledgeable about - except that done in a potentially much larger scale. --Duplode (talk) 18:41, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
Sure, they would have to follow local policies, but there could also be enough of them in comparison to the number of regular Wikibooks users that they could get consensus to change the policies as well if they get in their way. What might be dealing with a convenience issue for us might look like a hostile takeover to people who have been on Wikibooks for months or years. I'm not saying we shouldn't collaborate with smaller projects, I'm just saying we need to be very careful not to make it look like we're seizing control from the regulars. Mr.Z-man 19:52, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
Precisely what I meant above by 'there could be problems with a global "call to arms"'. I think this would be best started off small-scale, with a few projects helping out off-Wikipedia, preferably divided over multiple sister projects. --Yair rand (talk) 21:18, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Some sort of cross-wiki-WikiProject thing might be beneficial. There have been times on other projects where I've felt something was an issue, but there was no analog to a WikiProject I could go to and say "okay, I feel there's a problem in the domain of topic X, what do you all think?" For instance, I don't agree with the way the categories for roads/road sign photographs are set up on Commons. If this had happened on Wikipedia, I could consult with WP:USRD and work out a consensus, but it doesn't exist over there, so I couldn't go seek the input of people specifically knowledgeable about road photos. As a result, last time that I attempted to broach that topic, it ended up with two or three Commons categorizers shouting that I didn't understand Commons and me arguing that they didn't understand the reasons the photos had been taken in the first place, and thus their categorization scheme was silly. Very little got done. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:15, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

You'll find that Wikibooks has a friendly small-town atmosphere, so don't worry about encountering the same situation. -- Adrignola (talk) 21:46, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
I think this is a very important proposal. Unfortunately, if we do this we will be fighting against the software because there are no cross-wiki watchlists. There is currently a strategy discussion here (you may have to log in there separately even if you have a global account), and on the talk page I have proposed adding cross-wiki collaboration as an explicit goal. Hans Adler 09:21, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
In the short term, a bot synchronising pages across projects could to some extent make up for not having cross-wiki watchlists, no? Rd232 talk 15:35, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

(Without breaking the flow of the current discussions: I just told people at Wikibooks about this thread. --Duplode (talk) 15:59, 11 May 2010 (UTC))

I think it's a really good idea. Cross-wiki watchlists would help, sure, but there's plenty of users who have coped without them across an admirable number of projects. I think that the most feasible way to do this would be, as suggested above, have individual wikiprojects run "outreaches" to other projects. This kind of thing is a start.
A way to get more traffic (both reading and editing) would be to include these projects in a separate section of the interwiki bar. Maybe not the way the languages are structured, but there nevertheless. It might even be as simple as one link to a page listing all the Wikimedia projects, or maybe more like this:

More about Foo
Books about Foo
Quotes by Foo
Current news related to Foo
Definition of Foo
Pictures of Foo
 Opinions? {{Sonia|talk|simple}} 05:40, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

{{sisterlinks}} --Cybercobra (talk) 06:11, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Oops. Yeah, like that, but defaulted into the left column for every article. {{Sonia|talk|simple}} 09:30, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
That would be nice if it could be part of every article. For what it is worth, I have made my attempt at to the math community here over at Wt:WPM. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thenub314 (talk • contribs)
{{sisterlinks}} just isn't applicable on every article; fact of the matter is, enwiki's scope is far, far, far broader than any other projects', so cross-pollination (which I'm all for, as evidenced by my cross-wiki edits) isn't a simple "we need to get A talking to B". EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:48, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
How about adding some optional parameters to {{Talkheader}}, to generate notes at the bottom (just above the archive links, I suppose) that for contributions of type X1 (where X1 is, presumably, something that Wikipedia is not) consider Y1 (some specific thing on a sister project), for X2 consider Y2, etc.? It's technically simple to do, once we thrash out just what the wording ought to be; readily customizable for each article; and may actually catch the attention of more contributors than something left-column-ish or Wikiproject-ish. --Pi zero (talk) 18:56, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
re: to the comments above, I would probably lean towards Sonia's stance in that the key thing is getting potentially interested contributors involved (and thus Wikiprojects are important); and things like watchlists or how extra links to sister projects would be tailored to individual articles and subjects are mostly convenience issues. On the other hand, talkheader does looks like (another) great place to slip these links into. --Duplode (talk) 19:48, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Anyone want to just go ahead and try to organize a cross-wiki collaboration effort on a Wikiproject? Seems like it's time for some actual action, hm? --Yair rand (talk) 03:08, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
I am attempting to at W:WPM, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest as of yet. But maybe I am going about it the wrong way... Thenub314 (talk) 11:47, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
That link goes to Words per minute, which I feel is not the intended destination. Can't find what is, to fix it. Rd232 talk 11:53, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
He meant to point us to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics --Duplode (talk) 16:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


First: great anecdote, and collabs across Projects is a great idea.

Second: the easiest way to support a project may be to drive traffic to it, particularly editing traffic. This doesn't have to have any particular structure (such as the rotating boards).

One thing we could consider is setting up a more effective banner system to sharing project-related messages for editors -- so that editors would see notices of other projects related to their interests, or randomly selected notices about something cool going on across Wikimedialand.

Third, Yair is right :) Maybe one big WikiProject here devoted to collaboration and barnraisings across Projects would be enough, could have weekly or monthly drives, and could call on specific WikiProjects here for each of its efforts. –SJ+ 15:53, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I just say that I wish to add my support, as many have, to the idea of trans-wiki collaboration - it makes sense to me. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

So who's up for proposing a Wikipedia:Wikiproject cross-wiki collaboration? (New wikiprojects are supposed to be proposed here, right?) --Yair rand (talk) 22:39, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
I've proposed a Wikiproject dedicated to cross-wiki collaboration at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Cross-wiki collaboration. --Yair rand (talk) 23:21, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Integrated watchlists

The main reason Wikipedia editors don't edit much at Wikibooks, etc. is multiple watchlists.

Please see:

Hm, I don't really think that's accurate. Having separate watchlists might be a little inconvenient, and make it harder to keep up with things across projects, but I don't think that they're really causing people to not edit on multiple projects. --Yair rand (talk) 19:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I also don't think that's accurate – in fact, I'm not sure why you'd want to watch pages from multiple projects on the same page. There are no main reasons why editors from one project don't often migrate to others, but I would say it's largely an issue of not being aware that they exist. It's also difficult to acclimate to a foreign project, where the rules and atmosphere are completely different. Juliancolton | Talk 23:04, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Lack of an integrated, global watchlist is the main reason I have heard from people as to why they don't edit much on other wikis outside Wikipedia. The other reasons are also true, but much less used as reasons why people don't participate. Most registered editors on Wikipedia are aware of the other projects in my opinion. The other cultures on the other projects are a slight hindrance, but not a real reason why people don't participate in my opinion.
The Commons is the second most popular wiki in the Wikimedia universe, and its culture does not really hinder people. What hinders the Commons is the lack of a global watchlist. Many people start on the Commons, and then stop. Illustrating Wikipedia is so important that some people continue editing on the Commons in spite of having to use a separate watchlist. But others hate having to upload images to the Commons, and continue uploading to Wikipedia instead. If there were one watchlist there would be no essential difference, and many more people would upload directly to the Commons.
This user supports global, cross-wiki, integrated watchlists.
I personally prefer separate watchlists for Wikipedia and the Commons, because I do a lot of work on the Commons, and like to keep image work separate from Wikipedia work. But I would like to integrate all the other wikis with the Wikipedia watchlist. People could make their own choices about which watchlists to integrate and consolidate. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:07, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
This is really a technical issue, and integrated watchlists are probably not going to be available for a long time. We need to discuss more how we can get people to contribute on sister projects, even without more helpful software. --Yair rand (talk) 22:48, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
See related discussions:
Based on my own habits and those I've observed of others, I think TimeShifter is right. People will often, for instance, create a page at one of the non-Wikipedia projects, and then totally forget about it, even when people are posting comments to the talk page or making major changes or whatnot. If it doesn't show up on the watchlist at the project they're most involved in (which is usually Wikipedia), it's not really on their radar screen. Who has time to check a bunch of different watchlists frequently, and who has the inclination if one's involvement in the project is minor, and therefore there are not a lot of watched pages? Heck, if it weren't for unified login, I probably would check my watchlists on other projects even less frequently than I do now.
Having said all that, this is indeed a technical issue and someone just needs to bite the bullet and put the time in to figure out how to implement this, and then to implement it. That someone could very well end up being me, although the way things are going, I'm not sure that I'll end up taking an approach that Wikimedia will be amenable to, so someone else might have to come up with an alternative method that uses CentralAuth. Really, if people would put as much time into coding as they do into debating, we would have some pretty good software by now. (See m:Mediawikianism.) Tisane (talk) 21:04, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
If mw:LiquidThreads used the regular watchlist, then it could be used at WP:Village Pump (technical). Threads on an issue such as integrated watchlists wouldn't be duplicated numerous times, and then buried in the VP archives. Developers would be more inclined to participate. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:12, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, it is a trivial matter to put a link to the pertinent VP archive in a centralized location, e.g., Wikipedia:Integrated watchlists, and thereby keep the content of those conversations from being forgotten. But devs tend to use Bugzilla; that way, they can subscribe to the Bugzilla listserv and/or to particular bugs that they have an interest in, and get an email whenever someone makes a comment.

I want to raise another issue about this proposal, which is that, by encouraging cross-wiki participation, integrated watchlists will likely increase homogenization across Wikimedia projects, as users bring the values and norms of their own preferred wikis to other wikis. I personally think that's a good thing; we could use some cross-pollination. But the downside is that, Wikipedia being the 400-kg gorilla of the group, the other wikis will probably tend to be pushed even more in the direction of Wikipedia-like standards. E.g., strict adherence to "reliable sourcing" and notability, etc. But I think it's unavoidable; really, our only alternatives are for those wikis to remain neglected, or for them to become homogenized/dominated by Wikipedia-like standards. I don't think that's a false dichotomy. Wikipedia really reflects the standards of the Wikimedia Foundation in purest form, and it seeks to ultimately make all of its projects conform to those standards. It just hasn't made it a high priority for those smaller wikis, because no one really cares about them all that much, since they don't show up much in the Google search results. Tisane (talk) 23:50, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Er, I hope this doesn't sound incivil, but I completely disagree with everything you just said. Carry on. :) --Yair rand (talk) 01:36, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Bugzilla is not that great. It does not use wikitext, and it can't be put on a watchlist. Same problem of lack of integration (format and watchlists). Also, email addresses are exposed (other logged-in users can see all the email addresses). The other wikiprojects were set up by the Wikimedia Foundation, and the main rules were created by the Wikimedia Foundation. So the homogenization can't be voted in by users. Integrated watchlists would gradually cause higher placement in Google results for the other wikis as they became more popular, and more and better content was created. I have websites and blogs, and have watched how Google results improve as particular pages become more popular. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:57, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, Bugzilla has a lot of drawbacks, but it remains one of the main tools used by devs. It has a lot of other useful stuff too; e.g. bugs can easily be marked as duplicates of other bugs, resolved bugs are denoted as such by a strike like this, and it is in general less cumbersome to work with than MediaWiki. If you want the devs to code something, you pretty much have to put it on Bugzilla (as has been done with this proposal.) Probably a better approach would be to code a MediaWiki extension to provide the functionalities that Bugzilla offers, but that would probably be a major pain in the neck to code, and there's no guarantee it would be particularly well-integrated with the rest of MediaWiki; for instance, mw:Extension:CodeReview isn't integrated with watchlists either.
I think that as the other wikis start showing up higher in the search listings, Wikimedia and its editing community will become less slack about enforcing certain values, such as notability. Right now, for instance, Wikiquote has a notability essay and quotes can theoretically get removed for lack of notability, but it isn't enforced all that strictly. That will probably change when the project becomes more high-profile, much as Wikipedia became stricter as the project matured. Tisane (talk) 14:50, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
There are differences between Wikipedia and the other projects. Tutorials are accepted in Wikibooks and Wikiversity. Wikipedia does not allow tutorials. Some sections in a tutorial will not be notable, but are still necessary in order for the tutorial to teach people effectively. Also, reliable sourcing is different in Wikibooks and Wikiversity. Editors who know their subject can be the source for parts of tutorials. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:14, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

If your username is Example%%%%% and if you have edited at English Wikiversity, then you can leave a message at http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:Example%%%%%, inviting editors to leave a message at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Example%%%%%, which might say "You have a message at http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:Example%%%%%." -- Wavelength (talk) 03:12, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Like Yair rand, I feel it is important to state my disagreement with Tisane's position. In particular, I will refer mostly to Wikibooks (the project I have more experience with), but the argument is extensible to the other projects as well. The main reason why we have a different project culture and editorial guidelines is because the activity of writing books is inherently different from writing an encyclopaedia, and the differences call for different practices. Otherwise there would be no reason for the existence of the sister projects, and everything would be done within Wikipedia. The viewpoint that we do not adhere to certain standards just because we have less visibility (and therefore nobody cares) is mere prejudice. If you abstract it from the current context (Wikimedia projects), the notion is analogous to the anthropological stance of seeing people from very different cultures as "primitive barbarians" that must be "civilized". Of course, some principles (reliable sourcing, maintenance of NPOV) are more or less universal, even if the extent of enforcement that the editorial needs of the project call for might vary. The key point is that each project has their own appropriate editorial guidelines, and the admins and contributors work hard trying to enforce them. Disregarding that is not only inaccurate but borderline disrespectful.
This argument lends support to a closely related observation Yair rand made earlier on the discussion: that the lack of cross-wiki cooperation is not just due to technical obstacles. There are cultural issues involved, and one of them is people not understanding the point of the smaller projects, falsely believing that all of the human knowledge can be feasibly covered by the encyclopaedia umbrella.
Finally, a corollary from the perspective of a Wikibookian. To me it seems that the general feeling at Wikibooks is that more contributors would do good to the project, and there is no significant fear that an influx of, say, Wikipedians could harm our project culture. Just as much as the values of newcomers could modify the project direction they also would necessarily adjust, to some extent, their views and behaviour, since our practices are coherent with the goals of the project (which are different from the goals of Wikipedia). --Duplode (talk) 20:33, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
P.S.: I noticed Tisane's proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Why does Wikimedia need more than one MediaWiki installation?. Just to keep things clear: unifying the underlying infrastructure is actually a very good idea. The argument I made on the paragraphs above doesn't apply to that proposal - it concerns content and editorial decisions, and not software infrastructure. --Duplode (talk) 20:42, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I contribute extensively to two projects. Wikipedia and Wikimedia. A watchlist that covers all projects and a talk page that covers all projects would be great. Communication should be more seamless. We should each have one central talk page.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:17, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
An integrated talk page is an interesting idea. I would centralize all my talk pages except my Commons talk page. That is just me. Others may want other integrations. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:03, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
User will be able to integrate "new messages" notification for talk pages, if they wish. By the way, I am about to begin work implementing the integrated watchlist. Would anyone care to suggest how this should work? It doesn't seem all that feasible to have hundreds of checkboxes (one for each Wikimedia wiki) in one's preferences, so that users can pick and choose which wikis to integrate. So I think what will happen is that we will have Special:Watchlist and Special:IntegratedWatchlist, with two separate buttons for easy access ("my integrated watchlist" next to "my watchlist"), or perhaps it will be a single checkbox in preferences. Or maybe the button to access your integrated watchlist will be available on your regular watchlist, and vice versa, so that you can easily access one from the other. Any suggestions on how the user interface should work will be appreciated. Thanks.
As for the predictions of how this will affect policy, those are just my own predictions, based on what I've seen happen on Wikimedia projects so far when they became more popular. I am a pretty diehard inclusionist, and inclusionism can cater to everyone's desires, except for the desire not to include stuff. But I don't see Wikimedia going in an inclusionist direction. Nonetheless, this is a technical change whose time has come; I leave it to others to sort out the political issues. We'll see if this plays out the way I suspect it will. Tisane talk/stalk 04:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
For those who want another place to discuss implementation please also see: Wikipedia talk:Integrated watchlists. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:13, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

To anyone interested, another technical step: Wikibooks has just imported b:Template:WPBannerMeta and associated templates (like ratings) so that interested Wikipedia WikiProjects have a familiar interface available for coordinating efforts. --Duplode (talk) 05:15, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Promote Notability (sports) to a guideline

Please join in Discussion to promote Wikipedia:Notability (sports) from essay to guideline, deprecating the Athletes section of WP:Notability (people).  --Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 02:09, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Slightly Increase the Font Size on the "3 equal sign" level section headers

Here's a "3 equal sign" heading sample

The "third level down" section header (4 equal signs, sample above) and the "second level down" (3 equal signs, sample below) look too similar, making the section hierarchy easily missed. The are identical except that one is (only) 11% shorter.

The difference is even harder to spot when they are a few paragraphs apart, and where where the difference should be obvious enough to guide the reader rather than when the reader is comparing them, knowing that they are different (as in my post here).

Proposal: make the "3 equal sign" heading font a tiny bit larger.


Now, here's an example of a "4 equal sign" level heading

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 11:40, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Check the archives- I am sure this has come up before. Heading 3 is invoked with <h3>, which is defined in monobook as:
h1 { font-size: 188%; }
h1 .editsection { font-size: 53%; }
h2 { font-size: 150%; }
h2 .editsection { font-size: 67%; }
h3, h4, h5, h6 {
	border-bottom: none;
	font-weight: bold;
}

h3 .editsection { font-size: 76%; font-weight: normal; }
h4 { font-size: 116%; }
h4 .editsection { font-size: 86%; font-weight: normal; }
h5 { font-size: 100%; }
h5 .editsection { font-weight: normal; }
h6 { font-size: 80%;  }
h6 .editsection { font-size: 125%; font-weight: normal; }
If you really want, you can overide this in your CSS. I will have to play with it, but I have to run away at the moment. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 11:56, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

New temp proposal

I have a proposal for a new template, designed for users or IP's who have a history of many warnings over a few months and possibly one or two blocks, possibly none. This could be used to tell them in a very open way that they are close to being blocked, possibly indef blocked. I have had good some results from this, and it appears to work. I'm just throwing this out there because I think that it could help, and I know it may not, so if anyone has any mods/complaints or supports it, PLEASE say so. Here's the proposal:

Many of your recent edits have been obvious vandalism, and most have been reverted. Please do NOT continue your streak. If you vandalize Wikipedia again, you may be blocked from editing without further notice.

If this is a shared IP address, and you didn't make the edit, consider creating an account for yourself so you can avoid further irrelevant notices.'


Just an idea. Old Al (Talk) 21:52, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

This should go to Wikipedia:WikiProject user warnings, but it seems redundant with the existing series of warnings. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 22:10, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
You are aware of the existence of {{uw-longterm}} ? SpinningSpark 00:55, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Pending Changes (nee Flagged Protection): update for June 10

As requested, here's the weekly Pending Changes update.

We proceed boldly toward launch. The main update is that we have pushed the English Wikipedia launch back one day to Tuesday, June 15. That will let us avoid stepping on the WP Academy Israel event, and it means Jimmy Wales will be available to talk to the press, which in turn will yield a better public understanding of Pending Changes.

However, we will still be rolling the new FlaggedRevs code into production on Monday, June 14th (circa 4 pm Pacific, or 23:00 GMT). We hope that this, aside from some minor UI improvements, will pass unnoticed on the project currently using FlaggedRevs. If there are bugs, we look forward to hearing about them via the usual channels, including #wikimedia-tech. Minor bugs will be fixed in place; any major issues will result in a quick rollback to the existing code.

More prosaically, we had a number of bits of work verified complete this week, including a number of little bugs. Our thanks to the German community for their diligent testing of a labs instance of the German configuration.


If you'd like once last chance to see what's coming, try the latest code updates on our labs site.

To see the upcoming work, it's listed in our tracker, under Current and Backlog.

Thanks, William Pietri (talk) 23:58, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

(Cross-posted from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous). Cenarium (talk) 03:27, 11 June 2010 (UTC))

In addition, there are a few remaining issues to settle, such as usage of flagged protection/pending changes, please see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Flagged revisions trial. We also need to finalize documentation pages among other things, any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Cenarium (talk) 03:27, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

WP:Usurpation

Currently, if a user who has made no edits and who's username is about to be taken does not object in 7 days to the usurpation, then the usurpation occurs. I feel that this should be extended to 14 days, to ensure that the user has sufficient time to become aware of the matter and object to it (if they want/need to). Immunize (talk) 23:17, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd oppose that. The fact that they need to have made no significant contributions is an important part of justifying only waiting 7 days. No one who has really used the name significantly is in danger of being usurped, so I don't see the problem. You shouldn't be able to "reserve" a name just by registering it and then not doing anything with it. Equazcion (talk) 23:20, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Although I understand you point of view, I feel that, given that this action is irreversible, it would be reasonable to give users at least 7 more days. Immunize (talk) 23:50, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
I wonder, is it possible (for someone) to see if a user has logged in, and when? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 00:09, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
I think Checkusers can, am I right? (And as an aside, since I usurped this account I've been regularly receiving password reset requests from a variety of IPs.) {{Sonia|talk|simple}} 07:25, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
2 questions:
  • Again, the "no significant contributions" usually takes care of this, but if the account was recently created I think the 'crats also decline to grant the name.
  • The 'crats will typically decline in this instance to prevent SUL collisions. –xenotalk 17:26, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. Extending the wait time to 14 days just makes the long-time editor have to wait longer to receive his/her new usurped username. Because they aren't active, it is highly unlikely that they will return to Wikipedia anytime soon, and so this shouldn't really be an issue. —MC10 (T•C•GB•L) 17:18, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
When you say "significantly contributions" does that mean that in some cases users with say, 1-2 edits to the sandbox could be usurped? Immunize (talk) 23:37, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Most likely. –xenotalk 20:16, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
WP:Usurpation says otherwise: "The account you want to usurp should have no edits or significant log entries to qualify for usurpation" (original emphasis) "although rare exceptions are made where old edits do not require attribution under the GFDL or CC-BY-SA." (my emphasis). This clearly states that, as a general rule, even a single edit is enough to prevent usurpation. cmadler (talk) 09:46, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
It is doubtful that an edit or two to a sandbox would be considered significant such that attribution would need to be retained, so that would be one of the 'rare cases'. In any case, usurps are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. –xenotalk 17:05, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I missed that Immunize specified 1-2 sandbox edits. Yeah, I think that would probably be one of the exceptions. cmadler (talk) 18:32, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

If a username has been registered for some time and never been used for editing, then there is no reason to double the period of grace that its owner has to insist on maintaining it. Oppose proposal. ╟─TreasuryTag►inspectorate─╢ 17:11, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Robot reader

I was just reading slashdot and noticed they have a robot reader. [1] Here is one open source text to speech program [2] Would there be interest in attempting to combine this into Wikipedia? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:36, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Text-to-speech software is not good enough to do any sort of automation of WP:SPOKEN work. This is an example of what espeak produces. rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:51, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
I have a great text to speech program at home that uses dictionaries of spoken words. It is very listenable but unfortunately is not public domain. This is for people who cannot see text. But I guess they usually have there own programs. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:25, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Pediaphon uses open-source speech synthesizers to read Wikipedia articles aloud. Unfortunately, the output doesn't sound very good. Most blind people use screen readers to navigate Wikipedia. Graham87 06:22, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

context menu options

It would be very convenient to be able to add, through the use of Wiki markup, context menu options to a link. This would allow one to link the same word to many different sites or to the same site with many different optional parameters. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lemmiwinks2 (talk • contribs) 19:35, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I think this has one very significant problem – it's unintuitive. Nobody expects that by right clicking on a link, they could go somewhere else than the normal destination. Or do you mean some other context menu, like one that would open by hovering over link? Svick (talk) 22:12, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Hmmm. I see your point. Yes, it would be necessary to mark the link in some way so that people know that it has context menu options. I hadnt thought of that. Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 22:17, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Ability to view pending changes by Wikiproject

I am wondering about adding the ability to view pending changes restricted to a single Wikiproject. I think this would bring many editors aboard who wish to stay within their primary area of interest. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:50, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed users and WP:SEMIPROTECTION

Question, is there a way to remove a user from autoconfirmed? It would make semi-protection a highly useful, and selective way of protecting pages from one or two problem-editors with over 10-edits who are edit warring but not requiring a block as yet. It allows the page to still be edited by helpful non-admin users, while 'offending' accounts have their autoconfirm removed for a period, or until dispute is passed at a mediation page or RfC.

Just a passing thought, feel free to obliterate :D S.G.(GH) ping! 21:42, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I see the idea behind this, but can you not just stick them under 1RR, and block if they carry on edit warring? Putting a new account 'back on probation' is a nice idea, but as it'd probably require developer time I suspect it's not going to happen. Fences&Windows 02:15, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Administrators can remove confirmed status as you can see here. – allen四names 17:18, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, how about that. But are you sure that admins can remove "Autoconfirmed" status, rather than "Confirmed" status? If we can, I like this as an alternative to blocking or full protection. Fences&Windows 21:10, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
If not it may be possible for the system admins to edit LocalSettings.php to create the same effect. I think the documentation is at MediaWiki. – allen四names 03:02, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, the edit-filter can de-confirm accounts... ╟─TreasuryTag►directorate─╢ 21:12, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

...but there's too much risk of a filter false positive stripping (auto)confirmation wrongly, so they're not gonna do it. Same goes for blocking (which the filter is also technically capable of doing). —Jeremy (v^_^v Dittobori) 21:43, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
It seems this has aroused a little interest. Would I have to forward it to a proposal page at Meta, where the coding lives? I like Fences' analogy, a probation period, and it just gives admins another option than the banning hammer, a sort of discretion. You could remove the ability to edit semi-protected articles in order to keep you off a page you care causing problems on without blocking all IPs, or you can have the right removed for a period in general as an edit restriction that is short of a block. Where shall I go to suggest it? S.G.(GH) ping! 09:25, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Maybe open an RfC here to get more contributions about whether it is a good idea and how it can be done? I think it is a great idea. Fences&Windows 17:29, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
I also think it is a great idea. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 08:07, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
I shall do so. S.G.(GH) ping! 23:22, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Removing autoconfirmed please contribute thoughts that I have forgotten. Cheers, S.G.(GH) ping! 23:38, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

AFD should reject plain ol' votes and AADD's

The way to ingrain that ATA are ATA is to reject it. This can establish more consensus.RussianReversal (talk) 03:30, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

"AADD"s ? --Cybercobra (talk) 05:36, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
This was a very effective suggestion. For not using acronyms. Not for... whatever you're trying to say. {{Sonia|ping|enlist}} 06:24, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
There is no voting at AfD. The closing admin is already free to discount any comment not based on policy. If you are proposing that any comment failing WP:AADD (this is how to link to policies and guidelines by the way) should be removed then I do not support, this could not possibly be seen as an open process. It would immediately lead to accusations of behind-the-scenes manipulation. SpinningSpark 06:37, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Bingo. Rationale-less votes are already ignored. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:40, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Okay... now I get it. No, it's not a vote- and each comment is assessed on its merit already. Removing comments is slightly bitey and likely to cause no small deal of controversy over what exactly could be removed. {{Sonia|ping|enlist}} 06:49, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Notice that the usage of the essay is not without controversy. Most of the arguments to avoid are, in the theorical level, accepted; but the problem may come when considering is a specific opinion given at a specific discussion is one of them or not. MBelgrano (talk) 12:19, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
There are some cases where an "AADD" can be a valid argument. Take "Delete Zero Google hits, must be a hoax". If a subject has zero google hits, 9 times out of 10 it will be a hoax. WP:NOHARM in some cases can be a valid argument for keeping (at least temporarily) for "low risk" article. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:01, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

A New Feature to Solve Page Move Wars

Can somebody create a feature that allows articles to have alternate titles, so that the name is rendered as whichever name the reader searched for? Redirects rarely solve naming issues where more than one name is acceptable, but this would solve that. For consistency, there should also be a format that allows alternate text within the article so that it goes along with the name. This would save thousands of hours of arguing over page titles, and it would be a fair compromise that both sides of almost any page name dispure would be happy with. --WikiDonn (talk) 23:49, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't see this solving page move wars. Consider wikilinks to an article: either they would change the page title of the linked article, or they would not. If they didn't, you still have page move wars amongst editors trying to own the default page title. If they did, the same editors who cause trouble over some page title would just change every link to that page back and forth repeatedly, trying to own the page title that was actually displayed. In addition, changing the page title might make it tougher for people off Wikipedia to understand how to link to an article, and we want lots of people to link successfully to our articles. — Gavia immer (talk) 00:01, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Also, the intent behind a page move war is, in my experience because the title soldier feels a particular title better suits or describes or honors the subject, is more appropriate for encyclopedic treatment of a topic, is more correct, that among two technically correct alternatives, one is offensive, or they prefer one over another for an ideological reason. This would not allow a person's pet version to be THE TITLE. It is rare that a person move wars because their concern is that the most readers reach the title they intend when they search for title X rather than title Z, which is all this appears to me to be a solution for, except that that issue is already taken care of by redirects.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:26, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Maybe you guys don't understand the concept of my idea. With an alternate title, there would be no dominant title. There would be a list of interchangeable names (on a page similar to the "what links here" page) that the article has, and no name would have priority over another. What I am saying is that redirects do not solve this problem, or the issue of user preference over editors preference. If the reader prefers one term over another, they can enter it into the search box to get their version, but there would still be one page, even though some of the text is different. No this will not solve every move war, but it solves legitimate issues, in a way that most good faith editors in argument would agree to. I suppose they could fight over which name is in the #1 spot, but that could not affect the article in any positive way, so anyone doing that can simply be blocked. In fact, you have it backwards, most arguments are over which should be the redirect and which should be the main, but that still doesn't solve the problem in the text of the article. And changing every link that links to the article would be a hell of a lot of work, and much more tedious than moving only 1 page repeatedly. This is a solution for arguments where neither side is wrong. --WikiDonn (talk) 19:39, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

The sort of dynamic page title macro you're thinking of would immediately be used for the most odious sort of vandalism. Even if we pretend that wouldn't be true, as I already explained, this would result in mass link-changing wars as the editors who currently engage in move-wars shifted to trying to dominate the actual displayed text by changing the link title in other articles. Even if we pretend that isn't true either, there would be a terrible cost to article prose, since every sentence that referenced the page title macro would have to written in an obnoxiously stilted style to allow it to agree with any conceivable page title. The poor prose that would result from this is reason enough never to do it, even without the vandalism and edit warring - which of course would be much worse. — Gavia immer (talk) 02:27, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

As an individual who's primary goal on Wikipedia is to reduce vandalism and edit warring, I can see this proposal (with application restricted to Admins) solving quite a few edit wars, like the one that has been going on over at epinephrine/adrenaline for the past five years, the editors simply wan the page to reflect the rerminology that they are comfortable with, and a macro like the one being proposed here would end this debate. (and cut down on the number of meaningless mediations. Ronk01 from an IP

citation needed notabilty

Hello,I think citation needed is a notable subject because have 2,240,000 result from Google search or please see this page:

[citation needed] is a superscript notation used in Wikipedia articles to identify questionable claims without any basis on reliable sources. Outside of online communities, the tag has been also used in real life to poke fun at public / corporate advertisements with dubious messages.

this caricature maybe help to notability.Is it True?:)Ladsgroupبحث 10:56, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

"Citation needed". A nice joke, but perhaps not a valid article topic as such yet.... Shimgray | talk | 20:54, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

List of foreign actors who achieved success in the US?

I don't know if this is the place for new article proposals too? I would like to see a list of foreign (non-US) actors who have achieved success in the (film) industry in the US. A ground rule could be that the actor has worked in his home country before having moved to the US. Think of actors such as Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo etc.. May such a list be added (I can contribute to the names), and if so, how should it best be named? Moviefan (talk) 21:58, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I think the main thing you'd need to make such an article reasonable in WIkipedia is a reasonably easy criterion for 'achieved success in the US'. Dmcq (talk) 11:04, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
You also have to define foreign. Mel Gibson was born in the US, but was raised in Australia where he achieved his early success. Bruce Willis was born in Germany. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 21:05, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
A list like that would end in AFD. "Success" is a subjetive and arbitrary measure. How do you set apart a succesful foreign actor from a mere foreign actor? MBelgrano (talk) 21:32, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
A list like that would end in AFD for being too big. Everyone knows that all actors are Canadians! :} Rmhermen (talk) 14:59, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Horizontal line bellow hat-notes

When I was working on another wiki that used Mediawiki software, I found that new readers were far more likely to notice useful hat-notes if they were somehow separated from the rest of the page. I tried putting boxes around the hat-notes, but in the end I found that the easiest way of doing this was to just add a horizontal bar across the page right below the hotnote, like so:

Fübar redirects here. For other uses, see Foobar (disambiguation).

Foobar is a common placeholder names used in computer programming…

I know that this change would affect millions of pages, but I found that it gave newcomers to the site web a surprisingly big help in finding what they were looking for. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 01:15, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

As a matter of interest, how did you find out it helped them? Dmcq (talk) 20:34, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
To be fair, my conclusions were not very scientific—it's not like a was doing another usability survey. I'm assuming that it was helpful based on the fact that linked pages saw their hit counts go up and that a couple people said that they didn't notice the links until I put them in a box. Also, in my humble opinion, I think it looks better to have the hatnotes separated from the beginning of the article, both on the page itself and while editing. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:30, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
I think it might be interesting to ask the Usability folks about this, but on the face of it I don't see why we can't simply modify the CSS stylings for the .dablink and .rellink classes in MediaWiki:Common.css. My main concern is that horizontal lines might have other undue effects, such as spearing infoboxes—not to mention that I don't think it adds very much, though I don't care much were this to be changed. :P I'd also suggest that we use a .dablink + .dablink rule so that hatnotes would group nicely, if we did it by CSS, but someone who remembers the quirks of CSS on browsers that aren't standards-compliant (will .class + .class work on most browsers?). {{Nihiltres|talk|edits|⚡}} 06:16, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable and thanks. Just thinking about the usability testing, I wonder if we might be able to do what some companies do when tring to improve webpages. They randomly send a number of different layouts to different people and see what difference it makes to sales. I'm not sure what our equivalent of 'sales' is or how difficult it would be to implement properly but perhaps there's an idea there? Dmcq (talk) 15:02, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
I guess one could test it based on view counts of rarely-watched articles before and after you change the hatnote links to them. Regardless of their effectiveness, I think it looks better with the line. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:34, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
This is all rather an IDONTLIKE / ILIKEIT argument ground until someone tests it. Myself, I very much dislike it; I've seen people use it on the off-Wikimedia wiki that I call 'home' and it looks terrible there too. Hat notes aren't supposed to be noticed, in my opinion, unless the user needs to use them, in which case they already know where to look. --Izno (talk) 02:30, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

LaTeX font

I believe changing the font used for latex rendering to something in slightly more modern and sans-serif would increase readability greatly. http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/mathfonts.html has a list of fonts, and the linked page for each font has a maths example. I propose Computer Modern Bright. 87.254.82.27 (talk) 03:54, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

A more common font like Arial should be used. Does anyone know how common the Lucida Console font is? – allen四names 15:23, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Arial is not only an ugly clone of Helvetica, but more importantly it is not a TeX font with all the bells and whistles needed for it to be used in math mode. In other words, you can safely assume that the list given by 87.254 is complete. And what does being common have to do with it? It's rendered on the server.—Emil J. 15:44, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
What do you mean "It's rendered on the server"? It does no good if it is not seen at the client. – allen四names 16:16, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
You seem to be missing something very basic about this discussion. The client sees a PNG, such as here: . See Help:Math for more information.—Emil J. 16:26, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
I see, it is rendered as an image by the server. I had forgotten about user preferences. Thank you. – allen四names 16:37, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
N.b., this is the default. 87.254.82.27 (talk) 17:39, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
What would be really helpful is if the html and png rendering were both in the same font. The current latex serif font does have the advantages that symbols, especially, greek and italics, are distinct and recognisable. Some of the html on the other hand are far from it. Capital pi, for instance, looks nothing like pi and italicisation is unclear for single letters. More importantly, it is not always obvious that a quantity referred to in the text in html is the same quantity in a LaTeX expression. I prefer to use \scripstyle in the text rather than html for this very reason, but that has its own problems, notably the vertical alignment is broken. SpinningSpark 18:53, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
I think it is quite clear what symbols are the same in PNG and HTML rendering. I don't like using \scriptstyle because it produces text that is too small and that is unnecessarily unaccessible. and look almost the same for me except that the PNG version is bigger and more fuzzy (because of anti-aliasing). Svick (talk) 19:17, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

I find the scriptstyle text the same size as the surrounding text, and, indeed, Firefox, zooms the whole page not just the text.

To get the maths rendered in the same font, size, etc. it's going to have to be rendered client side, and there does not appear to be any ubiquitous enough technology to do that.

I am merely proposing an incremental improvement. 87.254.82.27 (talk) 22:51, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for new tag to head articles on brand names

Most Wikipedians (myself included) appear to be against advertising becoming part of Wikipedia. However,a difficulty here could involve articles on brand names. It is true that there are some brand names - to name just a few, Kellogs, Cadburys, Heinz], Hovis and PG Tips - that have become so famous that they would surely merit their own article in Wikipedia. However, can I make a proposal that we have a tag indicating that an article on a brand name not advertise the product, but simply be a description of the brand name's history? Just how there is a category of living people, perhaps there should also be a category of brand names, to avoid material in such articles which could be construed as attempts to advertise for the brand name. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:22, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

The brand names redirect to the companies, which have their own articles. Tags are used to indicate problems, not give advice, unless you didn't really mean "tag" in the normal WP sense (where it means templates like {{refimprove}}, {{COI}}, etc.). Tags already exist for advertisement-like articles: {{advert}}, {{news release}}, etc. --Cybercobra (talk) 02:49, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

What shall we do with the DYK and Good article suggestion?

Hi again. Seems like our last discussion became lost. As almost always here on village pump or other discussion forums on Wikipedia. So what shall we do, should we have 50% Good articles on the DYK section I mean newly granted Good articles ofcourse. So that we can reach a consensus.(look a bit higher up for earlier discussion and support and oppose votes).--ÅlandÖland (talk) 23:09, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

So?--ÅlandÖland (talk) 09:28, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
We may start with an easy way: when it says that articles should be new or newly expanded, we may add, newly promoted to Good Article status. This wouldn't change dramatically the current system work, and may provide later greater insight into which of both sources work "better" (both in quantity and quality of pages), which would give a stronger evidence for a definitive solution; whenever both systems should stay, all should migrate to Good Article promotions, or restore things back to the current usage. By the way, this section isn't a live chat, don't get worried if a thread isn't answered within a few hours since you post it MBelgrano (talk) 11:32, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Should we have an RFC? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:32, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I Support both JMH and MBelgranos suggestion. I also suggest that we do them both as soon as possible.--ÅlandÖland (talk) 17:14, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

ÅlandÖland, there's no use in jumping right back into voting right away. The discussion above does not appear to have a clear consensus either way, so no one can start implementing any actual changes without consensus. And the outcome of the above discussion suggests that there is a need for more communicating before voting; it's not constructive for people just to keep throwing different proposals at the wall and seeing what sticks. If you want to do something, take Jmh649's advice and start some sort of open discussion forum such as an RFC, rather than just continuing to have more and more polls. rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:02, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
We have already had a long discussion about it with alot of different out-put. I know you are against the proposals but please relax.--ÅlandÖland (talk) 20:34, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree with the proposal but Rjanag is absolutely right. The proposal should be commented at a RFC, pestering here won't help it pass. You should kindly relax, Aland. Yes, WP process is slow and often gets stuck, but it's the only way around if you want a consensus among peers. --Cyclopiatalk 21:19, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Two things. 1. Slow?? It was only up for 4/5days. In real political life such things take weeks, months, years. That is one of WP's strengths often, but the above process certainly doesn't look slow. 2. Forget the 50% thing right now. That is statistically impossible. Look at the number of items nominated per day at DYK; now look at the number of new GAs each day. The former figure is approximately 10 times as large as the latter. If you want a proposal, why not make it "That an additional type of article be eligible at TT:DYK under the heading 'new'. In addition to newly created in last 5 days, or fivefold expansion in last five days, add 'promoted at GAN in the last five days'. The other criteria would be unchanged (long enough, cited hook, neutral), and the hook requirements would be the same". That's all it needs. Then put that as the proposal at RFC. hamiltonstone (talk) 04:57, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
    What he said. Fences&Windows 13:15, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, an RfC would be the next step. Trying to cram something through passed on weak consensus after less than a week on the village pump is not the way to go. I would also suggest dropping a note at the Signpost about the RfC. What is being proposed will radically change the spirit and purpose of DYK plus elevate GA to a level of visibility that previous community consensus have determined it should not have. For something so radical, the RfC will need a wide spread sampling of community opinions. AgneCheese/Wine 16:06, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm new to this discussion, so forgive the question: Did this come up because there is some sort of shortage of articles being suggested for DYK? Or did it come up because folks want to get more recognition for their newly promoted GA's? ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 08:05, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

The latter, and because many of the articles at DYK are a bit, well, rubbish. This would showcase more of our higher-quality articles. Fences&Windows 13:28, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
This is not about "folks wanting to get more recognition for their newly promoted GA". This is about exposing readers to Wikipedia' better work and promoting the improvement of our current content rather than its expansion.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:39, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
"rather than" ... or in addition to, I hope. Both improvement and expansion are needed. Fram (talk) 11:48, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I think is a very good idea and strongly support it. Pitty I missed the first discussion. --Elekhh (talk) 07:32, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Search results in more than one language

A few days ago I was looking for info about an Italian singer, Tony Dallara. While there was no article about him on the English Wikipedia, there was a pretty good article on the Italian Wikipedia.

I think you should assume that if there's an article in more than one language about a specific subject, the person interrested in it may be connected to both cultures and would be able to understand the article in the other language as well. But, with or without connection, many people speak more than one language. You should allow the user to pick multiple languages to search for topics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Srelu (talk • contribs) 15:03, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree. If the search doesn't find an exact match, then matches on other language Wikipedias should show in a box by the results, just as the sister projects like Wikinews are already included. I've raised this at Help talk:Searching. Fences&Windows 01:17, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
bugzilla:1837 Tisane talk/stalk 01:21, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
So will it happen this decade, or next decade? How do these "Bugzilla" ideas get implemented? Is it at the whim of a developer? Fences&Windows 19:32, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, the MediaWiki development community is made up of WMF-employed developers, who work on ideas they (or WMF leadership) think are important for WMF, and volunteers who basically work on whatever they feel like (including features that will never be enabled on WMF wikis, but might be enabled on non-WMF wikis). Some ideas, despite attracting interest from WMF devs, still sit around for years without getting implemented, because there's such a lengthy to-do list. You can vote for a bug, or otherwise contact the devs, but really the most effective thing is to code it yourself. Granted, that's a lot easier said than done, but that's just the reality. Oh yeah, you can also theoretically put up an open source bounty, if you have some extra cash laying around. Tisane talk/stalk 20:58, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Ah, thought as much. My coding abilities peaked with BASIC a couple of decades ago. Wouldn't it be a good idea to find the most popular of these requested features (not "bugs") among Wikipedians? There must be other "perennial proposals" that Wikipedians agree on but that are sitting waiting for a developer to take an interest. We could do a poll here rather than relying on people to sign up to Bugzilla - most people are unaware of it! Btw, is there a way to get more than 200 results? [3]Fences&Windows 18:56, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Usernames used as examples in essays

While reading this essay, I noticed that some of the linked usernames used as "examples" point to real accounts. It is possible that the real User:Ididntdoit might later come back, see his userpage linked to the essay in "what links here" and object to being referred to as "The teeny bopper spammer", even unintentionally.

One way of avoiding this problem is to put an invalid character in front of the account name. Example, this... 

<span style="color:#0000f1">User:#Ididntdoit</span>

Will render as this...

User:#Ididntdoit

This looks like a blue linked user account name that is guaranteed to never exist. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 15:01, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Or link to User:Example. Svick (talk) 16:56, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Fine if only one account name is needed. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 17:29, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
You're right, I apologize. This is the "proposals" noticeboard so one should expect "support" or "oppose" to anything discussed. However, I was not suggesting that anything be written to a "policy" or "guideline" page (yet) so at the time I saw it, a bolded oppose seemed a little premature. I was pointing out what I thought might become a problem and suggesting one possible solution and this seemed to be the best place to "knock it around". I also recognize that my post here might have been "premature". "Instruction creep" is bad and that's the result of trying to write policy based on everything someone suspects "might" be a problem.
That being said, I notice that in another essay, WP:ATA, a lot of "fake" users are used as examples and the approach there is similar to what I suggested above. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 21:12, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Multiple reserved example accounts would be good. Domains like example.com, example.net, and *.test (example.test, anything-at-all.test, 68651865.test, etc.), among others, are reserved on the Internet for just such purposes. User:example serves that purpose well in WP but only one exists, to my knowledge, and the page the original commenter cited needs two different names to make its points (or needs significant rewriting). Almost no administrative or bureaucratic work is required, just the reserving of all names that begin User:example-. . . and preventing their usurpation. Or some such memorable system will do. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:50, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
I have created Example editor 2 (talk · contribs) to meet the need for a second Example (talk · contribs) account. Immunize (talk) 18:56, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
My last comment erred in forgetting case-insensitivity. Perhaps that should be considered, since users often wouldn't remember it. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:04, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
JFII. Tisane talk/stalk 23:12, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Can we get WP:WikiProject Essays to help change it the way you suggested? I think it is a good idea, though the whole thing should be moved to WT:WikiProject Essays. Kayau Voting IS evil 13:47, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Adding maps to all infoboxes for buildings, areas, landmarks, etc.

There has been a few editors lately that have proposed inserting large maps into the infoboxes of many, many articles. For examples, see Petrillo Music Shell, American Museum of Natural History, AT&T Plaza, etc. For the record, I am against this proposal, but those enacting these changes are going ahead with them anyways without putting forth a formal proposal despite the far-reaching effects this precedent would have on the majority of wiki articles.) Thoughts on the insertion of maps into infoboxes?

Bad idea that is what geocodes are for. Maps have some utility when you are providing a map of the actual museum or area in question.©Geni 00:51, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Here's an observation: The "Contents" link in the sidebar is basically useless. It contains huge entirely unusable lists of articles, and some links to featured content which is redundant to the "Featured content" page. I propose that the "Contents" link in the sidebar be removed. --Yair rand (talk) 20:23, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Oppose - I'd rather remove the 'featured content' link than the 'contents' link. A person who uses the encyclopaedia may use it to find articles. Kayau Voting IS evil 12:55, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
#n-contents { display: none; }

{{ImageUndeleteRequest}}

Hi. I have proposed that {{ImageUndeleteRequest}} and its associated process be folded into Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion. The reason is that Category:Requests to undelete images is not regularly monitored (yesterday, I cleared out an entry that was sitting there for two weeks) and that templates do not facilitate feedback on the user's request. If you have an opinion, please participate in the discussion at the WP:REFUND talk page. Thank you. --B (talk) 15:13, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

142.33.41.7 should be on the WP:SIP list

I believe that 142.33.41.7 should be on the WP:SIP list, because, according to the WHOIS, it is for the province of British Columbia. Logan Talk Contributions 20:50, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

move page: reason truncated in display: shouldn't be or shorten field

When moving a page, entering a reason is encouraged and a field is provided for it. But when the reason is displayed it's truncated. Since this can't be predicted, it throws off writing it. The reason entry field should be shortened to the length WP will display later, so we'll be likelier to trim our reason until it fits.

We could add the trimmed information to the talk page of the redirection page, but it's unlikely anyone will ever look there. We could add it to the talk page of the destination page, but the presence of the reason field on the move-specification page makes it unlikely we'd also write on a talk page.

Example: On May 7, 2010, I moved The Lottery (Film) to The Lottery (2010 film). I successfully entered this reason:

Distinguish from two other films with the same name. One is in another article. The other was listed in the Lottery disambiguation page, although no article exists on it; the latter film's existence is confirmed at <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0204453/>, as accessed a few minutes ago.

This was truncated in the final display to (including ellipsis):

Distinguish from two other films with the same name. One is in another article. The other was listed in the Lottery disambiguation page, although no article exists on it; the latter film's ...

Possibly the final display including a statement of the move contributed to the truncation, but, even so, something should be redesigned, so that the length of the entry field corresponds to what the final display will support.

Thank you.

Nick Levinson (talk) 00:19, 17 June 2010 (UTC) Corrected a link and added nowiki tags to prevent wiki-interpretation of reason entry: Nick Levinson (talk) 00:29, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Reasons for move, just like other edit summaries, are supposed to be concise: just distinguish from other films with the same name would do, or maybe distinguish from other films with the same name ([[The Lottery#Dramatizations]], http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0204453) if you really want to include the details, both fitting comfortably within the limit. If you find yourself dangerously close to the 255 (or whatever it is) character limit, you should seriously consider writing it up on the talk page instead of the edit summary.
Part of the reason why the software does not impose the limit already in the form is that the effective limit is different in different contexts: your reason for move got recorded as far as the imdb link in the move log[4], whereas it got truncated further in the page history[5] due to the prefixed automatic "moved ... to ...:" message.—Emil J. 17:34, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, but concision is relative, and truncating to shorter than the field length provided means we can't plan accordingly. Your advice about the specific reason is informed by hindsight.
Solution: Shorten the entry field to the shortest that is supported by any of the contexts that rely on it.
Nick Levinson (talk) 18:42, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
I posted about this very issue six months ago. See: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 68#Reason field in moves: lack of limit on characters leads to botched edit summaries.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:11, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

sister project xrefs on main article to automatically include redirects to article

A Wikipedia article will cross-reference the article's title to entries in Wikipedia's sister projects in Wikimedia, given a template such as {{Sisterlinks}}.

Sometimes, a WP article is supported by WP redirects from similar titles, mispellings, and so on.

The main WP article should similarly cross-reference sister project entries that correspond to titles the WP redirects support.

Example: WP has an article titled Feminism and a redirect to it titled Feminist. The article, via a Wiktionary template, now tells us that Wiktionary has a definition for feminism. But Wiktionary also has a definition for feminist and, because of the redirect, the Feminism article should offer both definitions.

The same should apply to a Sisterlinks template and to related templates.

This should not apply to an article cross-referencing another other than by a redirect.

While an article editor could add templates for every redirect, it's difficult to anticipate all the redirects in the future (e.g., new slang), adding lots of parameters and/or templates is cumbersome, I don't think I've seen an article where that's been done, if a redirect is abandoned (e.g., to replace it with a disambiguation page) someone would have to recode the former destination, and server-side processing can handle this efficiently.

Thank you.

Nick Levinson (talk) 01:46, 17 June 2010 (UTC) Corrected, to add nowiki tags to suppress the effect of a Sisterlinks template: Nick Levinson (talk) 01:55, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Not sure how this could be done automatically. Redirects can be due to misspellings and all sorts of other oddities, we surely wouldn't want to include those? Fences&Windows 16:33, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Redirects representing misspellings and other errors: If the misspelling isn't a title or entry or some such in a sister project, this procedure would not generate anything in the Wikipedia displayed article. If it is an entry or such, presumably there's a good reason for that and it should be displayed.
However, redirects at a sister project should be ignored. As a hypothetical example, If a WP article is titled "Monday" and a redirect to it is "Munday" and Wiktionary has a redirect from "Munday" into Wiktionary, the latter redirect would be ignored for this purpose. But if Wiktionary has a destination entry for "Munday" and not just a redirect for it, then the WP article could say that Wiktionary has entries for "Monday" and "Munday".
As to how to do this, note that WP allows searching for what links to an article and hiding everything but redirects, thus generating a list of redirects only. That suggests a method for automatically identifying all the redirects for any article title.
Nick Levinson (talk) 02:25, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
(I don't exactly get what this thread is about, but you should know that Wiktionary doesn't really do redirects, for the most part. See wikt:WT:REDIRECT.) --Yair rand (talk) 20:45, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Yair rand, thanks, but that doesn't matter. If any Wikimedia project besides Wikipedia supports any mechanism functioning as redirects do (and I gather Wiktionary uses lists of misspellings as functionally equivalent to redirects), then the feature should accommodate that mechanism. Nick Levinson (talk) 23:56, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
OK, a cautious yes. You might want to cross-post to VPT to find someone who might know how to do this. Fences&Windows 18:43, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
It's posted at VPT. Further responses should go there. Thanks for the query and support. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:46, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

MOS'es for particular sports

I think there should be an MOS for sports, but I was curious as to where it would go. Figured i'd check here first. Doc Quintana (talk) 14:48, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Your best place to look is at the wikiprojects dedicated to various sports and leagues. Many of them have developed stylistic guidelines for articles within their scope. Resolute 02:10, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Ok, if there are certain styles, would it be appropriate to transpose them into WP:MOS somewhere? That would seem appropriate to make them seem official and standardized. Doc Quintana (talk) 04:38, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Please help review commons:Commons:Sexual content

Commons has been developing a proposed policy regarding sexual content at commons:Commons:Sexual content. It is now stable and ready for review by third parties - please look it over and provide any feedback on the talk page. We want to move forward on adoption soon. I'd also appreciate it if you can help spread the news to other relevant forums and local wikis, since this affects everyone. Thank you! Dcoetzee (talk) 22:58, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Hide protection reason when editing protected pages

On pages subject to pending changes, there is an option to show the latest entry in the pending changes-protection log. On semi/fully-protected pages, the latest entry in the protection log is shown, I think it is preferable to have it hidden by default in the same way as for PC-protected pages. It can take a considerable place on the edit screen and there's imo no need to have it displayed at every edit. Cenarium (talk) 03:19, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Restored from archive. Comments ? Cenarium (talk) 03:01, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
I disagree unless I am misunderstanding you. It seems similiar to the thinking behind edit summaries -- every action on Wikipedia should theoretically have some kind of reasoning behind it in case it needs to be justified. Doc Quintana (talk) 04:39, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

CSD for userpage being used for games

A quick browse through the list at WP:MFD brings up a number of user-pages, user talk-pages, and user sub-pages being used exclusively for keeping track of betting pools. Many of them are quite blatant (and colourful); I wish all our article tables could look as pretty as this one! These pages serve no purpose whatsoever and yet they mostly sit at MFD for a few days until the clock runs out and they're wiped (some are simply snowballed). These are non-controversial pages to remove and I feel they should be removed quickly and cleanly, so I propose we create a U4. Game pool section to WP:CSD. Tag them and bag them; why hold a vote? Matt Deres (talk) 01:50, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I sometimes wonder why we don't have a UfD process, though that might be a bit too much... I would certainly support a CSD process like this one. By the way, I DON'T hope that all our article tables look like them. :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kayau (talk • contribs) 06:19, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Whoops, sorry about forgetting to sign. Kayau Voting IS evil 06:33, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
I am sick and tired of seeing fantasy TV show tracking pages. I seem to remember first encountering this sort of page two/three years ago. (There is an ANI on this issue 1.5 years ago and some older stuff in the MFD archives.) Delete on sight, salt, block, big colorful flashing text, abuse filter, whatever it takes to get the message through. MER-C 13:20, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
This rubbish always ends up being deleted through MFD unceremoniously, and I figure we can save time by making it a delete-on-sight issue. harej 17:07, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes please! If admins can speedy delete articles, why not speedy delete equally obvious violations of WP:USERPAGE. Johnuniq (talk) 02:15, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Because speedy deletion requires not only that the case is obvious but that it's frequent and objective as well. In this case it isn't. On a side note, can we please keep speedy-deletion related discussions at WP:CSD? Regards SoWhy 18:06, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Reviewers & New page patrols

With the number of reviewers approaching 5,000 I thought it might be appropriate to allow pages patrols to be only allowed for reviewers. At present, any autoconfirmed user can patrol a page and page patrol sprees often go unnoticed. -- Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 06:07, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

What?! I don't think I understand your question. What do you mean by page patrols? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 21:00, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Never heard of New pages patrol? -- Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 21:02, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Oh. How would you prevent someone from patrolling a page? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 21:28, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
To patrol, one has to have the “patrol” right. Currently, all autoconfirmed users do (see Special:ListGroupRights). Marcus proposes to remove this right from that group and leave it only to reviewers. Svick (talk) 21:39, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
"Patrolling" means "marking the page as patrolled". Fences&Windows 21:42, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Is there any evidence that the current situation is a problem, i.e. have there been many inappropriate patrol sprees? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:55, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Is there a place that records all the pages someone patrolled or the patrollers per pages? I ask to see how many people are taking advantage of the feature, because there is a pretty big backlog and I don't think taking the patroller right from a huge amount of editors will help that right. Feedback (talk) 18:00, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Special:Log/patrol, As expected, I don't think many people take advantage of it. Also, a note about the backlog, we also have a couple thousand admins who have the reviewer right by default. -- Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 18:04, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, 1700 admins who are doing squat for patrolling. I understand your proposal, and if there were "too many patrollers", then your proposal should be implemented. But right now, there is a big backlog, and there are frankly "too few patrollers", not "too many". Maybe if patrols were added to one's contributions, would editors be persuaded to start patrolling pages. Propose that if you want. Feedback (talk) 18:45, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
The backlog isn't as bad as you might think. I just finished patrolling the last few articles of May. -- Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 19:51, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
It's now almost July, but articles are only listed for new page patrol for a month anyway. I wonder how many don't get patrolled at all? Quite a few I suspect. Malleus Fatuorum 00:35, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

"You have new messages"

You know that yellow box that appears on any page when you have a new message in your talk page. Will it be possible to have that yellow box appear when there's a new message on any other talk page or WP page which the user can specify (like at a Special:Alerts" page). This will be very helpful for everyone to keep track of discussions. Feedback (talk) 17:51, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

This is for WP:Village pump (technical). -- Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 17:56, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

New editmessage for semiprotected talk pages?

Currently when an IP views the source of a semiprotected talk page they would receive a message telling them where to make the editprotected requests, but on talk pages it's still link to the talk page, not the non-autoconfirmed talk page. Kayau Voting IS evil 05:58, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

The reason no one has responded is because you haven't proposed anything, FYI. Feedback (talk) 17:52, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
So can the link be changed so that it points to the non-autoconfirmed talk? Kayau Voting IS evil 06:20, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Why? Almost every semi-protected page does not have a semi-protected talk page. {{Sonia|ping|enlist}} 06:21, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Have you forgotten about the HD thread? :D In that case an admin unprotected it, but there are still a few out there. Kayau Voting IS evil 06:24, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
No, but it would be troublesome for the editnotice to detect which pages also have protected talk pages, and switch messages accordingly. What I was about to do there, in inserting a custom editnotice, would have been enough, imo. {{Sonia|ping|enlist}} 07:26, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Correct, the PROTECTIONLEVEL magic word can only detect the protection level of the current page. (There is T19970 open for this, in case anyone would like to vote for this feature.) However, we could probably add something to the message which appears on the talk page to direct unconfirmed editors to another place to make their requests. This would require a change to MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext. I think this is probably a good idea, because at the moment there is a link to "Submit an edit request" which doesn't work on these pages. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:51, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for the informative answer, MSGJ. {{Sonia|ping|enlist}} 09:53, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
All along I'd been thinking of a message derived from MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext, but this idea seems fine. Thoughts? Kayau Voting IS evil 14:40, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Random Browsing Mode

One way which people use wikipedia is to browse random pages through the 'Random article' link repeatedly. When browsing in this way, the user will often read the title and maybe the first line of the page before moving onto another page of possible interest. This, I imagine, would be a large drain on resources (server load, etc) as the whole page is loaded when only little is read/seen. Possible solution: a browsing mode where a page of titles and first sentences are randomly listed, where users can go to the page (or even have it expand to be the full article with some ajax wizardry) so that the user can look at random pages without wasting resources. The level of complexity this solution adds to UI may not outweigh the resources saved - a suggestion none the less tho. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jrlord (talk • contribs) 14:49, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

First, you should read WP:Don't worry about performance – there are people who care about the performance of Wikipedia. If random browsing would be a significant drain on resources, I'm sure they would do something about it. Second, even if what you propose would actually reduce the stress of Wikipedia servers, it would require someone to program it, test it, etc. And that's lots of work for probably very small benefit.
If you want this because it would be easier for you to use, that's a whole different matter and it would be best accomplished by some external tool, I think. (Somebody would have to program that too, of course.) Svick (talk) 15:42, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Barnstars 2.0

Recently, Antonu (talk · contribs) has proposed a massive upgrade of barnstars. The details can be viewed here. As this proposal has project-wide impacts, I am posting this here for community consensus. Kayau Voting IS evil 06:03, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Procedure for dealing with potentially illegal content

A discussion has recently arisen in various venues about an image which is potentially illegal as possibly constituting child pornography. The object of this proposal is not to rehash that debate but to extract some positive proposals which seemed to me to arise from it.

1. There is no clear guidance on what, if anything, an editor should do if they believe that content is criminally illegal: I'm thinking child pornography here, not libel or copyvio. Is it good enough to report it to law enforcement and sit back and wait for the feds to call? If not, what should a concerned editor do on-wiki?

2. There needs to be a clear process for saying "I think X content is illegal" which does not render the report liable to blocking for violation of WP:NLT.

3. I specifically propose: a notice board where concerns can be reported; agreement that admins at that board can remove content if agreed likely; process for referring such content for WMF legal opinion.

Kenilworth Terrace (talk) 19:59, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

One problem that you have is that different things are unlawful in different jurisdictions. I don't believe that you can restrict this discussion to sexual images. That which is unlawful is unlawful. But does it depend on the location of the servers or the location of the reader?
I see why you have raised this. I saw the initial discussion and have seen prior discussions with that editor and others. I think one must rely on WMF to solve this issue. We as editors are not lawyers. We are wholly unsuitable to make a determination. Your suggestion of a noticeboard makes sense, but, since there are genuine legal ramifications globally, I think it has to be patrolled by WMF, not by us. If this discussion shoudl move topwards any form of consensus then they must absolutely be made aware of the discussionsFiddle Faddle (talk) 20:12, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Another problem is that any policy wouldn't apply in the case that initiated this, as it clearly isn't illegal, and that should be made clear in any proposed policy. The Virgin Killer furore and the Futanari image should be used as examples of legal content. Verbal chat 20:44, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Please do not rehash that, or any other specific case, here. I think it might be helpful to have a clear and authoritative statement about the legality or otherwise of certain images or classes of images from a WMF lawyer to guide concerned editors. My, or your, personal opinions are irrelevant. Now, do you think this proposal helpful or not? Kenilworth Terrace (talk) 20:59, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
(after edit conflict)I'm afraid you may be mistaken about legality. A court case in Australia relatively recently found someone guilty of kiddie porn because he had a cartoon of the Simpson kids having cartoon sex. As I said, it comes down to jurisdiction. And thus we are back to the main problem. We are just ordinary folk. We can absolutely not make these judgment calls. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 21:03, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Just to make it clear: I'm not suggesting that this discussion attempt to write a set of guidelines for what is or isn't illegal here and now. I'm suggesting a forum in which such questions can be raised, handled and answered in a constructive and authoritative way. Kenilworth Terrace (talk) 21:08, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I think that would be a very bad idea and could get those that participate into legal problems in their jurisdictions. For example, in the UK, a cached copy of an illegal image counts as "making" - a serious offence. Those involved would be running a very high risk of prosecution. Best to follow WP:NLTs advice in similar situations and keep legal issues off public facing forums. Report it to the appropriate authorities. Verbal chat 21:15, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Florida is the relevant jurisdiction. In response to the Australia or even VK/UK issue, WP:NOTCENSORED already exisits. The policy should be basically if you think something is illegal, report it and raise the issue with WP counsel. Do not engage in editwarring (that could get you into legal trouble too in some jurisdictions, returning after you've seen illegal content - unless you're a law enforcement official). Basically, keep it off wikipedia. Verbal chat 21:12, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) You have my qualified support. The qualification is that this must be a direct communication route to WMF and must be under their auspices. Without that we just have another talking shop. We have enough of those. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 21:14, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

The problem though, is when you get into stuff like Muhammad. That's why only Florida is relevent, not out of some sort of malice toward other places. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:13, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

What about simply banning all pictures cointaining either people below 20 years, sexually explicit material, or both, at least until the panic vanishes?--Ancient Anomaly (talk) 22:15, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

LOL. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 22:32, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
IRT AA, that could be considered censorship, especially since I believe the legal age is 18 to appear in pornography? In any case, that is not the relevant issue here. a user above suggested leaving it in the hands of the WMF. This raises a few issues.
  • Don't we as editors have a responsibility to act? In some jurisdictions citizens have faced legal troubles, not to mention mental anguish, when action was not taken in situation. While not likely to happen, imagine the fallout for the encyclopedia, and any editors involved if wikipedia had an image or other content that was illegal and discovered while we were "waiting for the foundation". The media and the public are not as patient as we may be.
  • Is a person who sees criminal activity, in any form required to report it?
  • Should the reported activity be reported to an Administrator? How would they contact one who could take care of the issue immediately? This may seem common sense, but it would seem that the users here are stating, "call the cops, send an email", dont remove the content that could be illegal or dangerous. Who could see it? If there is a picture or video of someone being murdered on wikipedia, I dont want a kid wandering across it while waiting for cops and lawyers. Thoughts? Sephiroth storm (talk) 23:26, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Where do people get this notion that editors don't act responsibly ? We don't need to formulate everything in policy in order to do the right thing. We have no official policy on acting on threats of suicide, yet I know of at least 2 cases where editors have contacted law enforcement because they had serious concerns after comments that a person left (and those 2 cases were high school jokes as well).
  • In many jurisdictions you are required to inform law enforcement of criminal activity (not per se about illegal activity).
  • Illegal content is almost always deleted, some with more immediacy than other, depending on the certainty and severity of the claim. However in the case of suicide threats however, police often asks to keep material online first, because they need it to make their research more efficient. So there are always exceptions. Administrators and staff know about things like this. Perhaps not all of them, but more than most people seem to think.
  • Pedophelia issues have always been taken care of out of the view of the public. That is much safer for everyone. Just because you don't see something documented, doesn't mean it hasn't happened and been dealt with. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:55, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
It is unrealistic to require anything of editors. They don't have to read the policy in the first place even never mind follow it.
It is up to wikipedia editors to do things in the first instance and only drag in the Foundation in tricky cases. We should just delete anything which looks like a definite problem and has no educational or artistic justification. Tags can be used to raise questions for others to judge ones which which aren't quite so obvious. The number of cases that would need the Foundation should be minute, an occasional test case to check the boundaries and things lie that. Dmcq (talk) 00:13, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
See commons:Commons:Sexual content for our proposed policy so far regarding (among other things) child pornography. We're moving towards adoption right now and we really want your input on the talk page there. The English Wikipedia only needs to worry about illegal fair use images, which I reasonably expect to be quite rare. Dcoetzee 00:30, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
The starting-point was not policy. The starting point was does saying "I think this picture is illegal" or "You could be sued for showing this" constitute a legal threat? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:33, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Indeed, and part of my proposition is a space where such discussions can be held without tripping up over WP:NLT. Kenilworth Terrace (talk) 06:28, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
This is a very bad idea, as has been pointed out already. If the material was illegal (not the case here) then taking part in this talking shop would open editors up to prosecution in various jurisdictions. Report it to the authorities, and report it to WMF. If it is clearly vandalism, remove it as such. Legal opinion and interpretation of content such as this has no place on wikipedia. Whether "I think this picture is illegal" is a legal threat or not depends on context, while "You could be sued for showing this" is a legal threat per WP:NLT and should result in a block. Verbal chat 07:24, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Hm. So should WP:NLT be updated to reflect this. I don't think very many people are aware of that... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 11:14, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
That's silly, of course suggesting media may be illegal to host is not a violation of NLT. We nominate articles and images for deletion as copyvios all the time, and the nominators are not blocked for this. On Commons nearly all deletion requests are of this form. A legal threat is not expressing a concern, it's a demand to comply with an action or face legal consequences. Dcoetzee 05:12, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
It may be silly, but see the discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Possible WP:LEGAL situation. Kenilworth Terrace (talk) 18:43, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
I think this focus on legality is a red herring. What we really want, IMO, is for material like this to be evaluated with a certain amount of common sense and circumspection. Unfortunately, the more 'edgy' a bit of material is, the less likely that the people advocating for it are going to be using common sense and circumspection - edgy material attracts loud, edgy adherents. To my mind (as I've said before) the best way to approach this is to update wp:NOTCENSORED so that it requires some explanation of the value of a piece of material for the encyclopedia. If someone wants to add material that might be illegal, immoral, disturbing, or what you will, require them to explain what value it has for the encyclopedia, and if they can't do so, give the right under policy to remove it. --Ludwigs2 06:04, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Last I checked, WP:NOTCENSORED already basically says that: "Discussion of potentially objectionable content should not focus on its offensiveness but on whether it is appropriate to include in a given article." The problem is that when someone doesn't like something they'll pull out any policy interpretation they can think of to try to set the bar arbitrarily high. And the other side tries to set the bar arbitrarily low. And thus people wind up arguing over the fine points of WP:N or WP:RS or WP:UNDUE or WP:OR or WP:OI or WP:NOT or whether a particular law might apply etc when the real dispute is just WP:ILIKEIT versus WP:IDONTLIKEIT. And the result often comes down to whichever site is more loquacious and/or tendentious, or whether the "wrong" admin happens to come by.
A closely related situation is WP:NOTCENSORED versus "Think of the children"; if one side is an IP or a "new" user the discussion usually ends pretty quickly (by a block for disruption, if nothing else), but if it's "established" editors on both sides we're in for a ton of wikidrama. And there's not really any hope of a solution by rewriting policy: People will never stop thinking their pet peeve should be an exception to WP:NOTCENSORED, but adding one exception makes it a great deal harder to justify not adding exceptions for everyone else until we cannot even cover anything that might be controversial to anyone. Anomie⚔ 15:51, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not suggesting a change to policy or to WP:NOTCENSORED but a procedure for making these discussions more constructive. Kenilworth Terrace (talk) 18:45, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

A suggestion

The laws relating to this issue are necessarily non-specific and subject to interpretation. Although it seems to attract no shortage of editors willing to offer their opinions, the community at large is simply not qualified to offer an opinion on this specialized area of law. It bears noting that adminship confers no special knowledge in this area. Discussions on related topics have shown the community -- both here and at other WMF projects -- to be hopelessly polarized and dysfunctional when it comes to taking constructive action to deal with these issues.

Rather than creating a noticebaord or procedure, we should offer advice on how editors who encounter something that they genuinely believe to be child pornography. Simply put, that advice would be:

  1. Follow the laws in your jurisdiction.
  2. Report the image to the authorities.
  3. Contact the WMF.

I hope that anyone encountering something that is obviously and inarguably child pornography would take it upon themselves to remove the image from public view. This is a WMF issue, not an English Wikipedia issue, and we should allow the WMF to lead the way on this if further action is warranted. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 11:57, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

This is only the course of action that someone who actually wants to effect the change they profess to want to effect would take. Individuals who are more interested in publicizing this terrible, terrible badness would not be interested in following this procedure. IE - this is how it worked before this last round of navel gazing, and it's how it will work after. Hipocrite (talk) 12:09, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
I can agree with the above, but I have a feeling these borderline issues will come up again. Eventually we will be called in to action. Sephiroth storm (talk) 12:44, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Does clarifying the procedure for dealing with illegal content really count as "navel-gazing"? Kenilworth Terrace (talk) 17:19, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Any discussion on this topic should be on the policy page, not on the proposals page. And there must be input from the legal counsel. Anything else is just wheel spinning. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 18:16, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Population pyramid

es-wiki has a template es:Plantilla:Pirámide de población. We used to have an equivalent Template:Population pyramid, but it was apparently removed for lack of use. Several of us are currently translating es:Calviá as en:Calvià. The es-wiki article uses that template. Is there any reason I should not undelete or recreate it? It seems potentially useful. If I should not recreate it, do I have to handle this data as a graphic? - Jmabel | Talk 23:56, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Before and after diffs in noms

We have a lot of nomination systems for articles (FAC, FAR/FARC, GAN, GAR, also AfD and PR), so I'm making this proposal here. It is difficult to gain useful information from old assessment archives (i.e. looking up objections to last year's failed FAC before renominating) because the article can change so much. I propose that we archive permanent links to the revision nominated and the revision at closing. This helps editors see whether the article has progressed since the nom, and helps reviewers see how much the article has progressed during the nom. If a bot could add this information retroactively to the thousands of archive pages, it would be great; otherwise we'd just start doing it now. Thoughts? HereToHelp (talk to me) 02:50, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. - Jmabel | Talk 03:11, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Surely one can view what the article looked like just prior to the AfD template being added to the page by looking into the history and finding the comment where the tag was applied? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 18:49, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Isn't this already done for FA/GA, PR, etc.? The date column of the {{article history}} banner identifies the version at the time of review. For example, Talk:Super Mario 64 has listings of milestone versions starting in October 2004. Though, if there are pages not using the template, combing for the last update date of a review archive could probably generate this information. —Ost (talk) 19:02, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Never thought to click those....heheh. That and the page history section lets you pick a year and month; did it always do that? Anyway, between those suggestions, I think we can get by. Thanks for your ideas, HereToHelp (talk to me) 19:08, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Name formats for "-box" type templates

There's an RfC about standardising the names of navbox, infobox and sidebox (sidebar) templates here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Templates#RfC_re_template_naming. 212.84.103.144 (talk) 18:38, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Main page suggestion

I have one suggestion as pertaining to the English Wikipedia main page but may be applicable for other languages as well.

Since many people visit Wikipedia to search for an article, I was hoping that the search bar would be in a more prominent position. The previous version had the search bar in the left-most column and the current version has the search bar in the upper right hand corner.

I would suggest that the search bar should be centered, towards the top of the main page and bigger so that it is easily accessible and prominent to viewers. Perhaps a good place for it would be the space to the right of the line: "Welcome to Wikipedia"

I am suggesting this by following the example of other search-intensive sites such Google or Bing or YouTube

Thanks for considering my suggestion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Noblerare (talk • contribs) 19:36, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Because no one has been able to do it in a way that has satisfied all parties I guess. For just the homepage, I think it is a good idea, the problem is designing it to properly integrate into the main page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:50, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Pseudo-tag filter "any tag" to match all tags

RC patrollers would love this because it will offer guidance to them as to which edits to revert. T3h 1337 b0y 01:03, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

This sentence is no longer valid

I noticed this sentence "When you click Save, your changes will immediately become visible to everyone." at the bottom of the page when I am editing, and, while in the past it was entirely correct, it is no longer valid, as with pending changes an edit is not automatically viewable to all users and readers. Could someone remove it for the duration of the pending changes trial? Best wishes. Immunize (talk) 18:18, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Given that it's only wrong for less than 1% of articles (and far less than that of all pages), I think leaving it alone or just adding a caveat ("on most pages") would be better. Mr.Z-man.sock (talk) 01:13, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
The "on most pages" should wikilink to WP:Pending changes. Or maybe we could have a different message appear for pages to which pending changes applies? It probably is good to clarify this matter, since some users may think something's wrong when the changes don't appear immediately. Tisane talk/stalk 01:43, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
  • I like the idea of linking to FAQ or a Help page since they are generally more reader-centric. I suspect that the actual question frequently asked would be along the lines of "Why did my edit/changes not appear when I clicked save?", which may already be answered for edit conflicts, protected pages, external link blacklists, nearly instantaneous bot reverts, etc. —Ost (talk) 18:16, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
      • Again, in this case "usually" means more than 99.9% of the time. And even when it isn't "immediately" its still a median time of <2 minutes. I would worry that changing it too much could actually make it worse by making it more misleading. Currently it says that 100% of edits will go live immediately, which is still pretty close to true; "usually" could mean edits on only 51% of pages. Mr.Z-man 21:46, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
        • Maybe replace "usually" with "in almost all cases"? Really, it should be split into two separate messages, one for situations in which changes will appear immediately, and one where they won't. Pending changes is probably going to be implemented project-wide, so we're probably ultimately looking at more than just 0.1% of Wikipedia pages. Tisane talk/stalk 21:49, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
          • The trial however, is for no more than 2000 pages, and it will last for 2 months. It only takes a minute to actually change the message, there's no reason to do it preemptively. Mr.Z-man 22:02, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
            • Actually the most pertinent measure would not be number of pages but number of edits to those pages, or even more specifically, number of edits to those pages by users unfamiliar with how pending changes works, would it not? E.g., a page like The Beatles probably receives more edits than Jason Boland & the Stragglers. Hmm, anyway, I'm sure we're all sticklers for accuracy but as you say, it might not matter much so maybe the whole issue should be deferred until later. To get the message perfect would probably require a bit of development, and there are a lot bigger fish to fry. Tisane talk/stalk 22:21, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
What we actually want to do is not display this message for pages under pending changes. Does the software support a custom message in this position based on the settings of the page? Dcoetzee 14:55, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Support. One reasonable way is to simply remove the text "When you click Save, your changes will immediately become visible to everyone" on edit pages when Pending protection is in place. Another is to modify the script so that, e.g. when Level 1 is engaged, for non-autoconfirmed users the text is replaced with something like

    "Edits to this page by anonymous or newly registered users are subject to review before becoming visible to everyone"

    With Level 2 just use an appropriate variation. For example,

    "Edits to this page are subject to review by a reviewer or administrator before becoming visible to everyone."

    ... Kenosis (talk) 15:08, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Recent Changes Proposal

I propose that past offenders' (users and i.p. that have been warned for vandalism) changes be in bold to indicate that they have a higher risk of being vandalism. This could be an invaluable tool for vandal fighters. --Iankap99 (talk) 07:12, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Strong support Would be very helpful. Immunize Contact me Contributions 13:53, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose - scripts can do that; don't make it default for everyone. Besides, it's unfair to list out IPs that are on shared computers. Kayau Voting IS evil 14:28, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Probably what will happen before too long is that all pages will be subject to the Pending Changes thing, and users who aren't trusted won't be allowed to auto-review their own changes. So this proposal will be implemented, for all intents and purposes. Tisane talk/stalk 17:29, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Vandal Fighter Rewards

Would it be possible to have rewards for vandalism fighting? This could be done by the amount of rollbacks that have been performed by the user.--Iankap99 (talk) 07:10, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

You mean something like {{The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar}}? See WP:BARN for more information about barnstars. Svick (talk) 12:17, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
And rollbacks versus reverts are different. - Denimadept (talk) 14:04, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
To me, the idea that the number of an editor's reverts is something to be admired is somehow not in the spirit of collegial editing, even though as a vandal fighter, I do a lot of it. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 21:01, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
Being diligent is good. I'd rather a reward of a free drink at a WP gathering, though. - Denimadept (talk) 21:34, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Start a petition against 'fake consensus'?

This is my third village pump proposal for a short while, but I feel the need to do so. I think there is an unhealthy trend in Wikipedia (it could have been the trend long before I came, but I'm still pretty new to Wikipedia as I wasn't involved in any serious editing till sometime last year.) Anyway I don't like the way people count the number of supports and opposes and call it 'consensus'. This is democracy, and Wikipedia is anything but a democracy if we want to make a good encyclopaedia. Lots of WP:LIKEs and WP:IDLs are recognised as !votes every day. And besides, IMO calling a vote a !vote is no different to just calling a vote a vote. I think there could be a petition where Wikipedians sign to reflect their discontent on such 'fake consensus'. Kayau Voting IS evil 14:32, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I can't see this being constructive... ╟─TreasuryTag►estoppel─╢ 14:34, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
Petitions can be a success, such as WP:PIAR. Kayau Voting IS evil 14:48, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
That was a success? ╟─TreasuryTag►Speaker─╢ 16:50, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
I think the admins do a good job of shutting things which fall under "If we vote, we can make the article's subject whatever we want!", a case of which I saw recently trying to label an advocacy group as a hate group. I haven't seen this sort of thing survive long even in less contentious cases. I have seen people who decided the consensus was against what would have been the vote result being accused of POV, personally I think the decisions I've seen that way have been in the main correct but perhaps I'm a toadying member of a clique and unable or unwilling to see the truth. :) Is there some particular case or cases which you believe are worrying? Dmcq (talk) 15:18, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
A !vote is not a vote, it's a discussion wherein a number of people state their opinions proceeded by brief bolded summaries of their opinions. We already have "not a democracy" written in policy. Any admin who interprets a result according to a strict vote count to achieve a stupid result is going to get told off for it. Dcoetzee 16:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Question for Kayau: wouldn't the petition you suggest be a vote itself? Voting against votes sounds a bit strange! Alzarian16 (talk) 16:47, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't like this proposal. Closing admin, please take my opinion into consideration when deciding whether to implement this idea. Tisane talk/stalk 17:25, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
But seriously, the current system exists for a reason. That reason is not a very laudable reason, but it's a reason nonetheless. Admins want to have a certain amount of discretion, and the !votes allow them to assess what they can get away with. If the admin wants to delete a page, and the rules don't clearly support deleting the page, then the admin looks at the results of the vote to judge whether his decision to delete is likely to be reversed. If there's a certain voting margin in favor of deleting, then he knows he can probably get away with deleting. The margin is not set in stone anywhere, and there is a certain potential for other admins to reverse decisions based on their own interpretation of the rules (and, of course, their own preferences as to whether that article should be deleted, which influences whether they choose to get involved), so getting your way is more of an art than a science. I think Abd set forth a "Rule 0" that said the cardinal sin on Wikipedia is to expose the true nature of the "consensus-based" decision-making process for what it is, but whatever. Tisane talk/stalk 17:38, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
The current trend is happening for 'small' discussions. I don't think I've seen anyt 'big' discussions being closed like this before, like the XfD, and we have to stop the trend from spreading to the XfD. The petition will not be a voting, just a way to promote consensus and non-voting. Kayau Voting IS evil 05:33, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
Sorry Kayau if it seems like I'm stalking your proposals (because I'm not- you just show up on my watchlist heaps), but Facepalm Facepalm . "Fake consensus", per se, can occasionally be an issue, but a petition ain't gonna solve anything. XfDs and RfXs are already closed by weight of argument and admin discretion (the percentage is very necessary for borderline cases, and would be used de facto anyway if it weren't de jure), and content disputes are naturally solved via consensus. Where is the issue? Petitions, here as in real life, are in general a load of hot air that give little useful change or information to anyone- especially when the premise is loaded and ambiguous. sonia♫♪ 06:08, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Indeed; online petitions of all kinds are generally slacktivism at its finest. Tisane talk/stalk 03:54, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to rename Autoreviewer to Autopatroller

I propose we rename Autoreviewer, see the documentation to Autopatroller, articles create by users in this group are automatically patrolled when created. The name 'Autoreviewer' has resulted in much confusion with the upcoming and unrelated reviewer usergroup which will be used in the Pending changes trial, and the name 'autopatroller' is closer to the group's function. Cenarium (talk) 16:57, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Seems sensible. –xenotalk 16:59, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
IIRC, we called it autoreviewer because we were planning on using it with FlaggedRevs in some capacity. If that's no longer the case, I would support a rename, if that's actually possible. Mr.Z-man 22:15, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Good plan. Fences&Windows 17:22, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Does the comment by developer Roan Kattouw here deem this proposal moot? he said "Added patrol and autopatrol permissions to this group because 1) the group needs to have some permissions in order to exist and 2) it has these permissions by default in the FlaggedRevs code (among other, FR-specific permissions)." Does that mean the the new reviewer group will include the old autoreview right? Sole Soul (talk) 17:25, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Seems that way. The Autoreviewer group includes just one right, autopatrol. The new Reviewer group includes the patrol and autopatrol right. Patrol is given to all autoconfirmed users, so right now the Reviewers group is functionally identical to the Autoreviewer group. And once Pending Changes is activated, it will have more functionality than Autoreviewer. Reach Out to the Truth 17:52, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
(interject out of chronological order) This was an error, and now reviewer no longer contains 'autopatrol' –xenotalk 18:30, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
I would say that, if this were for a more definitive implementation, we should consider dropping entirely the autoreviewer/autopatroller group. But this being a trial, we should preserve the autoreviewer usergroup in case we don't continue pending changes. Cenarium (talk) 18:00, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
The idea was that later 'autoreview' userright would be added to this group. The group was intended as a general autosomething group. Ruslik_Zero 08:26, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
It's unneeded since all autoconfirmed users have the 'autoreview' permission, see the table. Cenarium (talk) 13:59, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
If this is the case, then why does it appear that I do not have autoreviewer status? —Ost (talk) 18:56, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Also support a rename. Will reduce confusion. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 07:59, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
With the existence of the new Reviewer permission, the Autoreview permission is extremely misleading. Even if it is eventually removed altogether, the Autoreview permission should be renamed to Autopatrol for the time being just to avoid confusion (and because it's a more accurate description altogether). --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:53, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Autopatrolled. DS (talk) 21:07, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
I like Dragonfly's subtle change, as it makes more sense. The user is not patrolling anything; any new page said user creates is automatically patrolled. –MuZemike 21:14, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. Cenarium (talk) 00:22, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Much better! Autopatrolled or Autoreviewed is a much better choice because the user isn't doing anything. The process is happening in the background on the server to reduce the workload of other users. Acps110 (talk • contribs) 03:16, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree, a name change seems in order. However, if the name is going to change, I'd like prefer the new prefix be something other than "auto-". Currently the "auto-" prefix is also used to indicate permissions that are granted automatically by the software itself (e.g. see "confirmed" vs. "autoconfimed). Since there has been some discussion of other permissions being automatically granted, I'd like to see permissions that apply an action to one's own edits use some other prefix, perhaps "self-". Thus I suggest a new name of "Selfpatrolled" or "Selfpatroller". —RP88 (talk) 18:26, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
I also agree that a name change is in order. I went to see if I was given Reviewer rights and I first checked "autoreviewer" because it was the first right that I saw. The permissions weren't obvious to me from the name and self-patrolled seems to make more sense while not conflict with de facto naming conventions for "auto-". —Ost (talk) 18:56, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

FYI, the reviewer usergroup no longer possesses the 'autopatrol' userright, since it could conflict with autoreviewer which applies different standard for granting et al. Cenarium (talk) 00:20, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Support rename. —ΩpenTheWindows™ 04:07, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Support rename as making more sense. The current names might imply that autoreviewer is to reviewer, as autopatroller is to patroller, and autoconfirmed is to confirmed. (even if it doesn't quite work out orthogonally). I also like patrolled vs. patroller, as noted by Dragonfly. — Becksguy (talk) 14:28, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Strong support More accurate. Immunize (talk) 20:48, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

  • Several names have been proposed now: autopatroller, autopatrolled, selfpatroller and selpatrolled. Can you mention which one you prefer so we decide ? Cenarium (talk) 03:22, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
(Noting that this was addressed to everyone.) Cenarium (talk) 20:31, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
I currently feel the best name would be selfpatroller. Immunize (talk) 14:24, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Except Javascript is a scripting language. It's pretty clear which one is which. Is an autoreviewer somebody whose contributions are automatically marked as "reviewed" or somebody whose new pages are marked patrolled? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 19:22, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

 Done - although the name should really be a noun, not an adjective. Prodego talk 03:06, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I too support the name but would prefer autopatroller to be more consistent as all the other groups are nouns. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:56, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Autoconfirmed? {{Sonia|ping|enlist}} 10:01, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Ah, okay. This is about grammar. In that case the editors themselves are autoconfirmed. In this case it's not the editors who are autopatrolled; it's the pages they create. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:05, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, true. We can say "you are autoconfirmed", but "you are autopatrolled" is just weird in itself. {{Sonia|ping|enlist}} 02:01, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Proposal: Use Google Translate/other TT as translating tool

It will be extremely helpfull if we add a Translating Tool(TT) Like Google Translate in tool box or in print/export section of every article/template.It'll be extremely easy to translate articles. As grammetical errors in the machine translated text are common,these errors can be fixed by human users. Consider an article of 5000 words which would have taken a month to translate fully by various users but can be translated in seconds and can be made grammetically error free by contributors in 5 minutes. This can also prevent some original research. Like a German translator who translate it manually may add some original research while translating.

CoercorashTalkContr. 14:55, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

The thing is, these translators miss the subtle nuances of each language. Also, trying to decipher what they mean is sometimes harder than just straight translating, from experience. {{Sonia|ping|enlist}} 08:55, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
As someone who comes across text translated by Google and other software tools on a regular basis I strongly advise against implementing this. I speak, read, and translate Japanese and I can tell you that what Google spits out when going from Japanese to English or from English to Japanese is absolute garbage. It might give you the most basic idea about what the text is about, but other than that it should not be used or relied upon. I know a lot of people think that other languages are like codes where the words are simply switched around, but that is just not the case. Someday, hopefully soon, computers will be able to handle the thought processes necessary to translate. But it is not today, nor this decade most likely. Colincbn (talk) 13:12, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
Even with relatd languages (e.g. from Dutch to English), the results can be quite amazing. Considering that the Dutch "West-Vlaanderen" (Western Flanders, one of the ten provinces of Belgium) is translated as ... Ontario (!)[6], I believe that it is indeed still way to early to use such software to create articles. (That the River Yser is given as Iron, or that the province of Namen is translated as Names is more understandable, but accetuates the problem of translating proper nouns). Fram (talk) 13:27, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree: we must beware the limitations of translation software. I admire Coercorash's optimism, but in reality, it would be very rare for Google Translate to provide a translation which would be usable after a simple grammar clean-up. Often, the original meaning is completely lost and the translation is gibberish, but more importantly, a mistranslation may appear to make sense but might actually be completely wrong. Google Translate can be useful for very simple fact-checking or to get a rough idea of what the article is saying, but should never be considered an adequate substitute for human translators. It's particularly problematic when translating languages with very different grammar and/or text which is badly written to begin with.
I found some bemusing examples of Google Translate's efforts when I was attempting some research for the Vitas article: since much of the potential source material is in other languages (mostly Russian) I decided to give Google Translate a try.
He worked in the theater and the plastic voice parody, where he found a Sergei Nikolaevich Pudovkin - his current producer.
OK, this one's relatively straightforward: an editor would just need to ascertain the correct English translation of the phrase translated literally as "plastic voice parody", then the sentence would basically make sense and would need only minor tidying.
In December 2002, Vitas took part in the shooting of multi-series on the book of Mrs. Dontsova "bastard beloved" in the role of the artist who came from the province and blew up a unique voice and his songs pop Olympus.
The first part of this sentence makes sense (though "Beloved Scoundrel" or "A Beloved Scoundrel" seems to be the generally accepted English translation of the title literally translated as "bastard beloved"): however, I can't make much sense of the rest of the sentence. As for these...
Thousands of viewers and listeners, usmlyshav extraordinary voice of Vitas, broke his head, he does it so sings?
Now Vitas very izmenilsya.S one side is correct, the old image of all of its new long nadoel.A same deprived "gills", enigma, increased the number of hair ... "and moved it into the category of" such a lot "...
...wtf? Contains Mild Peril (talk) 13:39, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Even between common language pairs (such as French–English or German–English), the ones that Google should do best, it still takes as long to clean up a Google translation that to translate the old-fashioned way. I'm not saying that Google Translate is useless, far from it, but it is not suited to the production of reasonable quality English prose such as we look for on Wikipedia. Physchim62 (talk) 13:42, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


Machine translation is OK at best and horrible at times. If you understand the issues, but still want translation links, add this to your JS:
importScript('User:Manishearth/sidebartranslinks.js'); //[[User:Manishearth/sidebartranslinks.js]]
This will translate the country codes to English and add a Google Translate for those languages that are supported. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


  • Probably many users who oppose proposal haven't seen what i said:

-As grammetical errors in the machine translated text are common,these errors can be fixed by human users. CoercorashTalkContr. 14:55, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Probably you haven't read what they said: Machine translation introduces other errors, not just grammatical, and the translated text sometimes doesn't even make sense. If we did exactly what you propose, we could quickly translate articles, and the result would be grammatically correct, but it wouldn't make sense or it would be wrong. Svick (talk) 16:01, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
I have seen what you said ("grammetical" errors and all), and I oppose the idea even more. Machine translation is, in general, garbage, and your statement that more such garbage would be "extremely helpfull" is entirely unsupported. Your notion that an army of human users would make up the deficiencies is naive, because fixing syntactical errors (grammar) in no way addresses the more profound deficiencies of semantics (meaning). Sorry, but no way. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:50, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
I have seen cases where machine translation produces a sentence that is perfectly grammatical English, but with a meaning exactly opposite that of the original sentence. Unless you are fluent in both languages involved, you won't be able to find or fix this sort of thing. --Carnildo (talk) 01:33, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
Here is the original suggestion, translated into German and back again:

It will be very helpful if we translate a tool (TT) template.It As in Google Translate tool box or in print / export section of each article / 'll add is extremely easy to translate texts. As grammetical errors in the machine translated text are widespread, may be adopted such errors by human users. Let us look at an article of 5000 words that would have taken a month to translate fully, but can be translated within seconds by different users and grammetically made errors of contributors in five minutes. This can also prevent some original research. As a German translator to translate the translation can manually add in some original research.

I don't think removing the grammatical errors would help much.
--Boson (talk) 06:31, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
Eh, why not go step further?

If the end is calculated to turn around the conversion of dae (automatic device of the information entrance) (TTT, of what gradiciamo with the printing of portautensili Google or the drawer u), or, if all the regulations or the exemplary section if they are united to, this one is not useful the much municipality. It' Ll the limit in the conversion, is very simple. Gradice erroneous Grammetical the unit - what the preoccupations, transform the text to the divided interest of the conversion an error, what closings, more than the client of the person if possible those. About the month the requirements in the conversion and many that the types of that one probably had, turned totally the client into a second, can think that done grammetically and they do not depend on 5 distribute, the more on the equipment of employees of the relations of processing of 5000 words end to pay erroneous to the regulations are possible. That it interests the origin the search is therefore impedetto later possible. Somigli to the German decoder, if one turns, possibly, if this one turns the end to add the end him to use the hand, in the order the origin of the search.

♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:23, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
A considerably more realistic proposal, already used in practice, is to suggest that article translators (who do know the source and target language) use automatic translation tools as a starting point to facilitate more rapid translations. Dcoetzee 14:52, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
I know it's very hard to understand for people who speak only one language, but different languages are not just scrambled versions of each other. Automatic translators are not helpful for proper translations, where did you get they are used in practice?--Ancient Anomaly (talk) 21:50, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
I object to your assumption that I speak only one language. I said they're used in a supplemental way, which they are. You still have to speak both the source and target language and look at the source text, obviously. Dcoetzee 16:38, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
In practice (been there...) it's a waste of time. Starts with sources, not with a script! All too often even one good source on the subject presents more info than a web article, and of superior quality. A good source will lead the editor into subtopics that were not known at the start. Your proposal places writing ahead of research; ideally, it should be quite the opposite.
Another point is actual content of the article. A good article in a foreign language may miss on the points that are expected in en-wiki, yet elaborate at length on subtopics that are not notable here. Different cultures see the same things differently (the blind men and the elephant). All too often a foreign source begs for a question: WTF are they writing of all these non-notable events and people? Can't they just make the point? Yes they do but it's a different point... East of Borschov 09:44, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Expandable ellipsis

I propose that a expandable ellipse be made for quotations. Currently, when a quote is used with either redundant or irrelevant content, it is removed and replaced with ellipsis ("...") which indicate that content has been removed. These however, can be made in bad faith, either to remove context or to remove content contrary to the use of the quote. My proposal is that to show good faith ellipsis, when clicked the full quote becomes visible. I suggest this could be achieved by the use of Template:... e.g. "I am quoted without the {{...|hidden part of the quote}} as an example"
This, as far as I know, is not possible at the moment due to commons.js forcing a table and [hide]/[show] 930913 (Congratulate/Complaints) 23:28, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Great idea. The people at technical may be able to expand on the feasibility question. Anthony (talk) 14:57, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
What about this approach:

Here's my ... full quote[1]

Full quote

"Here's my not actually full quote".

Or you could just include the full quote in the "Quote" section of the cite template that references the quote.

References

  1. ^ "Example". Here's my not actually full quote

Fences&Windows 22:19, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

The top one requires a new section to be made, the second one is better, but still requires the user to scroll to the bottom (even if by means of an anchor). My idea is that it could be in line with the actual usage. Also, the latter, while it can be done, I have not seen it be done; if we make a template for it, people would use it as best practice. 930913 (Congratulate/Complaints) 03:19, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
I looked into this once a few months ago, and as I remember it's actually fairly easy to do. I think I even made a request for it over MediaWiki_talk:Common.js, but apparently nothing ever became of that. what needs to happen is that the current javascript code and css classes for collapsible divs need to be expanded to work on span elements as well. I could mock up a test version for if you'd like. --Ludwigs2 03:51, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
If you wouldn't mind, please. 930913 (Congratulate/Complaints) 11:53, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

More general or specific

Devise a scheme whereby I can, at a glance, tell if a link to another wikipedia article leads to a more general subject or a more specific subject than the one which I am currently viewing. That is to say, "Will this link take up or down the categorical hierarchy of human knowledge?". For example if I am on the subject of Physics and I click on a link that takes me to the subject of Thermodynamics, I will have moved down the categorical hierarchy of human knowledge because Thermodynamics is an aspect of Physics. Therefore it is more limited in scope. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.234.75.216 (talk • contribs)

Most links are not of either type, so this may be of limited utility. For example, George Washington is not a subfield or superfield of Culpeper County, Virginia. However some people have proposed characterizing the relationships expressed by links more precisely; see Wikipedia:Semantic Wikipedia. Dcoetzee 05:57, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
No, but categories do in essence serve this function. You can compare the categories of two article or navigate using categories instead of via links within articles. Fences&Windows 16:39, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm working on the Open Library project at the Internet Archive. We trying to build a catalogue of all books ever published. The plan is to add links from our author and book pages to Wikipedia. One of my colleagues has suggested that we could also add links from Wikipedia to Open Library. Would it improve articles about authors and books if we include a link to Open Library? If not, are there any changes or improvements we think we need to make to Open Library before adding links from Wikipedia? Edward (talk) 22:41, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Based upon my reading of Wikipedia:External links, I believe the links should not be added at this time. A scan of the information your site provides on authors, a short biography followed by a listing of the authors works, appears to match the first criteria under the Links normally to be avoided in that such information would clearly be expected to be included in any Wikipedia article about the same author. As for links to books, criteria 13 (Sites that are only indirectly related to the article's subject) is partially applicable. In addition, the information available at Open Library is not unique but comparable to Google Books and several other book search engines. As your site does not provide a unique resource, why should Wikipedia link to it instead of any other site providing equivalent capabilities? --Allen3 talk 00:00, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
On the other hand, we already do link to Open Library, using the templates {{OL author}} and {{OL work}} (and also {{OL}} which is older, and possibly superfluous?). When the page there provides worthwhile information now, it is worth linking to. If it is the equivalent of a stub, then it is not. Hence I'd oppose any automated/bot additions here, but support manually selected additions of links.
I'm not sure about overlap with Google Books (for which we use the template {{Google books}}). Compare Open Library: Neuromancer with Google Books: Neuromancer.
Automatically adding links to Wikipedia from Open Library, seems like a fine idea.
HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:41, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
The proposal is to restrict links to Open Library to only pages where Open Library provides books that can be read, or books that are part of the print disabled collection. The bot will explicitly not add links when all Open Library provides is the equivalent of a stub page. Arielbackenroth (talk) 17:21, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
I had to dig a little, so here's what I found:
The DAISY Digital Talking Book format provides access to books in audiobook and braille-friendly formats, and this particular collection is offered through a partnership with The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.
Example links: Open DAISY zip linked here, Protected DAISY zip linked here
That sounds like a great addition. Full Support. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:03, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to remove the Preference setting that marks all edits as minor by default

See Help talk:Minor edit#Should we remove the Preference setting to "Mark all edits minor by default" ?. –xenotalk 14:24, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Must re-former name of an article AL Dhafeer

These tribes, and I know them. Write a letter in Arabic (ظ) and is not available in English so enlisted the letter which is closest (d). Should be re-the former name of this article. Then it's not an Iraqi tribe

This is the article and should be re-former name Al-Zafir_(tribe)

--The arabin wolf (talk) 14:07, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I've replied to this editor on the talk page of the article.
All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 18:22, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Renaming proposal

I propose we rename the following seven following articles:

In my opinion, this change is necassary to prevent confusion mainly because the articles need to focus only on the most prominent and significant events and trends in popular music worldwide and not include insignificant events and trends (the significance of each event and trend is of course debatable and would be determined acording to the consensus reached by the editors). TheCuriousGnome (talk) 20:28, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Seeing how they are about popular music, that seems sensible. WP:RM gives guidance on how to do this proposal. Fences&Windows 20:50, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
This would make sense, as every little band won't be mentioned on the page, and this may stop some garage bands from adding themself to the 2000's or 2010's list. Old Al (Talk) 01:26, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
Not sure... might be confusing, considering the lede of popular music notes the confusion with Pop music. The articles are about significant events in all genres of music.  –Joshua Scott 01:34, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Proposal: Switch back to the old skin as default

This vanishing topic was moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/May 2010 skin change/VPR.

WMF paid for this?

This vanishing topic was moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/May 2010 skin change/VPR.

Recent interface changes

Assessment level display

I think that the default interface should implement the code at User:Pyrospirit/metadata. One of the biggest problems we have with getting people to trust Wikipedia, is that they don't see us trying to maintain the quality of the articles. I showed another user last week, and he had no clue that you could do this and thought it would be very useful. If you implemented this code, or something similar, it would tell users alot more about articles on the main page. Right now we only show them GA and FA symbols, why not the whole range, that way we can increase awareness of all of our efforts in assessing articles? Sadads (talk) 14:27, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Support; the metadata is pretty helpful information, if only for those who are curious about what Wikipedia's quality standards are these days. What used to be considered a "featured" article is now just a "good" article, and no doubt in the future, what counts today as a "good" article will only be a B-class article. Tisane talk/stalk 14:43, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
I like the idea, but adding color to the header is not the way to do it. Maybe there could just be an icon at the top right, like the FA and GA icons, indicating what class of article it is. Or maybe just use the tagline... --Yair rand (talk) 14:48, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
A very nice proposal was put forward at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment#Proposal: Indicating article class assessment on articles and was enjoying substantial support. Unfortunately it was never taken forward. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:50, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
The tagline alone would be more than enough, the symbols just don't get enough attention. Maybe we could force it into the Usability initiative? Sadads (talk) 14:53, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
Ratings below GA are pretty much arbitrary and frequently based on only a cursory review. I think the quality of our quality rankings needs to improve before they're especially useful for much. Mr.Z-man.sock (talk) 16:28, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
The problem is that people don't understand that we are actually trying to monitor stuff for quality. That is usually the first thing people say, when they talk about Wikipedia, "They have no way of telling what articles are good quality vs. bad quality" or from scholars "They never peer review stuff". We need to preempt these arbitrary, and consequently ungrounded, opinions. Besides, showing people assessment standards, allows the work of users who do project assessment to reach the general public. Sadads (talk) 16:40, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
My point is that anything below GA is almost meaningless. Such articles are not seriously "monitored for quality" or if they are, it isn't related to their assessment rating. GA and FA are our peer review processes and we do advertise those. Below that is little more than a checklist - size, infobox, image, checks for obvious problems; there's no fact checking and often not even a copyedit. Its only a review in the loosest sense of the word. So I wouldn't say that such opinions are totally unfounded. If we want to show the work of people who do project assessment, project assessment needs to be a lot more rigorous. Someone needs to actually read the article (not just skim it) and if not completely fact check it, at least check the sources for reliability and relevance. Project assessment is currently based on doing as many articles as possible as fast possible, with the consequence that the resulting rankings are nearly useless to readers. At this stage, I think it would be disingenuous to present the assessment ratings as a true "quality" ranking, at least as far as readers are concerned. Mr.Z-man 18:45, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
It seems to me that most people only use Featured, Good, B, and Stub anyway, and sometimes Start. You hardly ever see A or C used. Tisane talk/stalk 06:54, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
The projects I'm part of seem to use C very regularly, and B not so much. It all depends on individual editors. My main problem with this proposal is out-of-date or inaccurate assessments; for example, British Rail Class 142 was for a long time marked as B-class while still carrying a {{refimprove}} tag and being the subject of an edit war, while The Vampires of Venice was marked as a stub for about six weeks after it was massively expanded. And what do we do if projects disagree about the quality (eg. my creation London Country North West)? Do we show the lower or higher rating? Alzarian16 (talk) 10:17, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Currently the tool shows the higher, and I agree. In response to showing old tags, I think the higher visibility of assessment tags will help experienced users pay more attention to what class articles are and make it easier for them to change it when they disagree. I find, when I use it, I am more able to revise class rankings when I encounter one that does not conform to the standards for its current ranking. If anything, I do far more assessment updating then I ever would, because I see the class at the top of the page every time I load a page. I think it would be a good way to involve more people in assessment as well, as it is right now we have a backlog of 370,000 articles without a class plus article that are not project tagged (another 500,000 or so, see http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/table2.fcgi). This is a total engagement opportunity plus an awareness campaign, what more could we want?Sadads (talk) 11:16, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
That would make sense if we were to make it the default for logged-in users only (which I would support), but increasing the visibility to general readers is not the same thing. I agree that experienced users would find it useful to see the assessment level, but to general readers it would most probably be meaningless. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:55, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
I think we should deploy it for signed in users at least, but I really do think a general deployment would also be useful in confronting our inability to convince scholarly communities of our sincere efforts in maintaining quality. Sadads (talk) 21:13, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry that I missed this until now, but this is similar to another issue I have raised as a proposal as WT:ASSESS not too long ago. I was going to try again here at the village pump, but in more broad terms, sometime within the next week or two. If you take a look at my initial proposal, I offered options to deal with Stub-thru-B-class articles separately, but you will still get very strong opposition from the WikiProjects that still use A-class and don't want to give it up. Although I favor what you are suggesting for the same reason, we'd have to push through lots of thorny, deadlocked issues to make any changes. For that reason, I was going to step back and ask a broader question and try to see if I could get people to agree on some basic principles, then proceed from there. All-in-all WP:ASSESS may need to be completely revamped, and there could be many, many ways to do it. We could get rid of lower classes, make a separate (but interconnected) rating systems for the public and editors, etc., etc. We'd only be limited by our own creativity and the limitations of Wiki. Anyway, I'll try to post the proposal sooner rather than later. If you want, I'll even try to type it up tomorrow night. – VisionHolder « talk » 21:58, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Sploofus

Does anyone know where the "Sploofus" website is?

This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Please consider asking this question at the Miscellaneous reference desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for). Just follow the link and ask away. You could always try searching Wikipedia for an article related to the topic you want to know more about. I hope this helps. Kayau Voting IS evil 12:43, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
It's offline Anthony (talk) 13:06, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

A better experience for new editors

This is what I have in mind. Click "here" in the green comment at the top.

  1. We want more readers to become editors.
  2. New editors make mistakes, so more new editors presently means more work for established editors.

My proposal addresses both of these issues.

  1. Having a prominent invitation to edit at the top of each unprotected article would encourage more readers to try.
  2. Linking that invitation to editing essentials would improve readers' first edits.

I'd like to do an initial one month trial on one article, tracking the stats, analyzing the quality; followed by a one month trial of a representative sample of 20 articles; and then present the findings for your consideration. Any support for this? Anthony (talk) 00:41, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I think it significantly overcomplicates things. We need to ease people into editing, not try to give them a crash course on citing sources, content disputes, and original research before they do anything. If it looks hard, people won't do it. I don't think "more work for established editors" cleaning up after new users should really be given much weight for things like this. Trying to anticipate the mistakes people will make is what makes editing tutorials like Wikipedia:Tutorial (9 pages?!) so complicated. As long as new users are given the opportunity to learn from their mistakes rather than being punished for them, it should be fine. Mr.Z-man 03:10, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
It is complicated in this case because it is "how to edit a medical article", and I'm recommending this precisely because it is not 9 pages. It is the bare minimum required to edit a medical article without being a pain (sorry) in the ass. How to edit Rainbow could be half as small again. Anthony (talk) 04:42, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
Again, you're looking at it from the wrong angle. The main goal should not be "how to make new editors less of a pain," but "how to attract new editors." If it really is that complicated then we have more serious problems than lack of documentation. We need to actually make editing easy, not just tell people "Sorry, this is as easy as it gets." Mr.Z-man 04:13, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
I'm here to address "How to attract new editors". That is the purpose of this proposal. I assert that having "You can edit this article. Click here" prominently displayed at the top of an article will encourage first-time editors to try.
You are concerned that the mini-tutorial it links to will scare first-timers away. I hope it is possible to compose a short, simple, clear intro' to editing, that covers the essentials and makes the transition from reader to editor easy. I have trimmed, rearranged and simplified it since your last comment, and would really appreciate your thoughts on this version. Anthony (talk) 06:26, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
If access to medical journals or textbooks is a requirement to do anything more than fix a typo, then you can say it as simply as possible but still not attract many people. Mr.Z-man.sock (talk) 16:40, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
I project it would mostly produce useless test edits --Cybercobra (talk) 03:19, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
Would you like me to test that hypothesis? A couple of days ago I examined 300 IP edits (one sequence of 100 and another of 200 captured 2 hours apart from Recent changes), and found 3 pairs of test edits in 300. I could do the same analysis comparing the percentage of test edits during the trial month with the average for that calendar month since the article's conception. Anthony (talk) 04:42, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that red links are what tempt people the most to edit. People who aren't familiar with the fact that a red link means there's no article there, click on it and are confronted with an invitation to edit. Of course, there is always the possibility of reopening up new article creation to anonymous users; that might be helpful. Tisane talk/stalk 03:34, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I quite like this idea, and I think it deserves a trial. If it's a success, then Wikipedia is greatly improved, and if it fails, nothing lost. Whether it would produce test edits, no edits, or good edits, I have no idea, but there's really no way to tell unless we try it out. --Yair rand (talk) 03:51, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia and new editors want to work together, but Wikipedia's rules and standards usually look complex to new editors. Fortunately in the great majority of situations I think the rules and standards can be applied in simple ways, some simple techniques can make new editors' work much easier, and it's fairly easy to see where this approach is enough and when new editors need some help in a complex situation.Please see me proposal at User:Philcha/Essays/Advice_for_new_Wikipedia_editors and comment at User_talk:Philcha/Essays/Advice_for_new_Wikipedia_editors. --Philcha (talk) 05:10, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
Wow. That is really cool, Philcha, a very nice overview. It did take me 10 minutes to read, though and, as Mr Z-Man pointed out, for the purposes of this proposal, even my 1-minute summary is a little long. The idea is to have it so clear and short that they will read it. Anthony (talk) 05:28, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
I think it is about right. It states the basics and I think saying straight out about citations and not writing your own ideas is good. I think I'd put in about not to worry too much about a polished result as others would fix it up if the content was okay. Dmcq (talk) 10:54, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
I think Anthony's idea is definitely worth a trial. We could add it to a few articles. Develop criteria to decide how we will determine weather or not this has worked. Than wait and collect the numbers. Ideally this would only displace to non registered readers.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
So, can I give it a shot at Pain? It's a moderately popular page with not much IP editing and a good number of vigilant watchers. I would contact all the regular contributors and make the suggestion on the talk page first. (I'd prefer to start with just one page, Doc, just in case of unforeseen problems.) Anthony (talk) 20:55, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
I think it would make sense to move the related pages from your user space into the project namespace first. --Yair rand (talk) 03:04, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean move User:Anthonyhcole/Pain/tutorial to Pain/tutorial? Anthony (talk) 04:46, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking that it should be moved into the Wikipedia: namespace, but Pain/tutorial would probably be better, come to think of it. --Yair rand (talk) 21:07, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't think I know what "namespace" means. I fear it might get speedy deleted if I put it into Pain/tutorial without getting some kind of authority. But I have no idea of the right protocols here. Do you think now might be the time to approach recent editors of Pain about this? And maybe I should run this thread by Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine? Anthony (talk) 03:35, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
Yes, Pain/tutorial probably would get deleted fairly quickly. The problem is the article namespace does not use subpages, mainly because an article's name may contain a slash. I think you have enough support for a trial and you should probably go about it like this:
— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:04, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. I've just found Wikipedia:Namespace so I have a clearer understanding of Yair rand's last post. I'll get started on that soon. Anthony (talk) 14:09, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

When I saw this section heading it made me think of a problem I've seen several times recently for new editors. It's happened a few times to me, and certainly to several others I've seen. Dunno if this is the right forum, but here goes...

The problem is when a new(ish) editor (I've only been truly active for around six months) makes a suggestion on a talk page, or sometimes with a WP:BOLD edit, and gets told something like "No. You're wrong. That was all decided years ago. You can't change that consensus now". Well, that's an insulting arrogance, and is basically telling the newcomer "Your ideas aren't wanted". We need to find a way to better welcome newcomers than that sort of response. HiLo48 (talk) 08:18, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

You're right, that can be a problem on Wikipedia, but I'm not sure what can be done about it. (You might like to move this thread to the idea lab as it is not directly connected to the rest of this thread and this village pump is more about concrete proposals than exploring ideas.) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:33, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
I have created the project page Wikipedia:Invitation to edit. Don't know how to do templates; but that shouldn't be necessary for the first trial, I guess. Anthony (talk) 18:40, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
User:MSGJ has kindly created the template Invitation to edit. Anthony (talk) 21:00, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Consensus

  1. Support I think this proposal will raise awareness and expand the ranks of editors. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 14:02, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
  2. Support. I am willing to support a one month trial on a limited number of articles. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:04, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Citation templates: naming by style

When discussing citation templates, I find it very clumsy to have to differentiate the different templates by style. I propose to name these:

Wikipedia Citation Style 1 (CS1)

This template is based on APA style and uses a comma as the default separator:

Wikipedia Citation Style 2 (CS2)

These templates are based on APA style and use a period as the separator:

Wikipedia Citation Style Comics (CSC)

These templates arebased on Ellis, Allen (1999). Comic Art in Scholarly Writing: A Citation Guide.

Wikipedia Citation Style Other (CSO)

These templates are based on APA style but use styling that differs from CS1 or CS2; the listed templates do not necessarily use the same style:

Wikipedia Citation Style Vancouver (CSV)

These templates are base on the Vancouver style:

Wikicite

A freestyle template: {{wikicite}}

---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:54, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

That sounds great but, um, which cat does {{cite news}} fall into? (Does anyone even use templates other than CS2?) Kayau Voting IS evil 23:46, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
{{Cite news}} is listed under CS2. CS1 is used on more than 25000 pages (that is the max that AWB will count). CSV is fairly new and used on a handful of pages. Then there are the uncountable number of article that don't use templates. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 02:55, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
O, silly me, I meant {{Cite web}}. Sorry. Kayau Voting IS evil 03:35, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
Ah- missed it somehow; added it to CS2. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 09:46, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
In that case I'm not opposing - makes perfect sense for me. Support. Kayau Voting IS evil 11:53, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps slightly more indicative abbreviations? To wit: CSCMA, CSDOT, CSCMS, CSO, CSVAN. Just a suggestion. --Cybercobra (talk) 12:01, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
Many of the descriptions contain a phrase like "This template is based on APA and MHRA styles". First, what is MHRA style? Second, how do we know? Can someone find some talk page discussion in the archives explaining what the original editors of these tempates were thinking? Finally, APA style is only used for parenthetical referencing so it is misleading to describe a style oriented to footnotes as being based on APA. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:42, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
MHRA crept into one of my early notes when I was doing some comparisons, but that is not right— removed.
I am well aware that true APA uses in-text parenthetical citations. On Wikipedia, we seem to have separated in-text referencing and the reference list citations into two separate systems. The most common Wikipedia practice is to use in-text numerical referencing with Cite <ref>...</ref> tags that link to the reference list citation formatted with CS1 or CS2. I am not out to fix this system, as it seems to not be broken. I just want to document what is already in use, and I need some terminology to do this. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:48, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
Sounds useful and well thought out to me. Support. (Where are you planning on placing this mini-glossary?) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:15, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
I would like to see each template note which style it uses. I would also like to see central pages for CS2 and CSV that define the style used with guidelines for formatting each entry. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 22:24, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
May I once again recommend CSCMA and CSDOT (or similar; CMA = comma, DOT = period) rather than the more opaque and generic CS1 and CS2? --Cybercobra (talk) 00:37, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
You will note that CS1 states "comma as the default separator". {{Citation}} has parameters to change the separator, thus comma is not always correct, and it can even be styled to look like CS2 (which I will have to address). CSV uses dots and commas. Then there is the possibility that someone would create templates based on Chicago or other styles. I considered APA1 and APA2, but the templates do vary from APA, such as having titles in quotes. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 21:27, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Lightbot is being considered for re-approval

ArbCom is considering lifting the restriction imposed in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Date delinking#Lightmouse automation, subject to BAG approval of Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 4. As part of BAG's mandate is to gauge community consensus for proposed bot tasks and Lightbot's former activities were highly controversial, I invite all interested editors to join that discussion to ensure that community consensus is in fact in favor of this task. Thanks. Anomie⚔ 17:32, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Checking availability of username

Make a feature by which new users, who are registering in wikipedia, will be able to see if the usernames they have chosen is available or not, before entering password and anti-spam words. It will save people's time. It took more than 4 mins for me to register here as whatever username i'm using shows a message "This username is too similar to XYZ" ): --Tintin rules (talk) 04:45, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

That is a good point. Maybe take that to Bugzilla? Tisane talk/stalk 05:06, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
Might just make sense to link Special:ListUsers in the verbiage somewhere. –xenotalk 14:29, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
Makes me wonder how the similarity check works. WP:U describes it as "over-sensitive", yet I just found that somebody managed to register Emil J as a user name.—Emil J. 14:51, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Italics at works of art

This isn't a proposal made my me, but a proposal that's going around and I'm curious about the general perception about it. Recently there was a bit of code added to Template:Infobox comic book title, that makes the titles of the articles using it to be in italics. There was a little reversion dispute about it, and a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Comics#Italic titles in Template:Infobox comic book title. The manual of style requires the names of works of arts (which includes comic books) to be written in italics, but its unclear whenever such rule is limited to the article prose (such as in "Frank Miller created Sin City, a black&white comic book of policial stories") or extends to the title of the article itself. Critics support the first thing, supporters support the later, and consider as well that specific projects may develop their own consensus about this.

That's actually what I wanted to ask. Being a detail of style that's so highly visible, can it be left to specific projects to decide about it, or should there be a wider discussion? Besides, if the rule is accepted, shouldn't it be applied to articles about other types of works of art as well? After all, the general rule is about works of art in general (movies, books, TV series, etc.), and whenever the rule reaches the article title or not should be the same for all of them. I'm not much of an editor of comic books articles, but I do work with some articles about Argentine TV series, books or portraits, and I want to know if I should place italics in their titles or not. MBelgrano (talk) 12:03, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

The style guide that I see referred to most often is Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Style guidelines, which suggests italics and the template Template:Infobox Book incorporates this. I think the italics ought to be in there, Sadads (talk) 12:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
That guidelines does not even mention the word "italics" a single time. The template does not do the same thing: for what I checked, it places italics at the title displayed in the infobox, but the page title (the one at level 1 font size, at the very top, above the "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia") stays as usual. That's the title the infobox for comics modifies, and the one I'm talking about. Check for example the title at articles like Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns or Crisis on Infinite Earths, which use the template. MBelgrano (talk) 18:02, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Copy editors' tab

Hello everyone, I posted an idea I had into meta, and was looking for some feedback! Thank you - Theornamentalist (talk) 02:20, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

about the hide/show

I would say we don't have to hide/show the content table, but for every section. So we always show the "content table", all information is collapsed, and I can choose to show any specific section or subsection.

Since at present, all sections are shown, and some might be not interested for some readers. As for this page, I am just interested in this section I created. So I hope all other sections to disappear. Jackzhp (talk) 18:50, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

When I read an article, I usually read more than one section and having to click on “show” for each of them would be tedious. I think this would only annoy readers, without any real benefit. Svick (talk) 19:09, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
I agree. I usually skim all the sections when I read an article. Kayau Voting IS evil 00:40, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
See MOS:SCROLL. If the References section is collapsed, then in-text reference links don't work; if a section is collapsed, the reference list backlinks won't work. You can't search in collapsed sections. It is possible that a script could be written to collapse all section for you. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:05, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
Show/hide mechanisms, which use JavaScript and/or CSS, do not work for those accessing pages using screenreaders and other text-based perceptual interfaces. This is important because most of us don't want to exclude blind and visually impaired people from editing WP. David Spector (talk) 15:55, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
It would be acceptable to write or find someone to write a script that you could use on your account. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:59, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

A Consensus Committee

When there is an argument about whether a change should be made in an article, and there is minority group against a change, they often start repeating that there is no consensus because they do not agree, and are able to prevent the change. The argument then breaks down into whether there is consensus or not, and even if the majority is supported by policy and reason, they are unable to make the change because they are unable to convince a small group of people. I think there should be a committee that has the power to declare based on the number of editors, supporting policies, supporting reasons etc., what consensus is in favor of at a given point in time, and give permission of one side to make a change, and block the opposing side from editing the page until they can get a consensus in their favor. I think this will help prevent endless discussions from being used to prevent a change. --WikiDonn (talk) 18:16, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like rules creep to me. You are aware of the third opinion system that exists precisely for what you've described, correct? And for truly egregious cases, we have arbcom. --erachima talk 18:22, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict)No, very bad idea. After all, what happens if, say, everyone on the committee believes in Evolution, and blocks edits to Intelligent design because "there's no consensus"? If someone makes themselves obnoxious by blocking consensus, there are Dispute resolution steps you can go through, ending at Arbcom.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:24, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
No, already enough systems in place, including asking editors and administrators to come in and comment. Sadads (talk) 18:33, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
It wouldn't be instruction creep because it wouldn't be required; it would only be used when a small group refuses to accept consensus. Third opinion really only applies in cases that involve 2 people, I thought, and the problem I am talking about is that the current dispute resolution process is used to block consensus and continue endless discussion. ArbCom also doesn't make rulings on content. The thing about evolution wouldn't happen, because their decisions would still have to be based on the notability policy. --WikiDonn (talk) 18:46, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
"their decisions would still have to be based on the notability policy" - But if they have the power to overrule the community and arbcom doesn't rule on content, who enforces that? Mr.Z-man 23:10, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
Consensus doesn't mean unanimity an if there is clearly a consensus I think arguments against it should have to wait a short period before starting up again otherwise it can be very disruptive. Admins have been a bit slow at dealing with people who politely and persistently disagree with the consensus and keep going on and on and some guidelines there would I think be welcome. I don't think we could have a committee decide consensus though, it has to be up to the editors who know something about the subject, and RfC should bring along some editors who also are familiar with seeing if there is a consensus. Dmcq (talk) 06:05, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
Basically what you're suggesting is that we create a committee to dictate consensus in cases where people have failed to follow the principles of consensus. in other words, you want to throw consensus out the window entirely in certain cases where consensus fails. I find myself reminded of that old joke where the doctor comes out of the operating room and says: "I'm happy to tell you all that the operation was a complete success, and a spectacular victory for the medical sciences. Unfortunately, the patient died in the process."
Dude, if consensus has failed, build a new one. if you run into trouble, ask for help - most people on wikipedia are more than happy to help common sense prevail. --Ludwigs2 06:30, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
I can't help feeling people bury their heads in the sand when this question is raised - there is a problem with making consensus happen when there's a dispute (genuine or disruptive, whatever) over what the consensus actually is. Perhaps common sense does usually prevail in the end, but it isn't guaranteed, and even when it does, a whole lot of time and goodwill can be wasted fighting to get it. So I fully support the concept that there should be people who (fairly quickly) settle disagreements over what the consensus decision is. (In fact we do have such a system - but generally speaking it's hard to find an admin to make such a call except within the too-well-established processes of AfD and RM and so on.) Not having this, we are not really being run by consensus as we would like to kid ourselves, but by a "might is right" system where, roughly speaking, the most determined group of editors gets its way, rather than - necessarily - the one with the most convincing arguments.--Kotniski (talk) 07:23, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
I think it is more a matter of people who see weird or extended arguments going on on their watchlist stepping in and saying: This is screwed up, try this solution, else you are wasting the communities time. It always seems to work with articles I am involved in (though I admit most of the topics are not nearly as controversial as the type of articles you seem to be encountering).Be bold on Wikipedia pages, and Be brave on talk pages. That is my motto,Sadads (talk) 11:35, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Kotniski and WikiDonn that there is a distinct problem here, I just think that this proposal is a move in the wrong direction. We don't want people determining what consensus is; if anything, we want people stepping in to make sure that consensus has a chance to happen. As I have said elsewhere (I have a long-term goal of fixing the consensus system on wikipedia, which I engage in fitfully), working towards consensus is actually very natural for people, and almost everyone will do it if the other quicker, easier, more noxious options are squelched. Get one person on a page who thinks s/he can win an argument by attacking an opponent, and you will rapidly get a talk page that's nothing but attacks. squelch the bad behavior dispassionately but ruthlessly, and you will rapidly get a page where people are communicating with each other, because that will be the only option left for people who want to improve the article.
Gardens are easy to grow, so long as someone's willing to do the weeding. but (understandably) no one seems to want to get their hands dirty weeding discussions on wikipedia. --Ludwigs2 13:54, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
Yes, generally speaking that's what's needed, though there are occasionally situations where even after all the polite discussion in the world, some editors take one view, others another, there is no reasonable compromise, and someone neutral just has to determine what to do about it. If not, then the side that fights hardest (without appearing to step over the loosely defined boundary into edit-warring territory) will get its way. Where editors are not able to fight (because that would need admin privileges), we do have admins who come along and decide what consensus is (AfD, RM). And since we don't want to encourage people to fight, then we should have admins doing the same thing even in cases where the editors could technically fight it out.--Kotniski (talk) 14:36, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

A recent interview posted about Dragon Quest IX has brought up a major problem. The site is entirely in flash and contains multiple videos and there is no clear way to distinguish which video one is referencing because they are all on the same page. Unlike some flash pages which can be saved to specific pages within the flash page, this one cannot be saved to a specific movie.陣内Jinnai 02:13, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

I would treat it in the same manner as citing a portion of dialog from a video game, as is commonly needed for our higher quality CVG articles: cite it normally, then quote the important part of the interview you're referencing directly using the "quote=" field. This is good practice for anything where the source is hard to get at. --erachima talk 02:46, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Discussion Questions on Potentially-Objectionable Content

Hello, I'm Robert Harris, the consultant who has been hired by WMF to conduct a study on Potentially-Objectionable Content within the projects. I've posted a series of questions for discussion to begin consultation within the communities at the Meta page devoted to the study (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content). Although the main focus of this specific set of questions is Wikimedia Commons, I'd be very interested in what all Wikipedians have to say about these questions, especially since policies on Commons obviously affect every other project, and the handling of images in Wikipedia is often subtly different than that of Commons. Robertmharris (talk) 12:23, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Proposal: Article rating systems as an informative tool about vetting

Currently, the vetting (review) processes on Wikipedia is poorly understood by the general public. Wiki is often judged privately and publicly on articles that may or may not measure up to our highest standards. This leads to mixed opinions about the content, as well as sharp criticism and general distrust by the public and within the academic community. This in turn could complicate efforts to develop expert review systems in an atmosphere of distrust and misunderstanding.

In order for a reader to assess the Wiki-rated quality of a non-GA or FA article, they must select the Discussion tab (if the article is rated at all). If the article lacks a talk page or does not even have a header with a rating, no information is provided. If a rating is provided, it may either link to WP:ASSESS or an assessment page for a specific WikiProject. The pages often provide little information in a format that would be engaging to the average reader. Furthermore, ratings vary between projects, and many pages are rated inaccurately. The higher-quality content offered on Wiki, in the form of A-class, GA, and FA are not always perfect, but sweeps and reviews have improved the content within the past few years. The latter two even provide a link to WP:GA or WP:FA respectively from the article itself, in the form of a green plus or a bronze star icon. In short, article ratings and communication about those ratings are inconsistent and offer little "reader-friendly" information about our vetting process.

I would like to start by making a very general proposal. (In other words, don't read more into it than what it says.)

Proposal:

To begin a process with the goal of finding ways to utilize some sort of rating system to inform readers about the quality of the content of the articles they are viewing and inform them, as simply as possible, about our vetting system(s).

The proposal is being left very general for a reason. There have been many deadlocked issues that tie in with this topic, and I don't wish to address those details now. The purpose is to get consensus on whether or not to move forward with this general idea. More proposals will come, becoming more and more specific as we collectively find the most agreeable solutions.

Reason to support:

  1. You feel that informing the reader of an article's general quality is helpful and could build trust and understanding between Wikipedia and the public.

Reason to oppose:

  1. You feel that any sort of article rating system should be viewed only as a tool to editors, not readers.

These are the only points I want people to focus on for this round of the discussion. Again, please do not read more into than this than what is explicitly stated. – VisionHolder « talk » 16:01, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Support
  1. Support the idea in principle and am prepared to facilitate other issues to effect this (i.e. antiquated grading) Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:16, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
  2. We need to make the program more broadly accessible, it is a serious issue when we are interacting with traditional Academic communities. They just don't understand that we don't promote everything as being of high quality. It scares them that people are always going to trust everything on Wikipedia. Sadads (talk) 18:04, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
  3. (Sort of) I support this idea in general, though I agree with the opposers in that I think it is probably too early to implement. If we can reduce variation between WikiProjects and reduce outdated assessments, this would be an excellent development. Walkerma (talk) 02:47, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
    A graduated deployment, first to registered users then to the general public with a 6 month period to clean up the outdated assessments? Would that be the kind of approach you would like?Sadads (talk) 11:13, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
    Yes, I would like that a lot. However, I think we need to hold off for a year or two, to reduce variation. Walkerma (talk) 03:57, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
    Six months to clean up oudated assessments? The GA sweep exercise took years.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:06, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
  4. Support, though I would prefer a graduated deployment along the lines of Sadads's comment. --Yair rand (talk) 01:39, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Oppose
  1. Trying to apply any kind of quality assessment system across Wikipedia's 3.3 million articles consistently seems set to fail. There are widely varying standards in what constitutes start- C- and B-class that aren't applied uniformly; as long as there is inconsistency, telling readers that an article is B-class for example is a bad idea as it may lull them into a false sense of security. Wikipedia should be read with a sense of scepticism. Nev1 (talk) 16:16, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
  2. As Nev1 says, start- C- and B-class are applied inconsistently and there are reassessment procedures for GA and FA. I'll add that there are well-defined criteria for GA and FA. --Philcha (talk) 17:08, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
    As stated above, please discuss below. I was wanting to avoid lengthy discussions in these subsections. The two of you are also assuming too much. I'm not even thinking about Start-, C-, and B- classes as this point. – VisionHolder « talk » 17:12, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
    I completely agree with what Nev1 said, just seems set to fail. -- Jack?! 18:43, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
    This proposal seems to be based on the premise that a general reader is not capable of evaluating an article; and must therefore be "force-fed" with a quality symbol on the article. Firstly, I would suggest that it is not always necessary to look at the talk page of any article to see whether it is "good" or "bad". Some articles are very short, have no references and may even have a {{stub}} template at the bottom of the page and possibly no illustrations; in contrast other articles are well referenced and well illustrated. At this level a reader should be able to informally "rate" it in his/her own mind as a high, medium or low quality article. Secondly, the reader can go to the talk page to see if the article has been graded (perhaps readers need to know this). However, there are a number of problems with Stub/Start/C and B-class ratings: C-grade is a newish grade and is not accepted by certain WikiProjects (such as MilLHist, but there are others) so an article that appears to be C-quality has to be either up- or down-graded by those WP's that don't accept C-grade; it may have been graded too high or low a few years ago before WP:verification was tightened up, some previously B-rated article have been re-rated as C-class; the article may have been improved, but the grading has not been adjusted to take account, or it may have been extensively vandalised or copious uncited material added, so the current grading is too "high". Pyrotec (talk) 19:46, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
    Quite frankly, alot of readers (think high school students and people without full high school educations) don't have the skills to evaluate the quality of research or presented information. Just think how common quackery is on television and in advertising. Sadads (talk) 18:08, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
    Or they can't be bothered paying attention even if they do have a university degree, which is why politicians just go for out-of-context and misleading one liners. And it happens on Wikipedia with grading metrics as well, so even if people make the "consumer reports" easy to obtain, the WikiProjects will inflate/game them anyway as the leaders and article owners and whatever other stakeholders have an interest in doing so. So many WikiProjects have silly marketing gimmicks nowadays YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:52, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
    But some consumer report is better than no consumer report. At least the people that will look for one will appreciate it.Sadads (talk) 02:13, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
  3. I don't think making B/C/Start tags more formal/prominent would actually work and it would just lead to edit wars on history pages, especially on non-western world topics. Most history/politics/culture articles in those parts of the world are deliberately POV, and most of the owners including admins typically always remove any tags even if the article is unsourced etc or POV tags. So people will either edit war to make their POV more prestigious, or there would just be massive grade inflation, of which there is heaps already, particularly with many wikiprojects led by people who are politically conscious or obsessed with their image; there is at least one Wikiproject and likely more where the median B class article is less than even 10kb (even though the examples on the assessment guides are always 30k) despite the invariable claims of pursuing a standard higher than everyone else (I'm aware that some topics don't have much info, but there are always incentives as you get the same number of points etc if it reaches a certain "class" so people are more likely to write on dead-end topics and get nominally better stats). I wonder whether WP will descend into political marketing as an increasing number of "leaders" try to offer more and more incentives to try and lure the remaining would-be writers to serve them and bump up their stats YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:48, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
  4. This proposal is built upon the false assumption that article ratings are sufficiently accurate that they provide useful information. Even when reviewers have a working knowledge of the rating system and take the time to read the article before making an assessment, two conditions that are routinely violated, assessments a frequently more a practice in WP:ILIKEIT than a meaningful rating of an article against an established set of criteria. Through in problems of reviews needing to be redone following significant changes to an article and the difficulty in finding reviewers with enough knowledge of the subject to determine the level of article coverage (many subjects are still waiting for someone with enough knowledge to write the article) and there is no reason to believe meaningful assessments will be available in the foreseeable future. --Allen3 talk 01:39, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
  5. Yes, the assessements are useful just for Editors. However, I just wanted to add that it would be really helpful to add an extra note to Editors, in the template or all wikiprojects - leading newbies to the Assessment rules, the process and WHO actually does the assessments. There's a bit of information overload in trying to get to the write place to get help about assesements. It's probably dumb, but I've been editing for a year and only just realised that the the assessments can be done by each wikiproject rather than a faceless approved specialist Assessment team. Teine Savaii (talk) 09:15, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

  • This proposal is very poorly thought out. You've simultaneously made it too vague and too specific to have any useful results. Attempting to support or oppose requires pigeonholing your opinion into one of two specific options (which are, I might add, heavily skewed towards support), and because there's nothing concrete to the proposal it's impossible to give an honest assessment. Also it's on the Village Pump, which is not an avenue well-suited to long term discussion, and this is an issue that will require long term discussion. In conclusion, I'm sure you're trying to help, User:Visionholder, but I cannot possibly envision anything productive coming out of this topic. --erachima talk 16:15, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
This proposal has been mulled over for over a month. Following a prior proposal at WT:ASSESS, where people focused too much on pet issues and couldn't address the general concern, I've taken a step back and tried presenting it in a more general fashion. So if I add specifics, the topic gets bogged down in deadlocked topics, and people come out in opposition because I either included or omitted references to controversial things like A-class. If I'm general, then I'm not being specific enough. I'm also confused because people complained that the last proposal wasn't in a more visible place, such as the Village Pump. Once I put the issue up here, I'm told that this is not the right place either. ... And we wonder why relatively few people stick around long enough to become dedicated editors. The reasons: thing's poorly explained, there's little consistency, and most editors would rather grumble, revert, delete, and criticize than act constructively. – VisionHolder « talk » 17:09, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
Upon further reflection, I'm going to go cool down for a few days in another part of Wiki. We'll see how this proposal develops or rots. Whoever wants ownership of it can have it. Obviously if I'm not capable of coming up with a well-thought-out proposal, then I shouldn't be conducting one. – VisionHolder « talk » 17:32, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
  • You don't need a proposal to have a discussion. Just start it. You only need to get a consensus when you want to say "Here's our idea for a new assessment system, should we use it?" Mr.Z-man 16:28, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
My initial wording focused on a "task force", but I was advised against it. Maybe this should have been a discussion, but I wanted to see a consensus from a vote. I guess it's still young — we could scrap the vote section and re-title this to a discussion. – VisionHolder « talk » 17:09, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
My point is that there is currently nothing to get consensus on. You don't need a consensus for a discussion, and this would be far too vague to use as proof of consensus for any actual implementation that may result from such a discussion. Mr.Z-man 18:40, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Absolutely - there is interesting fodder for thought, but I see the need for more discussion before coming up with a concrete proposal, which epitomizes the very rationale for WP:VPI--SPhilbrickT 16:11, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Indeed; in future, it would be best to create a WP: page with the proposal, the WT: page can serve to discuss it, and then place a pointer on the pump to the proposal. –xenotalk 18:14, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure I agree. This was a more specific proposal but got bogged down in specifics, so Visionholder tried a different approach to see if folks were agreed in principle to the idea of some form of article grading more easily visible to readers. I agree that many many pages have old gradings on the pages from before the wholesale move to inline referencing. I suspect many B-class need to be moved to C-class as the biggest shift needed. If a push to do this results - a good thing?Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:15, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I think a lot of the reasons for opposing are valid - there are significant variations between projects, and many assessments are out of date. I think these prevent us from using the system at present (although our system is already much better than most online rating systems on other sites!). However, there is a HUGE amount of value in showing valid assessments to the public, if we can reach that point. Whenever I've shown our assessment system to librarians, they get very excited, and feel this should be more widely known. Our assessments are done by subject-experts, which means they can be more nuanced than an average reader; I think the assessment would be very useful to students. I also think that there are a lot of metadata available in our assessments for academics to use in analyzing Wikipedia trends, etc.
A simple way to implement this would be to improve something like Pyrospirit's script (only works on the old skin), and make this visible to all users. It would need some discussion on which assessment would take priority when differences occurred. I think this is probably premature until the information is more reliable, but I hope we will be able to implement this one day. Walkerma (talk) 03:13, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Option to select which system of units to use (Imperial or Metric)

  • Background

While for the US/UK readers the imperial system is relevant, it doesn't happen the same for the rest of the world. In some articles both information is displayed, but it is not the common rule and makes the articles unnecessarily longer and more complicated to create (or edit).

  • Proposal

Create a wikimedia symbol to input units and give users the option to select which units system to use. For instance {{meters|30}} which would display "30m" for users with the option "Metric system" activated and "98ft" for users with the "Imperial system" option. --Micru (talk) 14:45, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Support
Oppose
  • Not really. WP:UNITS suggests always using both sets - that is both informative and robust. A conversion is not. How would you encode "Today it was 25 °C, 5° less than yesterday"? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:08, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Way too much programming, no discernible benefit. This kind of automatic conversion would create lots of false precision, unless you required people to put both 30 meters and 98 feet. In which case, it wouldn't save on editing time at all, so the only benefit would be a tiny amount of improvement for readers at the expense of programmer time and processing time. --Golbez (talk) 14:53, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
It depends on how you do it. Processing time, probably not to much, but you would have to find a development team to make sure that a whole slew of templates could support that, and then develop a good sized chunk of code for the mediawiki. Sadads (talk) 14:58, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
I think that false precision is not a problem, see how {{convert}} handles it. On the other hand, I don't think this would be worth the work from both developers and editors, especially considering that most readers are either anonymous or wouldn't set the preference one way or other. Also, if you want to show imperial units to anonymous Americans and metric to the rest of the anonymous world, it would require geolocation and, as far as I know, Wikipedia doesn't do this now, so that would be additional work. Svick (talk) 15:15, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Ooh, that's a huge point - the vast, vast majority of our reading population is anonymous, and therefore wouldn't benefit from this. --Golbez (talk) 15:30, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
  • The current system of using {{convert}} or just doing the conversion manually to include both units works just fine. Using both units is basically like adding a single word to a sentence; its not increasing the length by a significant amount. There's no reason to overcomplicate things. Mr.Z-man 22:03, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
  • I didn't know about the existance of the template {{convert}}, and the anonymous users argument is indeed too powerful to overlook. I would suggest to close this discussion and focus in making the {{convert}} tool of widespread use. Would it be possible to modify the WP:UNITS guidelines to recommend the use of {{convert}}? --Micru (talk) 08:45, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Hard-coded "preferences" disrupt usability. I'm from a metric land, but when it comes to American road distances or British gun calibers, I prefer the native imperial units. Current wikipedia convention fits this pattern: the choice of (primary) units follows the subject. Your proposal replaces this diversity with a black and white one-way choice. If I choose metric units, the articles on old England will look funny... If I choose imperial... Why? East of Borschov 09:04, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Just plain unnecessary — an overly complicated solution to a fleabite of a problem. By the way, please do not refer to US customary units as Imperial. --Trovatore (talk) 05:16, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Would make any page that used the option not cacheable slowing down Wikipedia. Rabbitfang (talk) 00:20, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
Discussion

Please move this to a subpage, the pump is not well-suited for extended discussion, polling, etc. You create a subpage with the proposal and link to it from here. (In respect to the proposal, this looks like just going back down the same road of the date autoformatting saga with units, and we all know how that turned out). –xenotalk 15:13, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

I know the result, but I am not sure exactly why we did that. Sadads (talk) 15:19, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Adding to a talk page

Today I revised two questions I asked on reference desks. I used this method to show where I was deleting what I had said. Is there an equivalent if you add something to a previous statement?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:57, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

See WP:REDACT. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:50, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, that works. I should have just asked under Technical because they had surely thought of this.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:59, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Seeking feedback on essay

I wrote an essay recently and would appreciate feedback on it (either here or on its talkpage) or improvements to it: WP:Wikipedia is amoral (WP:AMORAL). I have no aspirations of trying to elevate it beyond a mere essay. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:24, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Is it possible to create an RSS feed for DYK?

I was looking for an RSS feed for DYK. I see we don't have one at WP:Syndication. I asked at the help desk, and I learned from Calvin_1998 that "because DYK, ITN, &c. are updated manually (bot or otherwise)," we would have to "ma[k]e a script that creates an RSS/Atom feed from the HTML on the main page".

That's outside my skill set (and my vocabulary). Can it be done? (and post the product at WP:Syndication?) Thanks. Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 06:14, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Keeping sports stats up-to-date

I’m the founder and CEO of StatSheet, Inc. (http://statsheet.com), a sports media company that specializes in making sports stats easy to integrate across the web.

There are thousands of sports pages on wikipedia that get out of date quickly because the articles contain sports stats related to a team or player.

Would you have any interest in StatSheet providing a service to Wikipedia contributors that allowed them to embed a snippet of Javascript, which updated those stats/standings/etc in real-time? The embedded content could look like it is part of the page — not an outside add-on.

We have a service called Embed StatSheet that does exactly this: http://embed.statsheet.com

Look at the football standings table on the following page to get an idea of what I'm talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_A%26M#Athletics

Robbie

While such a service would certainly be useful to Wikipedia's sports team pages, and if it was implemented we would certainly be willing to attribute the content as we do any other entry, I'm somewhat doubtful it will work out due to a combination of Wikipedia's copyright status and our editors generally being opposed to advertisement. I suggest you post this message to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports, where our sports-related article editors congregate, and you may wish to also visit more specific venues like Wikipedia talk:WikiProject American football. --erachima talk 23:46, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
As a sports editor, my first inclination is to be a skeptic. I can say up front that the use of a stat service like this that carries a note like "statistics provided by company" simply will not fly. It actually runs counter to several policies related to promotion (and in your case, self-promotion). I think that given the promotional use of your company name is extremely unlikely to be agreeable to the community, the fact that you would not be paid for the use of such a service, and the requirement that contributions be released under a free license makes Wikipedia a very unlikely client for your services. Doubly so given the fact that if there was such a need, one of our more technical editors could likely be convinced to write a bot that would accomplish the same function. Resolute 23:55, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
a note like "statistics provided by company simply will not fly; Yeah, at most, people might be willing to give them a footnote as a source citation. --Cybercobra (talk) 08:17, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
I agree, this idea is bad because it is provided by a company, which means it is commercial, which conflicts with wmf's goals. Kayau Voting IS evil 13:33, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
If we got it through a free service, that would be acceptable, but anything that uses a "commercial" service is a no go. Though users are more then welcome to cite your statistics. Sadads (talk) 13:44, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
I don't think it's about the source. What's important is under what terms would be the stats released. If it was free license compatible with the current Wikipedia license, this would be great. If not, then, yeah, it's probably impossible. Svick (talk) 13:46, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
Can the numbers be copyrighted? I'm sure any interpretation, analysis or layout can be copyrighted, but I don't see it for the raw numbers. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:42, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Hence proper citations, Sadads (talk) 15:47, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Why do we care if we get information from commercial services? Commercial news websites are heavily used as reliable sources, and sites like ESPN's website are widely used for sports statistics. Nyttend (talk) 15:33, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Page Deletion (and move maybe) Protection

This proposal in a nutshell: Have a list of pages protected from deletions or moves (even by admins) to prevent accidental deletions/moves.
In order to prevent deletions like these that have caused Wikipedia harm, I was wondering if a solution could be made that would prevent pages from getting deleted. I suggest a kind of MediaWiki:Pages protected from deletion page that would not allow any page listed on it to be deleted (preventing moves as well as deletions might also be a good idea). This would only prevent accidental deletions of the listed pages. If an admin really wanted to delete one of these pages, all he/she would have to do would be remove the page from the list and then delete the page. However, doing so would make it obvious that the deletion was intentional. When an admin presses the delete tab or navigates to the delete page for a page in the anti-delete list, they will not be shown a form to give a reason for the deletion but instead be given a notice that the page is protected from being deleted and must be removed from the list in order to be deleted. The notice would be shown before not after submitting the delete request to prevent certain people from thinking that the page is in the list when in reality, it is not. I would suggest the syntax to be similar to MediaWiki:Bad image list (separate lines for each entry, entries are links, wild cards accepted (somehow), and other entries on the same lines as exceptions (i.e. prevent WP:Sandbox from being deleted but allow its subpages to be deleted)). The list should only be populated with pages that would disrupt access to Wikipedia or pages necessary to the operation of Wikipedia (i.e. Wikipedia:Administrator's Noticeboard). Also, if implemented, releasing the source code would be great. If someone comes up with a better wording for all of this, please feel free to add it below. Rabbitfang (talk) 03:13, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Not to sound like a blithering idiot, but doesn't move protection exist already? Kayau Voting IS evil 05:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
Yes (WP:MOVP), but it does not affect the ability of admins to move the page. Not that I think this proposal is necessary. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:40, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
Yes, the proposal is not one of those 'we need this now!' types of things (more of a 'nice to have') but it would prevent some accidents like those from happening in the future. Rabbitfang (talk) 17:57, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
It is already impossible for admins to delete pages with more than around 5,000 edits. Due to the way that feature is implemented, it is sometimes possible to delete pages with, say, 8,000 revisions but impossible to delete a page with 3,000 revisions for some random reason. Such deletions are now restricted to stewards, and cannot be carried out by admins. The episode with the sandbox is unlikely to ever happen again, and I think I'll make a note about that on the village stocks page.
Re: moving pages, there are legitimate reasons for admins to move pages with large edit histories, such as when they are performing history merges. Page moves do not cause nearly as much damage to the database as deletions, and this has been the case since a major software upgrade in June 2005. I have moved Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous, a page with well over 100,000 revisions, twice to history merge the page, and neither of those page moves caused any significant damage to the database; if anything, the database was locked for a couple of seconds at the most. Graham87 05:29, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Improve awareness of new RfCs

Does anyone have a good way to be alerted when a new RfC is created? I tried watchlisting pages such as Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines (which is what the links at Wikipedia:Requests for comment imply we should do), but that involves wading through a diff, where the bot may have both added and deleted stuff, so it's not very clear in Popups what the change is. This seems a significant deterrent to widespread use of an important function—even assuming users take the step of watchlisting. If anything, wouldn't it be better if the system automatically alerted all registered users when a new RfC is created? PL290 (talk) 08:01, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Mass user messages are never a good idea. Not all people will be interested in joining any discussion even if being aware of it, they may not want to do so (for any reason) or know anything about the topic and don't want to risk saying something silly or follow some common misunderstanding. Messages must be kept for small and specific cases, such as something involving a article created by the user, a user that had previously agreed to receive such messages, etc. Otherwise, they would become spam. And the problem with spam is that if people gets used to the idea that the orange "you have new messages" is about discussing whenever the articles involving some small island should use imperial or metric units first, or someone should be called by first or last name, or other such things, people would begin to simply ignore the new messages as a "white noise" and not notice when they receive a message that is important MBelgrano (talk) 12:50, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
I agree. I wasn't thinking so much of messages, but some other means such as those info alerts at the top of the page (Input is invited on the subject of "xxxxxxxx" [hide])—in fact those seem ideally suited to this. Unless, of course, our agenda is to hide RfCs from all but those who know about them. :) PL290 (talk) 13:30, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
There are newsletter delivery bots. The ideal solution, probably, would be for someone to adapt such a bot so that people can sign up to have messages on whatever RFC topics they want. The bot would need to be able to figure out how to produce neat, non-duplicative messages from the RFC page updates; not sure how hard that would be. Rd232 talk 13:50, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
If the general view is that it's best kept as an opt-in alert, perhaps the RfC bot could simply use a more informative edit summary (e.g., "RfC 'xxxxxxxxxx' created; RfC 'xxxxxxxxxx' amended ..."). PL290 (talk) 14:00, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
That would certainly help, and should be easy. Drop a note to the bot operator and see if they can do it. Rd232 talk 10:45, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
I pinged the bot operator a few days ago in case he/she could make a change or wants to comment here. I don't know if that change would be easy, or, more to the point, whether there's really something more comprehensive we could do. Any suggestions from others about how we can improve matters? PL290 (talk) 06:13, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Vidipedia

I was reading this article in the New York Times about how some are beginning to incorporate video into ebooks and other text on the Ipad and similar devices. A few weeks ago, i thought of the idea of creating an encyclopedia, but with videos interspersed throughout the text, as an aide to help clarify or provide a visual for better understanding. Or, maybe some just prefer things by video.

I googled video encyclopedias and the best result I came up with was vidipedia.org, but it doesn't exactly look like its going places. I thought I could create my own company but the amount of effort and cost that would go into such a project are too enormous for a college student like me with limited funds.

I was hoping that maybe you guys at wikimedia could look into such capabilities for your services. I see that you guys have "wikis" for various media but not video. Perhaps a partnership with Youtube is in the works.

But alas this is just a suggestion, someone will probably think of doing this before long and make money off it.

Cheers —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.118.181.3 (talk • contribs) 16:15, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Videos can be hosted at Commons if I'm not mistaken. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:32, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Creation and usage of media files --Boson (talk) 20:40, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Videos can be uploaded, but must remain within the 100 meg limits, plus we only support 1 video codec, not all the current accepted ones for the HTML5 proposal, and HTML5 video is very limiting at the moment in browsers. The 100 meg limit and the inability to auto-scale quality based on connection speed would be a big holdup to incorporating better video into articles. That and I think a lot of people have preconceived ideas for what video is acceptable for an encyclopedia. And another major stumbling block is finding people who create good video content to release it under a free license acceptable for use here. I do think that properly done, and produced videos can greatly improve articles allowing users, specifically those with limited literacy to get more out of the encyclopedia. — raekyT 01:48, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia already has videos. Consider Cartesian_diver#Experiment_description.©Geni 19:48, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Is it possible to create an RSS feed for DYK?

I posted this on WP:VP (Proposals) on July 8, but nobody responded.

I was looking for an RSS feed for DYK. I see we don't have one at WP:Syndication. I asked at the help desk, and I learned from Calvin_1998 that "because DYK, ITN, &c. are updated manually (bot or otherwise)," we would have to "ma[k]e a script that creates an RSS/Atom feed from the HTML on the main page".

Can someone do this? (and post the product at WP:Syndication?) Thanks. Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 06:14, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Raising economic barriers to malicious editing.

Not going to happen. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 16:29, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I don't know how big a problem "vandalism" is on Wikipedia but I have developed a simple idea that may provide a disincentive for new users to make bad or malicious edits. This idea is so deliciously simple I don't know why it hasn't been thought of before. Namely, upon registering an account, a new user must use a credit card to "deposit" a sum of at least $20 in a Wikipedia trust account, although a user could choose to deposit more if he desires. For each edit the user makes that is flagged as "vandalism" or "non productive," a fraction of the deposit (perhaps $2-5) is forfeited to the wikipedia administration. If the user continues to make non-productive edits, the entire sum will be soon forfeited. Once the user's funds in the trust account are depleted, the user is banned from wikipedia. If, however, the user is not banned, the entire sum is refunded to the user's credit card within six months of registration, or within the first ten edits, whichever comes last. Wikipedia can also keep all the interest generated by this aggregate trust account, which mayhap would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thus the tangible threat of economic loss will serve as a powerful disincentive to vandalize wikipedia. Your suggestions are of course welcome. Thank you. DeepAgentBorrasco (talk) 05:08, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

...at which point, we would lose all our volunteer editors expect the ones who have funding behind them to push POVs. Bad idea. :-( --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 05:10, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Someone who wants to make a simple edit - like fixing a typo - isn't going to be willing to put up with such hassle. The problem with this suggesting is that it raises the cost of editing overall, not just for vandalizing. Prodego talk 05:15, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Is it April 1st already? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 06:17, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Gratis editing = more editors = more people to revert vandals. --Cybercobra (talk) 07:46, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
But not everyone reverts ill-faithed edits though. With this system, there would be very little vandalism to revert, leaving editors more time to work on articles. DeepAgentBorrasco (talk) 08:08, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
When I decide that your posts are vandalism, and you disagree, who decides? At the moment, it's only a matter of ego and pride. As soon as money is involved, the consequence of your post being defined by me as vandalism is a bit more serious. Keep money out of the right to edit. HiLo48 (talk) 08:22, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
"The Free Encyclopedia" Tim1357 talk 09:18, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Promotes an even more slanted contributor base than we currently have. I wouldn't, as a new user, have been able to give $20, nor willing. After all, who knows if the money will actually get back to me or if Wikipedia is an elaborate scam? The only new users who will be keen enough on editing to pay $20 before getting hooked will be those who already have experience with this sort of thing, and we want a broader group of contributors and less bias, not more. sonia♫♪ 09:21, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Note that I was around 8 when I registered, and it would be total bosh if I'm asked to give the wmf 10 dollars. Not to mention that when I was 8 I had no idea what 10 US dollars was worth in HK dollars. And, as Tim1357 said, this is a FREE encyclopaedia. Besides, the WMF has had enough controversy these days - I don't think Jimbo needs a visit from the ICAC. Kayau Voting IS evil 09:27, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Respect points like slashdot might be an idea so people who like that sort of thing can display them. I wouldn't have it meaning anything more than number of edits though. I wouldn't want to go into a spending war with some of the nutter organizations that try pushing their view here never mind the spam merchants. Dmcq (talk) 13:36, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
I wish someone comes and screams "innocent!", but I guess we are not in december yet. MBelgrano (talk) 15:03, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Terrible, terrible idea. Have you ever heard of the bad idea machine? elektrikSHOOS 08:32, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
This doesn't just raise an economic barrier to malicious editing, it raises an economic barrier to any editing. To enter into a system such as this, a prospective editor would have to have a) a credit card, and b) $20 of discretionary cash to throw on the table. If I were joining Wikipedia today, that would rule me out. Also consider the number of Wikipedians for whom $20 likely represents a week's income. Anyway, the tagline wouldn't fit on the front page. "Welcome to Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit... unless you live in a developing nation, or are unemployed, or are on a fixed income, or don't use credit cards, or run a tight paycheque-to-paycheque budget, or don't feel safe giving out your credit card details online, or choose not to register an account, or don't think you'll ever want to make more than a couple of typo-fix edits, or don't have absolute certainty that in the process of making a good faith edit you'll accidentally ping the vandalometer." At the risk of sounding like a tofu-knitting socialist, the idea that $20 is a trivial sum to gamble on a supposedly free website does not even come from the same planet as the warm and fuzzy information-equality ideals of Wikipedia. katherine_a (talk) 10:28, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
And that doesn't even cover people too young to have a credit card. WP encourages edits from all, even 13 year olds. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:09, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
I'm 12 years old, and I know another Wikipedian is too. :) Kayau Voting IS evil 15:02, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Vandalism is less of a problem than it used to be as our bots are getting cleverer and reverting ever higher proportions of it. We need to give a greater proportion of our attention to other problems such as degradation of data. I'd be willing to bet that over 400,000 of the people we have articles for in category:Living people will be dead before this century ends, that's an awful lot of editing we will need to get done. So I think we should be trying to recruit more editors not try to deter them. ϢereSpielChequers 10:42, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
  • People think standards at RFA are too high, wait till you see the standards at RFCCHR (Request for Credit Card Handling Rights).--Cube lurker (talk) 15:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
  • There are already massive economic barriers to editing or even viewing Wikipedia. Millions of people on the planet can't afford a computer or an Internet connection (not to mention food or clean water) and don't have a library to go to either. EdEColbertLet me know 00:53, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proper Bookmarks system

I've been trying to organise my watchlist, but frankly it's a bit of an archaic system that Wikipedia uses. Why not have a system similar to internet browser bookmarking, which is surely much simpler? Or at least have the ability to add folders to your watchlist, with a 'tick selected' to move individual pages into it arrangement?--Richyratton (talk) 10:44, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't get the comparison; Watchlist != bookmarks. RSS feeds would be a much more apt comparison. I can't see why one would need to structure it, unless you have an insanely large watchlist and can't follow all the changes. --Cybercobra (talk) 10:54, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
Well, honestly I have 546 pages on my watchlist and I would love some way to structure them. So that I can check, say, Wikiprojects one day, astronomy-related articles another, AfDs the third... --Cyclopiatalk 18:58, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
I agree, I run about 5 different projects at any one time, and my watchlist has nearly 2000 pages and continues to grow. Sometimes I am in the mood to deal with one type of issue, etc. etc. It doesn't make sense for me to have copy and paste the links to a separate page everytime I put them on my watchlist, just so that I can use related changes! Sadads (talk) 19:04, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
If you want to use them in a 'bookmark' fashion rather than a 'RSS feed' fashion, then maybe you should go to User:Richyratton/Links and add some links there. Kayau Voting IS evil 10:59, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
Kayau: But if I create User:Richyratton/Links then i'll still have to copy and paste every single watchlist item html address into it? And Cybercobra; you can't see why anyone would want to structure a watchlist? If someone's using wikipedia for research, then yes, it would be good to structure the watchlist, and given that wikipedia is an online encyclopedia reference tool, then that might well be one of it's uses. Personally i'm using it for story research, and would like to organise watchlist items into 'places', 'events', 'characterization' (and this itself would be handy to subdivide into 'psychology', 'neuroses', 'medical conditions' etc) and so on. And if you're a student of something, say design history, then you might want to stucture a watchlist into categories too, such 'art nouveau', 'mid century modern', 'memphis movement' etc. Also, maybe we misunderstand one another but I don't get wanting to track 'changes'. I want to bookmark pages i would like to come back to for reference, not to see what's been added to them recently.--Richyratton (talk) 12:00, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
Watchlist wasn't designed for bookmarking, so it's no wonder it's not good at it. I think a user script could be written to achieve this. Or, why don't you use your browser's bookmarking? You basically want to duplicate a feature you already have. Svick (talk) 13:00, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
Fair point Svick! Just presumed when i started watching things in wikipedia that i could organise it at a later date. I guess i'll rebookmark everything in safari! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Richyratton (talk • contribs) 13:31, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

m:Requests for comment/Global banners

^ --MZMcBride (talk) 22:34, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I would also recommend advertising this via userpage banners such as User:Tisane/Remove banners. Tisane talk/stalk 17:45, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Causes of death

Hello, I was wondering if you could help us out. We are quite new to all this, but after a conversation with a good friend over dinner we were talking about some of the issues in the article List of deaths by corporal punishment. This was resolved on the Biography of living people noticeboard, for although the subject of the list was dead, some people mentioned (as alleged murderers!) were living, which was the concern. We've got two more questions - not sure if this is the correct place to ask this becase the living persons board seems wrong for questions about list of deaths - if we are in the wrong place then do please point it out and feel free to move the question!

Firstly, we were looking at Category:Lists of people by cause of death, and it seems quite strange that there are the following articles:

  1. List of assassinated Lebanese people
  2. List of assassinated people from Turkey
  3. List of people assassinated in Africa

AND

  1. List of assassinated people

Whether or not keeping the complete list is something which is possible (ie: will ever be a complete list), we can see the reason for having one - but not why Turkey, Africa and the Lebanon get their own lists! (On a side note, the "see also" on the lebanon article seems to be pointing to a particular cause, which may or may not be backed up by the list...)

What would be the best thing to do in this circumstance? The main list seems to divide by country and continent as well - should the articles be merged?

Secondly, we were wondering what Wikipedia's policy is on the use of "alleged" or "allegedly" in an article. Are you allowed to allege that someone has/is/has done something, based on (eg: speculation made in a newspaper etc)? IE: If notable person Bob claims that notable person Mike has come round his house and stolen all his cutlery, even though there is no evidence to say so, is Mike's article allowed to say "Bob alleged that Mike came round his house and stole all his cutlery". Or is Bob's article allowed to say "He claimed that Mike once came round his house and stole all his cutlery"? We're not sure where the line is on this one!

Anyway, sorry for such a long post! Any answers you may have would be greatly appreciated! All the best, Artie and Wanda (talk) 23:00, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

My thoughts on your two questions:
  • Allegations: our policies do not prevent us from stating that an allegation was made; however, such statements must be backed up by reliable sources, and if there are conflicting views about the fact among reliable sources, those must be represented too, in suitable proportion. Please see the policies WP:V and WP:NPOV for full information on this. Those policies have talk pages too; these are mainly for discussing improvements to the policy wording, but would also be a suitable place to raise questions should you find the wording doesn't cover a particular aspect.
  • Lists: I would assume those particular ones exist simply because they are the ones that happen to have been created by different editors. Merging may not be necessary or appropriate, given the size and usability implications, though reorganization and rationalization to relate the lists may help (I haven't looked). The talk pages of the lists in question would be the place to make any such suggestion.
PL290 (talk) 06:26, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

You have new messages

There is a WP feature that shows an indication (depending on the skin, I think) that someone else has edited your personal Talk page. This is a great feature. My proposal is to add an Email Preference to send an email to the user, in addition to setting the indicator. This preference would take priority over other Email Preferences so the email can be sent even when the user wants privacy for the other email features. David Spector (talk) 16:08, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki has this feature, but it disabled on the English Wikipedia, if I remember correctly, it is because of performance reasons. For example the Czech Wikipedia has this option enabled. Svick (talk) 19:45, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
I'd hate it. I don't want that much email. Vandals might love it. Dougweller (talk) 17:09, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
I agree with everything Dougweller said and then some (and there are WP:BEANS considerations as well). Allowing a preference for messages on your own talk page to be forwarded to email might be acceptable, though the WP:BEANS considerations still apply. — Gavia immer (talk) 17:20, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
I guess I wasn't clear: it is an option in preferences. Svick (talk) 17:25, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
It's more likely that I wasn't clear, actually, which would be my fault. An option such as is described at your link is no huge deal, apart from the performance issue. David Spector appears, to me, to be requesting an option to push messages to another user's email whether they want it or not, and even if they have specifically tried to opt out of such emails. That's a bad idea. Of course, it may well be that I have his idea wrong, in which case it would be nice to have a clarification. — Gavia immer (talk) 00:43, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, you're right, I didn't read the original comment properly. And I agree with you that it would be a bad idea. If I don't want to receive e-mails from Wikipedia, I shouldn't be forced to do so, under normal circumstances. I don't see the need for this and it could (and would) be abused. Svick (talk) 11:28, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

To summarize the comments: there has as yet been no objection to the proposal as stated. David Spector (talk) 23:49, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I would like to object, if that's alright by you. I simply do not see the point. If anybody is interested in the collaborative side of Wikipedia, then they will most likely use the site. Even if they do not keep an eye on their watchlist, the orange "new messages" banner will always alert them if anybody wishes to get in touch, no matter what page is being viewed at the time.
For active editors such as myself, whose talkpages frequently receive upwards of fifteen edits in a day (including minor edits, spelling-corrections, bot archival, template notifications etc.) this would mean receiving as many emails. Not only is that a lot of bandwidth, but it is also completely un-necessary, not to mention potentially irritating for the end user. Yes, I know they could turn it off, but it's worth pointing this out anyway.
And while I am not exactly worried about performence, for the reasons stated above, any needless drain on the Wikimedia Foundation's (charitable) resources should not be contemplated. ╟─TreasuryTag►quaestor─╢ 12:08, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Again, like the other folks, you appear to have missed the point that this would be an option, by default off. That means that the current functionality would not change unless you want it to change. David Spector (talk) 17:01, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) You appear to have missed the point that this would be an option – I distinctly said, "Yes, I know they could turn it off, but it's worth pointing this out anyway." So what made you think that I'd missed the point? ╟─TreasuryTag►secretariat─╢ 19:52, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

I support it. I know if I didn't spend every waking moment plugged into Wikipedia I would want to get e-mails when I have something on my talk. It would be like what I do with Facebook (silly silly website). Sadads (talk) 17:08, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

There was an option to have an email sent when your talk page was updated, it was disabled by the developers for performance reasons. I doubt they'll re-enable it. –xenotalk

As a semi-retired software engineer with about 40 years' experience working with computers, including 18 years of Windows programming, I can't see how sending an email to those who want one whenever their Talk page changes (or going even farther, when one of their watchlisted pages changes one or more times within a window of 30 minutes or so) would create a performance problem.

Presumably, WP data resides in a database handling thousands of transactions a second. Handling a few more every now and then wouldn't seem to be a problem to me. The actual email sending is also not a load; it can be handled by a lower-priority process. They'd have to convince me it would either load the servers or slow response time significantly.

This is a Proposals page. I assume that means that every proposal will be considered for implementation on its merits, not on some memory of 'they already rejected that'.

Concerning misuse by malicious users (vandals), I think this is not a significant addition to the tools they already have, principally too much time on their hands.

There's a lot of strong conservatism (in its meaning of 'opposition to change') here in spite of WP:BOLD, one of the most valuable of the founding principles of WP. I believe that "do the right thing" is a better attitude than "that's not the way we do it here."

Of course, if there really would be a performance problem, or this proposal turned out to help vandals significantly, then this proposal should not be implemented. David Spector (talk) 19:59, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It was disabled by the developers for performance reasons. I doubt they'll re-enable it. > As a semi-retired software engineer with about 40 years' experience working with computers, including 18 years of Windows programming, I can't see how [the proposal] is a performance problem. Perhaps you don't see. That is precisely why we have a team of dedicated experts to make such judgements. It's all very well pontificating about your decades of erudition, but (alleged) familiarity with the 40-year-old Datapoint 2200 is scarcely of any use around here. ╟─TreasuryTag►secretariat─╢ 19:52, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I've never heard of a Datapoint 2200. My first computer was the LINC, a breakthrough for its day and quite possibly the world's first practical minicomputer. I've been responsible for systems programming as well as application programming for such companies as DEC, Prime, and Honeywell, as well as many startups (including my own). I've designed and implemented improvements on a time-series, multidimensional OLAP business database system for Dun and Bradstreet. I improved the runtime performance of the Multics linker by 27%. I currently do database development for another startup of mine. I understand performance issues well. What I don't understand is the unncessary but pervading atmosphere of viciousness here at WP. David Spector (talk) 20:09, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I've never heard of a Datapoint 2200. My first computer was the LINC, a breakthrough for its day and quite possibly the world's first practical minicomputer. I've been responsible for systems programming as well as application programming for such companies as DEC, Prime, and Honeywell, as well as many startups (including my own). I've designed and implemented improvements on a time-series, multidimensional OLAP business database system for Dun and Bradstreet. I improved the runtime performance of the Multics linker by 27%. I currently do database development for another startup of mine. I understand performance issues well. Whatever.
Surely you realise that I simply do not care about your professional history. It is not verifiable and it is completely irrelevant to this discussion. We have developers to make decisions about performance. If you consider this apportionment of functions according to expertise to be "vicious" then perhaps Wikipedia is not the right environment for you. ╟─TreasuryTag►ballotbox─╢ 20:15, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Whenever I encounter this user it is abusing or sneering at other users. This behaviour is toxic to those around it and destructive to the project.Does anybody else think TT needs to learn some manners? Anthony (talk) 20:27, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
This is not the venue for a behavioural discussion. I would direct you to WP:WQA, WP:RFC/U or WP:RFAR. ╟─TreasuryTag►sundries─╢ 20:29, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
I wasn't talking to you. Anthony (talk) 20:31, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
But I was talking to you. I don't want to pollute this overall discussion (about "you have new messages") with any more of this crap so I'll let you have the last word. ╟─TreasuryTag►Captain-Regent─╢ 20:33, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
I don't want to pollute this overall discussion Could have fooled me. Anthony (talk) 20:38, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Whoah! ╟─TreasuryTag►sheriff─╢ 20:39, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

On some pages I believe you can subscribe to an RSS feed. Is this true of user talk pages? It might be especially useful on your own, and you could set up (email or other) alerts yourself using this. Verbal chat 20:46, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

  • Support (Back on topic) The vast majority of editors spend very little time on Wikipedia. A feature like the one proposed would be very useful. I'd use it. (Assuming, of course there are no performance issues.) Anthony (talk) 20:53, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support proposal, at least as a trial to see how it affects performance - it's available as an option on Commons, and I've often wondered why it isn't available here. Alternatively, would it be possible to set it up as an RSS feed (as watchlists can)? —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 08:19, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Ignoring the ridiculous and unwarranted side-tracking in the thread above, IIRC the reason the $wgEnotifUserTalk is not enabled is because there is no consensus to enable it in enwiki. (Don't worry about performance and such...) There is Bug 5220 filed in BugZilla about this, so you might be better off asking at WP:VPT whether anything has changed in the technical feasibility arena, as developers have a higher chance of reading that page than this one. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 09:43, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
  • I support enabling this option if developers find it feasible. I have used it on Commons for years and it works very well. It's especially helpful for people like me who still want to contribute to the project but don't have as much time as they had before. Royalbroil 02:52, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support but do not enable by default, as this is helpful to only some people. It's helpful because I never check commons or wikinews talk pages. Even though I do check wikibooks often, it feels good to have an email. I will not use it because I don't want to receive an email for every talkback, though. Kayau Voting IS evil 02:57, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Strong support -- Some weeks I edit Wikipedia every day. Other times, I'm occupied elsewhere and don't frequently check my talk page. As an administrator, I would very much like to be notified of talk page changes so I can be more responsive on my non-wiki days. I'm not concerned about system resources based on Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. --A. B. (talk • contribs) 03:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support - many Wikimedia projects, including Commons, have this enabled for users who choose it. For some projects that I have made contributions to but rarely check, I have chosen to get an email when my talk page is changed. There are editors, I'm sure, who would find this useful for them on EN, and we should offer it. Not as the default, but as an option. Jonathunder (talk) 04:09, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support - Other than any possible performance issues, I see no logical reason to not have an option allowing editors to get an email when their talk page is changed. If you don't like that function, then don't check that box in your preferences. Seems pretty simple.--Rockfang (talk) 04:39, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support - I didn't realize this wasn't an option here. Every other Wikimedia project has it as an option in the preferences that can be turned on or off. If you don't want to get the e-mail, just turn it off in your preferences. I would definitely turn it off in my preferences, as it would drive me nutso to get e-mail every time my talk page is changed, but if it's helpful for other people (e.g. people who barely edit anymore but still want to know when there's a problem with an image they uploaded), it should be available as an option. +Angr 06:18, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support as opt-out - This is going to help us draw back editors who took a wikibreak and didn't know they had messages. Enable it for everyone, and make it crystal-clear how to manually opt out. If a spam problem develops (NOT likely!), toggle to opt-in after a week. It's highly valuable; worth the controversy. as OPT IN. On second thought, opt-out would be a disaster. Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 06:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support: I support the general concept, and I'll let the programmers sort out the details. I have Commons set to e-mail me when stuff on my watch list changes. That's very helpful when my talk page there gets notices. It's helpful to me because I don't go there much as mostly a writer, but I upload all of my images there. I can imagine that some people don't check in here daily, or even weekly, so they might want the notice. I agree: leave the option off by default, and let users who want it enable it. Imzadi 1979 → 07:29, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support. No reason not to, as long as you can decide not to use it. --Conti|✉ 07:46, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Can't we just ask the sysadmins whether or not this is doable before even considering enabling it? -- Luk talk 12:10, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Conditional support. Provided the default is to have this off. (This should also help with the performance issues; for most users, this will be a flag check added to the existing notification software.) I do not want to find this has happened with a whole flood of e-mail from Wikipedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:25, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support re-enabling this feature with the default setting at off. – allen四names 14:31, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support as an opt-in. Very beneficial change. ThemFromSpace 15:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support: Obviously should be opt-in. Also, people really ought to note what A. B. said above—it isn't the place or remit of everyday contributors to worry about system performance issues. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:25, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • As long as it is an opt-in this looks good to me. I know I really do appreciate the emails from many of the other wikis, but would find it an utter pain here; for less active contributors it would be a godsend. sonia♫♪ 15:30, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support. From experience, this is very useful for less active contributors. decltype (talk) 15:34, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support. I love this feature on the smaller wikis and really wish it was available on en.wiki. I don't think it would cause serious performance issues, but if it did, perhaps it could be implemented through Sendgrid or something similar. Kaldari (talk) 22:07, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support - I would use this feature if it was enabled. I don't log into Wikipedia every day, so I might not read a message until several days after it was sent; if I was notified by email when someone posted on my talk page, I'd respond much more quickly. Robofish (talk) 23:38, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support - I don't know if I'd use it, but a living person with a BLP who doesn't know jack about WP could create an account and discuss issues, for instance. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 23:07, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support - Kozuch (talk) 10:48, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support for email re talkpage changes if it is opt in, I'd also support as a separate feature opt in email re changes to watchlist items. But we need some cap to prevent someone doing dozens of changes to user talk pages per day as that could be annoying. ϢereSpielChequers 18:43, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Support if it is opt-in, per above. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:55, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
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